• Chapter 68 •
Somewhere between the living and the dead was a place. Not quite heaven, not quite hell. Something that was more of a combination of the two - something like earth.
It was the place that Jisung ruled, the place where his people stayed from time to time, although they often spent their time around humans. It wasn't because of that, though, that life here and there was almost the same.
Regardless, considering all the similarities there was something else that earth and this place had in common: Prisons.
Jisung walked up to the door that was made out of firm steel. Simple-looking. A little outdated maybe. Yet it served its purpose.
Calmly, hands inside the pockets of his trousers, Jisung came to a halt in front of the door. He waited as he watched the figure on the other side. She sat on the cold ground, back and head resting against the wall behind her.
It was exhausting just to have to look up at the boys that glared at her from outside. She was too lazy to even pretend like this didn't bother her but she still managed to draw a mocking smirk onto her lips as if it was even worth it.
She looked at Jisung first, then glimpsed at Chenle who stood to Jisung's right, meanwhile Taemin stood to his left.
"See?" Hyun-joo muttered. "I told that girl that you'd be fine."
Chenle pushed out an empty huff. He rolled his eyes but didn't say anything in return - it really wasn't worth wasting his breath for.
Upon the lack of reaction, Hyun-joo sighed. She looked frustrated.
"Why am I here?" she asked.
Jisung frowned. "This is a prison, you committed misconduct. I'm sure you can figure it out."
"Shouldn't I be dead?" She was genuinely surprised. "Isn't it what that girl wanted to do?"
Jisung looked up. He hummed to himself. From Hyun-joo's point of view it might have seemed like that was her goal but...
"Wouldn't that be too easy?" he asked.
"What?" She laughed. "So what are you planning to do? Keeping me locked up in here? I will get out of here faster than you think."
Jisung shrugged. "Sure, go ahead. Good luck." Taemin raised a brow at his nonchalance, amused smirk on his lips. Chenle merely watched wordlessly.
It was quiet after that. The youngest drew his eyes up and down the woman's slumped figure. Pale skin, glassy eyes. She looked like she was feeling unwell.
"I'm curious what your plans will be when you get out anyway," he admitted. "Because it's not like you can do anything now."
He was bluffing. He didn't know yet whether or not their plan worked. Maybe Hyun-joo was feeling better than she looked like. Maybe she was going to recover soon.
But somehow he was confident enough in Cho-a's skills to take the risk and pretend.
Hyun-joo, on the other hand, felt uneasy. She hesitated, didn't move, didn't look away. She looked calm but her body was tense.
She raised a brow, tried to dismiss it by saying that, "If you are talking about not being able to teleport the--"
Jisung cut her off. "That's obvious anyway. If you were able to do that, you wouldn't be sitting here," he noted. "But teleporting - that's the only thing this place prevents you from doing."
He was getting curious, so he unlocked the door, stepped inside. Taemin and Chenle followed him hesitantly.
Meanwhile, Hyun-joo didn't say anything. She stared at him as he came closer to her, one step at a time.
Once he was right in front of her, he crouched down so that they were on eye-level. All the while she didn't dare take her eyes off him as she desperately tried to keep her composure.
Jisung inspected her carefully. She looked even worse from up close.
"At this point, you are no better than a mere human." He seemed happy about it. "For you that must feel horrible."
But Hyun-joo wasn't going to give in and admit that. Even though it was obvious that, at least for now, she had no energy left to argue much.
Still, she tried. "I don't know what you are talking about." Her acting was lazy and unconvincing.
Starting to feel a little bored, Jisung sighed. He reached out, curled his fingers around the collar of her shirt. He gripped it firmly, held onto it tightly.
Without another word he got up and pulled her up with him. With her legs still wobbly and her mind still trying to push through the haze it was stuck in, Hyun-joo didn't have much of a choice but to go along with it.
"Since you are feeling so great, I'm sure you wouldn't mind proving it, right?" Jisung asked.
Hyun-joo acted unbothered. "What do you want?"
Which was enough to make him smile. It was an amused smile, an angry smile. It surprised both, Taemin and Chenle, who had been watching them from a few step's distance.
Taemin leaned a little closer to Chenle. "If he kills her we won't find out if it worked," he noted as he watched Jisung pull a pocket knife out of his trouser's back pocket.
Chenle thought about it for a second. "She has no powers so he won't dare harm her," he said. "He's just scaring her because he's angry that she hurt me."
"Ah, really?" he asked before he mumbled under his breath, "Boring."
Chenle gave the older one a look but quickly went back to focusing on Jisung who, by now, was holding the knife far enough up for Hyun-joo to see.
"It's simple. I'll give you the chance to defend yourself," he said. "I won't be hard on you. So as long as you still have your powers you can fend me off easily."
With that being said, he moved the blade's tip down to the same spot where she had stabbed Chenle earlier that night. He pressed it against her clothes.
"Can you do it?" Jisung asked provocatively as he applied more pressure, causing the knife to break through the fabric.
