✎ to you, who swallowed a star 「 ed•v 」

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𝖕𝖚𝖑𝖛𝖎𝖘 𝖊𝖙 𝖚𝖒𝖇𝖗𝖆 𝖘𝖚𝖒𝖚𝖘.

•••

Khun Eduan’s endless pursuit towards making a name for himself that can incite both fear and respect had always led him to believe that he had all the time in the tower to make it happen.

Death is nothing but a social construct, at least for the son of Khun. A last act of mercy bestowed upon the dishonored and miserable. An escape for the weak. An end to a means. Needless to say, he was never fazed by such a trivial concept. Why would he be? Eventually, they will all perish under the constraints of time.

Some just do so sooner than later.

Yet, as dialogues panned out like an ongoing film with the sequence of events playing at flashforward, with that rustic scent he knew all too well and didn’t at the same time, staining the screen crimson red and everything he recalled touching withering, his consciousness was still stuck at that particular spring day, which nobody seems to remember nor forget.

“Eduan.”

A voice whispered to Eduan, drained and exhausted, as if the host had borne the weight of the world on its shoulders while its sanity hung over a thin piece of thread. The spearbearer turned towards bejeweled amethyst, crisp as if life was slowly being chipped away with every heaved breath, and the scenery changed again into his latest memory, albeit a twisted rendition.

“V.” The bluenet’s mouth moved on its own accord, and he was left only to observe, slowly relinquishing control of his own body to what seemed like divine intervention. ‘Eduan's’ thumb brushed lightly against the scars, however unsightly, that blemished his cherished friend’s once untainted skin. “Let’s elope.”

“Then it’ll be just like before, no? Somewhere, where there is only the two of us. Somewhere they cannot harm you.” A blithe grin graced ‘V's’ lips, making spring bloom once more before the latter’s eyes glistened with tears— bloody god-forsaken tears, smeared on the spearbearer’s hands.

“You are all I have.”

‘This V smells exactly like him. Why does he always smell like death?’

Anxiety brewed within him and Eduan cannot even begin to understand how the latter seemingly had aged so much in a theoretical span of a few hours. But, before he could even get a moment to process, the earth trembled and the man was pushed deeper unto the corner, making his head lean against the ebony-haired’s embrace as a mudflow of debris rained over them.

A sonorous pause then occurred between them before he followed V’s line of sight as it wandered below his own stomach, a long metal rod piercing through his diaphragm.

“And, I am sorry that I cannot be yours.”

The wavecontroller smiled before his life oozed out in a river of opaque maroon. A blood-curdling scream clawed its way out of the bluenet’s throat as the thick, warm fluid soaked his palms stuck like second skin, the metallic and rotten stench suffocating him before darkness engulfed Eduan like how death devoured V.

He doesn’t want whatever has become of this. No rational explanation could make him accept the fact that this ugliness had taken over someone as skilled as he. Yes, this must be a dream. A nightmare. How else does it hurt so bad when it is all fake?