Chapter 1: Chapter 1

→꒰Extended Summary꒱₊♡︎

→❝ Let me break it down for you❞

Cynical realist, Asa, has a past painted in bitter brushes of pain and regret. After getting kicked out by her mother who wants nothing to do with her, she moves in with her aunt, into a new city which was supposed to be a fresh start at a new place where no one knows her name or what she's done. She has wiped off the dust of her past and decided to start again. Once more. Just this once.

She's convinced that miracles and happy endings don't exist and she has successfully built a wall around herself and protected her heart with claws and teeth so that no one, not even her best friends, can come in...

But one conversation with Kam changes everything.

Kam, the honey-eyed, European exchange student with his camaraderie and infectious charisma brings all her walls crashing down and makes her question everything she's always believed was true about her life.

The more time she spends with Kam makes him seem more celestial to her and in no time, she finds herself falling for this honey-eyed boy that spoke with enough conviction and strength to bring other worlds into existence.

But when disaster strikes and he's hit by the curbing pangs of betrayal and ruins and loss, loss, loss... Asa finds out just who Kam is, and just how deep he feels... Deep feelings that he tries to hide behind quick smiles, loud laughs and a sunny personality. A yawning void, a gaping hole that he's trying and failing to fill up. Asa is the one who teaches him to remain calm in the face of reality and stop trying to fill voids and fix messes.

With Asa's past slowly catching up with her, drama, insecurity, love triangles, financial difficulty in her new home and the single demon of her comprising past coming back into the picture, Asa feels like she's being drowned in raging torrents of fear and anxiety. Kam is the one who takes her by the hand and shows her what it means to find true peace.

→꒰Epigraph꒱˖♡

It's always been clear from the beginning

Our souls were meant to collide

And the thought of being without you

Causes me to crumble into nothing."

-Perry Poetry.

→꒰Prologue꒱˖♡

Kam... He was a special boy. Everyone knew it.

He was excitement and curiosity, impulsivity and positivity. He blurred lines and defied odds. He'd wrestle with fate over control of his destiny and he'd win too. That was how special he was.

So used was he to being optimistic that good things found their way to him. And his heart beat with a force that was beyond this world, a force that could tear down mountains and raze oceans. He was honey and chocolate, gossamer and cashmere. He was maddening euphoria and drunken ecstasy, an enigma, too ambiguous to exist, hazardous and chaotic, but eternal and amaranthine.

He disintegrated my sanity, that boy, and spun me into something softer and sweeter.

Before I met him, I never believed in angels or miracles or other sweet things that tried to paint this world into something more softer than it really was. I never believed that someone, a person, with actual flesh and bones, a person as real as you and I, could have the light of a thousand suns burning in them. Could speak entire galaxies into existence. Could touch someone's soul and take away the darkness and pain with just a single touch. A single word. A single kiss.

He believed in coincidences and miracles and luck and other mysterious things that didn't conform to rules, that added more chaos to the already existing chaotic world.

But that was a good thing. A very good thing. Because he taught me that you had to embrace a little chaos, a little madness once in a while. Welcome a little challenge. Embrace failures that came when they did. Because that was the only way you grow.

He believed in adventure, in impulsivity, in letting the stars guide you... That sort of thing. He didn't conform to society. To a certain mold. He came into my life, shattering all the walls and letting the light in. And he believed so much in having faith. In believing in something. Anything. He believed so much, and infused his will into everything that even the universe bent to his will. Powerless to deny him what he wanted.

That was who he was. He was the sun and stars and so many other things that brought light and a little magic to this world.

-

Asa... She was a strong girl and everyone knew it.

She was lucid and cynical, pessimistic and real. She was a drop, a bottle, an entire ocean of grief so strong, you wrecked your heart just looking at her. She confronted pain and laughed with reality. She hid monsters under her bed and danced with demons. She'd dine with the devil and see his smile up close. She wore stars on her head like a crown, carried the world on her shoulders and made it look like a pair of wings. That was how strong she was.

So used was she to shouldering her pain that she had forgotten that man wasn't created to bear burdens alone. She was glass and she was diamond. Fragile and tough. Delicate and unbreakable. She wasn't a voice of reason. She was a screech, a scream, a resounding cymbal of all things rationalistic and realistic.

She ruined my senses, that girl, and re-created me in her image and likeness.

Before I met her, I never knew it was possible to fall in love with someone's soul and stand in awe of one's strength. She was the strongest person I'd ever met but she never even believed in her own strength.

Something about her prim and poised pose, a life bound by rules and confined by walls, made me want to take her hand and break down those walls and lay waste to those rules. And teach her that life is too short, too precious to live in confinement and absolute fear of the unknown. Something about her... Her eyes made me want to take her hands and step into the light and teach her the ways of the free spirited. To live a life devoid of rules.

I wanted to teach her to dare to dream and to dare to achieve it, take it in her hands and make it her reality.

I wanted to teach her to let happiness in. To allow joy sink into her bones and soul, to the tips of her hair and toes. To dance in revelling ecstasy and be consumed by euphoria, without trying to be realistic or cautious. To throw caution to the wind and give expectations the middle finger.

But in trying to teach her the essence of freedom and dreams, she taught me more. So much more.

She taught me that I didn't have to fill voids. That it wasn't my job to give and give and keep giving. It wasn't my job to be the hero all the time.

She taught me to be strong, to be careful, to look reality in the face and not flinch back. She taught me the beauty of staying true to myself. To touch the innermost core of my own sorrow and not move to hide it.

That was who she was. She was strength and tears. Magic and madness. Morbid and beautuful. So paradoxical was she.

And to me, she was the glowing moon, the crashing sea and rumbling thunderstorm and so many other things that had strength.

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