How to Make a Sinner Sleep

133 | sinner; they all wanted to save him

The wind danced down the hallway and clouds covered the skies, allowing a stream of sunlight to escape. It wasn't a particularly sunny day or a gloomy day.

It was simply another day.

In the closed classrooms, professors taught elaborate and detailed lessons while students either slept, listened or whispered to each other. Far below the Academy grounds, graduated students draped in white coats lifted beakers of blood, dense notes beside them.

A beautiful and gentle woman frowned as she examined a set of notes, keenly focusing. The stack of papers by her desk was the thickest.

She sighed, scribbling something down in a notebook. She checked the ticking clock hanging on the wall and a soft smile spread on her face.

Those two would be arriving soon.

Back in the hallway, a slender man with messy pink hair that was hastily tied back, lifted his chin to a framed painting hanging on the wall. His green eyes fixated on them sharply.

In his hand, he held a bouquet of flowers. Each bloomed with eleven black petals, with a center of wisping red, like a rising flame that slowly seeped into the petals.

He would receive a bouquet every second week, appearing silently at his door.

And every time, the man would hold onto them, or place them carefully in a vase to display. The sender remained anonymous, but he knew.

The man studied the painting. It was said all forms of art take another shape the second time a person looks at them.

Compared to all those years ago, what did the painting say?

In the mess of scribbled letters and notes that tangled together across the large canvas like overflowing thoughts, the white silhouette of a man stared out at a light that fled into the distance.

It was close and far. Close if he chose to reach it and far if he chose to admire it.

Along the painting, dark metal chains splintered into pieces. Whatever once bound the man had broken, shattering apart.

The pink-haired man decided. That this was a man who just found freedom was the burden of his scrambling thoughts, had finally been exposed to the light.

Back then, he'd seen several letters. H, E, L, P. S, A, V, E, M, E.

He stared at them deeply.

Then a soft laugh escaped him. What was the painting trying to tell him? What was the way to salvation, to that brilliant light that ushered from far away?

"Have me sleep," he whispered with amusement.

He was missing one 'e' but his thoughts had already wandered into amusement.

Did everything change then? That evening of a known insomnia, frightened away by a pair of warm arms. It was only that dragon who knew how to make a sinner sleep.

A pair of footsteps neared behind him, shoes softly clattering against the hardwood floors. They stopped beside him. The man didn't turn his head yet.

He cracked a lopsided smile, still examining the painting in silence.

They were two, standing in the fogs of past and present. 

"Do you plan on taking any unique classes, mister Dragon?"

Besides him, there was a low huff that was both amused and helpless. The dragon lowered his head to gaze at the fool. "I do."

They were brought back to all those years ago, in the Academy halls. Before anything had begun. Or really, hadn't things begun long, long before they'd realized?