#behold: the au nobody asked for | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

hanibalistic · 1 year

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CELESTIAL STRINGS | HAN JISUNG.

genre | fluff, angst, romance, friendship / soulmate au, magic au

synopsis | having been alone most of your life, the last thing you thought would gain you a few friends and a home was helping a random boy get past the school gate after he was late.

word count | 26.8k+

warning | violence, mentions of blood and injuries / mentions of death and killing

note | limiting 1000 blocks per post is the single stupidest thing tumblr pt.3 / bye bye baby.

parts | one, two, three

Seungmin could feel your presence around the school again. He wondered why you hid.

Turning over to look at his friends, his expression remained neutral and unbothered as he watched Jisung point at something on his phone and make Felix laugh. He breathed a mildly annoyed sigh, unable to verbalize the fault he had placed on Jisung since the moment it was revealed what had happened between you both after everyone split up to find the cat café.

It was because Seungmin knew it was not entirely Jisung’s fault that nobody had heard from you for weeks. Both of you have made grave mistakes in the recent fight, which was much more severe than anything any of you have ever picked with each other. Both of you have said things you shouldn’t have, using the vulnerable knowledge of each other as something as abysmal as snowballs on a fun winter day.

But he has not heard from you for weeks. Nobody has heard from you for weeks. Jisung had frantically reached out to you the night of the fight when he realized there wouldn’t be a time when you could finally come home. He could wait until the sun rose, and there would be no traces of you, so he texted and called you countless times.

Jisung had assumed the worst when he decided to call Seungmin. You were not the type to ignore his calls and messages; even though the tension might still be up, Jisung thought he would have some of your grace, in which you would at least tell him you were safe. But there was only radio silence, and he assumed the worst: you had been taken by the man he saw that day.

Except you were the type to ignore his calls and messages because you were the type to distance yourself as soon as complications arose. Seungmin hated thinking about it this way, but your record tracks: you ran away from your city, you ran away during the car crash, and you had run away this time after experiencing Jisung’s temporary hatred toward you.

Seungmin only tried to text you a few times. He assumed you would not pick up his calls if you didn’t reply to his messages. The results were the same: complete and utter silence.

Yet, lo and behold, you were here with them. Hidden behind walls, or among trees, or cloaked with invisibility. Seungmin wondered if Jisung noticed, but it didn’t seem like anyone but he did.

“I think you guys should go ahead first. I forgot something in my locker,” Seungmin said once he looked away from the other end of the street where you usually came from.

“Huh? Why? We can wait here for you. It won’t take you that long,” Hyunjin said, raising a brow at him.

Seungmin shrugged. “I figured I could find my homeroom teacher on the way to discuss my grade.”

Jisung put his phone down at the peculiar explanation. It may be within his character to forget a homework assignment in his locker, but Seungmin wasn't someone who lacked time management. If he needed to find a teacher to talk to, he would have done it during school hours instead of waiting until the last minute.

“Are you waiting for someone?” Jisung asked, his connotation failing to be discreet.

Hyunjin and Felix turned to Seungmin then, looking more surprised than suspicious. They have each reached out to you individually despite knowing the very little chance of getting a response, which they have yet to get. But regarding your whereabouts, those two also have their fair share of concerns.

Felix did not fault anyone for what happened. If anything, he didn’t think he should have a say since he was neither closely related to you and Jisung’s relationship nor well-versed in what happened to you in the past. Maybe Jisung had the right to be upset about not being able to help you with something with unpredictable danger. Perhaps you were also right in taking the extra step to protect his defenseless self.

One thing that was definitely right, though, which he and Hyunjin both agreed on when chatting during an after-school walk, was that better communication should have happened. Regardless of the agitated emotions and who was right and wrong, Jisung should have clarified for the pessimistic you, and you should not have assumed the worst knowing Jisung’s loving nature.

And you had been gone for weeks. Felix has been without a reliable friend, and Hyunjin has been without a pseudo-sibling. Seungmin has been without his best friend, and Jisung without his soulmate.

Everyone would want to know if you were here, as Jisung assumed.

“I’m not waiting for anyone,” Seungmin said. “I really just need to talk about my grade.”

“Seungmin, your grades are fine,” Jisung huffed in faint annoyance.

Jisung hadn’t been able to study well, nor had he been able to study at all. His bedroom had long lost its comfort. It was just a cell of memories with you, trapping him in and torturing him every single night. He still hasn’t rolled up the mattress on the floor and refused to wash the shirts you’ve worn before.

Hurting you was so easy for him that day. He just had to speak and walk away. He should have turned around. He should have emphasized that he still loved you and was only angry for now. He was negligent of your habits with human complications and made a mistake that cost him every ounce of peace.

“Okay,” Seungmin replied. “I still have to head back to get my stuff from the locker.”

“Then go,” Jisung said. “We’ll wait for you here.”

Jisung’s irritability has been putting a strain on everyone’s mood, and there is only so much one can handle before the awful truth comes out and kills everyone. But Seungmin has someone else he has to worry about; he looked to the side slightly as if to give you a signal to follow him if you were even here in the first place, and then he exhaled in annoyance.

“Fine,” Seungmin muttered. “I won’t be long.”

He went through the school building and headed to the backyard, where they usually had lunch. Standing by the familiar spot, his eyes squinted in concentration. He couldn’t even be sure if you were at the front gate or if you followed him to the back, but he felt obligated to try it. As your best friend, he had to see if you would receive his support.

Besides, he hated the idea of leaving that petty map argument unresolved. He hasn’t apologized to you yet, nor have you to him.

“[Name]?” he called softly, standing on his spot and looking around, feeling like an absolute idiot. “You can come out if you’re here. It’s just me.”

A ghostly breeze brushed past his face, blowing at his bangs to caress his eyes. Seungmin closed his eyes at the wind. His lips pursed into a gentle frown. Footsteps slowed down before him as his temporary blindness faded, and he found himself looking at you with your hands clasped before your chest. You smiled faintly at him, eyes filled with recognition of your friend’s face.

Seungmin softened, as did you. You looked the same, understandably. It has only been a couple of weeks since he last saw you, but you appeared exhausted. And you found him stoic and angry, which he usually was if he made no attempt to put expressions on his face. But as he looked at you now, he was a gentle boy.

His hand paused mid-air when he was about to brush at a piece of your hair away from your face, his movement stuttering before he clenched his fist and let it drop back to his side. You looked down at his hand and back up at his face, your eyes widening slightly at the unusual gesture.

Seungmin opened his mouth, wanting to speak but unable to because his mind was blanking out. Eventually, he found it in himself to speak. “I’m sorry about what I said that day. About your magic being unconventional.”

You shook out a breath, finding the willpower in yourself to breathe normally after so long. Every day felt like a knot in your chest, sucking in your oxygen and craving for your impending end. You missed the daily life you used to have, having a place to go home to, your friends, and being with Jisung.

The first thing you gave him was a huff of amusement. Then you jumped in your steps, moving forward and engulfing him in a surprising hug. Seungmin grew into a smile of his own, accepting the hug graciously, knowing how hard it was to overcome the distaste for human touch. He was the same way with people, but since he had not seen you in a while, he supposed he could make an exception.

“How have you been, Seungmin?” you asked, the evidence of joy clear in your straining voice.

“Annoyed that you ghosted all of us,” he replied jokingly. “If you want to ghost Jisung, fine. But I am not part of the argument you guys had. I do not deserve to be ignored. Neither do Hyunjin and Felix.”

You pulled a remorseful face as you pulled away from the short embrace. You did feel bad about disregarding all of their questions and constant check-ups. You went as far as not to tap into the notifications so they do not know whether you even read their messages; you did it once on purpose for Felix, and you figured he might have thought it a technical mistake, so he never told anyone.

“I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I needed some time alone.”

You had engulfed yourself with a simple furrow of your brows. Throwing guilt at you was the last thing Seungmin wanted to do, but he figured it wasn’t his choice whether you would shoulder everything by yourself or not. You were doing it in front of him, your thought process adding tons of stress atop what you were already experiencing when he accused you of leaving no traces behind.

His heart ached to see you like this. The witty and independent friend he adored back then was swapped with someone needing comfort and understanding. That friend was tired of causing roadblocks to people's smooth sailing lives.

“Yeah,” Seungmin nodded, “did you have enough of it? I hate to say this, but we’re all tired of Jisung throwing temper tantrums because you’re not with him.”

Your lips arched downward into a nostalgic smile. “How is he doing?”

“Very bold of you to ask, actually!” Seungmin replied with a rare exclamation.

It took you one look to know that he was being sarcastic. You groaned at the knowing expression on his face that seemed to be putting you at fault for every terrible attitude Jisung had given him the past weeks because you wanted to play as a missing person. The worst was that he had the right to blame you for his share of the consequences that had nothing to do with him. You have exaggerated the problem a bit.

“Seungmin,” you muttered with a downward arch of your lips, urging him to tell you the truth.

“He’s sorry and wants you to come home,” he replied.

You sighed deeply and squeezed your eyes shut as if Jisung’s yearning for you caused complications to your returned daily routine. Your back arched and bent like an exhausted mother would, and then you pursed your lips to clear the drying tongue in your mouth that had something to say.

“He is right, you know?” you said. “I just do whatever I want.”

Seungmin grimaced. “We don’t have free will.”

“Oh, wow. I almost forgot how much I hated talking to you.” You widened your eyes in pretend shock. “What nihilistic bible did you get that from?

“I’m saying there is a reason for everything you do, and the reason doesn’t have to be your fault,” Seungmin clarified assertively. He wanted to make sure you understand your actions were not (entirely) a reflection of your morals despite their consequences.

Then he cleared his throat and grimaced. “And, uh, it’s actually just behavioral psychology. Not that you’d know anything about that.”

You stared at him in silence. Seungmin responded by being your mirror image because he wasn’t sure what you were thinking. You were not thinking of much aside from the want to be playful with a friend, which you have not done in a while. Therefore, still maintaining the silence and the same deadpan gaze, you reached behind your bag and unzipped the front pocket.

Seungmin realized you were taking your magic strings out. He debated making a distasteful joke about you using magic on regular people. He did not make the joke.

“Come here,” you said with a funny beckon of your head. Your hands were busy wrapping red strings around your fingers. “I just wanna talk, Seungmin.”

He began to take stuttering steps back while you advanced toward him. He held his hands in mock surrender, and airy chuckles parted between words. “It’s cool. We can talk from a distance. What did I even say? What did I even say–hey! Don’t chant anything! Stop it!”

