ariadote

[ariadote]

The Secret Garden (1993)

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Dreams, feel real while we’re in them. 

[ariadote]

I dreamt of you. Is that such an oddity? / @ariadote

[ariadote]

vepid:

To: briarauroria@hanmail.net Bcc: mmikoshiba61@gmail.com 

Dear Peony,

Thank you!!!! Ah… I still can’t believe it. It just all feels too… unreal and fictional, almost. I’ve waited for this moment all my life and just… ah. I went to sleep last night and woke up this morning and rechecked my email again and again. I think twenty-two times. I was afraid I was dreaming.

Is this what you feel like sometimes? Afraid reality is a dream and that the dream is reality? 

It is very, very exciting, all of it. The idea of moving back to Japan permanently has always been what I planned, especially with my mother there and all. I want to make sure I’ll be able to take care of her as she only gains age and I wouldn’t be fully content anywhere else knowing she belongs in Japan. Japan has always been home and I don’t think anything or anyone could change that about me. Which… brings me to the point. 

Home to home and yet Junmyeon hyung is a different kind of home. Does that make sense? It’s very, very hard to explain and yet I too don’t understand it much yet. I’ve been trying to figure it out for almost four years and on, now, I think. 

I never thought anything could be more difficult than quantum mechanics and here we are. 

I think I’ll speak to him soon. Maybe over just one bottle of soju. Just to loosen the tongue up but not the mind. I think we both need to sit down and talk over somethings. Why are men so good at avoiding everything to talk about? Would it be different if we were women? I always wonder this. 

Oh my congratulations!!!!! Who is the father? I never knew Midnight had a lover… I feel misinformed and suddenly out of the loop. Well… based on Mendelian genetics, it’s entirely possible that the orange calico print and grey could have been just recessive or suppressed genes, but even with that notion it’s very rare as I believe black is the dominant fur color in felines, if I am not mistaken. Maybe I’ll ask my friend who is more knowledged than me in this area. But either way, ah! Congrats again and again! Please attach me some photos! They must be so cute! I’m smiling just at the thought of little, small Midnights walking around the place. Heh. 

But isn’t the planning the most difficult? With a good plan you can execute the ordeal easily. Without a solid plan, it’s terribly easy for things to stray. I think you’re being too humble. I think you’re amazing at what you do and that’s why you keep on doing it. And you love it too, I’ve clearly seen that from how you speak about creation and construction. 

I will always make time to star gaze. The stars always hold answers to questions we’ve never even dared to ask, whether it’s because we were not courageous enough to or just didn’t think of, and I think that’s something I will never miss for anything. Also, we look at the same stars when you look up at the sky! It’s the one of the handful of things we have in common and I take that to be special. 

I know it is not really in my place to say this, but, Aria. I think you are the type of person that touches another and that other person is never really able to once be the same again. What I am trying to say is I don’t believe your person could possibly ever be out of reach to you. Maybe he is just looking for the right time to return to take the hand you’ve reached out once more. 

As much burden there is for the person waiting, you must think about the burden of leaving too.

And please, know that you are not burdening me at all with speaking to me on this matter. I genuinely would like to know where you stand at all times. Even if that is a low place. Especially if it’s a low place. 

The stamps are in an envelope and making their way around the world to you! Let me know when and if you get them. I would love to hear about your reactions to a couple of them I know you’ll love and adore. 

Thank you! I have my grand thesis due soon so I’ve been up all night and bloodshot. 

With thanks and even more adoration, Mikoto.

P.S: OTP…? One time password? 

To: mmikoshiba61@gmail.com Bcc: briarauroria@hanmail.net

Dear Goldie, 

It’s been a little over a month and half since I’ve lasted written to you~ Ah, I’m so sorry! I got very caught up with things on my end with this and that. I have followed your advice, though! I’ve been eating well and taking baking lessons at a little shop down near a street called Rue Crémieux. 

