A deserted island of large hills and larger miles spread around the coffee table in Sunghoon and Taehyun's dorm's living room, and the sandy air blew hot at the inhabitants of said land, sat and focused on the paper spread over the glass of the table.
"Are you okay?" Taehyun carefully asked, eyes worrying in a squint as he looked at Sunghoon and Jake, pressed each on the opposite side of the table on the floor of the apartment, each staring at the other intensely.
"Shush," Sunghoon was quick to raise a finger wherever Taehyun's face could be, and the latter crossed his eyebrows and the sight of said figer. He looked down at Sunghoon's warning hand that stayed in the air for only seconds-worth of time before clutching the edge of the table again, "I'm trying to read him."
"You won't," Taehyun nodded all the same, "you won't read the boy if he does not talk." He elaborated, and his eyes went back to averting between both of his friends, utterly confused by their religious concentration on the game.
"Let him be," Jake spoke first after Taehyun, slowly moving his hand to where his small figure of a soldier stood on the map, "his stupidity has always been the cause of his loss."
"You are taking this way too serious-"
"Stupid," when Jake moved, the earth beneath them shifted, and air rose from the sand below their feet - a stronger wind with a swallowing land, water pouring from every direction where they sat, and it ran cold and harsh against both of their skins, "you forgetting that I am an ice prince is the only stupidity I can smell." Sunghoon told him with the spread of his hand over the paper, reaching for the dice when it was his turn.
The cold spread in the water's stead, and it reached even Taehyun, whose body went stiff when Sunhoon rose to his knees, and he smiled widely at his opponent, "beat that," he read the number on the dice first, then moved his soldier where the icebergs lied, clapping in content that his steps were with no pauses, slick and smooth all the way to the stairs that lead to heaven.
"Right away, your majesty." Jake did not hesitate to bow, respect beating all that of rivalry he had in stock before rolling the dice on his respectful time.
"No, no, no, no," Sunghoon's grip on the table multiplied in force, and he stretched where he sat with absolute devastation when all the land he had built in cold and white came crumbling beneath the spring Jake stepped on, and the last bits of ice melted over the petals that grew from around them right away, leading the older boy's way to paradise by the hand, "this can not be true!"
"Impossible," Taehyun clicked his tongue, the air shifting at once inside the room, and the furniture in their space enclosed on their beings again, bringing them to the real life where they were born, "this is plain insanity, I am telling you."
"He just never learns," Jake promised, weighting his words with the truth that did not seem arguable, for Sunghoon sat back, a small smile stretched over his lips as he threw himself against the feet of the couch, body inclined only the bit needed for him to lean his head over Taehyun's left shoulder, "although sometimes I feel like he makes me win on purpose."
"I would not put it past him," Taehyun giggled, easing in his seat when Jake joined them too, taking the right shoulder for himself, and his hand ran in the direction it had known for a long time, the place it was never hesitant upon finding - Sunghoon's hand, and they both lied on top of Taehyun's lap, "he is what Sihyeon made him to be."
"Tell me about her," Jake spoke, and it was not the first time he had asked. Both Sunghoon and Taehyun smiled at the direction their world has taken them, and neither of them stopped to think or reconsider their own steps, "I want to know more about your family."
"She, too, let me win," Sunghoon was first to speak, and his eyes worked their way to where Jake caressed his white knuckles, "times and times over; she let me beat my own miseries and pain."
"She was quite rigid, at first," Taehyun nodded, and he giggled upon the sound of his own words when they echoed in his ears, "she was hard to understand-"
"And still."
"-and still," Taehyun laughed, and he rested his head above Sunghoon's, "but she is our anchor all the same."
Sunghoon's smile grew when the warmth Jake's hold on his hand emitted spread through him alongside the memory of his first meeting with Sihyeon, "noona," he closed his eyes, contentment manifest on his features as contentment could ever do, "her edges are so sharp, yet she melts them away the second her eyes meet ours."
It was true. Sihyeon never let her sharp edges scratch her own kids, and it was the cleanest parts of her existence that she held them in, safe and right as safe and right could ever be, and she never trembled once in their wake, never shivered away from their colds.
Instead, there was another part of her world that trembled.
Naeun's hand was one to tremble.
Her sight was blurred with the tears that went against her will no matter how many times she swallowed them, and she had the frustrating task of packing Jaewook's bag herself.
