Cursed | Yang Hongseok

•21

Next week, I came back to work like nothing ever happened. Since I didn't really know when the witches were going to contact us, I figured it would be better to just continue with my normal life in the meantime. That was why I decided to visit An and pretend as if the whole curse thing never even happened. I wasn't sure if keeping that a secret was a good decision or not, but I knew that explaining all of that would take a lot of time and effort, and I was afraid he wouldn't even believe me.

You've always had a wild imagination, Xia, I could hear his words in my head, imagining how that whole scenario would go. But don't you think you're a bit too old for imagining something like that?

Well, my dear brother, turns out I'm even older than all of us originally thought.

"Xia, are you okay?" I could hear him ask. This time, his words were real and not just a made up scenario in my head.

"Yeah, why would you ask me that?" I said, trying hard not to sound too paranoid.

"I don't know, you just kind of zoned out." He said, scratching the back of his head.

"Oh, that's normal for me these days, trust me." I chuckled, feeling the relief because what I said was actually true. "You know, work and everything."

"I see." An nodded. "Are Hongseok and you still working on his biography after... you know."

My cheeks suddenly turned red when I remembered that. Even though it turned out that Hongseok had a good reason for why he backed away that day when I wanted to kiss him, that whole memory was still very embarrassing to me.

"Of course, we got over it rather quickly." I smiled, looking at the time on my phone. "Anyways, I think I should go now, I don't want to bother you any longer, since you probably have to study."

"Oh, you're not really bothering me." He shrugged. "But if you have to go, let me at least walk you to the door."

"No, it's okay." I said, giving him a kiss on the cheek and taking my coat from the chair. "I'll see you soon, An."

*

When I exited the building where my brother lived, I immediately felt thankful for not letting him go outside with me, and the reason for that was the sight in front of me.

An elegant, yet simple looking car was waiting outside for me, Miyeon sitting in the driver's seat, Soojin in the passenger one, and Yeeun taking on of the seats in the back.

"I hope you're ready for taking a little trip down a memory lane." Miyeon said, signaling me to enter the car, which I did without much hesitating.

"I didn't expect you to contact us so early." I said. "Especially not like this."

"And what exactly did you expect? Us flying to you on a bunch of brooms?" Miyeon said, and I couldn't help but laugh at her annoyed remark.

"Where exactly are we going now, though?" I wanted to know.

"Well, it's up to you to tell us that." Soojin answered. "We did a location spell to find you, but we need to save our energy for later, so you should tell us where we can find the others."

I nodded, giving them the location of the abandoned building.

*

After a few minutes of driving, we finally arrived. The guys didn't seem surprised to see us. As a matter of fact, it almost seemed as if they were expecting us. I guess that after so many years of being alive, they learned to develop a sixth sense of some kind.

"So, who's it going to be?" Miyeon asked, referring to what they said about only being able to send a limited number of people back in time.

"The three of us will go." Hongseok said, pointing at Hyunggu and me. "And which one of you will go with us?"

The three witches exchanged their looks, and after only one second, Yeeun spoke.

"I'll go."

After she said that, I noticed that her eyes met with Hyunggu's, but only for a moment. Regardless of how short that interaction was, I still felt some wierd kind if a connection between them, similar to the one I noticed between Hoetaek and Soojin only a couple of days ago.

"Okay, then." Soojin said, offering her two hands to the people standing the closest to her. "Are you ready?"

"We've been ready for a long time." Hongseok said, taking one of her hands in his left hand, and one of mine in his right.

I did the same thing, taking Yeeun's hand with my free hand, continuing the circle. As soon as I did so, I felt some kind of power traveling trough my whole body.

"I'm going to need all of you to stand in this circle." Miyeon demanded. "The bigger the circle is, the more powerful this spell is going to be."

Everyone obeyed, making it almost impossible to fit a circle of twelve people in a small office. However, we managed to do it, and as soon as we did, the witches started chanting a spell in a language that I never heard before.

Not so long afterwards, I could feel the strong wind blowing out of nowhere, although all doors and windows were closed. That wind was followed by the blinding white light, which source I wasn't able to identify either. At one monent, I thought that I was either going to lose my eyesight or that the skin on my face would be ripped of, so I had to close my eyes for a couple of seconds, still focusing on the ancient chanting that, with time, became more and more distant.

When it finally stopped, I opened my eyes, but, like I expected, there were only four of us now, and we weren't standing in the office anymore.

Instead, I found ourselves standing in the middle of a green market that seemed way too familiar.