You widened your eyes with a grin when Seungmin suddenly dove toward you, hoping to snatch the red strings from your hands. You swiftly hopped away from him, making him jolt forward when you were nowhere to be grasped as he had expected.

Seungmin grunted slightly as he pulled himself together, only to immediately dash from his standing spot when he realized there was ample time for you to begin chasing him in circles again.

Your missed laughter rang in his ears, making him lose track of time. He missed his best friend dearly.

Before he knew it, he had run himself out of the allotted duration reasonable for retrieving something from his locker. He snapped out of it once he remembered his friends were still waiting for him outside the school gate, and he waved at you to pause the friendly chase. He panted once you stopped with a tilt of your head and waved his hand again in dismissal.

“I have to go back,” Seungmin said. “They’re waiting for me outside, which you already know.”

Your heart dropped, but acceptance was quick to catch it. Fiddling with your fingers, you did not bother to unwrap the red strings around your fingers as you watched Seungmin gather himself and stand up straight.

You flashed him a brief smile that conveyed a sorrowful farewell he wished he could change. He was going to talk you into coming back, into meeting everyone outside the school gate, but the reassurance you needed could not come from him.

It can only come from the person you were avoiding, which was the tricky part because you refused to meet Jisung and wouldn’t believe his reassurance.

Supposed he would just have to wait.

“Text me anyway,” Seungmin requested softly. “And maybe Hyunjin and Felix, too.”

You sighed. There was no harm in that. “Okay.”

He went in for a hug this time, which you gladly accepted. This was a goodbye with a footnote craving out the date of a future meeting.

“Do you have a place to stay?” he asked during the embrace. “You can stay with me.”

“I’m okay, Seungmin,” you replied with a pat on his back, your eyes shutting into a peaceful smile. “I’ll text you after work.”

Your relieved smile was a sure sight, a tender view, for Jisung, who stood on the open porch that connected the school building to the backyard. Crescent eyes and crescent lips broke his heart into pieces he could not rearrange to fit by himself. You would rather meet secretly with Seungmin than return to him after every apologetic missed call and unread text because he hurt you. He hurt you. You hurt them, Jisung reminded himself.

Tears welled up when you opened your eyes and saw Jisung. Yours were frightened and embarrassed; his were pained and panicked. Seungmin grew confused when you flinched away, but he quickly caught up with the situation once he turned around and found all three of his friends standing by the porch. He cursed under his breath; he ran out of reasonable time to look for something in his locker.

Jisung hardened his gaze when he looked past Seungmin to find you scrambling with the red string on your hands. He could recall everything you said about your magic and every sight he has seen of you doing it. Red strings were for strong-type magic, like enhanced abilities. But technically, you could use any color strings for anything with the consequence of greater discomfort, like what happened the other day with the car crash. If there were one thing you would do now, it would be to run away.

You were running away. You were leaving him.

“Wait! [Name], please!”

Jisung leaped forward with his arm outstretched as if he could reach you from such a great distance. But you were gone in a second, not even sparing him another glance before the magic took you away. All that was left for him was the weight of his school bag hanging on his shoulders, the accidental scrape of his shoe against the edge of the porch steps, and a painful faceplant against the filthy ground.

Felix gasped in shock. Hyunjin stared with sympathy at Jisung’s fallen body. Both of them were halted to an uncertain pause when Jisung’s fists curled against the ground.

Tremors passed through Jisung’s body because the fall was painful. His nose felt broken; it was not. His forehead felt to have grown a bump; it did not. His knees and the heels of his palms were scraped with dirt and blood—that was correct. In an attempt to brace himself, he had reached his arms out before he fell, causing his skin to screech past the ground violently. And his uniform pants would never save his knees from any fall.

It was painful. Everything was painful. He could only wish that his body remembered these injuries and his heart forgot the cause because the heart was where it hurt the most.

Jisung missed you. There has not been a single empty moment without you infiltrating his head, taunting him of his misery and his desperate yearning for you. Jisung wanted you back. He wanted you back with him, sleeping, eating, laughing, and talking. It was all he wanted.

He missed you, and he stopped being angry at you, and he was worried about you, and he was in love with you. He was so in love with you that it all turned into frustration, disappointment, and an impossible dream to return to wrestle himself for what he forgot to say. I’m angry at you right now, but I still love you. I still love you. I always will. Why didn’t he turn around? Why did he stomp away? He could have salvaged this!

Oh, but who was he to have such wants? He was but a boy who uttered the most hurtful things to you. He was just a boy who kicked you while you were down on your knees, and you were never going to get back up again anyway!

He was a boy who, for even a repulsive moment, acted on his capability to tear you to shreds, talking about you escaping your home, talking about you leaving your one family member behind, blaming you for everything. There was no reason for you to return to him after what he said to you. He didn’t deserve it.

“I’m sorry–“ Jisung drilled his forehead against the ground because he couldn’t find a better way to make himself feel. Repulsed, pursed groans left his trembling lips as he dragged his skin along the dirt. He wanted to feel pain. He wanted to bleed. He wanted to feel beaten. He wanted his body to remember in return for his heart to forget. But the tears wouldn’t stop falling, and his ears wouldn’t stop ringing. “I’m sorry.”

Broken murmurs of apologies trickled out his lips like ants piled into a line. Felix wiped his eyes with the hem of his sweater as he stumbled toward Jisung. The freckled boy knelt beside Jisung with soft hands tracing across Jisung’s body. Felix attempted to slowly pick Jisung back up on his feet, ignoring the soured tip of his nose and the tearful redness at the corner of his eyes.

“Come on, Jisung,” Felix pleaded. He placed his hand under Jisung’s forehead to shield his vulnerable skin. “It’s okay. Let’s get up, Jisung. Please?”

Hyunjin stood frozen on his spot. He has never seen Jisung in such a wretched state. He has never seen Jisung weep like a child before. He did not know what to think of it. He did not know what to make of all of this. Was it all so bad that it had to come down to this? You did something wrong, too, did you not? But he could never put himself in your shoes to understand your trauma, so he has no say in how you should react to someone who dared to pinch your sore point.

But was all of this necessary? Avoiding each other, going radio silent, bloodying our hands, screaming unheard apologies into the air—was it all necessary?

“Help me, you guys!” Felix whispered desperately.

Hyunjin peered down at Felix before he eyed Seungmin. His brows furrowed. Seungmin noticed the faraway stare and looked up to maintain eye contact with Hyunjin. There was a short conversation of blame, questions, and demand. Seungmin should reach out to you, Hyunjin thought, but he was only told that there was no easy way to bypass interpersonal conflict. Seungmin refused to trick you into meeting a boy you were afraid of confronting, so he wouldn’t.

Stepping forward, Hyunjin crouched beside Jisung and helped Felix pull him up. Hyunjin sighed heavily when Jisung’s puffy red eyes met with his. He reached a hand up to delicately brush off the dirt on Jisung’s forehead, soothing over the bruised spot to earn a hiccuped flinch in response.

“Hyunjin, I miss them–“ Jisung cried and hiccupped. “I miss [Name].”

“It’s getting late,” Hyunjin could only say. He was sorry he could not do more. “We should go home.”

Seungmin fiddled with his fingers when he saw the bloodied heel of Jisung’s palms. When the other two got Jisung to stand up and checked under his pants, Seungmin saw that Jisung’s knees were also doing less than gracefully.

He felt guilty for some reason. Perhaps someone in his position should be able to do more than wait and stay silent. Maybe this could have been resolved if he had pushed you more. Sometimes, overlooking a timid smile may be the solution.

“We should–“ Seungmin cleared his throat. “We should go to the convenience store.”

“The one [Name] works at.”

“Jisung, I know you’re excited, but please stop shoving me.”

Jisung flashed an apologetic smile at a frowning Felix. Carefully pushing himself off Felix's back, he kept a hand on Felix's shoulder to steady his pained knees before poking his head between Felix and Hyunjin's arms to watch Seungmin enter the convenience store. Hyunjin nudged at Jisung's cheek in annoyance. However, he made space for the enthusiastic boy by stepping to the side just enough to still be covered by the pedestrian bush.

Seungmin held back a hefty sigh when he approached the automatic doors. But between going inside and telling you his purpose of being here at this hour and turning back to watch Jisung's eyes fall flat for what would probably be the rest of his life, he chose this.

He decided to give you the unasked push everyone in the know needed. He chose to be the hand that brings the glue closer to the one missing piece.

The automatic doors slid open with the usual welcoming chime. He looked to the left to find the register counter vacant, so he turned and checked for the aisles.

As expected, you were sitting at the window table having a dinner break, but he could tell you were watching for whoever walked in the store just in case you had to ring a customer up. When you saw that it was just Seungmin, though, you relaxed.

“Hey!” you called with a wave. “What are you doing here?”

“Jisung is outside.” Seungmin wasted no time.

You were chewing the remaining food in your mouth, and your slow but steady movements showed the reluctance you didn't have with words. Your gaze followed suit with unease and distrust, the chopsticks in your hand falling.

It wasn't that you hated Jisung. You could never. All of this happened because your devotion to him was blind and faithful. It was the unknown that haunted you. Jisung's repulsed gaze reflected in the mirror every time you looked at yourself.

Have they remained in his eyes until now? His violating words mirrored your judgment about yourself. Did he still think of you that way now? He hurt you because you hurt him first. You hurt him first. This was your fault.

You couldn’t take the risk of spiraling. You had to avoid him at all costs. You needed to walk away from the chance of making another mistake, even if it meant bidding a silent farewell to him forever.

“I’m so sorry,” Seungmin added. “But he’s hurt. He’s really hurt. He’s bleeding.”

Your brows furrowed sorrowfully, and you perked up from your seat. Your eyes darted out the window to look for any signs of people, but you saw none. Barely anyone walks by this area at this time of night. “What happened?”

Seungmin breathed a sigh of relief at your concern. He had been rigidly afraid of having to resort to violence, which just meant he would kick you off the chair and drag you outside by the ear.

Jabbing a thumb behind his shoulder, he recounted what happened briefly. "Jisung tripped and fell on the ground when you teleported away. He stayed on the floor crying. He was hitting himself and everything."

What you felt reached beyond mere guilt. From the sound of it, he must have been crying. Huffing out a shivering breath, you allowed the pain in your abdomen to dissolve into acid and spread through your limbs. It was painful. Your feelings were painful. Everything was painful.

