Rebirth; A New Age || seongjoong || ATEEZ

Chapter 20 : The Beginning of the End (pt.2 finale)

But no, instead, he was sitting on the roof of the little beach house because he had found a ladder in one of the closets and decided to climb up onto the roof from the balcony in his and Hongjoong's room. Instead of out fighting the war to end all wars, he was sitting at the very highest point, bare feet scratched against the sandpaper-like shingles because pain had become something that hardly registered in his brain.

He sat there quietly, his only escape when his thoughts became too loud. From there he could also look over the ocean too, watching the way that waves would roll in, ash floating atop, though thankfully it wasn't as much as it had been days earlier. The sun was brighter, only a mild shade of pink, but as the days dragged on it only became cooler rather than the comforting warmth that Seonghwa craved so desperately.

Seonghwa sat there quietly, the wind blowing a little more than normal but thankfully kept his too-long of hair out of his face. He had his hands in his lap, slightly hunched over to keep his balance on the slanted roof as he allowed his mind to think about absolutely everything but also nothing at all. He watched the seagulls play on the cliffs and he watched them dive down into the water. There were times like this when Seonghwa wondered if maybe he was dreaming.

Could this all have been a dream?

Considering how lucky he was and how they all were, the chances that he had been dreaming this entire journey were very high. Was he lucid dreaming? Is that why it seemed so real? Was he so far into a sleeping state that no one had been able to wake him up and he was trapped inside a world his mind had created just for him? When would he wake up? Would he ever wake up?

Maybe that's how a natural death worked. Seonghwa was always fascinated with the idea of death and how it happened, though he feared it terribly himself. He wondered if maybe when someone was old enough that when their time had come they went to sleep and started a dream. Perhaps that dream would bring them back sixty- seventy years into the past when they were young and lively once more. Maybe that dream brought them back to their prime, and let them experience a life full of an adventure they never got in their own life.

So maybe he had died. Maybe he was an old man that had already lived his life and he didn't remember because he wasn't supposed to. And maybe this was his final dream.

Then he went on to wonder if those around him were also people that were in their final dreams too. Maybe they had merged into one giant dream because they had all grown old on a lonely stage and so they dreamt of loyal companionship amidst a serious disaster. The last hurrah, a final experience of what it felt and meant to not be alone when you were more vulnerable.

One hell of a dream.

Seonghwa was spacially aware of Yeosang climbing up the ladder and onto the roof- he did this every time Seonghwa spent too long on top of the roof by himself. It seemed Yeosang also possed a sense related to Seonghwa's mental state and would always come to find him when the wind got too chilly.

Sometimes, it wasn't enough for Yeosang to just sit down to break Seonghwa from his heavy thoughts.

"I'm real you know," he said, sighing when Seonghwa wouldn't look at him and his eyes remained glazed. "I'm not a dream."

Seonghwa stiffened.

"You talk to yourself a lot. Well, recently at least, up here. You've got no filter, even when I come," Yeosang continued, taking Seonghwa's worried and confused glance as the go-ahead to explain himself. "This isn't just some dream world you've created because your real body is dead and hadn't had a fulfilling life. All of us are real, and we are very much alive."

Seonghwa turned to look at Yeosang on his left, his hair no longer in a ponytail.

"And how do you know that?" He asked softly, his words mumbled. "If this were a dream, how would we ever know? Would we ever want to know?"