Wax

One

A/N: I'm so excited to see everyone back and anticipating this new journey. I'm as eager as you are and gosh, it just brings back so many pleasant memories to be writing about London. I hope you enjoy the chapters as much as I do. At present, the update schedule is every Sunday, 10pm GMT +8 ^^

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[Vanilla]

What a thing to remember—the taste of a memory. Not the fragrance of his food; not the sound of his voice or how he smelled like, or even the useless remnants of appearance that would, without a doubt, change with age and time. The song itself was no classic. Whatever device he was using to play it however, shaped its tone into a fading nostalgia of fireworks and tea and together, they tasted like fire and ice.

Bitter was the new sweet I as a critic would've never subscribed to, having quite had enough of one-dimensional desserts and entrées alike. And as the average human being, too, would experience, I had, as of recent, been craving for a burning bitterness presently absent in my life.

But to ascribe my coming here to mere cravings—temporary and fleeting in nature—would be unwise. Returning was not an option for the people who try so hard to let go, and compounded by the knowledge of exactly how hard it would be to allow the repeat of a difficult past, returning would never appeal to the rational logician.

As it stands, I am very logical. And rational. But as it stands, I am neither when it comes to candles and flames.

I had not been expecting to be surprised; especially not if the man himself was perfectly aware and informed of his guest, myself, and the details of a visit but he had against all odds, as said man often does, surprised me so. The very first of which I had noticed going up the winding stairs, tailed by the most obedient animal I'd ever had the privilege of encountering to date, hoping that the owner of the apartment was in the process of making himself decent.

It was a Bluetooth speaker. Red. Right by the first door that was ajar, on an empty cabinet.

The rest of the room was a whole other surprise. At a glance, the bed was really the only other furniture I could identify for everything else was either lacking or simply open space. There was no dressing table, no wardrobe, no proper desk or chair for study; just the bed and an oddly-shaped platform protruding out of the wall beside it that doubled as a bedside table.

The dog making its way across the room brought my attention to the mess of covers on the bed, furthered by what appeared to be stray pieces of clothing dangling over the edge as though the owner had been so inert a creature to even bother undressing elsewhere that wasn't the bed. Technically speaking, it would account for the state of everything else in the apartment—absent of the characteristics one would associate with being 'lived-in'. Essentially, the two pieces of furniture that actually existed to the owner were the front door and his bed. Nothing else seemed to matter; bringing into question the size of the apartment and the resulting expanse of empty space.

Either way, the figure on the bed was barely clothed but (thankfully) censored by the mess that was his covers, sleeping on his stomach with one arm on a pillow that supported half his head and the other arm dangling over the side of bed. The descriptive identification of said creature had, indeed, demanded much capacity of the brain to actually make out only because at first glance, all that I could see was a mass of skin that was slightly tanned and and and bread rolls the perfect shade of golden brown—