Y/N's P.O.V

I signed it.

It wasn't a haste decision. The king gave me an ample time to think about it, but before I let it get to me with the line of thinking of that a powerful character compelling a weaker person into an agreement I signed.

It was simple, after all. A clear cut agreement that I do not hold any right to call him, but only in emergencies.

But why?

Why can I call him and others cannot?

That question had been pushed and bruised at the back of my head, wafting like smoke in the pristine, battered brain inside.

Did I even have a brain?

It was simple, yet the maddening complexity made me wrack my brain on end. I'd stay up all night connecting flimsy strings of red to shadowed pictures, and sit numbed on my bed all day.

Right now, I have a red string in between my fingers, with an unknown path to hundreds of images. If only I could bunch them all up and yeet them to a trash can, that'll do the job.

Those fingers are placed on an unsullied, clear glass, tracing with the crest the perimeter of daffodils and blooming lillies where a bounty of them is meant to be harvested and displayed on a vase.

The outside of the border is quite different; thorn, ambushed, decayed, greens are now stained with bovine black - it were as if fire thrashed the whole ground to ashes.

Why was this whole part dying? And yet beautiful, glowing flowers grow inside a huge circle pad - a large drop of pristine water dropped from the gods above. The duality shook me to the core.

The sun has risen yet the members of the town is still in their siesta - I remember now, they only come out during midnight, I don't know yet how this whole thing works but it's interesting.

My eyes are missiles locked on a target of the beautiful concoction of flowers, unfazed at anything that could block my vision, even the sienna grilles lining the frame of the window - those were just hazy pixelate lines.

I had found myself in here, coming from a foyer of an arch giving way to a dome structure. The ceiling - looking like an upside down bowl - is painted with murals of darkened entities of which faces are nonexistent.

They were a continuous picture across the dome, laced together in a rich fabric of explosive evil and black where dark and light hues of greens, blacks, whites, and deep colors are sewn in the seams.

Rimmed with gold all throughout the interior and exterior exploded a canvas of pure art into a story of shadowy malice -  an undertone of dedicated tenderness landed in a billow.

The line of painting of those entities starts at the beginning of the arch above and ends at the beginning. Reminding me how the universe works where we live and die and live once again.

Clouds painted with blue and white set the almost comedic coalescence of evil and calm above my head, they were scattered aimlessly and everywhere around the entities, buttering them up with its calm nature.

Loved it or not, those scary figures hooked me into an arch of a story - a long, forgotten - not lost - story in a woeful atmosphere of pitfalls.

The huge contrast of the atmosphere and the paintings above ebbed into my brain like a grenade, eventually going off and caving white and gray splashes of smoke and dust inside of me.

I hadn't realized. I was strung out.

"Hey," a voice called out making my heart pound. I turn, and there stood my brother, dashing in white trousers and white tunic draped elegantly over by a royal blue cloak reaching just above his ankle.

Spats of gold and silver elements blot the blue material in a golden hue. Vines of golden, intricate flowers wrench down small, obscure lapels on either sides of the cloak, with its hood rimmed with twining gold flowers.

His feet are caged in white boots running up higher than his ankles but lower than his knees, the white material of his trousers are neatly cuffed inside, its heavy, baggy cloth ending graciously where the high boots end.

He, was the visual representation of the royalties I've only seen on pixel screens, on tens of books I've read and in stories I've heard from countless people. It's a first to see him in a completely different persona, glammed up, emitting raucous balm of royalty wafting through everywhere he goes.

And he stood there, in front of me - a stranger I know since my birth.

Ironic, right?

Heels click pleasantly on the pristine, marbled floor and he glides across the room like a specter driven to the edge of its cliff. In a moment he was stood only inches away from me.

Why was he draped in these royal clothes? Especially a large cloak safetying his slim body from eyes.

"Stop that," he mumbles, towering over me like a bountiful tree shading a lone traveller.

"What?" I question absently, still running my eyes across the span of his body, gleaming and thinking at its existence.

"Stop thinking, you'll get worked up once again, you don't want to happen once again what happened to you the last three weeks," he threatens.

My eyes flit to him. And I see that his eyes are shooting with sparks of electricity, amplifying much more with the sharp, angled cut of his jaws deepening beneath harsh lights.