Since I can’t mail you bread you have to visit me some day. If ever comes a day that you feel like the world is caving in (and I pray that you never experience this) please know that you are more than welcome to stay with me and Midnight. I’ll bake you so many breads and pastries that you’ll gain about 50 pounds. hehehe there won’t be any room for sadness to live once i’m done with you (￣▽￣)ノ

ASDFHGJKLKJHF ‘who is the father’ I am so embarrassed to say this but i don’t know! What’s worse is that i didn’t know Midnight was a girl until after i took her in for an appointment Σ(･口･) does this make me a bad owner? She often disappears for weeks, goodness knows what she could be up to within that time... Goldie, i’m going to let you in on a little secret but i think Midnight might be double crossing me~ i think she has another owner TT what should i do??

Enough about my problems i noticed on sns that you said Junmyeonie got you a puppy! Is he growing like a weed? The kittens are growing so fast i want them to slow down. 

I take it that you and Junmyeonie are doing well... it is getting a little closer to the time when both of you are supposed to move away, no? Are you nervous? I bet your mother will cry when she meets you at the airport and didn’t you say that your sister will be leaving there with her husband for about a year or two? Your mother’s family will be reunited again!!

In regards to your question about if another person can feel like a different kind of home, yes you make sense. Do you know what’s so great about homes? Is that really, anywhere can be a home as long as it carries memories inside of it... if that makes sense. Junmyeon is a different home because you two grew up together in that you both spent your early college years (and also the time of most influence) together, grew to understand each other with and without words. Neither pressuring one another into something the other wasn’t comfortable with doing. At least, this is the picture you’ve painted within our conversations. 

It’s a very rare thing that you and Junmyeon have. Most students leave, and may shed a tear or two for the ones the leave behind but know that graduating is a chapter of their life where they move on to something greater but with you and Junmyeon...

Love, you built a home and it wasn’t in the apartment you rented. We all build houses, and it seems like you built your home inside Junmyeon’s heart. Like Jina in Joel’s, mine in Skyler’s. Midnight with some street cat that probably lives across the street (¬_¬) JUST KIDDING ABOUT THAT LAST ONE. I’m not worried for you but rather excited to see what the future holds for you two because despite the distance your love for one another can’t exactly be severed so easily. 

What can I say??? I’m a hopeless romantic (●♡∀♡) Also, aged wine would be better than soju in cases like yours when you need to loosen the tongue but in a more romantic way. NOT THAT I’M INSINUATING THAT TYPE OF ROMANCE. do you get me? Am I coming through to you ;;

DID YOU SEE THE ECLIPSE ???? I forgot about it TT TT and got busy red-lining structure layouts for a future project. The videos are so cool so tell me you watched it for me TT TT maybe even took a couple of pictures? 

Goldie you are honestly the sweetest person i’ve ever met and know that i feel the same towards you. I’m serious about the stuffing you with bread and pastries if ever you are feeling low! The stamps made it safely to me!! Korean postal is so neat looking! I’m envious! 

P.S how did your thesis writing go? Did you enjoy the tea I sent you? It’s good for sore muscles.

P.P.S I recently received a polaroid camera as a gift. It’s been fun to play with!!! I’m going to mail you little pictures from now on!!!!!~~~~@!~~~@

Yours truly, Aria. IMG. JPEG_1, IMG.JPEG_2

subject: for aria’s eyes only

[ariadote]

things you said with no space between us.

@reverieo

(1) Words are no longer a necessity when in a world made up of vibrant colors lives Skyler who never speaks, never needs to when he has his hands, and is with Aria who understands him with or without words. It’s a habit of theirs to leave conversation for their dreams, and communicate through their closeness, a language they’ve grown fluent in by building each other up with little gestures. 

And it’s one of those evenings. An evening spent in the afternoon sun requires no words — open window, Midnight and her kittens pressed safely between them. Skyler sleeps with his arms around her, Aria can feel the rise and fall of his chest against her back, taking in the sweet sticky air of summer. One of his pretty hands pets the head of a beautiful calico kitten in order to quiet it’s tiny mews. “We’re keeping her.” Aria says, toying with a woven bracelet she made long ago that’s tied around Skyler’s wrist. They’ll certainly argue about this later but right now Skyler only sighs, pulling her tighter.