They were reluctant, but they trembled as she went, and she did not dare raise an eye to where her husband sat, her swollen features an extra weight to what she already felt difficult. She, however, did not want to meet his eyes. His stay on the bed remained the second she had taken a step back inside their house, and he asked her to start packing right away.
Naeun did not look at him, afraid she would find anything to further her agony and terror. Although not focused, Naeun put her heart into packing, doing a terrible job at waving off all the other thoughts and warm touches that had threatened to take over her cold state. She realised, somewhere among the hassle of clothing, that it was not that cold after all. The trembling was not the cold's doing, because she was sweating, although that, too, might have not been the cold's doing.
"It's saddening, you know?" She still paid him no heed, and she wandered her eyes among the fabrics to sway them far from where Jaewook's words were. "The way you look for a man but me."
Her fist clenched against one of the shirts, and her teeth touched with a blaze. She coughed when the rage rose far beyond her chest, and she looked away to where the wardrobe was. "Do you need the-"
"What is so special about him?" He did not cease his attempts to break her out of the faulty shield she had created. As foul as it was, it still did enough job to keep her until they boarded, but Jaewook was insistent on stripping her off that protection and watch her bear, sad. "What has he done so well to make you despise me?"
Naeun sighed, the pain inside her chest turning times and times over with all that is there of emotions it could bear. She looked up at her husband, and she watched cautiously as his lips lifted slowly into an unfathomable smile, one that he grew while looking back at her, and Jaewook pushed himself to the edge of the bed. "Why are you doing this?" She finally asked, and it made Jaewook finally loosen his grip on her stare.
Naeun's voice was quivering, but Jaewook's was still, calm, and content, "can't exactly say I find joy in your agony," he shook his head, and had Naeun known him for a cowardly liar, she would have excused his words as an aimless ramble, "but I do feel thrilled when I think about it.
"You," he started, and Naeun's nausea escalated. She put her hands over the pieces of cloth inside the bag, and she breathed deeply to replace the sickening feeling with some of the air inside the room, be it suffocating or not, "your past life," Jaewook intended a smirk, at which Naeun refused to snap her head even in her state of fear and worry, "your choices." He said, and Naeun picked randomly at the clothes. She rearranged some of them again, her touch on the fabric cold and shivering.
"Your mother was right, after all," Jaewook nodded to himself, and Naeun saw him, because her eyes jumped his way, and she saw past his smirk and scoff and words and rest upon the mattress with the heels of his palms, sitting back as he stared into space for a while, and when he turned to look back at Naeun, that was when she shattered completely, "it's not useful if you don't make the right money.
"Yet he did not, did he?" He clicked his tongue, and he watched as Naeun's hand long forgot about the packing, grabbing onto the edges of the bag until her knuckles went bloody and white. "He never gave you the money that which your mother meant for you."
"You do not know what you are speaking of." It was an attempt, and Naeun was aware the words were more directed to herself, trying to convince herself with the words she spoke loud, maybe they would be loud enough to outgrow her worries then.
"I do too," Jaewook nodded confidently, and he snorted when Naeun's eyes went wide and wild with horror, and had it not been their hurry that seeked them, she was sure he would have laughed at her expression till the next day, but he was content with rolling a full smile onto his lips, breathing luxuriously before he spoke next, "I had thought endlessly about the ways with which I could fetch you," and breathe out, he did. He put a hand over her eyes, smile growing louder than the beating of Naeun's heart, "but your father handed you right to me."
Naeun felt a heavier weight break down her back, and suddenly all that about the bruises on her body felt small and negligible. Her breath drowned in her throat, and Naeun felt the pain in her body run ten times faster inside her veins, "you would not-"
"No, not on my own, of course," he told her, and he cast his eyes to where her hands fell trembling to her sides, "with the guidance of your mom, I am now able to take on her dream," he heaved a sigh worthy of a million lives, and he seized them, "she had told me lot of what you can be," he admitted, "of what he makes you be, and I saw it when the so small Naeun started rebelling against my chest once and once over."
"Jaewook-"
"Ah, that Kim Miran," his head fell back in his state of nostalgia, and he watched upon the hidden stars beyond their ceiling, as if the being he was all in awe with was different from that which Naeun had known, from that which Naeun tried tirelessly to forget, "she is something, you know? A great deal. Even in her death, she knows what to plan."
Naeun's heart shrilled.
