There were a row of cherry blossom trees across the street where Go Yeongeun grew up. Superficially, it belonged to the city, as part of an initiative to bring in spring festivals for tourism. There were cherry blossom trees and azalea bushes that ran across the residential areas, bringing in colour and joy in the springtime. All planted to target a specific season.
The rest of the year, it looked rather dead.
Go Yeongeun remembered walking down paths littered with cherry blossoms on her way to and back from school, and how it would clog the streets and stick to the bottom of her shoes. Little pink and white petals everywhere like a wonderland for just one month of the year.
Her mother would collect some of the yet-to-fall petals on the trees (and there were always so many, it didn’t matter if the residents helped themselves to some), wash them, dry them out, and then mix them with other fragrant leaves to make tea out of them. Sometimes she would sprinkle the dried petals onto other drinks to give it a more floral aroma and a sprinkle of colour. Go Yeongeun used to ask for milkshakes with cherry blossoms on top when she was young, because she liked seeing the pink mixed with white.
The rest of the year, the trees looked like any other trees, and the bushes looked like any other bushes. Since she grew up with them, they didn’t feel very special. Not in the way Sekwang City liked to advertise them during the springtime.
Cherry blossoms symbolised spring and new life. It was the start of each new school year, and it always bloomed through Go Yeongeun’s birthday. For that reason, her mother used to embroider little cherry blossom petals onto her clothes, and Yeongeun herself would draw it on her homework and the back of her hand.
“It’s just like our girl,” her mother used to say to her, before Go Yeongeun grew too old to listen to her mother, “so very beautiful.”
It was only when she grew to a teenager did she refute her mother’s words to claim, “Have you seen my classmates or the girls on television? I don’t have the time to try and look that pretty. I’d rather be a common dandelion.”
Besides, flowers were silly and everywhere, and they bloomed for such a short duration that seemed a waste to tend to them. She didn’t understand the appeal of flower festivals, or moon watching. Why waste your time?
Go Yeongeun wanted to grow up and leave the small district of the big city go to go a prestigious school. She wanted her own life and not sweet and safe path plotted out by her mother, nor the ambitious and lofty goals planned by her father.
She wanted—
Returning to Sekwang City was like stepping into the fire and brimstone of hell.
She couldn’t make it on the surface of the city at all and could only hide in the periphery of the subway system. She listened to rumours and at first she tried to buy food but eventually had to resort to stealing whenever she could, just to stay alive.
She forgot all about the flowers where she grew up, because life narrowed down to this: a warm hole to sleep in where she wouldn’t be caught unaware, food and water to get through the day, and counting down how many organs she had left to spare before her situation became critical.
Things such as beauty, newness, fragility, and flower festivals were all pushed to the wayside.
Cherry blossoms could not survive in this cursed city. In fact, she could find no flowers or plants of any kind. It was only in those lonely months that Go Yeongeun understood how horrible a world without flowers could be, and the push to surround yourself with beautiful things.
Yet here, she couldn’t even waste the ink to draw petals onto her hands like she used to do as a child.
She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to.
Without plants, there was little way of telling the passing of seasons other than changes in weather. When she stopped shivering in the middle of the day, she realised it was once again spring. When she asked to see a calendar in the Casino, huddled into her coats, she realised it was once again March.
She was another year older, and this time there were no cherry blossoms wafting down from the sky to congratulate her and cling to her clothes. No taste of flowers in her mouth to accompany sugary drinks.
“My little cherry blossom,” her mother used to say to her, but that Go Yeongeun disappeared long ago. Perhaps when the flowers in Sekwang disappeared.
As Go Yeongeun turned her eyes toward the grey skies of a cursed city, she cursed her past self for taking everything for granted. Even when she worked for Daydream, she had been protected and had never known it. But now… now she was in this hell of her own making.
There was no spring, no renewal, no beauty. Only grey skies and grey streets and grey buildings.
—No, not entirely grey.
A flash of colour strayed into her peripheral vision, and Yeongeun turned her head to look. She shuffled closer to the splash of colour on the ground, sitting in a nearly forgotten corner of the subway station.
It was a tiny thing. But it was something marvellous.
A barely bloomed dandelion had shoved its way through the cracks in cement, thin petals vibrantly yellow against the dark backsplash and grime. It was a small, wispy thing barely a centimetre or two off the ground, and yet—
She reached dirty fingers to touch the silk-like petals, but drew back at the last second. Go Yeongeun held her breath as she took in the sheer miraculousness before her eyes.
It was blooming.
(On her birthday.)
In this place where nothing grew, and everything merely decayed, there was a new life that sprouted within barren walls. Without water, without dirt, without sunlight… it grew and blossomed like an impossibility. A gift, specifically when she needed it the most.
There would never be a festival for dandelions. They weren’t celebrated in the same way other flowers were. Nothing but weeds, some might state. But at that moment, to Go Yeongeun, it was the most beautiful flower in the world.
(Hope. Resilience. Perseverance.)
A common weed.
Her hands shook. She curled up over the precious plant, as if she could protect it from all the horrors of the outside world.
But… it didn’t need that protection, did it? It survived all on its own. It…
Go Yeongeun never felt like a delicate cherry blossom. She used to compare herself to a dandelion instead, feeling average and common. Unremarkable.