(2) She falls asleep too easily, she gets tired too easily — and daily activities such as watching a movie together are a chore for her, one that she regrets day by day. “I’m sorry, love.” Are the first words that tumble from her mouth, even in her dreams her voice is laced with sleep and barely coherent, she sits up. Hair a mess, wearing Skyler’s shirt, she looks around. 

She finds him in their tiny kitchen, tinkering around with something on the stove. Probably warming up water for tea, she wraps her arms around his torso. “I’m sorry, love.” She says again, more coherent, understandable at least. Aria smiles a sleepy smile as she holds dear to him. 

They’ll likely spend weeks here, comfortable, and yet so far from reality. 

Safe in a world that only they know.

[ariadote]

reverieo:

He doesn’t recall the last time he’s dreamt a dream.

The line between what is real and what is nightmare is a blur, as it always has been. Instead of creating an Aria, he nightmares himself a god, and they meet to talk, always by the corner cafe a block away from the Sacré-Cœur.

“What was it like to leave her?” God asks.

“You’re always asking questions you know the answers to.” He replies.

“Well, am I not just another figment of your imagination? You’re taking a question too seriously from someone that isn’t real.” God seems displeased at his silence, but doesn’t press on forward.

They both survey their surroundings, where things have begun their way in becoming out of place. Flowers growing from within car parts. Birds walking the sidewalk as if they’ve forgotten flight. Rain falling inside a shop. Coffee cups filled with gasoline. Everything is misplaced, astray – he remains trying to find some meaning in all of this. “Skyler, what was it like to lose her?”

“It was…” He begins, and god ceases. He watches a mother and her son part two streets away, and turns his head left to watch two children waving each other goodbye. “It was like hearing every goodbye said to me.“

"It was like hearing every goodbye said to me, all at once.”

God doesn’t appear to him after that ‘mare. He waits at the same cafe every night, but he is kept in solitude. Instead, he continues to observe the universe out of order and the millions of goodbyes around him that seem both endless and perpetual. The next time god appears, is the first time he looks for god in a place that doesn’t hurt.

He wakes with her, and unlike her, he’s clear sure of reality for the first time. Their eyes meet and he realizes what he’s done to her, and it’s a little more terrifying than love itself. She looks at him like he’s some religion, and with the utmost softness in her hues. Somewhere, the god of his mind comes to him again. He seems angry, and he does not blame him for the rage.

(God: You took a girl who needed saving, tried to be god – and now she’s too afraid to go to church.)

“Not death.” He brings her hand into his own, and swears he can feel each heartbeat through her wrist. “And not heaven.” He places his lips on her palm, giving her a kiss that he knows will linger and reach her heart. His eyes remain steadfast on her the whole time, until he leans in, their lips coming together softly.

A kiss, some fucked up kind of absolution.

“Reality.” 

Inside her hands there’s an entire world at her finger tips, waiting to manipulated. She is his puppet, waiting for her limbs to be restrung and taught how to dance, shown how to move, instructed to breathe in and out. And god, does she have to fight for the air.

In her dreams his words are sweet like the fruit she’s so fond of. In her reality the silence is so bitter that it’s nearly impossible to function on it, to live without the sound of his movements throughout their apartment is nearly loud enough to never let her sleep well again. 

The stiffness in her palms from hours of assembling scale models of buildings that only crumble in her palms minutes after their construction hurts when he kisses them. Her lips, where her tea burnt her lips, tongue and throat alike as she drank the stemming liquid just to still the rumble of her stomach she hasn’t filled in days, hurts her mouth when he kisses it, yet she leans in no stranger to the pain of love.

And he’s assumed correctly, the kiss reaches her heart, lingers there. 

She leans in, fingers alive and shaking pulling herself impossibly closer, erasing all space between them like she desperately wants to melt into his very being. Aria’s fingers trace the slide of his silhouette, only to come to rest on the patch of skin of his hip that his white shirt doesn’t quite reach. 

Aria’s breath is measured, uncertain but she has to see, has to know so she strips Skyler of his shirt– raising the hem slowly with trembling finger tips, watching with eyes that are terrified they won’t find the mark that only she knows is there, a strange assortment of a shape and uneven scar tissue under his chest. 

