Chapter 37

In the underground room, Toren stared at his painting.

The canvas sheet was spread across the floor which became the landscape for the blooming flower.

It was based on the combination of Toren's vivid imagination and the book's specific details.

At the solid ground mile away from the receding seawater, the flower's petals were deep dark blue, resembling the shape of a rose.

Its stem and leaf were rich and fresh green which had no thorns.

Toren slowly caressed the painting at the dried spots and stared at it with overwhelming affection.

"Can you sing for me too?" Toren asked kindly.

According to the tale, the young prince was beguiled at a siren-like voice, holy and mellow, tender and gentle. The music was so mesmerizing, it could make any heartbeat pound into love.

Toren's painting brightly thumped alive, matching what song he wishes to hear. And so, with the spirits that beholden the magnificent artwork, they sang for him.

It was the most fascinating song he had ever heard which made him think that even the gods cannot resist such beauty.

Toren closed his eyes and relished the gift he was receiving.

There was a tender and warm fingertips probing, protruding through his heartstrings. Playing with it, manipulating it into a twisted entanglements of emotions.

He was not sure if it was because the seal deals at the otherworld when he would sip some celestial body, but he somehow felt like a star amidst the darkness he could see while his eyes were closed.

Like an expanding and contracting nebula about to bring about explosions of light. The music went on, his tears were flowing, yet there were silences too – at the crevices of somewhere in reality. But he swore to have been able to see some unfathomable galaxy within the seconds he was downright entranced.

As soon as the song had ended, there was a heel knocking from above.

It sounded like the signal cue he agreed with his mother.

Airen soon came in and brought some sweet snacks for him.

"How are you here, my dear?" She immediately asked when she got to him.

She glanced at the canvas sheet and saw the flower painting.

Nostalgia struck her when she thought that the flower was quite familiar.

As if she had seen somewhere in the distant landscape of her childhood, but she could swear that such flowers and such nostalgia must not have matched reality.

It is completely absurd and nonexistent.

"That looks like a rose," Airen softly said, looking at the painting that was so bright, it almost looked more real than the world and than any other flower she had seen.

The brush strokes and gradients and juxtaposition were all in flawless positions as if some deity's hand had personally drawn it.

"It is the flower from the story of the young prince and the mysterious flower. It is that poisonous, dark, and harmful beauty which eventually murdered the young prince."

"But no matter how much we villainize such beautiful murderer, we cannot deny what bliss it had given to him." Toren looked at her intently.

She seemed to have been reminiscing such a distant memory, something that might have been lost into hours and what had passed, but never to what her heart had probably felt.