But here, in a place where nothing else could survive…
She rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand, and stood back up. Her eyes were misted over with emotion, yet she refused to let it get a hold of her.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Goral Event -- Dandelion
The rest of the year, it looked rather dead.
Go Yeongeun remembered walking down paths littered with cherry blossoms on her way to and back from school, and how it would clog the streets and stick to the bottom of her shoes. Little pink and white petals everywhere like a wonderland for just one month of the year.
Her mother would collect some of the yet-to-fall petals on the trees (and there were always so many, it didn’t matter if the residents helped themselves to some), wash them, dry them out, and then mix them with other fragrant leaves to make tea out of them. Sometimes she would sprinkle the dried petals onto other drinks to give it a more floral aroma and a sprinkle of colour. Go Yeongeun used to ask for milkshakes with cherry blossoms on top when she was young, because she liked seeing the pink mixed with white.
The rest of the year, the trees looked like any other trees, and the bushes looked like any other bushes. Since she grew up with them, they didn’t feel very special. Not in the way Sekwang City liked to advertise them during the springtime.
Cherry blossoms symbolised spring and new life. It was the start of each new school year, and it always bloomed through Go Yeongeun’s birthday. For that reason, her mother used to embroider little cherry blossom petals onto her clothes, and Yeongeun herself would draw it on her homework and the back of her hand.
“It’s just like our girl,” her mother used to say to her, before Go Yeongeun grew too old to listen to her mother, “so very beautiful.”
It was only when she grew to a teenager did she refute her mother’s words to claim, “Have you seen my classmates or the girls on television? I don’t have the time to try and look that pretty. I’d rather be a common dandelion.”
Besides, flowers were silly and everywhere, and they bloomed for such a short duration that seemed a waste to tend to them. She didn’t understand the appeal of flower festivals, or moon watching. Why waste your time?
Go Yeongeun wanted to grow up and leave the small district of the big city go to go a prestigious school. She wanted her own life and not sweet and safe path plotted out by her mother, nor the ambitious and lofty goals planned by her father.
She wanted—
Returning to Sekwang City was like stepping into the fire and brimstone of hell.
She couldn’t make it on the surface of the city at all and could only hide in the periphery of the subway system. She listened to rumours and at first she tried to buy food but eventually had to resort to stealing whenever she could, just to stay alive.
She forgot all about the flowers where she grew up, because life narrowed down to this: a warm hole to sleep in where she wouldn’t be caught unaware, food and water to get through the day, and counting down how many organs she had left to spare before her situation became critical.
Things such as beauty, newness, fragility, and flower festivals were all pushed to the wayside.
Cherry blossoms could not survive in this cursed city. In fact, she could find no flowers or plants of any kind. It was only in those lonely months that Go Yeongeun understood how horrible a world without flowers could be, and the push to surround yourself with beautiful things.
Yet here, she couldn’t even waste the ink to draw petals onto her hands like she used to do as a child.
She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to.
Without plants, there was little way of telling the passing of seasons other than changes in weather. When she stopped shivering in the middle of the day, she realised it was once again spring. When she asked to see a calendar in the Casino, huddled into her coats, she realised it was once again March.
She was another year older, and this time there were no cherry blossoms wafting down from the sky to congratulate her and cling to her clothes. No taste of flowers in her mouth to accompany sugary drinks.
“My little cherry blossom,” her mother used to say to her, but that Go Yeongeun disappeared long ago. Perhaps when the flowers in Sekwang disappeared.
As Go Yeongeun turned her eyes toward the grey skies of a cursed city, she cursed her past self for taking everything for granted. Even when she worked for Daydream, she had been protected and had never known it. But now… now she was in this hell of her own making.
There was no spring, no renewal, no beauty. Only grey skies and grey streets and grey buildings.
—No, not entirely grey.
A flash of colour strayed into her peripheral vision, and Yeongeun turned her head to look. She shuffled closer to the splash of colour on the ground, sitting in a nearly forgotten corner of the subway station.
It was a tiny thing. But it was something marvellous.
A barely bloomed dandelion had shoved its way through the cracks in cement, thin petals vibrantly yellow against the dark backsplash and grime. It was a small, wispy thing barely a centimetre or two off the ground, and yet—
She reached dirty fingers to touch the silk-like petals, but drew back at the last second. Go Yeongeun held her breath as she took in the sheer miraculousness before her eyes.
It was blooming.
(On her birthday.)
In this place where nothing grew, and everything merely decayed, there was a new life that sprouted within barren walls. Without water, without dirt, without sunlight… it grew and blossomed like an impossibility. A gift, specifically when she needed it the most.
There would never be a festival for dandelions. They weren’t celebrated in the same way other flowers were. Nothing but weeds, some might state. But at that moment, to Go Yeongeun, it was the most beautiful flower in the world.
(Hope. Resilience. Perseverance.)
A common weed.
Her hands shook. She curled up over the precious plant, as if she could protect it from all the horrors of the outside world.
But… it didn’t need that protection, did it? It survived all on its own. It…
Go Yeongeun never felt like a delicate cherry blossom. She used to compare herself to a dandelion instead, feeling average and common. Unremarkable.
But here, in a place where nothing else could survive…
She rubbed at her nose with the back of her hand, and stood back up. Her eyes were misted over with emotion, yet she refused to let it get a hold of her.
Here, she could still survive.
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