Krystal has been dead for far too long. Her cheeks had lost its rosy color and her lips have turned pale. Her eyes are dull with no light. The cold heart she owns has stopped as well and the only thing that kept her from moving were the strings attached to her back and her limbs. The strings guide her to walk, to act, to remain a good posture and be elegant. The smile she forces on her lips is (fake) manipulated, forced but no one seems to mind.

He sees them, however. He is dark and tall and his eyes are sharp as knives and dark as the night. He is the prince of darkness—or so people have bestowed upon him. When he smiles, it is crooked and malicious. She wonders if it is even a smile when it’s close to a smirk.

They meet simply because they are the same. He is as much as dead as her and his life has been controlled from the moment he had come out from his mother’s womb. They are sons and daughters of socialites, parents who longed trained and practiced them into being someone of (fake) perfection and charismatic auras. Despite, receiving compliments and endearment, Krystal feels as if she was born into the wrong family because she was not made to be perfect nor was she trying to be perfect. And neither was he.

“This is not fate,” she says. Fate is nothing.

“It’s not,” he says. “It ain’t love either.” Love is missing.

But they both know it is a lie. They feed on that lie social gathering after another. There are sparks in between their once dead eyes. They both know it.

Krystal feels like Tao is a mirror of herself, only his heart was still intact, silently thumping and hers was somewhere inside her chest and frozen in time.

“I would have to marry one day,” she says. Mother insists.

He snorts. Father disapproves. “What an unlucky bastard.”

Love is not an option for them, as well as believing in destiny. Running away is.

They runaway because it is the wrong thing to do. Well, right. Or whatever. They pick their bags and throw them into the train. They sit down. Shoulder to shoulder. Knees to knees. The world passes their eyes. A blur of green and blue and white. The sun is singing.