Song of the Day:
Agust D 🖤
(I love this song too much 😂)
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Seongmin didn't sleep much.
Between the unseen eyes outside her window, the rain pounding on her windows and roof, and Chihun crying his eyes out over YLiA, she'd found it hard to fall asleep, especially with the tingling feeling staying there most of the night.
In the morning, she awoke groggily from the few hours of sleep that had overtaken her to the soft grey light of dawn coming though her bedroom window. She rolled over, snuggling up like a kitten in a basket, not wanting to leave the comforting warmth of her blanket, wrapped around her like soft white fur.
Why on the days when she didn't want to get up was the blanket so comfortable?
Groaning, Seongmin rolled over, before realising it was Saturday.
The office wasn't open on weekends.
Joy raced through her and practically made her heart explode as she realised she didn't have to leave the warmth of her bed, and she burrowed back into her pillow with the full intention of gaining those extra few hours of sleep she'd lost to the tingling in her neck.
But just as she was about to close her eyes, a shrill screech awoke her. Her first thought was that it was her alarm clock, but she then remembered that she'd unplugged it. Meaning that scream that sounded like an exploding chicken could only be...
Chihun.
Heck.
She got up reluctantly, leaving the bed like a sleep deprived sloth. At a snail's pace, she made her way downstairs, the colder air of the hallway attacking her and making her shiver despite her long sleeves and pyjama pants. When she got to the kitchen, she saw one of the strangest things she'd ever seen in her life.
Chihun was standing on the counter in his white T-shirt, but his pants he'd been wearing the night before were now absent from the scene, and he was dancing around in bright yellow Pikachu boxers. Wielding a spatula, he was repeatedly hitting the ceiling, screeching like a banshee, and it took Seongmin a second to realise what was causing the fuss.
A tiny spider, no bigger than her pinky fingernail, was desperately crawling in circles, doing a pretty good job of avoiding Chihun and the spatula considering its size. Sighing, Seongmin walked over, grabbed the back of Chihun's shirt, and dragged him off the counter, taking up a plastic cup and a napkin. She caught the terrified little spider, slipping the paper underneath the cup, and let it go onto the bushes outside her kitchen window.
Turning around to look judgementally at Chihun, she raised an eyebrow at him. The awkward arachnophobic man in question was now sitting on the tiled floor, still clutching the spatula, a sheepish look on his face.
"Put some pants on, Chihun," Seongmin said, taking the spatula from him and hanging it back in its place.
A little bit later, her and Chihun, safely with pants on now, walked out to his car, which was parked a little bit down the street.
"Thanks for letting me spend the night, Seongmin," he said, looking at her with his warm chocolate eyes, a smile stretched across his lips. Seongmin, despite her exhaustion and the spider incident, couldn't help but grin back.
"No problem, Chi. Try to avoid more spiders, okay? I think you scare them more than they do you."
He laughed. "Somehow, I highly doubt that, but okay." He ruffled her hair again, hopping into the car and vrooming away. Seongmin smiled as she watched him go, then turned around, running right into someone on the sidewalk.
Seongmin heard a muffled oof as the person she'd run into tripped backwards, a stack of papers they'd had in their hands flying everywhere. Seongmin fell as well, but quickly got onto her knees, apologising profusely.
"God, I'm so sorry! Are you alright?" She began to gather the papers, a few of which had landed dangerously close to the tiny river flowing through the gutter.
The man on the ground laughed softly, beginning to collect his papers. "Don't worry about it," he said. "I have a tendency to cause disasters like this."
Seongmin smiled a bit, looking at him more closely as she tried to figure out whether there was an order the papers went in. He had kind, dark eyes, a cute tiny, nose, and thick lips, which didn't sound like it should work in her mind, but suited him extremely well. His blonde hair was styled in an undercut, with strands of it blowing around in the slight breeze that threatened to steal his papers. With his very slightly tanned skin and dark clothes, all in all Seongmin thought he was rocking whatever look he was going for.
The two finished collecting the papers, and Seongmin stood up, helping the man up and handing him his papers. He tucked them under his arm, looking back at her with an adorable dimpled smile.
"I'm Kim Namjoon," he said, his smile making Seongmin's own grin grow wider. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance, and sorry about... all this." He waved his free hand around, indicating the runaway papers. Seongmin chuckled.
"No problem. Sorry I knocked you over. I'm Cho Seongmin."
Namjoon smiled again. God, Seongmin wanted to pinch his cheeks, his dimples were having that much of an effect on her. Control yourself, you idiot, she thought to herself, keeping her hands safely at her sides.
A couple seconds later, a watch which Seongmin hadn't previously noticed on Namjoon's wrist beeped. He looked down at it and his smile faded.
"Apologies," he said, looking back up at Seongmin. "I have to run. I'm falling behind for something important." He smiled one last time at her.
"No problem. Nice to meet you, Namjoon." Seongmin smiled, stepping aside to let him pass in the sidewalk. He bowed quickly before walking away at a brisk pace, papers held tightly to keep any runaways from getting away.
Seongmin sighed and walked back to her house, wondering if she couldn't still get those few hours of sleep that her darn arachnophobic friend had cost her.
...
After laying in bed for another hour, Seongmin gave up, going back downstairs to the living room. She flopped down sleepily on the couch and turned on the TV, where she flipped through a few channels to get to the news. Might as well find out what was wrong with the world if she couldn't do anything else.
