You will always remember that one summer when you fell in love

**

Seven pairs of eyes stared at a riddle on a piece of smooth, silver-gilded plaque affixed to the front door of the 74th floor.

The 74th floor's test

Give me something of every color

And I'll show you your heart's desire

Shibisu scratched his head. "This is from the floor's administrator, isn't it?"

Rak mumbled under his breath. "We've got black turtle, blue turtle, red turtle –" He gave Endorsi some thought before saying "orange turtle –"

"I'm pretty sure it doesn't refer to our colors, Rak," Hatsu remarked doubtfully.

Endorsi looked at Hwa Ryun. "Any wisdom, guide?"

Hwa Ryun shook her head. "I've heard that the answer to the riddle represents the administrator's heart desire. We must solve this to get to the next floor."

After a moment of silence, when it has been established that no one had a suitable answer, everyone's eyes turned to Khun.

Khun stared blankly at their faces. "Why is everyone looking at me?"

"You're the bossy – uh, I mean the brains of us all, of course," Shibisu cleverly chirped.

Khun smiled wryly at the mock compliment. "As the team's strategist, I suggest we open these doors to find clues on the floor itself."

Bam does the honors of pushing open the treble-bolted doors, and they glide smoothly outward to reveal a pleasant mid-morning.

The sky is flame-blue and the little leaves on the floor are powdered green-gold with sunshine. The group wordlessly removed their outer layers by shedding their jackets and coats; heat had become tangible.

They learn soon after that the floor's administrator had broken the Tower's pendulum of light, which shattered over the floor to create an eternal summer. Crisp autumn mornings and wintry nights were now a memory.

"The first turtle who solves the riddle will be genius turtle!" Rak is loud-mouthed about his declaration as he waddled off with the red-witch. Shibisu and Hatsu dragged a protesting Endorsi off with them to leave Khun together with Bam.

"Khun thinks better with just Bam, and we really need to get to the next floor," Shibisu said as he dodged the princess's elbow.

Bam walks with Khun past glossy white shops and malt-smelling bakeries. He can smell buttermilk biscuits baking and sees muffins glazed with summer fruits. The sunlight around them is like liquid, and he wishes that he can drink it.

Khun's hair is subtle variations of blue underneath the light, and Bam cannot help but smile – he feels as if he is walking beside someone iridescent. A pair of marmalade kittens peer at the two regulars with wide round eyes.

Khun stops at a cloistered garden thoughtfully, a mile from where they started. Tiny birds wheel through spokes of sunlight. A baby thrush on a nearby branch turns its eye toward him, cocks its head, and blinks. Bam does the same.

"Aren't we supposed to look for clues, Khun?"

His best friend stretched his arms over his head, shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, gauntlet buttons undone around the cuff. Khun flashed him a rather petulant grin. "Let the rest be the brains today, and we can enjoy the summer."

Bam laughs. "And here I was thinking that we would be the pair to solve the riddle."

Khun flattens his back against the grass to watch flights of pink-rimmed clouds sail overhead. "I bet Hwa Ryun already knows the answer. She just likes to see us struggle."

Bam lies parallel to him so they are both watching the sky, just two of them against the world. Their hands would have been close enough to touch if not because Bam has his hands behind his head.

"What do you think the riddle meant by showing us our heart's desire?"

Khun blinked. "I thought it was referring to the entrance of the next floor."

Bam closes his eyes. There are crabapple trees with red-cheeked blossoms, and Bam imagines that their fruit is both sour and sweet at the same time. The air smells of honey and thyme. Bees buzz as their tiny feet dust a million flowers.

Even without the stars, this moment with Khun is very much enough to make Bam happy.

"It should be any moment now," Khun murmurs.

"What – "

"I overhead someone saying that the administrator gives a clue at noon each day."

They hear the melody of a bell twelve times from a distance, scattering a flock of birds.

Without warning, a misty rain falls on the green grass. Bam is determined not to peel his eyes away from the sky – he wants to see them falling; he wants to watch the summer showers bind the heavens and the earth, which in all eternity would not touch.

The droplets are like pearls, and as Khun takes his wrist in an attempt to pull them to shelter, Bam muses how it would be nice if the sky was a musical box, both of them jewels in sapphire-tinted velvet, where a rotating ballerina would turn with the four seasons, and Khun is right beside him.

Khun's fingers are warm and slippery around his wrist. The rain and Bam's heart is a soft pitter patter.

Any semblance of shelter is further away than expected, and Khun shrugs out his coat from his lighthouse. He drapes it over their heads, which forces them to huddle together. Bam stares at him.

"Why didn't you just take out an umbrella instead?"

Khun shrugged. "I grabbed the first thing I could find in the lighthouse." He raises his coat higher to shield Bam from the wet clouds. "It's cosier this way, isn't it?"

Bam does not dispute the fact, but offers a proposition. "I can hold it if it's easier, Khun. I'm now two inches taller after all." He grins at Khun, who responds with a low-lidded glare.

The rain is falling and Bam thinks being soaked alone is cold, but being soaked with Khun is an adventure. Droplets are getting caught in Khun's eyelashes, and Bam's gaze keeps returning to him.

Any attempt at subtlety is ruined when he repeatedly catches Khun's eyes with his own.

What does your heart desire?