Plump lips are set to a straight line, a pitying attempt to add to his tantalizing expression - it only came out as a small pout of an endeared child that is yet to see the world.

It takes me back to three weeks earlier, where the king had dismissed me from the woeful, intrinsical darkened room of his.

I had been wheeled back to my room where darkness also consumes the air, tightening it like hands around my neck.

Before my body could shut down from panic it is alreading reaching above, stretching more than it could take to switch the damn light on.

That's when all the irritations and vexations came pouring out like the thick, juice of chocolate in a chocolate fountain, filling me until I'd drown.

If only I could drown my sorrows - too bad, I was the one drowning.

I didn't leave the room, covered under a mountain of piles of piles of blankets I had found in the closet.

Letting the darkness slowly close in on me as I force my eyes shut to avert all possible perilous events.

This is the only day I'd mustered up my courage and stepped out of my safety case. I thought I had healed, but the only way that would happen is if I get all the answers I so desperately seek.

But what would guarantee that I would be healed once I get it?

It were seemingly the questions were maiming me much more than the strangers around me, leaving ghastly shapes of scars of broken flesh of pity and of hatred.

Or of guilt of insensibility.

I was lost in a vast sea where the dying ember of the last sun and the horizon are all I could see, where the dark of the night is coming to indigo to azure to berry and to cataclysmic black.

But they were still too far away, enough for me to sulk like a child for not reaching the colors.

"Come with me, I'm showing you something," he says, his threatening expression shifting to a concerned one as he looked at my face.

I was still lost. Not figuratively. Literally.

Before I could see the signal of the sudden shift of the weight of his foot or the reaching hand I was already being pulled to somewhere.

His grip is still tight as we venture through halls and similar domes to the one with the darkened entities. I had just noticed in a split second as I was pulled harshly through cold air that the other domes weren't painted with those monsters.

Instead, they were painted with angels and butterflies and flowers.

What made it different? They were just paintings.

Right?

He stops, momentarily loosening his grip as we step into a large foyer.

The waft of musky scent barged into my nostrils. Warm and burgundy wrapped the huge, golden room in a thin atmosphere of the opposite sex.

Men.

They sat on huge, luxurious, comfy couches.

I recognize snow white who was partially protruding between two huge men, eyes drooping from weariness, the pink silk pajamas he adorned are rammed with creases.

There was also the dimpled guy and the anime one.

Dimpled guy is reading a book, flaunting golden specs as he absently flipped through pages, head buried into the span of inked words blanketing the inside.

The others were too engrossed and submerged in their little quips to care about our sudden arrival.

Anime one is pulling faces, wheezing through with a red face trying to cross over snow white's anterior legs loosely tightened and crossed together on top of the glass table in front of the couch, rested firmly as he visibly struggle to sleep before he could hit the man with a large slap.

His eyes are closed, lids scurrying to open resulting to them trembling much than normal. Two fine lines morph his forehead, with the act of pretense sleep slowly getting on his nerves - much more than the irksome man by his legs.

The situation was comical in a way it was strangely sad.

I had wished I had this kind of friendship in my life, where everyone is just chill in their own possible and unique way.

"You're Jihyun's girlfriend, aren't you?" a man inquired to my left making me turn. He's sashaying towards me, a wilted sunflower slackingly held in his right hand, its little petals floating through the air before it reaches the ground with joyful last moments.

"Who is he?" I ask back, everyone's attention are on me now, even the lazy turtle with the trembling lids.

"You don't know him?" Sunflower man asks and then grins to a happy sun. In an instance the atmosphere brightened, all the gloominess and facade are sucked out by his joyful ray. There are two dimples adorning the ending tips of his lips. "That's good."

"Why?" I suspicion, completely betrayed by the small squeak of my scared voice. There was something to him that seemed like wine, aged beautifully in perfection - but dangerous in a way.

He hands me the sunflower, its small frame drooping substantially with the intensity of sunflower man's radiant smile.

The sunflower is being robbed of its life and being transferred—.

"—To me, yes. I'm Jung Hoseok, your sunflower man and the keeper of death."
—————
[A/N]
UNEDITED.