Hyun-joo didn't move at first. She just watched. Frozen. Tense.
Taemin crossed his arms in front of his chest. "It's less fun knowing he won't do it," he mumbled, too quiet for the other two to hear.
Chenle gave him an odd look. "Man," he said under his breath. "Why are you like this?"
"What?" he asked. "That's just an observation."
The younger nodded. "Sure."
"I'll give you five seconds. Is that enough?" Jisung asked meanwhile. "Five--"
"I can't do it," Hyun-joo interrupted him, her voice coming out hurriedly in all her panic. Breath quick, her eyes jumped up and down between the boy and the knife in his hand.
Jisung sighed in return. "You lasted only one second," he muttered under his breath. "How disappointing."
"If you already knew, then why are you even doing this?!" Hyun-joo shouted angrily.
He brought the knife up, pressed the flat side of the blade against the bottom of her chin and pushed her head up.
"Because you take so much pride in being stronger than most that even just admitting this must have hurt you," he explained. "Besides, your ridiculous amount of pride is your only memorable personality trait. Without it, you are just a useless, empty shell."
He took a deep breath, let his gaze run over her face slowly. Then he arched his brows expectantly.
"How does that feel?" he inquired curiously, talking surprisingly quietly. "Because it's how you will feel for the rest of your life."
Despite being confused and reluctant to act due to how she felt, Hyun-joo was also angry. She was upset about not understanding what was going on. She was upset about feeling how she felt.
So, with nothing but her angry glares and pointlessly clenched fists, she asked,
"What did that bitch do to me?"
For a second after that, it was quiet. Dead silent. Because Hyun-joo had said what she wanted to say and because neither Taemin nor Haechan dared to even breathe.
Jisung used this second to turn the knife so it wasn't its flat side that was pressing against the woman's chin but the sharp edge instead. He once again pressed her chin up, only that this time there were drops of blood running down her chin and neck before they got soaked up by her shirt.
Upon seeing her pain-filled grimace, Jisung managed to calm down a little.
"Technically seen she saved your life," the youngest noted. "So I'd be careful what you call her."
"Does it matter?" she asked, mumbling since she didn't want to move her jaw much. "She isn't even here, it's not like she can hear me."
Jisung took one deep breath after the other but he couldn't help but get more and more irritated.
"She passed out just before I did," Hyun-joo noted, remembering how she saw the girl's eyes turn from a bright, shining silver to a dull, lifeless brown, like a star ceasing to exist. "Is she even still alive?"
With the last sentence, Jisung froze. Taemin inhaled sharply.
"She's really choosing all the wrong words huh?"
"Maybe you were right and we should step in--" Chenle said quickly but then suddenly stopped himself.
He stopped himself because all of his attention was drawn to Hyun-joo. As if Jisung wasn't standing there, right in front of her, she looked right through him with wide eyes.
Jisung didn't seem to notice right away. He stood tall as he kept glaring at her with his cloudy eyes, brown covered by the swirls of dust that circled around in his eyes at the sheer mess of emotions he was feeling.
He was glaring at her, yet she looked in his direction as if he wasn't even there. She didn't dare say a word. Not until she found Chenle's eyes.
"What's going on?" she asked in a hurry. She made it sound urgent, she was horrified.
"What do you mean?" Chenle asked in return, sounding at least as confused as Hyun-joo herself.
Taemin got a step closer. "You can't see him?" he asked, which caught her attention right away. She looked at him and didn't dare to say a word, didn't dare to move at all.
Chenle and Jisung both looked at Taemin who had his eyes locked with Hyun-joo's. He could tell by her reaction that he was right.
"You can't see Jisung," he repeated, then looked at the boy in question who took a step back, away from her, letting his arm and the knife in his hand hang down next to his body as he stared at the woman.
Then, he and Taemin swiftly turned to face Chenle, the one who had the most experience with thos.
"But that...?" Taemin mumbled, urging the younger boy to speak who hesitated before he nodded in agreement.
"That has never happened before," Chenle said and looked at Jisung who seemed a little lost.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"Even when Cho-a tried her best, the thing we never lost was the ability to see one another even when we are like this," he explained, referring to his cloudy grey eyes.
Jisung turned around to get another look at the woman that still stood there, nervously pressed against the wall behind her despite the boy already having had let go of her.
He looked at her, her pale skin and those exhausted eyes.
Chenle nodded to himself before also laying his eyes on the woman again.
"She is the first person to lose all of her powers."
"Does that mean that...?" Taemin wondered out loud but his question was left unanswered since no one knew for certain.
But whatever it was, this was a good start.
Good.
She did well, Jisung thought.
"Let's go back," the youngest said, losing interest in Hyun-joo all of a sudden. He wanted to see someone else instead. Whether she was awake or not, he just wanted to see her.
And so the three of them left without even bothering to look back at the confused and terrified woman that slumped down on the cold floor again.
• All •
Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
It will be more light-hearted next chapter (I think), sorry for the sombre mood so far but it had to be done
Bye bye 💚