“Why do I keep doing this? Why do I keep hurting him?” you whispered, tongue filled with violent accusations. “What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Hey, nothing is wrong with you,” Seungmin urged after he quickly approached you. “Nothing is wrong with you. What happened was a gross case of miscommunication. You two suffered the consequences. It’s all done. Jisung is out there right now. He needs to be healed, and he wanted to see you, so please–“

He picked you up by your arm and shook your shoulders. He faked the motion of slapping your face twice before he huffed with determination. “Pull yourself together!”

You stared at him, wide-eyed and in disbelief. But, after a moment, you nodded and told him to bring Jisung inside. Meanwhile, you headed to the back room to get your handy pack of strings.

There wasn't much left, which wasn't an issue for a small healing job. But you would need to have it refilled eventually. You usually did it by sneaking back to the city, but now that you've talked it out with Minho, perhaps you could arrange a delivery instead.

You pushed the door open with your shoulder while untangling the green string. An exhale brushed past your lips in exhaustion once you looked up and saw Jisung standing by the counter table. His palms were faced skyward, reddened with ground debris and blood scratches. His pants were rolled above his knees to air out his wounded knees. His eyes were puffy and teary as he stared at you, unsure if it was from the physical pain or seeing you.

“You’re so clumsy,” you muttered when you were near.

“I’m sorry,” he replied softly, his eyes shakily following your face.

You didn't say anything. Jisung trailed behind you and followed you to a seat. You took his hand in yours and did what you were most familiar with—using magic. He watched as your palm hovered over his, and his hand remained rigid in your other hand despite how gently you held him. He swallowed a gulp of saliva down his throat, realizing how empty he had felt in the past weeks once you touched him again.

The unfulfillment had been so stagnant in getting him used to not having you around that he almost forgot about it. He was, with uncertainty, grateful to be reminded of it.

There were crickets of stinging pain when the soil and debris got sucked out of his flesh, and he recalled you telling him that healing magic was a reversal process rather than a magical process. The feelings of his skin closing together felt weirder with that knowledge in mind. You did the same thing to his other hand and scraped his knees in complete silence. As it happened, there was no single word or eye contact between you.

There was evident awkwardness in the air, but the tension was so wobbly and breakable it could cut neither of you. Since the last argument and the consequences of it, the atmosphere that would mold when you and Jisung were near each other grew softer, soft with fear and caution to keep history from repeating.

You looked up after his knees were healed up. Your eyes brushed past his above; just between the gaps of his hair, you noticed a faint redness.

Dismay grumbling out your lips, you reached up to hold his bangs out of his forehead. Jisung winced when your hand came in contact with the small cut he made when he was dragging his head against the backyard floor, but he didn't mind you touching his head.

“Did you fall face-first on the floor?” you asked as you hovered your stringed hand over the bruised cut.

Jisung nodded. “You can say that.”

You huffed in annoyance not directed toward him, and he looked away from your face in the self-induced reflection. He should not have dragged his forehead through the mud. He didn’t think you would be so upset over it.

The lingering background pain faded before you leaned back into yourself on your seat. In a matter of a minute, his body was back to normal. If he weren’t in such a sorry state, he would verbally suggest going on a fearless rampage with this kind of immediate healthcare coverage. He could do almost anything!

“This is not an invitation for you to go jumping around,” you said pointedly when you saw the thoughtful spacing in his eyes.

Jisung perked up slowly, returning to the present. “I wasn’t even thinking about that.” He laughed a little and shook his head in denial. When he saw your prolonged glance, he shuddered timidly and shrugged. “I’ve never touched dry ice before.”

His mother had some groceries delivered to the apartment the other day, and they came with a pack of dry ice to preserve some of the food that came in the box. The icy air surrounding it felt refreshing to Jisung; he only wanted to touch it. He was repeatedly advised against it, making him want to do it more.

“Oh jeez–please don’t do that,” you groaned.

“What the–you and Seungmin are so annoying! It’s not like I’ll die from it!” he slurred out animatedly.

“I’m sure it’s not just me and Seungmin.” You rolled your eyes.

“Well, yeah? Of course, my mom would tell me no. That is when you guys come in and encourage me to try it out! Parents say no; friends say yes!” he spilled confidently. “Hyunjin was in on it! He’s the true ride-or-die, I guess.”

You narrowed your eyes at him and leaned your body to the side. You looked out the convenience store doors.

Felix perked up when he saw you looking by the wall. He clapped his hands with a bright smile, waved, and looked to the side to pull Hyunjin out from hiding. Hyunjin stumbled with a curse, but he let Felix hold on to his wrist in excitement from seeing you again.

Looking up from the floor, Hyunjin searched for your eyes. He pulled a face at the deadpan glare you sent him from miles away; he knew there was a reason for it. He just wasn’t sure what Jisung told you.

“The first thing he does is talk shit about us to [Name],” Hyunjin muttered.

Felix giggled, clearly not a care in the world now that his friends were making up with each other. Seungmin rolled his eyes with a scoff and made sure his comment about how Jisung was only talking about Hyunjin was loud enough to be heard.

The two got into a minor hissy fit, where Seungmin remained still, and Hyunjin looked more exhausted than ever. You could see the grimaces on Hyunjin's face from inside the store.

“Those two are at it again,” you muttered to Jisung.

“They always are,” he said mindlessly, playing with your fingers. “Did I tell you about what happened the other day at the library? It was so stupid. Hyunjin was–"

“Ow! Hey!”

Jisung looked up innocently when you winced after he pulled a hangnail off your index finger. A small apology threw up from his stomach when you glared at him. He smoothed over the sore spot with the tip of his finger, rubbing the redness gently and slowly erupting into laughter upon your persistent grumpy expression.

You didn't pull away from him. He thought that meant something. Forgiveness, perhaps. Forgiveness that was given without an actual apology; forgiveness reserved only for those who are the dearest to us; forgiveness that was strong enough to shape the air around you, making everything mellow and soft again. And you two would not hurt each other again. You two would never hurt each other again.

"We all missed you a lot," he said as he released your hand. "I missed you a lot."

“Enough to trip and fall?” You smirked in amusement.

Jisung sighed with a quirk on his lips, embarrassed. “Yeah.”

It took one final stare—this time, you could see longing eating away at your irises—before you two broke down. Silent tears fell down Jisung's cheeks as he reached for a hug. You returned the embrace with equal devotion in your strength, both of you doing your best to crush each other's bones and physically submerge yourselves into each other. Anything separating your bodies was a nuisance; your clothes, flesh, skin, everything.

“I love you,” he mumbled. “Let’s never do that again.”

“Okay,” you nodded, “I love you too.”

You two would not hurt each other again. You two would never hurt each other again.

Felix hopped on his spot when you showed up at the glass doors. He squealed in celebration and left Hyunjin’s side to jog over to where you were. Jisung pursed his lips into a smile when Felix almost tackled you to the ground with a hug. His eyes trailed from his excited friend to behind his shoulders, where Hyunjin and Seungmin were approaching. When Jisung caught Seungmin’s eyes, Seungmin breathed a relieved sigh that reflected how Jisung himself felt about the ending of this stoic period.

There was a newfound perspective that Jisung was too absorbed in his sorrow to see before. The way Seungmin looked like the weight of responsibility got lifted off his shoulders, how Felix immediately trapped you in a tight embrace, and the fond smirk seeping onto Hyunjin’s face—the hostile tension impacted everyone, and everyone was glad to see you again.

It was no news that you have blended into becoming an inseparable component of this friend group. But, with the tightly bound relationship you and Jisung share, it would slip his mind sometimes how much you were sewn into his friends' lives, to a point where the lack of your presence had caused a strain in their routine.

The affectionate stake to Hyunjin's ego, the partnered softness in Felix's life, and the permanence in Seungmin's loyalty. This was never just about Jisung. This was about everybody, friends who would lie and die for each other.

Jisung smiled at Seungmin when he was near the quiet boy standing a few feet away from the commotion by the convenience store doors. There wasn’t anything they had to say to each other. The purposeful brush on the back of their hands conveyed gratitude.

“What did Jisung say about me?” Hyunjin asked, standing tall before you.

There was a ringing in your ear, but you ignored it. You eyed him with a playful glare. “Did you actually agree to touch dry ice with Jisung?”

He giggled and opened his arms to hug you. You accepted it begrudgingly. When his head lowered enough to your ears, he replied, “I was never going to let him do it. I gotta take care of him when you’re not here, you know?”

That was how it was, you supposed. Initially, you thought Seungmin would be the one to look after everyone, but being the decision-maker of the group did not come with the kind of life skills that Hyunjin grew up being taught by his family. Felix lived in wealth, Jisung’s parents did everything for him, and Seungmin could negate most responsibilities in return for academic success. Hyunjin juggled every homely activity to support his parents’ lack of presence at home.

From cooking to cleaning, fixing clothes to perfectly putting on a mattress cover, making a doctor’s appointment to negotiating grocery prices—Hyunjin has always been the person to go to. You appreciated his help whenever you, surprisingly, needed it.

You hummed, attempting to relish in Hyunjin’s lanky figure, but the ringing in your ears bothered you. There was nothing in the atmosphere.

The ringing came from a sense of sudden dread, a downcast of paranoia. Something was coming. Something was coming directly at you. You raised your hand, the green strings you felt glad you hadn’t taken off yet, and you discreetly muttered a chant under your breath just as the convenience store collapsed onto you and Hyunjin.

A hammering in Felix's ears came from witnessing a natural hazard. The dust drowned his eyes, but he found looking away from the fallen building impossible. He shook his head and attempted to steady his heavy breathing. No, this wasn't a natural hazard. He did not feel anything.

The ground did not shake under his feet, the ocean did not cover the city, and the wind did not pick up across the map. The convenience store collapsed onto his friends because something he couldn't clearly pick out crashed into it.

Seungmin grabbed Felix's hand and pulled the stunted boy to his side. His other hand restricted Jisung's haphazard and impulsive movement.

The tightness of his hands wrapped around his friends helped cease the tremors traveling across his arms. However, the clear suspicion of what could have caused such a commotion struck a permanent fear in Seungmin's chest. It would be best to wait it out. It would be best to trust you and wait it out in case someone none of them can deal with comes into the picture.

The green string was generous with your usage of it. With shaking arms, you shoved off the rubbles on your body and cleared a space to sit up. You could feel Hyunjin under your knees. Before you even looked for your other friends, you gazed downward to find him lying beneath you.

Anything below his waist should be fine. You suspected that since most of your damage was done unto your arms, torso, and head.

That would make sense. The building collapsed on you mid-chant, meaning the protection spell you were casting was done halfway from the ground up, protecting your legs and lower body. Hyunjin seemed to have gotten the short end of the stick with the heavy rubbles as blood trickled down the side of his face from an invisible spot on his head.

