𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 (𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞!𝐚𝐮) 𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐙

CH. 51 ~ Found Out

"Didn't you say you were still recovering from your attack? If you feel so well that you can go wandering into town, I might as well give you the order of the fresh produce I need to pick up."

"N-no, never mind. I just remembered I got a really bad cramp this morning." Seonghwa lies, quickly attending to the food sizzling in his pan. Bina smirks, swiveling back toward me and Jongho before shooting us out.

"Go! Go! My meat will spoil if you two don't hurry and bring it back to refrigerate it." Jongho swiftly grabs a hold of my wrist, tugging me along with him and we start our trek over to the ice cream store.

~

"This ice cream isn't half bad," I comment, licking the deliciously minty, mint chocolate chip dessert in my hand. Jongho looks over at me confused, staring at the melting treat I'm holding.

"Wasn't that supposed to be for Seonghwa?" The truth: it was, initially. Seonghwa had seemed to want one when we left the diner but it started to melt on our way back to Bina's, so I had no other choice but to eat it. I wasn't about to let a perfectly good gelato go to waste.

"It was melting," I shrug, waving the ice cream in the young battle master's face. He follows it hungrily and before I can move my hand, he grabs it taking a gigantic bite. "HEY! I WAS EATING IT!"

"Seonghwa would have wanted me to have it," he speaks with his mouth full. I frown at the ice cream in my hand that is now just the cone.

"You already had yours!" I whine, stomping my feet in a tiny tantrum. Jongho just laughs, ignoring me as he continues his way back to Bina's with the meat packages in his hands. I throw out the now empty cone, catching up with the young battle master when I start to notice some yelling coming from behind us.

I stop in my tracks, turning around and squinting heavily to see where the yells were coming from, but with the commotion of the outdoor market and the people flooding the town, I can't see clearly.

"What's wrong?" Jongho calls out from a few feet ahead of me, having noticed that I stopped following him. He tries to catch on to what I'm looking at but fails, beckoning me to hurry up.

"Wait, you don't hear that?" I inquire, a bit afraid that I might be hallucinating. Am I that tired? No there's no way, I know what I heard.

"Hear what?" He pauses, once again trying to find out what's making me act so strange. "Sun-Mi, there's nothing—,"

"SHHHH!" I shush him violently and exactly as I do is when we hear it.

"HELP!" Some people screech in the distance, just barely audible for us. I snap my head back to Jongho with worried eyes.

"Something's wrong," I say, 100% sure that there's something going on. My suspicions are confirmed when I hear the distant sounds of muskets firing in the air, wreaking havoc on the town. Terrorized shouts and blood-curdling screams reach the both of us. We don't even have to look at each other to sprint as fast as our legs can take us to Bina's diner.

"BINA! SEONGHWA!" Jongho and I holler in anxiousness as soon as we step foot into the diner.

"Yes?" Bina attends to us, coming from the kitchen to meet us.

"The town! It's in chaos!" I announce, searching the room with wild eyes to look for Seonghwa. No matter where I look I can't find him and with every second I don't see him, I begin to panic.

"What are you talking about? It seemed perfectly fine," The old lady clicks her tongue, peering out of the diner's windows to see outside. At the same time she does, a large tremor is felt in the ground below us which really sends her into a frenzy. "Oh my, I haven't felt something like this since I got captured by your captain."