Where he was once kissed by an angel his sister had once whispered sweetly into Aria’s ear in a dream she wasn’t supposed to be in, her voice was soft, her arms almost gentle as she cut off Aria of air, forcing her to wake before Skyler did.

Aria blinks, shaking the horror from her thoughts but now was not the time to wonder that if Skyler is truly back... then is Hayong behind her, gun in hand waiting for her opportunity to take back what was once hers.

After Aria’s fingers pull the shirt over his head they fall immediately to the angel kiss, her head she rests against his chest, breathing breaths of relief into his collarbones. “It really is you.” She murmurs, before lifting her head to grace his lips again with hers. She pulls back to look at him, knowing his voice meant this isn’t reality, not just yet.

“Will you be there when we awake or are you going to leave me again for her?” 

[ariadote]

How can it not matter to you where that train will take you? @ariadote

[ariadote]

“A one-sided love is like building a house and breaking it down all on your own.”

[ariadote]

Did. Did. Did. She did love him. It should be enough. He should sate with enough.

(It isn’t.) 

(He doesn’t.) 

The buildings around them come down, while one wall behind her remains. He takes a step forward, knowing she’d take a step back. “Do you know what happens the moment I agree with my heart, Aria? Do you know what I open myself up to the moment I let my heart overrule almost every other voice telling it the opposite? Do you even know what it is like to be on the other side of it all?” 

He lets the harsh silence between them speak for him. It is the kind that cuts, a kind of quiet that hurts.

(My heart’s still damned and stupid enough to think it has a chance against every other heart you hold in your palms.)

(So I’ll break it first, before I let your sweetness knife through it any longer.)

His chest falls in the same way his heart’s done a long time ago. His arms drop by his side, as he turns his back to her. He has to, in the way he loves her even in this moment, in how beautiful she looks as she carves scars into him from just existing. 

“Go find Skyler, Aria. Tell him I’m not emotionally stable enough to be on the same team as you anymore. That I’m a clear threat to the safety of all our missions to come.”

“Tell him I’m leaving.” 

“And are you really leaving this time?”

The question triggers a feeling of déjà vu— the strange tenseness in his shoulders evokes a memory, sending her back to a nearly identical scene 10 years back. Jack is sitting on her bed, the only extravagant piece left inside of what used to be her bedroom and was now an empty large room save for the piles of boxes and her mothers vanity table.

“And are you really leaving this time?” 

She pauses putting away a collection of fine jewelry that’s a combination of both hers and that of her late mother, before she catches Jack’s eye in the reflection of the table mirror. He is strangely quiet, staring at her with tired eyes reflecting various mixtures of emotion.

Heartbreak is the most prevalent among them.

Aria understands this better than anyone because the look in Jack's eye is the way her heart felt when her parents died but what Jack doesn’t seem to understand is the promise she made to never love anyone again as she did them. 

Aria carefully shuts the lid of the jewelry box and locks it. With it she locks away her parents memory, her photographs, and most of all the pearl drop earrings that Jack gave her the day after her parents died. The boy her parents told her she was made for. 

“Jack come here.” It’s another step of her casual manipulation and she waits for him to obey. There’s a shift in the way he moves towards her, nearly hesitant in his steps but she’s impatient, she reaches for his hands— placing the jewelry box in them, “Take this with you.” 

After he takes the box from her hands, Aria ties a necklace with a key to the jewelry box on the end of it around his neck, “If you’re really leaving this time… take this with you because i don’t care if everyone else forgets but you must remember me.” She presses a small kiss to the part of his jaw she can reach, “I don’t care if I never remember.” with that she leaves him.  

 She never returns.

Aria in the present day wants to curse, her mind is a series of unexplored houses that no matter how many times she revisits them she can’t make sense of the shift in her life — she can’t seem to rid herself of the gardens of guilt she’s sowed, the fields she’s reaped on her own. 

“Jack, if there’s anyone unstable on the team it’s me.” She breathes in, small and shaky. “If there’s any one person who is a clear threat to the safety of the team, it’s Skyler.”  

Finally, after 10 years of constant shoving Jack away to fight on her own, she says what she should have from the very beginning. “Stay.”