"Even in her death, her touch remains to carry on," he repeated, and Naeun stood a stone, "that is what bravery really is like," there was an obvious taunting in his words, but had the information he split in clean halves between them not been as harsh, Naeun would have taken further offense, "to make life meet death oh so gracefully."
"Jaewook," Naeun shuddered in her own breath, her knees shrinking on themselves she could no longer maintain her thriving posture, and she fell beside his legs that hung from the side of the bed, hands running to anywhere that they could reach and find sympathy in, "Jaewook, please, don't. You shouldn't. Please." The language on Naeun's tongue ran quicker than her heart beats, and she pushed herself further before him in plea.
He looked down at her from where he sat. Unlike her, his posture barely changed, and his expressions moved alongside the winds. His eyebrows raised at his wife where she fell, and an amused life became one with his, "you know better now," his voice, too, beared an evident mirth with which he spoke, "you are much wiser, my dear," he pushed himself forward to where she sat, and one of his hands reached to seek for her own life as well, holding the whole of her cheek and helping her keep her eyes up, "you are no longer hasty or stupid. You know exactly what you are bound to do, and I love you for it."
"Our family- Jaewook- you can't." The nails on her pleading fingers held tighter to his leg, ushering her body to pull closer to where he sat, and she rose to her knees at once, "you love me; you say so, then don't do this to me-"
"I love you," he nodded, and he made the task easier for her when he leaned closer to her, holding her gaze as if it was life itself, "that is why I know what is best for you."
"But it is not," Naeun knew there was nothing she could do but try. She knew that there was no life beyond that, and she knew that saving herself meant murdering every body else around her, so there was no life but in trial, and she held onto it with all her might, hands reaching to the one he held her with, begging with the same manner that she did with his knees, "you are selling me, Jaewook. This is no different than a monster's work-"
His palm stiffened its hold, and his jaw ticked with the present pain and the memory simultaneously, "was your mother a monster, dear Naeun?" His jaw moved, munching on the words angrily, "did you not seek her presence and warmth?"
"I seeked that of the mother I had known," Naeun's speech and voice were small inspite of the rage that rose inside her chest, inspite of the anger that ate away her insides and left her with nothing but hollow pits to feed on the rest of her sanity, "not the mother I realised she was."
"There is just no difference, is there?" His hand remained the same, his eyes remained the same, his hold remained the same - harsh and threatening and wrong, "you were blind is all, but that does not make her two different people, Naeun. Miran is who Miran is, and it is the nature of you that made you love her so much, evil or good."
"This is so wrong," Naeun cried, the entirety of her voice falling further with every trial to suck it in, with every attempt to lull her fury, her desire to disagree, "this is so, wrong. You are so wrong. This is not how things work."
"Then how," the look in his eyes turned to a twisted one Naeun had learnt by heart, widening with the insecurity towards her saying no to his words, "how does a world so great - if you're poor you're doomed - work when there is nothing left for you to live with.
"Where did being so poor in this world lead you? What has it done to you?" Their forheads brushed, and Naeun saw the flame clear and alive in his eyes, "it brought you Park Jimin," at the mention of his name, Jaewook's entire body loosened in contrast to Naeun's, whose every little bit of a touch on him felt ten times as rigid, "a being as wrong to this world as you are, a human as mere as you are."
"No-" Naeun felt her heart misshapen when Jaewook found way to her breath, pulling himself too close and too hard against her own lips, kissing her but no longer as her husband, yet as an act of possessiveness, an unspoken message for her to read. He kissed her, and Naeun knew he was hurting her when pain spread far beyond the kiss and into her body when his hands did not touch anything but her jaw.
"Yet he took this from me," he said between his vicious kisses, the wounds he inflicted on his wife, "he made it his job to be my foe," Naeun's hand fought against his chest, making truth of his earlier words, but she could no longer find way to resist it, she could no longer try prove him wrong, "and I am going to kill him." His red eyes met hers again, but now she was sobbing, and her hands that were hard rock against his wall of a body trembled.
"Who is it that is powerful now, dear?" He demanded an answer, and Naeun's anger brimmed. She looked at him with the same type of digust she had once buried, feigning weakness in his wake, yet it surfaced again, but there was nothing for her to do about it, "answer me, Son Naeun," he tightened his grip on her jaw, and he fought to wring life out of her, "who is it that deserves respect now, huh?"
