celestial strings | h.js

two.

"Jisung! Jisung! Oh no, don't sleep-wake up!" You shook him as soon as you knelt beside him, holding his body up and placing him on your lap.

He opened his eyes weakly. It took him time to adjust to the view, and he barely gave you a smile when he saw you. He heard the explosions loud and clear; it would have been weird for him not to, considering the degree of it. The ringing in his head worsened after suffering the shock wave it released. As it was strong enough to decapitate the councilman's head, Jisung may have barely scraped past the pressure.

Glancing up at you, a noise came from the back of his throat when he saw tears streaming down your face. He nudged his head against your side, trying to comfort you as much as his body allowed him to.

"Hey," you laughed, wiping your hand before touching his face momentarily. "You've lost a lot of blood, but don't worry. I'm going to fix you up, okay? You wait."

Jisung wanted to protest. You were already bleeding all over. He wasn't sure how you would go about helping him at all other than further harming yourself. Nonetheless, he wanted the pain in his body to go. Therefore he chose to wait.

You closed your eyes in thoughts then, thinking of what you could do.

Considering the severity of his injuries and your lack of energy, you could not heal him fully. But, perhaps Jisung didn't need a full recovery rather than to hold on for another while until the law enforcement arrived, which you were hoping they would. You looked off to the side at the dead body and flinched away. You have to be gone before anybody can see you. But you were unsure how much magic he needed to hold on. Or he could already be taking his last few breaths. You had no idea.

You ran the risk of messing up and miscalculating. It may also only be one to two patrol police officers that came by. Then it would be more waiting for an ambulance to arrive.

Curating the speed of your heartbeat by steadying your breathing now that the aftermath of the fight was beginning to wane, you sorrowfully looked down at Jisung. You caressed his hair, forcing your cheeks into a visible smile upon his resting state. He was still bleeding, or perhaps he was close to running out of blood to pour. You knew his lips were turning dry and white, which was not a good sign.

A clench of the heart was nothing short of an impactful memory. It was just as painful as the physical injuries you sustained during this altercation. You did this to him. You were partially the reason behind such suffering he was much willing to endure. This may not even be the tip of the iceberg; you knew there was more than one councilman behind the downfall of your family.

One came after you and failed. The rest would follow suit with drastically different strategies. What then? If Jisung doesn't die today, he will be the target of another. Eventually, so would your friends. Sweet Felix and his gullible nature; Hyunjin and his blind protectiveness; Seungmin and his envious maturity—children under the hands of unmerciful adults who would push and shove to get what they want.

If there was anything you should do, it should be to destroy any connection anybody has to you and subsequently distance yourself from the human world. Your last and most logical resort was to go back to where you came from.

The breath you forced yourself to hold in finally got out when you came to that terrifying conclusion. The sheer amount of misery boiling inside your chest from knowing that everything you did was for nothing pushed a temporary sob out of you—you felt useless, but more importantly, it was regret and delusionality that bit at your flesh.

This should have never happened. If you could return in time, you would have never offered to help him jump through the school gate. You would have left him be. If a God could hear you, may they heed your words. You would have left him be.