The back of his palms was bruised with red; you swore you could feel them near your head when it all went down.

You called his name, and he responded with silence. “It’s okay,” you said to yourself as you hastily pushed off the cement blocks covering his body so you could pull him out from under the weight.

Preoccupied, you did not notice the floating figure descending from skyward. When he called out your name, you finally looked up, and you froze at the recognizable face—the councilman who took charge of you after your family’s murder. There was no concrete evidence of his involvement, but from his forceful way of care and blatant distaste for you, it was evident to you, even as a child, that he was part of the plan to take your family down.

Jisung watched with praying eyes as you scrambled to pull Hyunjin’s unconscious body toward your chest as if protecting him. He followed Felix and Seungmin’s gaze toward the councilman, who finally reached the ground with his feet and mumbled, “Who is that?”

“Nobody good,” Seungmin replied.

The councilman observed the destruction he caused with disinterest. His mind was focused on accessing the group of children he saw—one he wanted and the other four disposables. A sparkle in the air caught his keen and experienced eyes, which he soon realized was the red string of fate. It tied between you and the scrawny-looking boy wearing a dirtied school uniform. He clicked his tongue; he disliked unkempt clothing, but what mattered now was the string and its meaning. So it was one child he wanted, one child he could exploit, and the remaining three (or two) were disposable.

"What are you doing here?" you asked aloud to gain the elder's attention. When he shot a sharp glance at you, your glare deafened into a flinch, and you unconsciously cradled Hyunjin closer to you. You were still afraid of him. No matter how many years have passed, you would always be more afraid of him than you could hate him, and you hated him intensely.

“Pointless question, [Name],” he replied calmly. “What other purpose would I have other than to bring you back to the city.”

Felix could piece two and two together much more quickly this time. The severity of the situation and the fearful adrenaline burning in his chest could have forced his brain to react so quickly. The second he heard the councilman speak of taking you away to where you escaped from, he knew he could not listen to a single word that man had to say. He shouldn’t already, considering what happened to you and Hyunjin—a whole building? Was that necessary?

Snatching his hand away from Seungmin, Felix bolted toward you and knelt beside you. He crossed his arm through yours, holding you tightly, and glared at the councilman. “They’re not going anywhere with you! Leave us alone!”

Seungmin watched defeatedly when Jisung escaped his grasp to follow Felix's lead. He genuinely could not understand the thought process but supposed he could not be the odd one. Fixing his backpack straps, he scoffed in annoyance and turned to the councilman.

“You!” he called out impolitely. “Has it not been years? There is no point in bringing them back to the city now because having them there serves no real purpose. You should also start letting things go. How long do you really have to enjoy political power at your age?”

“Yeah!” Jisung echoed Seungmin’s sentiment. “You’ll get a heart disease before you die, old man!”

Felix peeked over at Jisung with an increasing frown. He whispered, “People usually do.”

“Confidence precedes logic, Felix. Shut up.”

It stopped being about having political power years ago. He already obtained that when your family was massacred, and your uncle was put in an eternal coma.

Your survival had been an unexpected gift. The plan was always to kill and personally tank public rapport's fall as speculations and rumors rise. But you became a calculative child that comes once in a blue moon, a lie in the making, a way to replenish their dignity.

The plan became to kill and have every strand of responsibility fall on you. Pushing you to study and training you to become an elected council member just for you to fail was only part of the ploy. It was the part that they let you on and you ran away from.

The councilman remained stoic; an explanation reached not even the tip of his tongue. He could not say anything to your friends to garner an understanding of his reason for abusing and exploiting you. His prolonged silence was eerie.

It felt like he was planning every route you could take to escape this situation. You pursed your lips—he probably was planning, which would soon pose a threatening issue to you and all of your friends present. The tips of your fingers caressed Hyunjin’s cheek, almost as if to check if he remained warm, and you looked at Seungmin.

“You guys need to leave,” you said. “Take Hyunjin to the hospital.”

“[Name]–“

“Jisung, please,” you pleaded after you turned to him. His lips were pursed into a thin line, and his cheeks jutted into a frown so disagreeable that you wanted to cave in. You would have in any other situation. “I’ll come back. He won’t kill me, he needs me.”

"You're right. I won't kill you." The lightning pace at which you could switch your facial expression was comedic to the councilman, but you didn't think he was smirking because he saw anything worth laughing about. Waving his hand in the air, he cleared his throat. "I will kill them, though."

The air rumbled gently for a few seconds before the debris around you began to shift around. The rocks and soil came together, weaving about in the air and assembling at one spot to mold into the shape of a human, particularly the councilman’s body shape.

Felix was the first one to be yanked away from your side. Immediately after were Jisung and Seungmin. Standing tall behind them were the stone clones of the councilman—his family magic was the ability to make clones of himself out of any surrounding resources.

Jisung struggled against the clone’s grip but found himself rendered useless as the grip around his bony arm tightened mercilessly. Felix cluelessly scanned his surroundings, feeling his heart drop closer to the ground as seconds passed without a single passerby to help.

Seungmin remained still, unable to react due to how rash the situation was, saving him from unnecessary pain. His luck lasted no longer than a minute, though, as the second the councilman snapped his fingers, he found himself held at the pointed end of a jagged blade made of stone.

The clone’s arms have transformed to become weapons. How convenient.

“Leave them alone!”

You let go of Hyunjin for the first time since he fainted. With the green strings tightening around your forearms, you chanted a spell under your breath to pause the clone’s movements collectively. Then, seconds later, as you shot your arms outward for impact, they all crumbled as if you had their stone limbs removed piece by piece.

Not wasting a single second, you pushed Felix and Jisung toward Seungmin. Then, you immediately turned to hoist Hyunjin into your arms.

You stood up with great difficulty, never quite realizing how much weight his taller height contributed to him, and you handed him to Seungmin. Reaching into your pocket, you fished out your rolls of remaining strings and sighed at your lack of choices—some purple, a few green, and an abysmal amount of red.

Unwrapping them from the card, you curled them around your palm except for the purple strings, which you used to create a teleportation pattern.

“Take Hyunjin to the hospital,” you told Seungmin. “Don’t let Jisung go anywhere.”

He noticed your one-way stare, and he understood it.

Felix would protest against leaving you despite being in danger himself. He was that kind of boy, that kind of friend. More importantly, he was hard to refuse and hard to upset, which were traits you were not immune to.

Jisung was an even bigger problem for obvious reasons. His protests would be loud and outrageous, without a care for his safety as he charged into danger for your sake, only to almost always make things worse. He could not help you; you would never say that to his face again, but the truth remained, unfortunately, dear to you. In this case, confidence does not precede logic.

Seungmin, though. He who was your best friend, he who knew your way of thinking more than anyone else, he who was good at accessing situations. You looked to him because you trusted him. You looked to him because you knew he would agree with your plan and because you knew he would let you go.

Even if he hated to, even if he was afraid, he kept Hyunjin’s body close to his side while he tightened his grip around your hand. As the teleportation portal hovered over him, he kept his grip on your hand promising; it screamed for you to come back, come back to me, come back to all of us. He would let go when the portal closes.

“Jisung is being so loud,” Seungmin laughed.

You raised your brows. “I know. I’m trying not to look–“

You got cut off and pinned against the nearest wall. The impact blown to the back of your head knocked on an uncomfortable sore spot, and a clone wrapped your neck in its hand. Your body writhed at the loss of ground, but you disregarded the pain to look off to the side where the teleportation portal was. Seungmin’s eyes were wide as he looked at you.

His arms circled Hyunjin’s body now, and he looked like he regretted letting you go. You ignored it as you reached your hand out meekly, your fingers curling shut to close it. Once it did, you deactivated the teleportation spell and recharged the strings on your forearm for an offensive attack. You slammed your fist against the clone, and it crumbled to the ground with you following it.

You caught up with the breaths you lost in those few seconds of being choked. A fleeting sensation of electricity flowed across your arms before the sting became permanent. You have used your strings for more than their intended purposes, and they were starting to fight back by taking from you. But the pain was not so severe yet. You could negate it for a better thought.

Knowing that your friends were at a safer place made you feel immeasurable relief even though you were finally sent back to face the root of your trauma alone. It was always supposed to be this way, you thought. You had support along the way, but the final blow was an act only you could do.

You were always meant to face the councilman by yourself, so you would. Stumbling to stand up, you raised your head to look at the older man, and your heart dropped.

Why was Jisung still here?

This was in character of him! How did you not anticipate his rebellion? Of course, he managed to step through the portal before you could close it fully! Why couldn’t he just listen to you? God! Why did he always have to complicate things? All you wanted was his safety, and he flat-out refused that at every turn!

“He didn’t jump through the portal,” the councilman broke your aggressive chain of thoughts. “I snatched him out of there before it closed. I might have broken your friend’s fingers.”

“You broke Felix’s fingers?” Jisung accused as he struggled against the grip a clone had on him.

“An inconsequential question.” The councilman waved him off dismissively. He was only focused on you. “I’ve got your soulmate in my hands, so let’s strike a deal, [Name].”

You huffed sardonically, but you listened. Giving him an attitude was merely child’s play, something you needed to do to overshadow the sense of dread present over your body.

“Come home with us, and I will let him go,” the councilman said. “Your friends will return to their daily lives. They will never hear from us, and you, ever again.”

“That’s not a daily life, asshole,” Jisung spat. “You’re taking my soulmate away from me. How can my life be normal?”

The councilman ignored Jisung, believing the boy was not worth his time. “If you don’t take the deal, we will start with this… thing over here,” the councilman gestured at Jisung. The clone gave his neck a threatening squeeze, causing Jisung to gasp out a fearful breath. “And you know what happens to the rest of your friends.”

Your shoulders slumped. It was a deal. To you, it was even a generous deal that he was willing to let go of loose ends in return for your cooperation.

You eyed Jisung, who looked appalled that you seemed to be considering the councilman’s words. His face further disintegrated into a silent type of madness, with words pushing out the corners of his mouth, but his voice was rendered silent when you began to negotiate with the elder.

“What about my uncle? He’s still in a coma.”

“He will remain so, but we will not kill him.”

“What about me?”

The councilman hummed. “Framed for your family’s murder and sentenced to prison. But, if you come now, I can secretly arrange something more comfortable for you.”

Jisung whipped his head upward to stare at the man in shock. "Who is going to believe that? They were a child at that time!"

"It's not about the truth. It's about what they're willing to be framed for."

