Andromeda

IX.

The first thing I heard when I woke up with some sort of strange, whispering murmur. The voice was far away, and I couldn't hear anything that was being said. But no matter how hard I listened, I couldn't understand a single word that Andromeda was saying. To this day I'm not sure how I knew it was her speaking. Then again, I can still remember her voice clearly now, maybe it had already started then. I blinked my eyes open and noticed the sky was now a faint blue. It was dawn.

Jeongguk was still there, looking scarily dead to the world. I once again checked that he was still alive and wondered if I should try to wake him up. But then I stopped myself. If there was something medically wrong with him, I didn't want to disturb him. There was so much about all these people that I didn't know. I looked around for Andromeda, wondering if I should ask her if there was something wrong. but I was surprised to see that there was no one there. the fire was still going in the fire pit, and still going very strong. It was keeping the surrounding area warm. So warm, in fact, that it took me a moment to realize that everywhere beyond a several-meter radius of the fire was covered in a thin layer of frost. That shocked me. I knew that fire could stave off the cold, but not to that degree.

"Andromeda?" I called out into the cold dawn air. I was shocked to see my breath in a cloud of steam in front of my face. How was that possible? I felt so warm. As far as I could tell, it was warm outside.

Thoroughly freaked out by that, I called again. "Andromeda!" Where could she be? I had heard her.

I was also somewhat frightened to see that Jeongguk still hadn't reacted to anything around him, even though I was yelling.

"Andro-"

"Yes?" I spun my head around so fast I felt I had whiplash. There was Andromeda, standing right next to the fire pit.

My mind was boggled for a second, trying to comprehend how she had been nowhere, then just standing there. It's not like she could have been out of sight or just behind something, we were on a roof, for goodness' sake.

"Uh," I said. "Is he okay?" I asked, pointing at Jeongguk.

Her eyes softened into sadness and sympathy as she looked at her friend. "Yeah," she said quietly. "He's okay."

There was a loud thudding noise followed by loud yelling. Andromeda groaned.

"It's the wake-up party," she said, and I could practically hear the eye roll in her words, though she managed to keep a straight face.

"The what?"

"They're like little children. Once one of them wakes up, they're all up." She gestured to the door. "Give it a few seconds."

There were several more loud thuds and bangs and the sound of running footsteps became closer and closer to the door before the other six boys literally fell through it.

"Get your elbow out of my stomach!"

"Get your stomach out of my elbow!"

Andromeda sighed, crossing her arms. "That doesn't really work, Jimin. Good try, though."

Jimin looked disappointed as he picked himself up and brushed either imaginary dust or very real frost off his nightclothes. "Why did what he say worked and what I said didn't?" He thought about that for a second. "Did what I just say make any sense?" he added as an afterthought.

Andromeda thought about it for a moment. "Because I assume it makes more sense that you could put an appendage into something that is not an appendage."

"What?"

"Nevermind."

Right then, Taehyung grabbed my arm and I was suddenly a part of an argument between Taehyung and Jimin on whether or not parrots understand what they are saying when they talk to humans. It felt oddly paradoxical. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Andromeda walk to the bed and sit down next to Jeongguk, leaning over him like a princess about to wake up the sleeping prince in a fairytale. She brushed a hand through his hair and gazed at him with subdued adoration. He finally seemed to wake up then, eyelashes fluttering as he glanced blearily at the world around him.

I wanted to keep watching, but my focus was broken when Jimin tugged on my arm, wanting me to agree with him that parrots only spoke words that were repeated many times, so therefore they had to just be like voice recorders that could replay voices but didn't know what they were actually saying.

A little while later, we were all sitting in a circle around the fire. Yoongi had brought with him some sort of breakfast bread that could be warmed over the flames. The bread was good, much to my surprise. I ate several pieces. So did everyone else, except Andromeda. She just stared at the bread like it was some sort of offending object.

"So why do you guys never talk about coming here?" I asked no one in particular. "Publicly, I mean. It's nice here."

Hoseok looked taken aback by the question. "Because then everyone would know where we live. Sometimes. Where we live sometimes."

I shook my head. "No, I mean..." I fumbled with my words, then gestured at the whole area that was visible from the rooftop. "Why don't you tell people that you're going on vacation to go visit friends?"

They looked at each other with questioning glances. I wondered if they had ever considered the suggestion. Eventually, it was Seokjin who answered. "Because we don't want other people to know that we leave. Whenever we're working, we're always BTS, a music group made by our entertainment company. We're supposed to act, dress, and talk a certain way because it's our job and it's what we're expected to do. Here, we're just us. We're not expected to act a certain way because we're not BTS, we're just a group of guys being idiots."

"And if we told anyone about us leaving, then suddenly this becomes public. It's not private anymore. Even if reporters and people don't show up on the doorstep, it'll be different. Suddenly this isn't where we go to just be us, it's where BTS goes when they're not working."

I thought about that for a while. "Are they really all that different?'

They all nodded slowly.

"Very different," Hoseok said.

I looked at the horizon and thought about how strange it was that I spent so much of my life in the general area, yet I'd never heard of this mall. I wondered how long it had been since it had closed. I looked at Andromeda and figured it couldn't have been too long. She looked too young for it to have been closed for more than fifteen years. Besides, I knew the ages of the boys. They were young as well. Curious to learn more, I stood up and looked for my phone, remembering that there was some data connection in the area. While searching, I noticed with amusement that the group had gotten into another trivial argument, and were chasing each other around near the edge of the roof.

I found the device under the mattress on the couch and typed in what I remembered from the address from earlier in the week.

There was only one relevant result, a page listing various buildings that had once been popular spots and were now abandoned or repurposed. I scrolled to the mall and read the short result. There were a few sentences on who the original owners were and what some of the stores in it were. And then my eyes fell to the final sentence.

Due to supposed rumors of a haunting, the mall closed its doors in June 1971.

My mouth went dry. I was sure I had heard Andromeda say that she had gone to that mall with her mother when she was younger. If that were true, then the absolute youngest that she could be would be her late forties.

I looked up at Andromeda, still in her light purple nightgown and laughing and smiling as a young girl would. She was the epitome of youth. I must have heard her wrong.

Shaking my head, I set down my phone and went back to the group, meaning to maybe stop them from fighting so much when it was so early. The sun had barely gotten over the horizon, anyway. The moon was still high above our heads.

I noticed what was about to happen a second too late. A second too late to stop it. Namjoon had playfully pushed Jimin back, not realizing that Andromeda was staring at the horizon right behind the boy, right next to the edge of the roof. Jimin was shoved into Andromeda, and the girl was taken off guard, losing her balance.

There was a millisecond where it seemed like Andromeda was just stumbling, but then her feet fell off the concrete roof, and I screamed as I watched her fall.