[ariadote]

things you said that i wasn’t meant to hear. (kill me softllllyyyy)

@635mph 

(1)On the street of Rue Crémieux there is a bakery that she used to visit. The warm smell of bread that perfumes the air is what originally attracted her to the shop but it was the rows upon rows of homemade bread, jam, and pastries that lure her in frequently and to leave approximately 15 to 20 minutes later with the smell of rye bread and it’s caraway seeds cling to her clothing.

(She doesn’t mind.)

(2) The shop becomes a home away from home — Aria stops by often enough to be considered a regular. Soon after, one of the bakers offer her a cooking class for free, which she accepts. Aria falls in love with the little shop, nearly loves it as much as she loves Skyler. (but only nearly.)

(3) Aria takes small, careful steps each sound she makes seems to create a type of an echo that bounces off the hardwood floors and steel cooling racks as she approaches the pantry. Inside, everything is in a chaotic disarray. The footsteps left in the flour spilled everywhere give her a path to follow, and a pattern of behavior to help re-imagine the offenders process. 

First. they shoved the sugar packed tightly in packages of paper off the shelves where it fell to the floor and burst open. 

Second. the vanilla and other flavorings were also roughly pushed aside where it hit the granite of the counters and shattered into pieces. Aria turns away from the brown liquid that drips off the counter that currents places the room in an overwhelming scent of sweetness.

Third. A few of the shelves were upturned and then the boxes of aged wine are forcibly ripped open, yet their contents remain untouched. 

Fourth. Juwon finds what he’s looking for behind a pile of boxes. This is where Aria finds him, on the floor with an old vintage cinema projector at his feet, watching reel after reel of videos being projected onto the wall. His eyes are blood stained, his coat is covered in a fine layer of flour but a lazy, twisted smile rests on his lips because he’s found her out. 

He found her safe and broken into it. 

(4) Aria’s fury is containable. There is banging on the front locked doors of the shop, and she can hear the sounds of a million people outside. It wouldn’t be long before her subconscious gets into ripe him into shreds, tear his heart out, destroy him for betraying her like this. 

It wants him dead.

“Are you satisfied now, Juwon.” Aria’s tone is laced with bitter poison her eyes falling on the video of herself screaming as Jack pulls her away from the gruesome scene of the wreck that killed her parents. On screen, she fights him, scratches his arms with her nails, repeatedly trying to get him to let her go even though she’s bleeding, they’re both bleeding. The video switches.

Her breath catches in her throat when the image projected is one of Skyler during one of his episodes in the dead of night. He’s murmuring to himself fighting against his dead sister who keeps coming back for him, whispering to him to leave Aria. To take responsibility for what he’s done to her. 

“Do you still think that my love is easy? Is this what you wanted to see?”

(5) The scene of the video changes once again.

It opens up to a large ballroom. It’s washed in golden lights, and the ceiling is decorated with chandeliers that catch the light and reflect in a way that screams wealth. Skyler appears, trying to push the sleeves of his white tuxedo up as he walks quickly, weaving his way through the throng of people over crowding the room. “I’m done talking about this, Aria.”

“I’m not.” Aria follows after him tucking the fallen strands of her hair back into place behind her ear with the rest that is pinned back. “You know that he isn’t ready! Juwon is unpredictable, brash, and —“ she stops to grab a bit of her dress in her hands so she can lift the hem off the ground. After she does this, she speeds up in her pursuit. “And overall a mess. I don’t want him on our team.” 

“You could argue the same points against Jack.” Skyler responds through clenched teeth, still walking steps ahead. “Juwon has got all the credentials we need.He may not be as experienced but the kid has a sharp intellect.”

“You only like him because he’s just like you!” Aria snaps, finally catching up. 

A few people stare at the heated exchange with interest but neither stop to entertain them “I said we’re done talking about this, Ariadne.” 

That was her sign to leave it alone but of course, when Aria stops dead in her tracks she watches as Skyler starts to climb the staircase not bothering to look to see if she was still behind him she can’t let it go. 

“He’s not stable, Skyler.” 

Even with his back to her, Aria can see the shift in demeanor when Skyler stops, turns sharply on his heel to face her. “And I suppose you think that I am… stable?” his voice is soft, and dangerous. The question hangs uncomfortably in the air. 