The councilman must be out of his mind, not just because the plan may not work in his favor but also because thinking of doing something ridiculous was beyond Jisung’s imagination.

You have spent years as a runaway just for him to waltz into this city and ask if you could take the fall for your family’s death, which wouldn't have made any sense anyway! Who in their right mind would believe that? Was ridiculous crimes like this typical among extremely young magic users, and he simply would never understand it?

But you were considering it. With Jisung’s life on the line, you were considering it.

You have partially given up on curing your uncle, and it has been years since what happened that you held more hatred than grief toward your family’s tragic demise. You have, more or less, gotten over the past. With the help of this newfound friend group, your legs were able to move you to the present and help you look forward to the future.

If these people die, if your friends die because you weren’t strong enough to save them all, that would be a fresh wound waiting to be nursed inappropriately through avoidance and overexertion. That would be a scar you pick at to keep feeling it to fulfill your unquenchable thirst to suffer for your mistakes.

The councilman was making you a deal. A good deal.

It was a deal you did not want to take.

“How do I know you will leave my friends alone?” you asked.

“I don’t wish to have anything to do with children like them,” he replied. “I’m only here for you.”

You couldn’t trust him, but you have to. You have to let yourself believe that he would leave everyone alone—your soulmate, your friends, your uncle, and perhaps even you, eventually. All you had to do was go with him.

Looking over at Jisung, who had a strangled expression on his face, your palpitating heart came to a quick halt at the recollection of all that had happened ever since you met him.

He has done so much for you, and you hurt his feelings. Immediately after you promised each other that you would never do so again. You just keep hurting him.

Sucking in a deep breath, you let your arms fall limp at your side, and you nodded. “Okay,” you told him. “I’ll go. I need to talk to him for a little. Please.”

The man looked at you suspiciously. He gave Jisung a shove, and the boy stumbled forward. Realizing that he was finally free, he glanced behind him at the intimidating man before his head snapped back at you.

His heart broke when he looked at you, finding it hard to believe you chose to accept the deal instead of fighting against it. But when he made his way to you, his hands reaching desperately for yours, all he could do was giggle.

“You thought I jumped through the portal,” he whispered.

You pursed your lips into a bitter smile. “I did. I’m sorry.”

“I was going to, actually,” he beamed a little. “To stay here with you.”

You hummed out a low chuckle. Jisung was a precious boy. He was a lovely boy. He always has been. From his willingness to be fragile to his extraordinary capacity to love, from his loyal persistence to his forgiving nature, from the moment you met him until now.

He has taught you everything you knew, and he has given you all that you have come to love, and you learned that the red string of fate was a mere suggestion. The affection that blossomed between you both was chosen. You loved each other even before realizing you were meant to be.

With your hand pressed against his soft cheek, your lips quirked downwards into a soft smile as it hit you just how much leaving him would tear you apart. Jisung mirrored your smile, pushing your palm against his cheek and pulling a face to lighten the mood before he dampened it into a grim mood.

“Are you going to leave me?” he asked.

You sucked in a breath and pinched his cheek. “If you look at me longer, I might not.”

Jisung grinned. You could see your reflection in his squinted eyes regardless. “But I’m always looking at you.”

“Guess I will have to figure something out, then.” You reached in to hug him around his neck, burying your face close to his neck to sniff his scent for a little.

When you pulled away, Jisung looked apologetic, as if this had all been his fault. You stared at him fondly, but not without a tinge of bitterness laced beneath your equally apologetic eyes. You brushed the hair from his eyes. “I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to live without me for a little while.”

He followed you after you took a peek at the councilman to notify him that you were ready to leave. He trailed behind you without letting go of your hand and approached the elder with you. His grip tightened when he felt the councilman’s gaze on him.

“That boy will not be coming with us.”

“I know,” you said as you stepped closer to the man’s side and turned around to face Jisung. You gave him a nod. “He’s just holding onto me.”

The councilman sneered faintly. Young love. He knew nothing of it, and you wouldn’t be surprised that he didn’t.

After he held up his hand and waved his slender fingers, the air around you picked up, gradually blowing a pile of fallen leaves on the ground from all corners of the area toward you.

The wind pushed the weightless leaves into the air and circled them into a portal-shaped entrance that would gradually close around you and him. Jisung gawked at the phenomenon; he would have been so excited if you weren't leaving him indefinitely.

Jisung could feel his heartbeat as he anxiously waited for the closing portal to reach just a certain point below your head, nose, and waist, a tiny circle of opening. Then he slammed his other hand around your wrist and pulled at you! Harshly!

You ducked low so your head could go through the rapidly closing portal—you were right about the councilman panic-closing it. You hopped up, and with Jisung pulling on the other side, you barely grazed past the edge of the pressuring leaves and went out the other side.

He wrapped his arms around you to shield you from the rolling fall. His chest heaved up and down visibly to catch his breath, and you quickly sat up. He followed your movement, his eyes wide as he looked to you for confirmation that you were okay.

When he briefly glanced down at your propped legs, he frowned at the burn on your sneakers and the disgusting gash the portal left on one of your ankles. It was bleeding profusely, but you were not reacting to it because you realized the portal hadn’t fully closed yet.

“He caught on.” You cursed under your breath as you immediately got up, grabbing Jisung.

Your eyes fearfully glanced back and forth between the purple string and the reopening of the councilman's portal. As you focused on creating a pattern, you could hear Jisung's breath quickening as a sign that something was looming over. You looked up to find a clone standing behind you, inching very close for comfort—all you did was take your eyes off for longer than a second. The councilman was already planning to exert force.

You angrily forgone the pattern you were making for something entirely random; all you needed was a medium to use magic. It didn't have to be accurate anymore.

You made the first punch, the power-up of your strings allowing you to push the clone a few yards away from you. You took the chance to advance at his incoming clones, hiking up your speed and strength to escape rather than win this fight. You were never going to win. The councilman's clones were durable, made of natural resources, and littered everywhere.

Rather than a fight of ability, this was a fight of wits and stamina. You could exhaust him or catch him off-guard so you could run away. Then it was laying low until he found you again. The cycle would only end at his death.

Jisung watched as you landed a kick to the first shadowy figure and then another. He wasn't sure what else he could do at this point. It wasn't like he could join the fight and punch one of them. Or could he?

He tilted his head, and his eyes rounded in thought. Sure, they were strong, as displayed just a while ago. But he observed that they were made of stones that crumble easily. Would he have something to use in his backpack? An ultra-heavy textbook, perhaps?

You slammed a clone to the concrete wall when you saw that it was trying to regroup the rocks that used to be its arm, and you squeezed its neck and made sure you broke it before letting go. Turning around, it took you a moment to process the sight of Jisung creeping up behind one of the clones.

Your eyes widened as you moved forward, knowing reasonably well his presence was probably detected, but before you could take a step forward, you were held back by both of your arms. You cursed and squirmed. Letting out a vacant scream, a blow of air pressure pushed the rock clones backward.

Jisung squealed when the clone he was approaching snapped around at the commotion. He clenched his fingers over the hard-cover calculus textbook and made a clumsy throw. The book slammed into the clone’s chest, breaking a hole and causing its body to crumble.

He huffed at the unexpected result of his attack, ready to pump his fists in the air to cheer, only to be caught by a pair of human hands instead. He looked up and gasped at the councilman glaring down at him.

“Hey! Hands off!” you yelled after you saw the whitening knuckles on the elder’s hands, squeezing Jisung’s wrists like his life depended on it. Pointing a finger at the councilman, you chanted with the sparks of your strings jumping across your skin, “Incendium!”

Upon the heated burn on his skin, the councilman forcefully let Jisung go, causing him to stumble to the ground. You wasted no time unleashing another attack, waving your hand to create an electrical barrier around the councilman where it would threaten to close around him if he moved.

He gritted his teeth, sneering at you momentarily before he seemed to collect his emotions. He stood straight, but his arms twitched eerily as if summoning something. You knew he was trying to think up something to get out of the electrical ward you’ve built up around him, so you quickly turned to Jisung and flicked your wrist.

“Motus,” you said under your breath, bringing him to you with a movement spell. Quickly dragging him to his feet, you reached over his head and hugged him to you, a familiar spell leaving your lips. “Phasmatos Ianua Reclu.”

A portal appeared and wrapped itself around you both, sending you guys away from the alleyway and to a more remote area Jisung could not recognize. When you two landed on the ground, your alerted mind scanned your surroundings thoroughly—you two made it to a ghosty riverside near a residential area.

It was a sketchy shortcut students used to get home quicker or sometimes to hang around and throw rocks under the bridge walls.

It was one of the many locations you resided in before Jisung’s parents graciously took you in. You never slept around this place. You only liked sitting on the edge of the bridge and watching the sun go about its way in the sky. Occasionally, you would hide behind shadows and watch over those stumbling back home after a late night.

You finally gave yourself the time to catch your breath when you came to the fortunate conclusion that you made it out of the convenience store area. Whoever has the morning shift tomorrow must deal with the collapsed building.

Your brows furrowed when the adrenaline rush in your lungs began to fade because the pain and fatigue finally settled in. You inhaled and choked on the air, making you pant in hyperventilation. As you tried to breathe, your body broke down in rigid shivers, but your skin and bones ached through the blood seeping through your wounds.

Jisung stumbled in the process of catching your body. He dropped to the ground with you, anxious tears welling up in his eyes and his mouth blurting out strings of incoherent thoughts he failed to keep in his mind. He had no idea your strings had already seeped deep into your arms. He had barely seen anything just then.

Should he call an ambulance? How would he explain this situation? If the medical institution discovered a magical threat in the city, would they get the government involved? You could be taken away and jailed! They could capture you and hand you over to protect the city.

Or, the magical council has all the capabilities to wreak havoc on innocents who are just doing their jobs, too, would it not? No, that cannot be the case. They must have some form of signed treaty to prevent those situations. He should call an ambulance and lie. No! Wait to talk until he gets an attorney!

His eyes fumbled and shook as they glanced over your figure. His hands were unsure of where to put themselves. He has always been gentle with you, but he was deathly afraid of the pressure a pair of gentle hands can add to your skin.

Red, red, red, red, red, red—you have multiple strings on each arm, spaced without a pattern. Multiple strings were taking and taking the resources your body could provide. Strings tainted with the shade of your blood to a point its original color could no longer be recognized.

“We need, uhm… shit–” Jisung worried himself into a short coughing fit, which urged his tears to spill, and he began to sob uncontrollably–“we need less blood. You’re bleeding a lot. I can remember the healing pattern with the–what about grass? Does grass count as strings? I can split the grass into tiny pieces. They will be like needles!”

