"Peonies fair, with hearts of gold,
Their beauty a tale that's often told.
In your tender embrace, I find my rest,
Where love's caress is ever blessed.

Peonies bold, in their fiery grace,
Reflecting the passion in your gaze.
Who told you so? 'Twas whispered by fate,
In the blooming petals, love's eternal state.

And should these blossoms fade away,
Our love will flourish, come what may.
For in your arms, my heart finds peace,
Where time and space forever cease."

⊱ ───ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ─── ⊰

"Lavender's blue dilly, dilly
Lavender's green,
When you are king, dilly dilly,
I shall be queen."

In the hush of the autumn breeze, beneath the amber glow of the fading sun, Mai, her belly swollen with the promise of new life, and Cheon Seok, his heart heavy with the impending separation, found themselves on a weathered swing, swaying gently in the twilight.

As the scent of lavender filled the air, Mai began to sing, her voice a delicate whisper, carrying the timeless melody of "Lavender's Blue."

Her voice, pure and tender, wove a tapestry of love and longing, each word a gentle caress, each note a balm for the soul. Cheon Seok listened, his heart swelling with love and sorrow, his gaze fixed on Mai, his beloved.

For in that fleeting moment, amidst the lavender-scented breeze, they found solace in the timeless beauty of their love, a love that would endure, undiminished by time or distance, forever and always.

⊱ ───ஓ๑♡๑ஓ ─── ⊰

"No, no, Kook, you can not just physically avoid me if you were already planning to confess!" Like a bee buzzing in the summer fields of enormous buttercups, Y/n waddled behind me as I kept hiding my face from the world, and of course, my world.

"Kook! It's not fair! I need a closure!" If only the woman could see the flushing red of a lobster on my face, she'd know that I am a complete moron. I really shouldn't have confessed or even come straight to her.

"Stop!"

"Woah!" The woman physically pulled me by my shoulder, establishing complete dominance over a docile adult man.
The thought of fighting didn't pop in my mind, that's definitely a lie, but how could I fight against her?

"Listen, tell me," She pulled my collar and then in a fraction of seconds, my deprived eyes were gazing into her beautiful pool of coffee, the centre of which beheld a gold shine, a shine so captivating that I felt my body lifting and drifting a few inches above the floor.

"You could keep speaking, and I would keep listening." I whispered in her ears as I closed in the proximity between our bodies. Like two mystical beings intertwined, I felt her presence on me, my heart pulsating with the rhythm of her breaths. The lub dub sound seemed to be our background music.

"All throughout time?" She leaned into my face. Something about her kept me so focused like we were two characters in a story and the writer decided every little thing we chose to do but right now, even the writer was captivated in her.

"Forever and more, as long as you want me to hold on, as long as you hold on."

"And if my hands slip?"

"Noona will make sure it doesn't." I don't know what I said wrong to make her slightly repulsed before giving in to my statement and agreeing that we're both really just not as good at protecting as good Antonella is.

"And then, mister, who was the 'my lady'  that you've still kept a secret about?" A playful glee erupted between us. I was sure she isn't angry anymore but I was unaware of how I should be responding to her.

Mai isn't just my dream but my muse, my success, my creativity, my constant companion and my hallucination, my oblivious reality. But for someone I only see when I shut into a realm of refuge, I cannot unsee the ones I survive with.

My mind played several other games with me yet I couldn't come to one conclusion. Who was Mai? Really, who? Who is she? Why do I see her? What do I have to do with her?

"What? You'll still keep her a secret?" She gave a minion like squeak, giggling with her front teeth visible. Why do I always end up with evil rodents? This one's an evil hamster, Antonella's an evil chipmunk and Jimin's an evil chinchilla!

"Capybara!"

"Who? Me?"

"Yep! You're an evil capybara. I'm a hamster, Antonella's a chipmunk and Jimin's a chinchilla!" Y/n took me by surprise. I have this one friend in the US who's very much into the occult culture and he once told me that the native Bengali women are sorcerers, as they believe. I think Y/n is also one, part maybe, but still.

