Path Of The Wind

Part 17: Being too accepting isn't always a good trait.

Adem's POV :

I could see so much of what she couldn't see with her own eyes or feel with her gut. It was pointless to share my doubts and fears with her-she wouldn't see the obvious signs anyway. Major red flags that should have been heeded were ignored, as if she had gotten so used to chaos that it was normal to her.

Her accepting of others and their beliefs created a world where everything was allowed. But humans, in all their complexity, are capable of doing so much -that giving complete freedom could be very naive. Without boundaries, consequences become an afterthought, something no one thinks about until it's too late.

That's why people need some kind of structure-laws, religion, discipline-something to tie them to the basics of order. Without these, the line between freedom and destruction gets too blurry.

The first time I talked to Minjae was at the restaurant. His tone was cold, like he didn't care who I was. What he said wasn't just cryptic-it was creepy, like he was hiding secrets. There was something about him, half shown and half hidden, that felt like a dare, pulling me into a game I didn't want to play.

Then there was her friend-the clingy one. She was attached to Eunseo like a limpet to a rock. Even a twin sister wouldn't cling as much. When our eyes met, there was no curiosity. Just acknowledgement: distant, cold and completely meaningless. It felt like the air between us was a warning, telling us to stay far away from each other.

 We moved in the same orbit, circling the same person, meeting in passing moments that were destined for a reason. By then we'd stopped talking altogether, reduced to stiff bows and hollow nods- gestures so polite they felt like acid to me.

The final straw that got me to crack , the one that made me determined to find out who they were-was what they did at the hospital. It was a flyer they handed out to patients. As I read the words, goose bumps sprang up all over my arms. It was too scary to ignore, as scary as the cases Mirae talked about, maybe even scarier. The words on the flyer said:

To me this was a one way ticket to hell-a slow trap to lure people in, strip away their sense and leave them so deep in that escape would be impossible. It was brainwashing to destroy lives and prey on the weak. It was obvious to me at least, but I could see why it wasn't to others.

Both of them looked like role models-the kind of parent every parent would want their child to be, the kind of friend every young person their age would want to have, the kind of romantic partner every love seeker would want. They were the missing piece of the puzzle.

Both the girl and the guy Eunseo knew had an undeniable exterior-good looks that caught the eye, impressive education and a way of speaking that could charm anyone. They had a friendly, approachable aura that made it easy to attract and pull people in. They could be mesmerizing. And that was more than enough to scare me.

I'd just fixed things with Eunseo-everything was still fresh, still open, the closure I gave her on our mended friendship was a quick decision that didn't come after a deep conversation where we should've laid our hearts bare and given ourselves more time, it was just because I couldn't wait.

Right after I left her office that day

I grabbed the flyers wherever I saw them: on chairs, on the floor, discarded like they were nothing.I didn't want anyone else to get caught.

At first glance the flyers looked the same. But as I flipped through the handful I had gathered, I noticed some differences: the addresses and phone numbers didn't all match so I decided to test them.

I called the first number-unreachable. One address was impossible to find. But the details on one flyer were functional. The call connected and the location was found.