Your strings were all too short to be used energetically. They were sucking up as much as they could to fulfill your needed output to fight a man twice your age and twice the knowledge you have in magic.

They knew from your erratic heartbeat, from the calm you received when you gazed at Jisung, and your wish was to get him out of there no matter what. So they sunk into your skin, and you bled and bled and bled.

Jisung cooed under his breath when you dropped to the side into his body. He carefully wrapped you between him, his twitchy fingers hovering above your head fearfully. There must not be anything he could do but let you rest. You would have told him if there was, so he stayed quiet. He pressed his lips together to avoid huffing for air so his chest could remain a stable wall to lean on, and he waited for you to recover temporarily.

Desperately, he held in his tears. He almost looked ugly doing so; his neck ached from looking at the sky whenever he felt the swelling in his eyes, the muscles of his cheeks stretched as he forced a smile onto his face to decrease his desire to sob, and he would not let himself breathe as he needed to.

He suffocated in helplessness; he was suffocating in uselessness. He could only rock himself back and forth with you being fragile in his arms.

The ache in his chest was not tolerable. He despised it. He should have never asked you to stay for him. He should have made a promise to find you instead. He should have heard you out. He should have apologized earlier. He should never have gotten upset. He should never have been selfish.

If you had never been his soulmate, it would have been for a reason; his perceived unworthiness owned a strong presence in your relationship. It made sense for you both to be without a link. It made sense.

The universe did make an incompetent choice, but it was on your part that it made a mistake.

“I’m so sorry. This is all my fault, this is all my fault,” Jisung whispered as he looked down at you.

You opened your eyes to hint that you received his words. Endearment rushed to the top of your head, and your eyes started to fawn over Jisung’s face.

There was tenderness in his tears and snot, the redness of his face, and the wetness of his lashes. There was love in his ugliness, and there was love in his willingness to show you his ugliness. He was ugly, and your heart leaped because you were enamored with him.

“Silly boy,” you exhaled.

He was but a child. You were, too, just a child. None of all of this was any of your fault. Children should never blame themselves for an adult’s mistake, even if they had loved them.

“You’ve got a cut on your cheek. Does it hurt?” you asked.

“I cannot feel it,” he replied with several curt nods, holding you closer. He didn’t even know he got injured. “I can only feel yours.”

You pulled your lips into a thin line once you were aware of your sour arms. They felt much better now that you ceased the magic, but the permanent stitch your family heritage held around your body would continue to deal you blows until someone came around to tank it for you. Your consciousness brushed past the strings, and you relaxed for the wave of depression that dropped over your head.

You wished your parents were here. You wished your uncle would wake up. You wished Minho would appear with a change of heart. You wished magic could have been taught to you, and you didn't have to learn it at your pace. You wished you were more knowledgeable, and you wished you were stronger. You wished you had someone capable of handling this situation to cry to. You wished your family did not leave you things that could hurt as their parting gift.

You wished you had help because, for the first time, you were truly helpless.

There was nothing you could do now but hope things turn out for the better.

You wished it did not have to come to this.

Dust collected around the ground without you noticing. There was no warning when you were suddenly blown back a few feet. You coughed against the floor once you stopped dragging. You could feel the blood through your possibly ripped clothes, your arms began surging with blood against the friction, and you hurt all over.

Your head hammered, your eyes infiltrated with dirt, and your lips became bitter and dry. You hurt all over. You wanted to die.

Jisung was no longer beside you, and unfortunately, you knew too well the source of the sudden and very generous explosion. Scrambling to get up, you barely pulled yourself together so you could look around in search of his body.

You squinted your eyes, your head turning left and right, and then you finally caught sight of a fallen figure once the fog began to vanish. You choked up in shock with widened eyes and tumbled forward clumsily in an attempt to stand up.

Your knees ached to the point you could barely stand and walk. After one too many falls, you resorted to dragging yourself over to him. His weak arms lay by his side; he seemed lifeless, but you did not want to be sure yet. Ignoring the cracks in your lungs, jagged breaths forcing themselves out of your parted lips to keep you alive enough, you pathetically wiggled your way over to the boy you loved.

Footsteps inched closer to where you struggled, and just before your fingertips touched that of Jisung’s, the councilman grabbed you by your hair with ease and pulled yours upward. You struggled against his grasp while his free hand went around the front of your throat loosely, unlikely being unsure of his next move but rather wanting to give his peace of mind before executing his plan.

“That was smart, I must admit,” he said slowly, eying you without remorse. “But you’ve made a mistake of bleeding all over the floor, [Name]. It isn’t hard to track you with my clones when your blood smells so strong.”

You lost the capability to look below yourself. His grip on your hair yanked your neck backward so you could only stare at his terrible face. But he was right. He was telling the truth. You made a mistake on that part, yet simultaneously, you could not have predicted what he could do with your level of understanding when it came to magic.

There were millions of tracking spells with millions of loopholes. Preventing one does not mean you can avoid the other.

“I hate you,” you declared tearfully. “I did nothing to you.”

“Bad things happen to everyone. Tragedy is not karma. It does not descend only upon the worst. It is indiscriminate,” he mused.

“You only did bad things to my family,” you spat.

“I never said I was the incarnation of tragedy, only one of its executioners,” he said, looking at you with boredom. “I gave you a chance to leave peacefully, but you’ve chosen the alternative. I hope you understand that you were the one who brought this upon yourself and your friends.”

He dropped you carelessly, and you fell to the ground with a harsh thud. You groaned at the pain that spiked up your arm, having landed your weight directly on it. There was no resting moment as you quickly realized the councilman was making his way to where Jisung was.

You strung out throaty and strangled screams then, the rush of fear giving you the push you needed to stand up, only for you to fall a couple of steps later.

The councilman crouched near Jisung and acknowledged him when they met eyes. Jisung could barely tell what was going on; his body felt shattered. He was thrown against something, perhaps a lamp pole, and he swore his head scratched something sharp. He could not be sure. He just knew he was losing consciousness, and he could not dare to move with stinging pain. But he knew the face of that man. He recognized the face of the man who ruined everything, and he was spiteful.

Mustering as much strength as he could, Jisung spat, “Go to Hell.”

The councilman was prepared to grab Jisung by his collar when he stopped. The pause of movement indicated an examination of the fallen boy, and he wondered if someone as old as he wanted a weak and wilfully annoying teenager to be as affective as he wanted to be. Go to Hell? What magnificent words. He would be thinking about them when he heads to bed tonight.

“We all shall,” the councilman said. Not a moment later, he stood back up to approach you. He noticed your tear-stained cheeks and ignored them, picking you up like a rag doll and turning you to face him.

“I realize you will never succumb to the council willingly so long as he, or any of your friends, exist on this Earth. If they are why you stay, then I shall eliminate those reasons, which I planned to start with that one over there,” the councilman said. “But it seems he has landed on something sharp. Death would be upon him very soon.”

“Hmm! No-wait! Stop!” you protested within his grasp when you realized he was planning to bring you out of this place. You squirmed and moved about, hoping he would drop you to the ground. “Stop it, please! Let me go! Let me go!”

Taken back by your sudden burst of strength, the councilman released you. He watched with old annoyance as you scrambled up from the ground and darted away. Fresh blood slid over the old, but the pain never once stopped. Nevertheless, you tumbled over to where Jisung lay and halted to kneel when you were near.

There was no visible detection of an injury on his body, but a pool of blood was coming from beneath his torso and head. Your agitated breathing quickened in the face of a medical enigma.

There was no way for you to heal his injuries if you knew not the questions of where nor what. You needed to prepare for the type of strings, their length, the kind of spells, and many more things to successfully maintain the most remarkable outcome: Jisung staying alive.

“Okay, okay,” you exhaled through your words and looked affirmatively at him. “Where does it hurt? Do you-do you know?”

“It is the back of his head and the left side of his chest.”

You closed your eyes, letting the burning anger that manifested from merely hearing the sound of the councilman's voice ring away, and then you heeded his words. Reaching your hand down to his neck, you cooed at Jisung with a warning that you were going to touch for his injury before, bravely and with a lot of heartache, you pressed the tips of your fingers against his skin.

You winced when he withered, and apologies left your lips in rapid fire. You were unsure how he managed to get a cut like that, but you have got to assume a similar issue was present on his back. Since there was nothing sharp around his neck area, that must mean whatever he landed on was protruding through his chest.

It was not invisible before, but the more you were aware, the more the blood was growing in his dark-colored clothes. It soaked into his black vest, dripping to his gray uniform pants.

It must be agonizing and perhaps even weird to have something lodged in your body so violently.

“Okay, it’s okay,” you mumbled through an infuriated jumble of thoughts.

You moved your hands around your pockets, looking for any extra strings you could use that hadn’t already been rooted deep into your arms. When you found none, you took off your bag and rummaged through all your things, hoping to find even a strand of saving grace.

The councilman watched your measly figure with intrigue. Human devotion was as intense as possible, that much the old man understood. He did not go through his life condemning himself without a thought of devotion. But what he gave his life to was power and wealth, a beyond comfortable life where he could sneer and condescend, not other people or a soulmate.

The fearful adrenaline rush must have ceased your ability to feel pain if you were desperately finding a source of string to use. Or, you do feel pain, but it was not enough to stop you from wreaking havoc upon yourself to save someone you cared deeply about. You may have weighed the consequences; between losing someone forever and being in treatable pain, you choose the pain.

But could it be treatable? To chant the wrong spell on a string that has already been used, plus contrasting the purpose with its color—the string will convulse around you because it was not being used according to its purpose.

Adding that onto all the sewed strings already on your arm... painful. He could almost shudder at the amount of magic your strings will suck out of you. Even if you manage to save Jisung, you would be dead by then through blood loss and a lack of blood flow.

All of that for one boy. Soulmates or not, was Jisung worth it all? Was a human boy worth the magic inherited through your blood?

"Your strings have sunken into your skin, my child. Your body is bleeding all over, and it seemed to have corrupted your common sense," he pointed out the obvious. "You will kill yourself before you can save him. If you use up the strings now, you won't be able to fight me anymore, and it would also be much easier for me to kill him if he is without your protection."

You paused your movement, the chanting falling off your tongue. You forced yourself to clear your mind so you could think, your clueless eyes gazing forward without a cloud of feelings.

Gears and logic turned in your head, calculating and analyzing, and suddenly, your shoulders collapsed with your weight. Your torso fell forward, and your mouth hung open in a defeated gasp.

