hydra | svt

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

wonwoo

"i am phthisis, the daemon of rot, decay and putrefaction. and i want your head jeon wonwoo!"

he blows this out in one rotten breath and my lungs struggle to find clean air. things were starting to make sense now: his decrepitude appearance, his departed gaze, even the fact that he was a biology teacher. 'mr. pye' as in '폐결핵' or 'pyegyeolhaek': phthisis in korean. i curse myself for not being able to pick up on the red flags sooner, allowing them to perish in my mind as i had sat impassively at my desk.

"the great one will be delighted to see you six feet under!" the creature bellows and the ground shakes beneath us. the bones that made up his hands dig into me from all sides and the more i writhed the harder it became to escape. my arms pressed into my sides and i feel utterly hopeless. the daemon lumbers across the courtyard, stepping over the science wing like someone would a putrified banana skin decaying at the hands of the elements. my forlorn gaze casts over the school playing fields that are usually used for team sports but will now become my lonely burial ground.

phthisis' movements are delayed as if his rotten brain is working just slightly faster than his limbs, festering in mould and bacteria. every step is agony for him and he constantly coughs and wheezes, hot rancid air being squeezed out of his lungs and directly onto my face. i can tell that he's definitely uncertain of how to dispose of me; his eyeballs bulge in the direction of the yellow grass beneath us and his arm quivers ever so slightly - he's planning to propel me straight into the dry mud, headfirst like a toy thrown by a temperamental toddler.

using his hesitation to my advantage, i decide to question him about who he works for and whether it's the great evil force i'm supposed to be defeating.

"the great one?" i say dumbly. he grins down at me, revealing rotting incisors threatening to fall out any minute now.

"oh yes, the great one! he'll definitely let me join the electos decem once i squash you like a fruit fly!" he roars. the electos decem? i'll definitely have to google that later - that is, if i make it out alive.

"what's the electos decem?" i yell over the din of his laughter. at 30 feet in the air, it would be dangerous to provoke him to let me go as i would fall painfully to my death either way - it would just be quicker if he threw me. another option was to scale his body and run back into the school for help but one look at his soot lungs and the frail sepia bones had me desperate for a different way out.

"only the ten greatest demons and gods ever! but enough talking jeon, i want to see your brain splattered all over this grass!"

panic rises in my throat. i have to act quickly or i may never see the sun again. i think of minghao, the quiet boy from my art class who has yet to realise who i am. i think of junhui, my fellow 96 liner and his naive smile as he served me at the orbit cafe unknowingly. i think of my other brothers, still out there in the world with no recollection of our past lives at all. and lastly, i think of hansol, the brother i'd only just recovered, who was somewhere in school right this very second probably dozing off to some droning old bat. they say that right before your heartbeat slips away forever, your entire life is condensed into seven seconds of happiness and warmth that juxtapose the cold seeping into your body as your blood stops flowing and your vital organs shut down. the howling of phthisis becomes the background score of the credits of my life and i couldn't think of a worse way to go as the hopelessness drowns me whole.

after exactly three agonising heartbeats, a piercing shout exposes the light again and my film reel burns under the exposure. my heart feels refreshed and my strength renewed as i twist my entire body to glance at a small dot dashing up the leg of my captor. the dot becomes bigger and bigger until hansol is clutching a brittle rib with a bronze sword between his teeth; as well as being a fairly decent water mage, hansol was a prodigy at making and wielding weapons such as swords, knives and spears. he often spent his days in the shed at the bottom of our garden with soonyoung, working tirelessly together to forge all sorts of battle paraphernalia.

with both hands strapped around the bone, hansol greets me with a nod. phthisis had hardly realised the intrusion and merely scours the field for any movement.

whilst daydreaming in english class, hansol knew immediately that something was unsettling him. at first he scolded himself for not being able to keep his battle instincts in check, desperately trying to focus back on the lesson instead. nonetheless, the feeling worsened and he quickly excused himself on the notion of going to see the nurse; his head was throbbing and his stomach felt as if it were about to empty itself onto the grey linoleum. the smell wasn't helping either. the sour odour too became overpowering as he burst into the courtyard to find wonwoo. he knew he had some sort of science and power-walked in the direction of the science block, his inconsistent steps being the only clue to his heightened anxiety. to access the science classrooms, however, you had to walk past the field and despite being the slowest in the room sometimes, it didn't take hansol long to shed his jacket and race towards the giant skyscraper of bones and shrivelled flesh, sword in hand.

"hyung! are you alright?" he hisses, his speech muffled by the hunk of metal lodged in his mouth.

i nod discreetly and he relaxes a little with relief. after checking that phthisis' attention was elsewhere, he swings himself onto the forearm of the daemon and inches towards me. just as his arms lift, sword in hand, phthisis bellows.

"and what do we have here?" his speech is slow and deliberate as he brings me right in front of his eyes. incidentally, this causes hansol to lose his footing and he escapes death by the skin of his teeth when he hooks his arm around the cracked ulna of my captor, legs dangling in the wind.

"wait - you've already recovered one of the others?!" phthisis shrieks with anger and realisation. his arm vibrates, throwing hansol and i around as if we weighed nothing.

"this sets us back greatly," he mumbles to himself and i assume that by 'us' he means whatever evil organisation he's a part of. perhaps he could be referring to the electos decem. "no matter, i'll just kill you both!"