[Short Story Collection - Flower Crown] Episode 1: "Flower Crown"
Synopsis
A hero who discarded his crown and a boy who planted flowers.
Burying bones, praying to the moon, a journey where nameless souls intersect.
This is a story of someone's "feelings" being passed on between the past and the future.
Within a limited thousand characters, I weave in the memories of life and someone's prayers.
When the gears of the world begin to turn,
light and darkness quietly begin to move, unnoticed by anyone.
When they cross the boundary between life and death, what will they find?
"Red blood, white prayers, and distant promises—a series of short stories about life, written in a thousand characters each."
<< Prologue [List] Next Episode >>
Flower Crown
Once, in an age of war,
there was a slave man.
He had been brought from a foreign land,
and had neither home nor freedom.
He took up the sword to survive.
Before long,
he made a name for himself on the battlefield,
defeated the enemy,
and saved the country.
Then, as a hero who saved the nation,
he was given a golden crown.
From that day on, the man became a noble,
and no longer needed to wield a sword.
Even so, every night,
he continued to swing his sword in his dreams.
The sword he swung through.
The blood that splattered.
The crown on his head was stained a foul red.
Even when he woke up,
the smell of blood remained.
The man washed the crown.
Again and again,
again and again,
he submerged it in water.
However,
the smell of blood did not disappear.
No—
it was not the crown that was stained with the smell of blood,
but his own hands.
One morning,
the man took the crown,
and left the royal capital.
He was not aiming for anywhere in particular.
The place he arrived at
was a village he had once destroyed with his own hands.
A broken well,
collapsed houses,
a meadow with no one in it.
Within it,
a young boy, likely an orphan,
stood all alone.
The man handed the crown
to the boy.
"It's heavy."
The boy
remained silent,
accepted the crown with both hands,
and just stared at it
with dark eyes.
The man stayed in the village.
He repaired the fallen houses
one by one,
and tilled the dry earth
with his hands.
The boy, too,
followed behind the man,
awkwardly gripping a hoe.
While struggling to light a fire,
the two of them still spent their days
with few words.
One evening,
the man suddenly asked,
"What did you do with that crown?"
The boy
smiled innocently.
"I planted it with the flowers.
It was beautiful, you see."
The man laughed out loud.
The next morning,
the man decided to leave the village.
Chasing after his back, the boy asked,
"Take me with you."
The man turned around and replied,
"Not everything is beautiful."
"That's fine."
The boy nodded slightly with a smile.
At the edge of the village,
the former crown
had become a small flower bed.
Flowers of various colors swayed,
bees danced in search of nectar,
and a butterfly fluttered down.
The golden shine
no longer caught anyone's eye.
Only
the scent of the flowers
quietly rode the wind,
and drifted toward the distant sky.
<<End>>