As much as you hated to admit it, he was right. This would be much worse than last time when you saved Jisung from the car crash. Only one wrong string was spaced out on one arm at that time. This time, you've got a variety of colors tightly packed across both, and you are already bleeding from them.

Exhausting yourself to heal him would result in utter failure. But you still had to help him somehow. You still had to heal Jisung somehow. You had to keep him alive somehow. You just needed one more string. You needed to deal the final blow.

This was the legacy your family left you.

Bringing your hand up to Jisung's cheeks, you forced a small smile onto your face. “Hang on here, okay?” you told him, leaning down to kiss the corner of his mouth. “I’ll come back and fix you right up. Just hang on for a moment.”

You could taste metal mixed with dusty bitterness and salty tears in your mouth. There was nothing you wanted more than to take a hot bath.

As you stood up with your back facing the councilman, you fantasized about sinking into a pool of warm water and relaxing into a deep slumber. You fantasized about the life you could have had, leaned into the vengeance and the anger you have accumulated throughout the years, leaned into the pain and the fear you had felt for your friends who had been alone when they met the councilman.

Your strings glowed in their respective color, zapping a lightning bolt up to your skin and causing a scorching heat in your bloodstream. Your blood had nowhere to run but to be let out through the pores of your skin and used for your revenge plot. Everywhere in your body was dead-end. You could not begin to explain how relieved you were to feel anything at all. It was precisely that kind of energy you needed to cast a spell as strong as the one you were about to do.

You could barely remember it. Your knowledge came from a few years ago when you crept back into your abandoned home after sneaking into the city to visit your uncle.

You have done that in hopes of being able to research spells that could wake him up, and you had come across it hidden in a grimoire of dark magic spells, which you learned when you were young were off-limits.

Those spells only existed to test the potentials of spell casters, not to be used by them. It was at the top of the bookshelves in your father’s office; it seemed like he did try to hide it from your younger self, but you were much older now, and he never got the chance to find a better hiding spot.

The councilman sighed in exhaustion. He did not anticipate this level of exertion. “I am glad to see you standing.”

You turned around; your expression was suspicious and unenthusiastic. There was only one thing you must do: break the first physical rule of a spell-caster. You were not necessarily confident in your ability to accomplish the task. Still, it was either this way or the highway, given that this way wasn’t equivalent to the highway already.

When you were within arm’s length of the councilman, you lunged forward and quickly stumbled when your knees gave away. He rolled his eyes at your futile attempt and grabbed you by your hair, yanking you up from the mid-fall so he could sneer down at you in contempt for wasting his time. “If only I had more time training your combat skills.”

You laughed. “That was a bluff.”

“Was it?”

“Yeah.”

You pulled your hand away from your back and gripped the glass shard tightly. Without a second thought, you punctured the shard into his abdomen, forcing him to release you. You dropped the shard onto the ground, which was where you found it in the first place when you knelt near Jisung.

There must have been broken glass around the area you never knew of. Ever since you found a place to stay, you rarely got to roam around this place and people-watch anymore. Jisung must have hidden the glass shard under himself in preparation for attacking. Still, since he never got the chance to, he secretly gave it to you.

“That was not clever, child.”

“I don’t care.” You put your hands together and channeled the remaining power from the strings in your arms. You caught a moment of realization in his eyes, which screamed for you to pause, but you discarded him like he did to you. “Vapius Mor Molaedo!”

You chanted the spell through gritted teeth, clutching through the razor-like pain when your strings massively tightened around your skin, causing redness to squirt through the air. The blood didn’t fall to the ground, however. Your strings caught each droplet with their magic and linked it toward where your hand was, adding more fuel to the death spell you had just chanted.

A heated explosion blasted across your palm, burning your skin and blinding your eyes. Surely, people walking near the area would be able to hear it. It was loud enough to echo and travel through the atmosphere. Dust erupted from the impact, and you closed your eyes instinctively, hiding your face in your arms until all quieted down.

You let your arms drop to your side in exhaustion, and you tumbled to the ground in pain. You moaned and withered and squirmed against yourself, your limbs flailing about in the air in seconds before constricting back to your chest.

The unlikeable pattern of your movement directly results from how immensely sharp your body ached. You cried out loud for once, the frustration and fear you felt finally being released.

Your head arched amidst your outburst, your eyes supposedly gazing at the fallen body of the councilman, but instead, you were met with his soulless eyes. Widening in fear, you gasped and scrambled to your knees, only to fall back on your hips to the ground. Your breath was jagged and uneven, and you found yourself crawling backward to avoid the horrendous picture you saw in front of you.

You have beheaded the councilman.

You did that, you thought. You killed him.

An acid rush engulfed your lungs, running up your throat, and you immediately turned to the side, your mouth agape with a hellish urge to puke at what you had done. But your throat was afraid that if you did vomit, the content would burn and scar your insides for life. Trembling eyes coward away from your blood-stained hands. The blood of, perhaps, not the innocent, but still of blood.

A justified murder is still murder, nonetheless. The intention does not take away the severity and consequence of the action. Vigilantism does not belong to a broken teenager with a subconscious plot for revenge.

Trauma does not flee because the world is just; it will learn its victims and mold itself into the shape of biology and law just to feed off its host.

And we shall suffer from what is fair. We all suffer from what is unjustifiably fair.

You wanted to cry. You were already weeping in disgust and, minutes ago, in patheticness. But the urge to cry was not in the form of tears but clenched fists, nails digging into dirty and skin scratched with redness.

You were enraged and delirious. You were furious that this was the legacy your family left you: to make no choices and to suffer from what you desired.

There was one other thing.

Not allowing yourself more time to pull it all together, you steadied your breath as best as you could before quickly standing up straight and running back to where Jisung was.

“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, there 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 returning 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.

“It’s okay,” you muttered to Jisung as you nodded in agreement before grabbing his hand. “It’s going to be fine.”

You gasped when Jisung suddenly cried out, his voice raspy. You thought something inside him spiked; perhaps the glass shard lodged inside him moved because you were uncontrollably shifting about.

However, you knew he put two and two together when he snatched his hand from you and began protecting it as if his life depended on it. He realized that you were planning to cut the soulmate string.

He looked frightened. He looked more terrified than when he would die at the hands of a man he had never met before. The redness and the veins popping at his neck and arm showed how much he strived to protest your solution.

It wasn’t only about the fact that you two would stop being soulmates anymore. That part wasn’t even in the premises of his fear. It should never have been about his place as your soulmate. It was about you ceasing to exist from his memory once the string is snapped. It was about him losing the constant of watching you grow in his mind. He was going to lose the past, the current, and the future of you.

You would cease to exist in his world. Everything would be back as before, but it would be different. He wouldn’t know why, but it simply cannot be the same.

"Mmm!” he rasped out with grit, uncontrollably gasping for a release of pain when he felt the piercing through his chest. His eyes rolled up as he pursed his lips tight to hold the feeling. “No!”

You closed your eyes to be blind to his struggle. It made it easier to ignore his desperate wishes. Your hands clumsily navigated to his chest, pulling apart his intertwined hands. Apologizes left the aggression of your gentle hands. This lover’s quarrel was making you short of breath.

You couldn’t bring yourself to pronounce any words. There were only actions, and it was speaking more volumes than ever.

“Stop! No! Stop, ple-please!“ His words were short, quick, jagged, and ran through between coughs and inhales, but his intentions were clear. He cannot let go. He knew love was about letting go, but he could not see the sense in this. He cannot accept this.

Jisung didn’t want to forget you. Jisung would rather die as your soulmate than live not having known you. At least that way, he left belonging to somebody, and the somebody wasn’t just anybody but you, the person he fell so deeply in love with.

He just got you back. There were so many things he still wanted to do. He wanted to do everything and nothing with you; to sit around in his room and look out at the sky, chat quietly at night, and giggle when his dad tells you both to shut up.

He hasn’t done enough yet; he hasn’t kissed you, touched you, and definitely hasn’t loved you to the amount he was satisfied with yet. It could not be over before it even began.

His arms gave away with weakness after struggling for longer than his body initially allowed him to, betraying him. He ached—everything about him hurt. Everything about him was collapsing into a forced undoing. His body, his skin, his body, his mind, his heart, you.

He could not struggle anymore. Any last strength in him went to ugly cries, the tears choking out through pathetic sobs as he held onto your hand as a last, meek attempt to get you to change your mind.

Jisung’s cries were so loud and gut-wrenching that your hands trembled while trying to find your soulmate string. Part of you wished he fought more, but you did not dare to blame him when he stopped. You put him through all this wreckage. He deserved the breather if he wanted one, while you deserved to drown in guilt as he relentlessly wept beneath you.

But the string took a lot of work to find. It was hard to find when you didn’t want to find it. You clawed at your pinky finger and then at his, and you couldn’t find it. Before your heart could be at peace with the idea of losing everything, it would not show itself to you, forcing you to use the resources you have—your own strings.

“Fuck–fuck! Damn it!” you choked out the yells, your fists reaching up to knock on your head. Jisung was looking weaker by the second, urging you to get a move on.

You ran your tentative hands over your bloodied arms, your lips pursing to hold back the sobs as you looked around at nothing. Your skin felt tight, strangled, like blades lodged between your flesh. It would be painful to heal Jisung.

At this rate, you would die saving him, and you would die if you did not save him. In front of this double-edged sword, the only privilege given was a choice to make—do you kill only one of you or both of you?

“Okay…” You told yourself to get over it, and you did.

Placing your hands over his face, you smiled down at Jisung. He was staring back at you. Maybe he was just looking in hopes that he wouldn’t forget, hoping he could break all odds of the universe and remember you somehow. His eyes hazed out when you leaned down to douse his face with feather-like kisses. He held your hand, feeling the faintest smile overcoming him.

He thought this would be the best way to go if you had no plans to save him.

“I’m not breaking the string, okay? I’m going to heal you,” you hummed against his assumption and removed your hand from his face. You moved it down to his abdomen in preparation.

After you chanted, you could feel the magic in your hands vibrating. Immense power was released, and more importantly, your strings were angry. They clenched around your skin, slicing through your tissues and causing your injuries to squirt blood.

You doubled over at the pain but kept your hands flat against Jisung’s body, waiting and waiting for the pain to fade as an indication that the healing was done. You kept your body lurched forward just in case of fainting; if you did faint, your hands would still be on him, hopefully healing even beyond your passing.

Your eyes began to see white when the ringing in your ears and the squeezing of strings around your arms stopped abruptly.

Jisung felt blood rush into his head again. His eyesight was unburied by fog, and his breathing returned naturally to him once more. You healed him—oh lord, you healed him!