"How'd you know that?" I asked.

"Well, I've been living with your sister for over 6 years now. And about 3 years with you. That justifies how well I correlate you two."

"Are we that alike?"

"Very much."

"Wow. I never thought cousins could be so alike."

"For the most of your mother's pregnancy, they were together and because they're twins, their day to day actions and activities were almost the same. Since you two are barely a year apart and that 50% of your DNA is exactly the same, it makes sense that you two ought to have similar behaviour. Biologically, you two are half siblings!"

"I never thought it like that. I mean, what if I was Uncle Lee's actual son?" The question on my face answered every hypothetical questions.

"Then genetically you'd be full siblings but socially half siblings."

"That's cool. You're quite well versed with these?"

"Well, it's common knowledge, alright? But more so, I had a genetics paper in my Biology back in highschool."

"I thought you studied humanities."

"Nope. I was initially interested in Microbiology like my dad but then my mum lost her war against cancer, so I wanted to be a doctor. But when my dad passed away too, I was mentally shaken and I needed a refuge."

"So, painting is your refuge?"

"Not exactly but quite a lot. I was cleaning out the stuff in my home when I found out that 3 months before my father died, my grandmother had contacted them. So I realised that my grandmother was still alive. And the fun fact is that I never met her before."

"Your dad's mother?"

"Nah. Mum's mother. I found out many, many, many, an excessive extension of many, letters written by her, to my mum. And my mum, she also wrote many replies but she never sent any. She just clipped each reply to the letter grandma wrote."

"And then?"

"Then I decided I'll deliver those replies, too late maybe but not a never. My dad had a land in Marseilles. I sold that and with the money I got, I came to Korea. I applied for SNU but my med or microbiology scores weren't high enough to get into. I didn't qualify the cutoff. So I enrolled with painting."

She let out a strong huff of exasperation, a huge bubble of weight escaped her chest. My eyes stuck to her, her each movement the same as my dreams. And her scent, her peony scent, it drove me wild. She loves peony, this is one fact Jimin had taught me. I had decided I'd pick up a bunch of peonies when I confess to her but what a mess I confessed in.

"Ahoy." She hit me with her fist. "If you think this is how you're going to change the track, then rest assured, I'll not let you breathe in peace until you tell me about your 'my lady'."

"Mai. Her name is Mai. I don't know if her name is Mai but her hyung calls her Mai. And that's all I know about Mai." I went into a reminiscence. The sepia toned pages of my memory wrote so much about Mai yet so little.

"Oh. And does Mai know that you stalk her?" I didn't catch the satire, trust me.

"Stalk her?"

"Yeah. You draw her when she's on the swing, you draw her under the tree, you draw her below a street light. You draw her all the time."

"Yes, I do. But I don't stalk her. She's from the 1950s, she wouldn't be looking like how she used to."

"1950s?" Her eyes almost popped out of their place. "Who is she?!"

"You know, that question right there is what I couldn't discover. I have been seeing her face, her lover, her family, the people she grew up with, everyone. I have been watching them ever since my brain learnt to dream. Yet I don't know who she is."

"So... She's what you've been trying to find out?"

"Yes. As a child, I went to so many different psychiatrists, so many counsellors and so many of them diagnosed me with so many different mental diseases and labelled them as trauma induced. They said that Mai was my hallucination, a split personality of me and this is all because I am schizophrenic." When my lips finally took rest, I found ourselves in our backyard. Both her and I were sitting by the fountain. I wondered if it always existed.

"What is schizophrenia, actually?" She asked.

"The US Mental Health Association describes it as an inability to think and take correct actions. People who have it have a slower mental growth than their peers, a reserved and detached thought process and are often faced with bouts of violence or depression."

She stared at me in silence. I don't know what she's thinking about me. My mental disorders shouldn't be a surprise, she'd known about them earlier too. She shouldn't be upset either, should she?

What happens if now the roots are ripped off? Do we die or do we still survive? Do I have the roots still existing? Where do they lead? I don't know.