Finding You

A FAREWELL TO INNOCENCE: ONE

“Nothing always means something,” he countered.

Regardless, he neither pressed her for more details nor posed another argument. And she was relieved that he opted to leave the conversation hanging instead of putting them both on the spot.

Yet, the respite turned out to be fleeting because before they could even take that last step out of the forest, they saw the servant in question scurrying towards their direction.

Eon Jin inhaled deeply, ready to state the alibi she had been composing in her head throughout the hour-long walk home. However, the middle-aged woman flailed her arms wildly as if she was driving them away.

Run, my lady! Mrs. Pyeon mouthed over and over, discreetly warning them from a distance. Run! Now!

Confused, Tae Pyung kept his eyes on the panicking woman.

It did not take long for a small group of guards to come into view; they were chasing after her. Thus, without wasting another second, he grabbed Eon Jin’s wrist and tugged at it, then launched into a sprint back to the heart of the woods.

***

The night was falling before they knew it, and the dense greenery was making it nearly impossible for the faint light of twilight to seep in. Even so, they moved deeper and deeper into the forest without a specific destination. They ran at a dizzying speed, the sudden rush of blood propelling them to put one foot in front of the other for as long as there was ground to cover.

Nonetheless, fatigue started to numb their limbs after some time, therefore forcing them to slow down. By then, climbing the sloped paths was becoming more difficult. And soon enough, they were losing their balance as they travelled the rough track leading to their momentary refuge — wherever that might be.

“Wait...” Eon Jin groaned as she gasped for air. “Where are we going?”

Tae Pyung swallowed hard — likewise short-winded from their toils. And his response was to tighten his fingers around hers.

“We are almost there,” he told her despite his own apprehensions.

True enough, by some odd stroke of luck, a familiar structure emerged from obscurity minutes later. He supposed it was an oasis manifesting out of his desperation to find a hiding place, but he decided to check it nonetheless, for it was better to be proven wrong than having no sliver of hope at all.

In the end, his optimism was not in vain. It was real — not a figment of his imagination — and it was a hideout he remembered from their childhood.

They stopped in front of the dilapidated door of the old, abandoned hanok, and at once, he felt her stiffening beside him. Obviously, she recognized the spooky house they used to take a peek into when they were little before running away, screaming in fear (which was absolutely contrived — for his part, at least. Between the two of them, he was the one who fabricated tales to scare her for his amusement.). She stepped back, so he quickly moved and brought his hands up to frame her ashen face before she could retreat into the shadowy path they recently came out of.

“Listen to me,” he calmly pleaded with her. “I need you to be brave and forget about the ghost stories I made up just this once, Eon Jin. We have to get inside and hide until we find out what happened — and what precisely are we fleeing from.”

She merely stared back at him, her wide eyes darkening with fear.

“Did you hear me?” he repeated with his hushed voice breaking halfway as the waning adrenaline allowed him to fully fathom the dreadful reality of their present circumstances. “Say something, Eon Jin. Please… I am begging you.”