The Circle Of The Qur'an #1[The Arkaan Series] ✓

Crescent 21: Nine Flowers Heaven(3)

He wore a brightly coloured yukata embroidered with the most beautiful peony flowers of red, pink, and white. These only went to accentuate him in good looks. He looked quite mature for his age.

Under the moon, on an obscure and slum alleyway in a far east part of the Chinese landmass, the youth held a finely polished jade flute, his hair tied in a ponytail with a ribbon waving to the night breeze, he played a tune that would enthrall the listeners.

In this fashion, he moved down the alleyway in all calmness and composure, playing his flute elaborately in the night air. It seemed no one would mind, for all doors and windows were locked at this time. It was the dead of the night.

At length, when he had walked a certain distance enough, he ended at a dead end - a wall which had Asian writing all over it. Beyond this wall was a flowing tributary of river Kawthar.

The boy approached the wall, so closely as there would have been only a few inches between him and it. Then, he gently tapped the surface of the wall a couple number of times with his jade flute.

He did this in so specific a pattern, and with such trained and nimble movements as would be unable to be mimicked by one who was close-by, intently following with just eyesight.

No sooner had he withdrawn his flute from the last brick than the stones on the wall beyond which was river Kawthar, moved.

After a few series of rearrangements by the bricks themselves through an unknown mechanism, a passageway opened underground. Beyond the opened ground of the wall, a flight of steps led to an underground chamber.

The boy looked around a last time, before walking down the fleet of steps, with steps so light he seemed to be floating on clouds. The passage door closed behind him.

Down the underground passageway, a trail of candlelights appeared at calculated intervals, illuminating the dark tunnel.

After a series of turns and bends, he ended up at an archway, wide and spacious. The entire place here looked like a small world on it's own.

If it were daytime, there would be a fewer number of people here, as the black market was mostly active during night. Thus, since it was midnight, the entire place was swarming with people here and there, a crowd one could easily get lost in. Haru wore a mask of a rabbit, with a black peony flower at its rims.

The people were engaged in buying and selling, pawning stuffs that wouldn't normally appear in the market above, rare and exorbitant.

This was known as 'The Jade Dragon', a hidden underground black market in the South of the island city. Pure moonlight refracted by the waters above filtered into a spacious hall he had just entered.

A beautiful flower crest appeared in sight, quite conspicuous and large. It had nine petals from nine different flowers; a flower hybrid.

Being the first thing he saw whenever he entered this cold room in the past, he never got tired of it. Just that this time, it was without his elder brother..

He remembered a youth who hid his fragile emotions behind his coldface, about five years older than him. At that time, they were always together; under the moonlight, flutes in hand, they played notes which were ethereal by nature.