infinity || minsung

"new day"

prelude
minho pov

My hands surge with electricity.
 I taste venom pooling in my mouth.

I'm about to die.

If I have to give up my life, I won't make 
it easy. I'm going to fight. I'm going to claw 
and struggle and do as much damage as I can.

I'm going to kill Aro before he can kill me.

chapter 1

Roaming the endless aisles of the flower market, booths stocked only with plants and gardening tools and big bags of dirt — Jisung is like a kid in a candy store. It's adorable to watch him get all excited about slouching little sprouts, shouting in Latin every time he sees a pretty flower.

"Oh my lord, Minho, look — hibiscus arnottianus! Do you know how rare this is? Ooh they have floribunda and malva alcea too!"

"Casting spells again, babe?"

"Oh shush. Excuse me, how much are these?"

My mind wanders while he bargains with the vendor. Someone ribs me as they shove through the crowd. The aisles are barely wide enough to accommodate the foot traffic. Jisung told me to prepare myself for mayhem, but I was not expecting this. I've already seen a dogpile and an old woman roundhouse someone into a stack of ceramic pots.

"Minho!" Jisung has moved on to the next booth. I catch up, holding my breath as I squeeze through the crowd of humans. Though the smell of blood doesn't have the same power over me as it did when I was a newborn, I can't ignore how perfect the scent is, especially mixed with the sweet pollen of flowers.

He's picking through a rack of paper packets. "Look at all these seeds. Some kind of ranunculus would go great with the cherry tree." He hands me a stack and pays the person in the booth. "C'mon, let's keep moving, there's supposed to be an amorphophallus titanum around here somewhere."

"Yeah yeah, I get it, wingardium leviosa."

He waves me away. "Hey, how many bags of soil do you think the garden beds need?"

"The small ones or the big ones?"

"All of them."

"Well. A lot, probably. Eleven?"

"We'll go with fourteen," he says to the vendor. He heaves a lumpy bag into my arms, and I drop it into the wagon.

"Isn't this something we could buy closer to home? It's just dirt."

"It's soil, my love."

"What's wrong with the soil at home? It's good enough for Kokoa to eat."

"Kokoa still tries to eat her litter. And it's better because it's alive, it's bedrock and mountains broken down over eons. You can find dirt caked behind Hyunjin's ears, but soil on the other hand—"

Suddenly he gasps and grabs my arm. My heart leaps into my throat, my mind leaps to the worst — life or death, the end of the world, fiery armageddon — and then he starts shouting in Latin again.

"Amorphophallus titanum! Jesus Christ — are you seeing this?"

I palm my forehead, coming down from a panic. "Jisungie, please don't do that."

"Oh I'm sorry, I startled you."

"I thought you saw the Volturi. Or something."

His expression dims, but he smiles, takes my hand.