Sitting up, he was prepared to lung himself at you when, with a plop, you dropped forward onto his lap. His gaze shifted immediately when he saw the dark red color that adorned your arms. He was no expert, but they looked like fresh blood.

“[Name]…?” You did not respond.

“[Name]?” His voice quickened in its pitch. He jerked up, putting his hands on your shoulders, and pulled you to his chest.

Your eyes were shut, and you felt lifeless, easy to throw around. Jisung touched his hand to your arm and flinched at the cutting sensation. Blood seeped through the cushion of his index finger, paired with a feverous heat he felt upon coming in contact with the strings on your arms. He looked at his hand and down at you, at your arms that had fallen to your side, and sighed shakily.

If your strings were submerged into your skin with such sharpness and heat, they would eventually kill you. He has to do something.

Before Jisung knew it, he threw himself into a spiral loop similar to yours a minute ago.

Should he call the police? How long would it typically take an ambulance to arrive? What if you die between now and the help arriving? He should call for help anyway! It would be better than nothing, wouldn’t it?

Jisung hoisted you onto his back but stumbled when he lost balance and dropped you on the floor. He cut his skin when he haphazardly reached for your arms to hold you, causing him to wince. Ignoring the pain, he reached for you again and attempted to throw you over his shoulder so he could run to somewhere with lights, but he was weak against your dead weight. He already knew that.

Dragging at you repeatedly was a delusional act he could not afford to give up on.

“[Name], come on!”

As he pulled your lifeless body up, wanting to drag you to a place where help would be available, he briefly caught the dead body lying a few feet away. Shocked, he lost his footing with a yell and fell hips first onto the ground.

You fell against him, and he immediately tugged at your figure, pulling you close. Jisung unknowingly wiped his cheeks of soft tears as he watched the options narrow down one by one. He was racing the clock and losing.

The dead body and the decapitated head were an issue. Your injuries, paired with the gruesome scene, were a connection effortless to make. Jisung didn’t know what would happen to you if you got charged with murder. You weren’t legally an adult yet, so your sentencing should be light, but that only applied to people like himself, not people like you. Especially not when you murdered a high-level authoritative figure. He could be sending you straight to jail by calling the police.

“But–ah, shit,” he croaked and looked down at you. He caressed your face and begged, “Damn it, [Name]. Wake up, please! Please!”

He sat there and cried. He remembered tears rolling like this when he was younger. Back then, he had a pair of scraped knees because he ran too fast down the stairs at the park. Fat, sympathy-inducing tears fell down his cheeks with no one around.

Jisung looked around him to soak in the vacant area, and he could not stop crying for help, for his friend, for you. He couldn’t call the police. He couldn’t trust the ambulance. He couldn’t reach his friend for help fast enough. He couldn’t scream for anybody’s help. He couldn’t even rely on himself to get you to safety.

There was one last resort. Something he desperately didn’t want to think about.

The soulmate string.

Jisung hiccuped between sobs. Maybe he should end it here with you. Perhaps he should just kill himself and die on the ground, holding onto you.

He slowly scooted to the wall of the bridge and leaned against it. He hugged you tightly, the skin that went over the string surrounding your arms bleeding with every deep cut he pressed into himself. It was a form of self-afflicted punishment for being useless, helpless, and outright terrible.

This was all, still, his fault. If only he knew how to fly or was smarter and stronger, then he wouldn’t be debating if he should save you or kill himself.

He found himself laughing after a while. This must be how you felt just now, except unlike him, you wouldn’t struggle against his decision. You were breathing lightly on his chest, your life being drained away slowly. You would do what he chooses to do, unlike him.

“Okay,” he told himself, the same way you told yourself.

This—saving you—was the one thing he could do for you. This was the only thing he could do for you. Not just the breakage of the red string of fate but also eating dinner with you at the convenience store, inviting you over to his home, introducing you to all of his friends, sharing your phone numbers, feeding the messenger bird you sent him, holding your hand, holding you close, bleeding and cutting his flesh, staying with you despite everything, and choosing you over anything.

He will choose you over anything. Even if you two are not soulmates anymore, even if he suffers through the process, even if you forget his name, face, voice, and warmth.

Putting you on the floor gently, Jisung leaned close and pressed your forehead to his. He nudged the tip of your nose against his, his tears mixing in and rolling down to your lips where you could taste the saltiness if you were conscious. He timidly pressed his lips against yours, then pulled away to pepper kisses over your face. You would be okay, he thought, and it soothed him.

He slowly reached for your hand and fumbled for your pinky finger.

“I love you so much. You will not remember,” he whispered. “I never want any other soulmate but you.”

Jisung intertwined his fingers with yours. He couldn’t feel it, but the magic flowed directly from his veins to your body, seeping through your skin and finding the source of your discomfort. A bright white light surrounded him. It felt graceful, warm with a tint of coolness, like clean river water flowing over him.

The magic was great, but the execution was not. As the healing process began, the blade-like strings strung between your flesh started to pull away at the same time as your consciousness returned.

You screamed in pain, your body jerking about as your hands scratched at your arms, hoping to stop the tearing. Tears welled in your eyes and wasted no time falling. Jisung was thrown into a fit of panic once again.

He pressed his hands against your body, keeping you down and apologizing repeatedly for something he had no control over. It felt like he was gutting you alive, and he hated it. He wanted to die. You continued to scream and cry and squirm under him, and he just—sigh. God, he wanted to die.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered near your head, feeling snot run down his nose. It was impossible not to cry with you. “Please just endure it. Please! I’m sorry, but please!”

He could see your wound heal as your strings detached from your skin one by one, slowly fading into nothingness. The blood stopped pouring out of you eventually, leaving only what previously stained you. Your screaming gradually stopped once all the strings were pulled out of your flesh, and Jisung shakily let his forehead rest against yours.

Your chest heaved more visibly to showcase your breathing. He pressed his hand to your heart, feeling for its pace. One, two, one, two, one, two. He smiled, and he blacked out.

Felix was the first person you saw when you woke up. After noticing your gentle stirs, he immediately dropped his phone on the chair and rushed to your side, almost crashing into you.

He held himself back by putting his weight on the side of the bed where the railings were put up, and he beamed down at you when you opened your eyes to look at him.

Your eyes traveled to Felix soon. His body bounced with faint excitement, but his tearful eyes told a traumatic story you could hear through your assumptions. He looked as gentle and bright as ever, symbolizing peace in everyday life.

It made you relax easier into your pillow, and you felt free to shut your eyes again, knowing it had all been done. Your friends got out. They were safe now.

“Hey, Felix,” you greeted tiredly.

“[Name]!” He carefully took your hand, eyes glimmering with tears. “Oh! I’m so glad you woke up!”

“Have you been waiting here?” You raised a brow weakly after opening your eyes a fraction just to smile at him.

Felix giggled, nodding his head eagerly. His smile had a sunny disposition, as it always did. “Yeah! Seungmin and I have been going in and out of the hospital. I am in charge of looking after you for now!”

“Okay,” you sighed in acknowledgment. Swallowing a dry knot in your throat, you asked, “Did you find me?”

“No, I didn’t,” he replied with a gentle shake of his head. “Someone brought you and Jisung in. Thank god you were still around the area, so you both got taken here.”

“Oh.” Your eyes were squinted after hearing his response, confused. You squeezed his hand. “I’m sorry, but who… is Jisung?”

Felix frowned with a step back, and then he laughed awkwardly. “Han Jisung. Our friend–your friend!”

“I–“ You mimicked his frown sympathetically. “I don’t know who that is. Felix, are you messing with me?”

He should be asking you that question. He didn’t think you were messing with him, though. You were not the type to play such jokes on other people, let alone ones where you acted as if you didn’t know who Jisung was. He didn’t recall the doctors saying there was anything urgent about you either.

They couldn’t find any injuries on you, so they opted to do another check-up after you woke. But Felix thought amnesia was out of the picture, at least. His best speculation now was that something happened after he got teleported away. He wondered if he should ask.

“Are your fingers okay?”

He snapped his attention back to you and looked down at the cast the doctor fitted for him. He touched it carefully and nodded, watching your smile dim upon seeing his injury.

You were blaming yourself for what happened, he could tell, and he did not want that. He didn’t blame you for anything. He never could. If anything, he has only been afraid for you after the portal closed in his face. He trusted you. He trusted you so much that he knew you would never let anything happen to Jisung, even if it meant putting your life on the line, and perhaps you did. He just didn’t know of it.

His biggest concern was still how you forgot about Jisung. Could it be that someone put a spell on you? Were you meant to forget only Jisung or everyone else? Would you forget him?

Staring at your unknowing smile, the hidden tears behind Felix’s eyes finally dropped. You stirred in shock, sitting up quickly to comfort him.

“I’m so sorry! I don’t mean to cry–I really don’t!” he croaked out, rubbing his eyes harshly before he looked at you. “I was just–uhm. Everything had been so sudden, I wasn’t prepared for it!”

Everything in his life has changed since he met you in every way possible.

Magic has always been a faraway dream. A group of powered people living in their own part of a city—he always wondered what your childhood world looked like.

Did flowers bloom all seasons because of Earth magic? Did railroads carry over to your side of the city when your kind could teleport anywhere you wanted? Has the ability to communicate with animals changed anyone's lifestyle?

Then there were you and your past. Your troubling and problematic past were things Felix’s tender mind never thought about. He thought there would be no greed for more if everyone had power. But cruelty never ceases to exist. On a simple morning, three of his friends were hospitalized, all of you were threatened, and you forgot your soulmate.

His faraway dream was a childish delusion uncovered by cruelty and injustice. He could no longer call it a dream, but neither would he call it a nightmare, per se. Because you spent all your effort to make everything fruitful and great, you showed him the beauty of what magic could do to people and the world.

One part of every spiraling darkness stands a shining beacon, where people like you fight to keep the innocence intact.

Everything changed.

“I wish I could have done something to help,” he said.

You furrowed your brows in remorse. With all the strength you could muster, you squeezed his good hand so hard that he slightly pulled back with a pained yelp. You glared at him then, scolding him with the warm gleam in your tired eyes, and shook your head.

“The best thing you can do is not to put yourself in danger,” you said, and your lips arched downward when he dejectedly shrunk his shoulders, obviously dissatisfied. “You’re so great, Felix. You’ve been such a kind friend, and I love the brownies you secretly baked me.”

He kept in touch with you after you and Jisung distanced. Losing a friend was not part of his vocabulary; he also needed to support Jisung. Those days have been stressful for him. