Ishihara // ATEEZ ✔

47 |1| Heavy

There is a pronounced stillness as she reveals the cause, one that sounds so absurd that Wooyoung wants to immediately throw away the thought and say it's only a fake story being passed around. If the wizard and witch are indeed his parents, if the child is indeed him, that means he was supposed to be dead and that his parents had crossed a line that should not have been; he was the result of a forbidden practice. Here he is, growing up as Jung Wooyoung, alive and well. But that still doesn't answer one of his questions: why did his parents throw him away after desperately trying to bring him back to life again? That would mean that whatever they did amounted to a useless effort.

Bulan, still not picking up on the change of air around her, continues excitedly, happy that there are finally people who would listen to her talking about the stories she has read and heard countless of times. "A few people saw them the night after they buried their son, going back to the grave and digging it back up. They were so absorbed in it that they didn't realize they were being watched and followed. I guess the only thought they had was to have their child alive once again. The people saw what they did, the forbidden ritual they performed and saw with their own eyes that the baby started crying once they finished. So the ritual was a success. But that was the mistake; the people who saw what they did were shocked and started spreading around the news. They were rejected by society because of that. The last thing they heard of the couple was that they ran away with the baby to the Ilang mountain. We don't even know whether they're still alive or what happened to the baby."

"When did this happen?" Seonghwa enquires. He completely abandons his cut-up steak, ignoring his own hunger.

She takes a moment to think, before calculating mentally and giving an answer, "If I'm not mistaken it was 21- ah no, 22 years ago."

Wooyoung's face drops further when he hears this. That's his age and there's a high possibility that the child is him. And that is a fact that he's not ready to accept.

"Where is this mountain located?"

"Are you planning to go there?" she beams. "I can bring the two of you there." She's delighted at the prospect of spending more time with Seonghwa, that she's willing to step into the forest - somewhere out of her comfort zone.

"You? Going into the forest?" Suria scoffs, to which her sister glares at her quietly, warning her to stay put. She only shrugs, but she makes no intention of backing down. "You don't even know the direction in there you'll get lost the moment you step in there. You can't even fend yourself if something were to happen to you."

"Then would you like to follow, then?" she asks while gritting her teeth, hoping that her sister will try to understand what she's trying to do. "I'm sure these two gentleman right here can protect me, can't they?" She pushes up her glasses while smiling to Seonghwa and Wooyoung, who only shrug and nod. In their minds, their only destination is the mountain.

"But you said something about a curse if people were to ever get involved with them, aren't you scared of what's going to happen?" Seonghwa looks to the two sisters, looking for any of the two to answer.

Bulan quickly takes the opportunity. "I know 'curse' sounds like something scary, but it's not like you're going to die or something." She does quotation marks as she pronounces the word and proceeds to show indifference towards that particular detail. "Well, you still lose something but I have never actually heard anyone getting the curse. So this is the only part of the story that I don't really believe in. Anyway, the actual curse is that if you were to somehow get involved with them, you lose your ability to see colours. I don't even know what's the relevance of the curse with what they actually did."

Both of the men's jaws drop upon hearing this and it provokes a memory that they're trying to keep securely.

"Ah, right. There are rumours about people stumbling upon them at the mountain and never returning, or people who purposely look for them to ask for help. Usually it's people from other kingdoms - Fyrae, Lucida, Nyla. They think that if they're able to bring back someone from the dead, then they must be really powerful. Only the people of Estar are scared of them. Well, they're just baseless rumours so we can't really be sure."