 Aria immediately closes her mouth, small fingers let go of the red satin fabric of her ballgown to fiddle with one of her pearl drop earrings instead. She gives a small shrug of her shoulders. It’s the wrong answer regardless of wither she’s said anything or not.

“Ariadne.” Skyler repeats her name. All his emotions tied up into one word, before he shakes his head. “We’re all mad here.” 

(5) The video goes black she hears the glass of the front door shatter. In a matter of seconds, she is pushed aside as they attack Juwon. When they wake, Aria sits up slowly a sense of dread settles deeply in the pit of her stomach. “Congratulations,” Aria says bitterly. “You’re a part of the team.” 

Then she looks at Juwon, catching his gaze with hers, “You’ve just given Elymas the power to kill me.” This is when the angry, bitter tears start to fall. She wipes them away with the back of her hands, “I only ask one thing. Promise me you won’t tell Skyler.” 

Even if the mission fails or you have to leave me, don’t tell Skyler.

[ariadote]

runest:

“Come on now, Aria. This isn’t a night for tragedy.”

He forces a laugh, the sound empty at it’s core. When they meet eyes, and he sees the pity across hers. He forgets to breathe and he immediately regrets; Aria begins to talk, words tumbling in a fickle attempt to fill the void between them. His lungs forget the how, thoughts deconstructing all with his heart on a sleeve, body unraveling until she stops.

“You did love me then.” It’s something he’s known, something he’s kept alive in only his own dreams, locked away underneath levels and floors of underdeveloped limbo. 

“You even loved me back, then.”

(And I love you still – alone – since then.)

(And have had to deal with that, since then.)

“It didn’t seem fair to confess, especially when you had so much on your mind with the dream business, traveling, and… with him in the picture later on too.” He leans closer when she moves away, thumbs brushing underneath her gleaming eyes. He does away with her tears, but his confession is no more comforting, not any less harsh. “I thought I would be making you fall simply by a rash confession than anything else.”

He’s sure that he could win her back over, with the right gestures, the right juxtaposition of his words – just like rebuilding a dream – his dream. But there’s something within him that doesn’t allow him to be selfish – for she is not his to thieve. Not his dream to slumber into.

“Aria,” He murmurs her name, and her name alone does everything to him. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not the night to dwell on the past; not on New Years.” He bares a grin, trying hard to leave emotions behind.

He has eleven different feelings for her, and all of them are impossible. 

That was the first mistake, never talk of tragedies. 

The old year disperses and the start of the new one feels chiller than ever before – she still wears his shirts, she still has his name on her lips but everything is different now. She’s yearned for this – spent many nights longing, imagining this very moment and yet now that she has it, it’s nothing as she thought it would be. 

Heart break did not happen once, not even twice but it did happen more often than she can count on her fingers. 

Flashbacks of Jacks hurt or fallen expression used to satisfy her, although she’s certain she did love him in her own cruel twisted way but she played a game with fate, she rolled the dice... she lost. (And it’s hard to think of oneself as being cruel.) 

And even in this regard, Jack remains stoic – he had been enamored with her even when she was nothing but a young, naive, and blissfully ignorant little rich girl who played with the feelings of those around her, and he still loved her now even though she was a girl with nothing to offer but the empty shell of a fallen princess. 

He was there to pick her up after the deaths of her parents, he was there to pick her up even after this -- whatever this is Skyler has left them in. And she did love Jack then, admired him for holding her steady in the days she would crumble, and remained though she tried either with harsh words or cruel actions to drive him away, he stayed. 

And she did love him.

Those rare occasions where she would return the sentiment, she should have shown him with more sincerity back than, she should have said it but what are lost ‘i love you, i miss you’, ‘i need you please’,’ even when i push you away don’t go’ worth now? 

“Don’t.” Every move she makes feels like a sin, “don’t hide yourself from me, don’t ever hide yourself from me.” Somewhere within her a flare rises, uncertain of what to burn it burns nearly everything in its path and she wonders if this too could possibly be a dream, if this was lucid dreaming she doesn’t want to wake up. 

“Don’t you dare tell me that tonight is not the night for a tragedy because your heart would disagree. ”