Roses in the Heart

[Mystery + dark themes, tags are inaccurate]

I often asked him, “What exactly are you afraid of?

Anxiety, depression, or panic?”

He didn’t answer. He just gripped the cigarette butt tightly as he sat on the hillside, and a tear fell.

He said, “It’s been so long since I sat here and let myself take in the view. The last time I sat here so carelessly, I think it was twenty years ago...”

He had become the very sort of person he used to hate. Before he turned twenty-six, he started smoking like those middle-aged men. At that moment, he bowed his head, as if about to tear himself away from the world, surviving inside this tiny heart and blooming into a withered rose...

In his confusion, his cigarette fell and touched the arrow on the crossbow. It traced a beautiful arc across the sky. Years later, as he looked back on the misdeeds of his childhood, it struck his own wretched self, piercing his head...