Yeong-gi & Ember
4 minutes
Attain perfection. Every bouquet is a subtle balance, and its perfection lies in its fleeting nature. To even brush against it, every gesture must be precise, every arrangement composed with care to honor each flower as well as the whole. Yet perfection is always a transient state-it is what it is precisely because it does not endure. For the world's true beauty resides in entropy. Petal withers, droops. Plant decays, wastes away. The Muna would say this is a gift of self, an offering meant to enrich the world. He, by contrast, believes that meaning lies in transformation, in the slow, insidious process of alteration. In the passage from order to disorder, from form to chaos.
As a child, he once noticed, in a dark alley, the lifeless body of a cat, likely dead of old age. He lingered over it, studying its inert coat and its fixed, glassy eyes. Yeong-gi returned the next day, and the day after, and every day of the week that followed his grim discovery. Each time, he watched time and decay at work. He saw maggots writhing as the carcass melted away like snow under the sun. And one morning, the body was gone-no doubt discarded by the Urban Sanitation Guild. Even so, the image haunted him deeply. That, he thought, must have been what happened to his little sister when she was laid to rest near the water, there within the Asphodel-before white flowers grew upon her grave.
Perhaps that was why he loved flowers so much. Through them, it was as if Yeong-ja was reaching out to him. Or perhaps it was the opposite: a morbid fascination with watching them wrinkle and dry, or curl inward and blacken when he cast them into the flames. In truth, it mattered little to him. He was merely the product of his own experiences, the inevitable result of environmental determinism shaping his identity. Perhaps his customers would have been shocked if he had confessed that every flower was, to him, a ghost. One thing is certain: even in hindsight, it would not have been good for business.
It would have been worse still if, during one of his floral arrangement workshops, a trainee had inadvertently pulled back the heavy curtain of his private workroom. There, they would have discovered poisonous flowers, carnivorous plants, stinky shrooms... a true little shop of horrors. For he could not have made a living as a mere florist, even though he could scarcely have dreamed of a better location for his shop, ideally situated between the districts of Sonowen and Reykur. No-most of his income came from rendering services to Arkaster's Malavita. The underworld was always in need of poisons, sedatives, and, on occasion, certain unguents and perfumes...
It was likely for this reason that he appeared on the Qorgan's radar. His natural Ignescence proved useful in his daily activities, and though he usually kept it hidden, it was coupled with a rare capacity for Alteration. Too much hubris, perhaps. Not discreet enough, in the end. When Wanjiru's agents came knocking at his door, he could not refuse the bargain offered to him: rot in a cell, or form an Exalt in service to the Qorgan in place of the Expeditionary Corps. Presented that way, it was hardly a choice at all... though one might argue that, in its own way, marriage resembles a prison.
He had no say in the choice of his Chimera. It had not yet taken a fixed form. It was only through exposure to him that it assumed the appearance of Ember-a small lump of charcoal, scarcely fit for more than kindling the tobacco of a hookah. After the announcement of the Musubi, Wanjiru's Qorgan had likewise set about forging its own Exalts, seeking to harness their power and demiurgic talents. He was not the first, of course. There was already an entire clique of pariahs and eccentrics, and together they formed a most colorful bouquet. Each had been offered a pact much like his own. Needless to say, the early days of collaboration were difficult.
With a habitual gesture, Yeong-gi adjusts his glasses at the bridge of his nose, with that same nonchalant push of the middle finger-a mannerism that has already brought him no small measure of trouble in the past. People unfairly called him pompous, pretentious, affected, pedantic, when in truth few could be more taciturn or subdued than he. Yet is it not said that silence can sometimes speak louder than cries? He gazes up at the darkened sky, and at the shadowy veins spreading through the streets of the city. He had only just attended a wedding, and already he must prepare for a funeral-or a eulogy. At least he had not come for nothing. He sighs. Before day's end, there would no doubt be a need for wreaths and sprays to lay upon the graves.