a ticket to the sun ∙ myg ✓

3 ↝ garden shadows

She never realises the weight of a phone call until she is thirteen, and a voice that she thinks of as a home—more than the four walls she stands within—crackles like gravel through the speaker. Rough around the edges with static; jaggedly cut by the fine tuning of puberty. It murmurs without warmth, and she tries to remember if it ever held any in the first place. If he always spoke like this. Either way, she is incapable of telling if her blood is running cold because of the words he speaks, or if it is because of the blank tone in which he voices them.

The sigh is worn, rattling from empty lungs, and making her realise she has not spoken a word until she hears the wake is at four. She can barely mumble back an affirmation before the line hangs up.

Four o'clock comes all too soon. The garden is swathed in black, as if the shadows have somehow managed to garner living and breathing bodies to adorn, to hang from wrists and shoulders and sheathe skin in a woeful display of grieving. They murmur. Emitting a hum which chills across her skin in gooseflesh mountains and stiffens your limbs, has her hand freezing on the latch of the gate.

What if they know, what if they can tell? What if they can take one look at her and see the four numbers that have haunted her, the ones that carry curses and bad omens, imprinted on her forehead in strokes of blood?

They will know it was you. They will know you brought the rain. They will see the scarlet on your hands.

The gate creaks with rust, and flecks of white paint float to the grass. Although it gathers the attention of nobody in particular, it certainly grabs that of Yoongi. Lead bullets drop in her stomach when his chin tilts up in her direction. The way he casually seeks for her is almost too natural. He departs the conversation that had barely captured his attention in the first place and draws towards her being.

Hands stuffed in charcoal slacks, Yoongi sweeps his gaze from her feet to her eyes. Hesitancy knots her knuckles together, and it is not until he stands right before her toes that she notices the air about him is peaceful, that there is no hostility drowning his irises. The waters are clear. Matters may be safe for now, though instinct crawls out from the crevices of her mind, nagging that this may merely be the calm before the storm.

Nonetheless, his hands retreat from the pockets of his pants, gingerly searching for purchase on her shoulders before he is tugging her close, pressing her ribcage against his chest. His heartbeat feels right when it thrums gently against her own, as if they are long lost lovers that belong together. A cello accompanied by a viola, kindling a lulling harmony.

But the strings could snap, the strings could snap.

"Thanks for coming," Yoongi murmurs into her hair, but she says nothing. Instead, she anxiously nibbles on her tongue. She is ambivalent about his benign demeanour, and whether it is a sheer facade over the loathing that has been freshly injected into his veins by the recent loss.

Because you are a curse, a goddamn curse. You did this, you did this, you did–

"___," and the way that he says her name is so tender that her eyes prick with fresh storm clouds.

He should not be this benevolent with her when he is the one who should be mourning; when today is only deserving of his own tears and her cheeks should remain dry. She never knew the man, he was not her family, so she does not merit such sorrow. Yet Yoongi opens the floodgates to the salt lakes and they drain down to her chin in a betrayal she does not quite grasp. It just certainly does not feel equitable. The tears are misplaced for fear of losing those who have already lost.

Yoongi touches her cheek, fingertips coming away glistening. He takes to the white cuff of his button down shirt because it does a better job of soaking up her self-pity. Something twitches at the corners of his lips, the ghost of a smile, but such a display should not be exhibited on a day like today.

"Hey, don't cry, everything's okay," he cups her cheeks, knows the pinch in her brow is not for the same reason why everyone else in the backyard is permanently scowling. The skin beneath his palms glows hot; a fire that flourishes in the face of dark clouds. "I know what you're thinking, but don't. Please. For me. Don't think that this is on you, because it's not."

If anything, the sobs crash harder upon her lungs. She thinks it may possibly be because this is the first time anybody has ever suggested that death is not her fault. That it is not a contract with her name signed at the bottom to drop the guillotine. This is not on you, this is not on you. A mantra that sings through her blood, pumps with courage through her heart that still symphonies with Yoongi's own. His fingers chord soothing lullabies through her hair, stroking, caressing, touching. Nobody has ever comforted her like this, and so she selfishly bathes in a sympathy that does not belong to her.

A touch on the small of her back rouses her from his chest, encourages her to step back and notice that his parents have approached the both of them. There, she is almost desperate to tuck herself back into him. Yoongi may be understanding, but God knows the rest of the world is not so kind.

But they do not blame her. Nobody points their fingers, nobody hides their whispers behind cupped palms. Instead, Yoongi's mother gathers her into a hug that smells of petunias, his father gently squeezing her shoulder with a soft smile, murmured thank you's for paying her respects on this unfortunate, yet expected day. Yoongi holds her hand all the while, gradually taking her to the swing bench that hangs from the giant oak, curling his arm around her shoulders while he calmly pushes the both of them back and forth within the shadows of the late afternoon.

"I'm so sorry," croaks from her lungs, the words thick with dried up tears. Apologies are a familiarity when nestled in the back of her throat, but Yoongi pushes them away.

"Don't be, I barely knew my uncle, and we all knew that yesterday would come." Yoongi rests his temple against her hair, gently rubbing her arm. "You shouldn't feel like you have to mourn people you never first came to love. If we did such a thing, we would be mourning until the day we died ourselves."

"That's some very morbid thinking."

"Unfortunately, we live in such a world that enforces it. Best to be desensitised than to feel. Better to lose before it starts, than to love from the beginning."

The swing creaks as she shifts just enough to see his face. The expression upon it is drawn blank until he flicks his gaze away from the garden to look at her, and she does not miss the way his midnight eyes spark with flames that only she can ignite. Yoongi seems like he wants to press his thumb to the crease that lines the centre of her brow. To smooth out the wrinkle, soften her back into her usual, happy and carefree self.

Not restless, scowling as her mouth screws up, words voicing with slight indignation. "Is that really what you think?"

And in that moment, looking into her wide eyes of black holes that bend his body at the edges, Yoongi believes that he may be more of a liar than he once first thought. Because he is absolutely sure that if he kissed the girl wrapped in his arms, his best friend, he might just be encouraged to feel something that starts with the twelfth letter of the alphabet and sounds like the true death sentence.