"Y-you." Naeun breathed, and as small as it was, it made Jaewook scoff with a smirk all the same. He threw Naeun away, as easily he would throw a paper down a bin. She fell back, seated on the floor while he rose high above her, again and again and again.
"I thought as much." He sighed, and shrugged the weight of Naeun's minute act of rebellion off his shoulders, as if it was all the headache the world has sworn to give him. "Keep packing. We leave in an hour."
Trial was all but fruitful between Naeun's hands, and she lied there for what felt like hours longer than that her husband offered her. She sat, and the sickness to her body multiplied, the cold in the air doing too little to ease the sweating; her body clenched in a fever she had not experienced before, and when it all came shattering at once, for the first time, it felt like there was no way out this time.
Naeun knew, because Jimin had told her that she deserved it, and she sat there, the fever taking the whole of her body. She sat there, and for minutes and minutes long, the earth did not seem to listen when Naeun begged it to swallow her, when Naeun heard the bones of her knucles break under the pressure she put into forcing the earth open beneath her, yet all it did was hurt and reciprocate at her.
The pain in her palms then had her hand trembling all the while harder, and she winced every time she tried to open or close her fingers, instantly regretting the anger that also told her to walk out of the room and just ask Jaewook to kill her.
Naeun knew, because Jimin had told her that she deserved it, so she thought she might as well suffer the consequences of her own deeds. She knew, and when she sat back against the side of her bed, the tiles no longer too cold to her easy bones, she realised that there was no longer any fight in her, that there was no longer any point in fighting at all.
Jimin had told her that she deserved it, yet there was no pain in the voice he said it with. He had told her, yet he did not mean for it to be of so much meaning as he stood against the door to a dorm he has grown so used to, and the silence upon which he breathed was as stiff and as twisted as it would ever be.
Aera watched cautiously - his eyes that were all but eyes, a circle of red and a dark shadow casted on them. She watched his heavy chest rise with difficulty, and she scanned the entirety of his fragile body, disheveled in a way she had never seen before, but unfortunately learnt the definition of.
"You are the only person I could turn to, Aera," he told his kid, and suddenly she was no longer a kid. Suddenly, all Jimin knew was the he needed to be drawn inside arms so small and so understanding, arms so young and so comprehensive, arms so new and so innocent and so hurt, arms he was afraid if he finds courage a bit too late would fade from his sight, "I'm so tired."
"Is she gone?" Aera asked, and her eyes swayed among the furniture in the room. Her fingers fiddled together, and Jimin saw how hard she tried to cease that kid for him.
Jimin let his eyes wearily look at the hands of the clock on the wall, and he struggled to pull them down when the minutes tugged on his sanity, "I don't think so, yet." He took in a long breath, one he knew he would lose his life if he let go of without uttering the right words. "She was one to ask me not to follow her." He said, and it preyed on Aera's heart more viciously. "I could still-" his foot stabbed the floor beneath it, ringing in his lost words' stead, and he closed his eyes to think longer if only for a second. "I could still follow her, maybe this is all it needs, maybe we're one step closer, and I do not want to regret backing off last minute."
"She can not just leave without seeing me," Aera's tears just never seemed to come. There was not even anger at her mother in the way she stared back at her father's helplessness, "without saying why.
"I want to ask her," Aera said, pushing the chaos that was her sheets away, and she hurried down the bed, as small and as determined as ever, "I want my mom." There was a kid, and it was Aera, and it came back crashing to Jimin when she spoke with a heavy tone and watery eyes, when she looked like she was on her way to the first day at school, and suddenly there was nothing unusual about his kid, there was him and there was her fear of the world just like every other child her age, and he looked at her, for the first time drawing into his sight the whole of her smallness and weakness and fragility and innocence.
"If she hurts you-"
"My mother will not hurt me." Aera refused to listen, she walked to him and her arms were all he saw for a while, stretching high where he stood, asking to be even closer to him and there was not an ounce of hesitance in the way he knelt to hold her tightly, in the way he dragged his knees to where she stood and embraced her, shushing her as the tears started spilling after all. "She will not. I know her. She will not."
"We will go, then, baby," he told her, and the hand that lost itself on her back was determined to brush off every bit of worry hanging there. He pulled his kid closer to his chest, and kissed the top of her head when she sobbed between his arms, "me and you together, we can try."
They could try, and trial was a whole other term in the eyes of those that really seeked it. Trial, fruitful or not, was world and all the world is about in the eyes of those who had no salvation but their own sweat and tears.
