at the end of a desert your existence is limitless
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“Is that all there is to it?”
“Pretty much.” Baekhyun breathed out, then he turned, facing the front. “I'll be getting most of the paperwork done, and it might be surprising to know that it doesn't take too long.”
I nodded, even though I knew he wasn't looking at me. Suffice to say, I couldn't be bothered about whether he noticed or not. “How soon?”
“End of this week, probably, or the next at most.” He had taken of his glasses, which were now hanging from the neck of his plain white shirt, and was squinting against the sharp wind.
We were at the top of the old, beaten-down building the racers usually utilized as their base, the very place I had first got to know that Baekhyun was one of them. An informant. It was frigid due to the cool breeze and exhausting at this late hour, but I wasn't tired. I had done nothing but sleep the whole day.
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the railing and tucking my chin into my palm. The weather was pleasant, at most, a contrast to my current mood. Though it was significantly better than it had been in the morning, I still wasn't happy, exactly. The worries had simply been pushed to the back of mind, where they were going to stay until it was time for me to leave. Hopefully.
However, the odds hadn't been in my favour recently.
“How's your shoulder?” Baekhyun asked abruptly, looking at me with the familiar tilt to his head. “It might be a problem once they find you again, and you'll probably have to run—an injured shoulder might cause problems.”
“It's fine, really, almost as good as new,” I answered, flexing it backwards subconsciously. “What do you mean, though, ‘once they find me’?”
He lifted one corner of his lips in a dry smile before looking away again. “You and I both know there's no way they'll let you go,” he said. “Not after Lay himself made an attempt on your life.” He coughed out a chuckle. “He definitely knows where he shot you, and since you're not dead yet, they'll probably be after you again.”
The sudden, darker turn the conversation had taken made my lips press together into a thin line. “I don't want to talk about it.”
Baekhyun turned his face towards me, reflecting slight surprise. “All right.” He sighed. “What do you want to talk about?”
I hung my head, clenching my jaw as I studied the watch around my wrist. What did I even have to talk about? Almost every subject was taboo, and even a single suggestive word could send the conversation spiralling downwards. I mentally scoffed at that thought. This was what my life had come to. I couldn't even speak without overthinking.
“I don't know.” I voiced what had been going around my mind for some time. “There's just—ah, there's so much happening, it's difficult to process it,” I said, sucking in the air through clenched teeth. “It feels like everything is going wrong.”