Khun decides that the best way for them to stop glancing at each other is to start a conversation. "This is a fox rain, Bam. A phenomenon where it rains in the mid of summer. It marks the day where a tiger marries a fox."

Bam looks up at the sky, which continues to shine brightly amidst the rain. "Why would it rain if it is a happy occasion?"

"It's because the cloud loved the fox and wept behind the sun."

Bam looks at the wetness around them and wonders if they are tears. The puddles of water on the ground which carry reflections of two boys in the rain are evaporating in the heat.

"But the cloud still gave his blessings. After a sun shower usually comes a beautiful – "

Khun stops abruptly and Bam has to dart under his coat again, having gone a few steps ahead.

"That's it, Bam. After a midsummer rain typically comes a rainbow!"

Bam is bewildered because he has never seen one. Khun has to explain to him the meteorological phenomenon and the science behind the reflection and refraction of light that creates a spectrum of every color.

"So a rainbow just needs sunshine and rain?" Bam simplifies the recipe, much to Khun's chagrin.

Khun tugs Bam toward a corner shop because he says he knows a way to create the heart's desire. Bam waits outside for him, staring at the rinsed sky.

As Khun disappears through the door, he catches sight of Bam's reflection. A breeze, a smile, and his heart's desire, all could fit in that small store front window. White magnolias are blooming outside the arched glass; every memory of Bam is always pure.

The luscious smell of the earth after the rain is intoxicating. As Bam stands still, he thinks of how to make a rainbow in the lofty sky, so that Khun would smile in that way again.

*

Khun steps out from the shop twenty minutes later with what he needs in his trouser pocket, and he is not prepared for what he sees.

Bam is in the middle of a lake and the sky, levitating ten thousands drops of water in the air. They move in reverse from the earth toward the clouds, creating a beaded curtain that rises and falls with the wind. He is focusing very hard on trying to create something, his strands of hair across his face, rotating the droplets in an attempt to catch the right angle of light.

Sunlight and water finally combine to create a rainbow under the blue, windy sky.

The crowd is awestruck. A thousand eyes are on Bam, but Bam looks at a single person.

"Khun, I created a rainbow!"

Khun feels he is on the highest seat in a ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The way Bam grins at him, regardless of how many times it has been, is still sublime. The multifaceted Tower contains one masterpiece, and it is smiling at him.

"My god creates miracles after all."

Khun doesn't even realise that Hwa Ryun is beside him, leaning against the shop window.

In her hand is a bubble wand, and she puffs through the hole. Soap bubbles catch the light and are rainbow-tinted as they float under the arc of the sky. They are fragile and fleeting, like wishes that are destined to burst.

Khun gives her a side glance. "I knew that you had the answer from the start. It's interesting how there is more than one way to solve this riddle."

"Of course. There's always more than one path, Khun." She pokes at a bubble with a satisfying pop. "That's why guides exist."

The floor's administrator acknowledges that the riddle is solved, and the rainbow morphs into a bridge of seven colors. A shimmering portal stands at the end of the bridge as a gateway to the next floor.

"So which path will you take Khun? The red? The orange? The blue?"

Khun answers without hesitation. "I choose my own path. And right now, I will take whichever path that Bam is on."

There is no longer a thousand raindrops or that magic in the air, but Khun knows that even if his feet is stuck in a filthy sewer, he would still find every possible way to Bam.

Hwa Ryun lifts her chin. "What if I said the path you choose is - "

Khun places a finger over her lips to silence her words. Her scarlet eyes flicker toward him and they share a rare moment together - the strategist and the guide who both believed in the same man.

"Hwa Ryun, the journey is what brings us happiness, and not the destination."

He steps ahead, and Hwa Ryun looks at his figure standing firm in the wind. Hwa Ryun tightens the lid on the bubble bottle. "Maybe the path of my god need not be lonely after all," she murmurs.

Bam is waiting for Khun at the front of the portal, his face open and bright. "Khun, we solved it!

"You solved it, Bam. You made the rainbow." They both stood on the green ribbon of the bridge.

Green, a combination of blue and gold.

"But you were going to make one too, Khun. Didn't you get something at the shop?"

Khun smiled. "Would you like a rainbow that fits in your hand, Bam?"

Bam is clearly astonished, but he holds out his palm. Khun fishes out a slender glass prism from his pocket. Bam blinks as Khun tilts it toward the light, and in half a second a rainbow appears on his fingers.

He opens and closes his hand in delight, a rainbow dancing on his palm. If love had a form, it would be a white light that is set free into a spectrum of colors when lovers meet.

"A heart's desire on my palm...what is your heart's desire, Khun?" Bam finally asks the question that is on his mind this entire time.

Khun places the prism in Bam's hand and closes Bam's fingers over it. "It's right here." He takes Bam's wrist and pulls him toward the portal.

"The entrance to the next floor, of course." He gives a wink.

You are my heart's desire.

"Let's go!"

Hwa Ryun guides the path, Khun lights the way, and Bam continues to spread his wings to fulfil his destiny.

Bam now believes in a rainbow after the rain, even if he does not see it. He now believes in the sun, even if it is not shining. He believes in love, even if Khun is not beside him.

After it all, Bam would set the glass prism beside a window and remember that sunshine or rain, Khun has his coat up to shelter him from the storm. Bam does not hold up his palm this time; the rainbow is now in his heart.