Trial was every second and every light and every traffic Jimin passed in his speeding car, rushing past the seconds that threatened to seize his life, and trial was just all he needed then. Trial was the lefts and rights and stops and runs that he made, the desperation in his eyes and lips and unforgettable instinct to keep his daughter warm and inside his hands. Trial was all the things and everything Jimin breathed, and there was no life for him in not seeking after it.
There was no life in not running past doors and guards and procedures and signs and all the things that made rules to his world, and there was no life in not breaking the rules, so he did break every single voice in his head threatening him of going further, of running to where he knew he could find his lover, his nineteen year old family.
The airport was empty.
The spaces meant to be crowded with irrelevant people that he should have seen his lover amongst fell into pieces, and he stood inside the vacancy of what sounded like his death, just as silent and just as wrong.
He and his surroundings both were not the right key to each other, and Jimin's kid stood by his side, looking for the passengers that took off with his heart alongside their flight, the weight of its absence drawned him all at once, and the shock his knee took for his fall rang throughout the rest of his body, stripping him of every bit of hope he had gathered on his way there.
The seconds were faster than him, and he felt like he unfairly lost a battle he was not prepared for.
"Is she gone?" Aera asked again, but this time the answer was written all over the emptiness that was the space around them. She looked around, still, and she walked closer to her father's side where he sat, body bent with weakness over the amount of times he had lost in fights he did not ask to be part of.
His breathing lost its balance, and the tears he had kept from his daughter wrapped him inside their hold at once; Jimin's hands were next to take his fall, pinning themselves to the cold floor as he broke. "God damn it-" he exclaimed, and the pitch in his voice fell on deaf ears, shrill and pained as it was. "What do I do more, Naeun! What the hell should I have done!"
"Dad-"
Aera flinched when he hollered again, "I am worn out," he cried, and the tears were as quick as he in their fall to the ground, "I keep losing her again, and again, and again, it's God damn useless no matter how hard I try! She keeps slipping!"
"Dad, please-"
"You should not be like this." It was another voice that halted Aera in her speech, helpless as she was in her stand beside her father's agony. The sound was one to make Aera turn at once, hand never ceasing to press against her father's back, and her eyes widened in their landing.
"Hi there, little one." Sihyeon had to kneel closer to the kid to be able to look straight into her eyes, just like she had always done, and she smiled when the bewilderment in Aera's eyes was the only answer. "You do not look so well, now, do you?"
Sihyeon eased Aera's grip on her father, taking its task at holding his broken posture where it had fallen. Jimin rose at that, and he looked to his side where Sihyeon sat, lips fighting in their mourning to let go of the words, "she is gone," He answered his daughter after all, but he was looking at none but Sihyeon, "your friend left me, again."
Sihyeon nodded, and her eyes cast to where the gates were. "That is what you see." At that, her entire being changed, and the eyes that once was delicate stared death right at the gates, rising in her place to her feet again, and the smirk that glowed on her face was nothing Jimin had seen before. "Aera, sweetheart, want to see magic like that of Elsa's?"
It was not magic that Elsa bore, and Aera knew, but she looked at Sihyeon with all the ambivalence a child could hold, and watched as her doctor raised a hand in the empty air, and while their stares at each other broke for Sihyeon's head to fall backwards, eyes closed and smile grown fully, Aera never stopped staring in astonishment at her.
Sihyeon's fingers snapped, and she talked once more, "it's time for my favorite show."
"Good evening, passengers. This is the post-boarding announcement for flight 89B to Mar del Plata, Argentina-"
"Argentina, you motherf-" Sihyeon spoke amidst the announcement, looking ahead while Jimin's head swayed around him in confusion, breath held inside his chest lest it break the world apart if he lets it go the wrong way, and he stood up again.
"-We are sorry to inform you that the flight has been cancelled and is now returning due to confidential reasons. Regular landing will begin in approximately ten minutes time. Sorry for the inconvenience. Your cooperation is highly appreciated."
(a/n: uhm,,,,
yeah so i just really love kim sihyeon
also this chapter may or may not have LOTS OF MISTAKES BECAUSE I WRITE SO QUICKLY
but yes i'll edit in the morning we know so
ANYWAY, let's look forward to Sihyeon beating Jaewook's ass yeah???? YEAH????
until next chapter~~~)