About halfway through the weather report (sunshine today with rain the rest of the week), a breaking news broadcast broke through the meteorologist's drone. A peppy, black haired woman looked excitedly up from her desk at the audience as the cameras went live.
"This just in, nothing short of a miracle has been spotted on the south side of Seoul! According to reports that are still flooding in, a superhero has been sighted in the city-"
Seongmin sat bolt upright. Could it be Black Rabbit? She watched intently, waiting for the broadcast to switch to the downtown news. Finally, after a few more agonising seconds that felt like years, she caught her first glimpse of the hero.
Dressed in all black, with a white and silver mask, the guy seemed to have a theme going with clocks. Three pocket watches hung from a silver belt of the same color, and a similar wristwatch decorated his left arm. A metallic chain around his neck held a pendant which Seongmin realised was an emblem, a white quartz circle with two crossed black arrows over the face. Even his mask had two black arrows, like the hands of a clock, running over where his hidden eyebrows would be.
Seongmin leaned forward, even more intrigued now than she had been before. If it wasn't Black Rabbit, that meant there was more than one of them. More supers running around her city. She felt a momentary pang of pure excitement, eyes wide as she stared at the hero on the screen.
Then her joyful balloon was pierced by a pin of shock and horror, as she realised he was being shot at by someone off camera.
Bullets whizzed by the man, pinging and crashing into cars, walls, trees, and street signs indiscriminately. Luckily, there were no pedestrians around, or they would've been gunned into Swiss cheese. Seongmin watched in horror as the hero dodged them narrowly, wondering why he wasn't using his power.
The news camera panned to the side, and Seongmin saw the shooter for the first time. She just about screeched out loud when she did, too, because he had no gun.
The bullets were coming straight from the man's hands, which were tube shaped. He wore dark goggles over his eyes and had dark brown, spiked hair, swept to one side. Dressed all in Kevlar and black metallic armour, it hit Seongmin in the face what she was seeing.
He has a power, too. That means...
Seongmin mentally slapped herself. How the heck could she not have realised?
If there were people with powers out there that used them for good, of course there would be villains, too. How Seongmin had failed to think about this earlier, she didn't know. She covered her mouth with her hands as she continued watching, suddenly unsure about how happy she really was about the supers.
The villains of her stories had been the stuff of nightmares to her as a child. When she'd gotten older and watched superhero shows and movies, she'd often go to sleep with images of the dark supers haunting her mind and plaguing her dreams, and wake up crying in a cold sweat. Now, she realised that, while the heroes of her stories were a reality, she could very well be facing a living nightmare woven into the dream.
Seongmin lost track of what was happening as she watched the battle unfold. The hero, who could apparently instantaneously teleport himself from one place to another, was putting up a pretty decent fight, landing blow after blow on the bullet man despite the enemy's quick reflexes. As it went on, she could see both of them becoming physically drained, their movements getting slower and less intense. In the final, climatic moments, however, it was the villain who fell first, unable to hold up against the strong blows the hero was relentlessly delivering.
The police, who had been hiding around the scene, jumped out the moment the villain was down, quickly handcuffing him and blocking his hands from releasing more bullets. He struggled to walk along with the officers, apparently completely exhausted, but he shot a hateful glance back at the hero before being shoved into a car and taken away.
The hero, who looked just as exhausted with beads of sweat covering his forehead and blood running from a cut on his collarbone where a bullet had nicked him, still stood victoriously. He stood tall and watched the police do what they had to do, before turning and actually jumping at the sight of the reporters that had snuck up on him.
The reporters rained question after question on him, and he held out his hands for quiet. Somehow, he actually succeeded in calming the reporters, and they fell silent.
"I'll answer one question," he stated gently, his deep voice soft. He nodded at a brown haired reporter girl, who excitedly smiled as she held out her microphone to him.
"Who are you, hero of Seoul?" She asked, eagerly awaiting his response. A tiny smile made its way onto the super's face as he responded.
"You can call me Legend. I'm a new hero, and I vow to protect this city with my life. No more questions, please."
Naturally, the reporters fired up their interrogation again, but a heartbeat later, the man was gone. Seongmin thought she caught a glimpse of him in the corner of the screen, disappearing into a nearby alleyway, but she couldn't be sure.
As a new news broadcast started up, something about a farm crisis, Seongmin flipped off the TV. She sat there in silence for a while, pondering these new events.
Who was this new hero, Legend? What was his power, exactly? Why did the bullet villain decide to attack, and who was he behind the dark glasses? Where were the other villains, if there were more? Were there more supers out there, waiting for their shot at protecting the city?
As these questions and others flooded Seongmin's mind, she didn't even realise she was dropping off to sleep until her eyes shut.
The last thing she felt was a slight tingle on the back of her neck, almost as if the mysterious pair of eyes was keeping watch over her as she slept.
...
Unedited
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Yo wassup
Long time no see 😂
How is everyone doing? I hope you enjoyed this new chapter!
It's been a few days since you've gotten a genuine update from me, but I'm FINALLY done with summer school! Woo! Now I can shower y'all in reading material 😂
Just in case you didn't see this message from me already, starting this Sunday I will be away from Wattpad for around two weeks. After that, however, you can expect a ton more updates from me, as I will try my best to work on chapters while I'm away.
Anyway, I hope you did enjoy, don't forget to comment your thoughts and suggestions! I hope you are all having a fantastic night, thank you again for reading, and I will see you all in the next chapter.
Peace out, fellow humans.
~ MineCat57 🌺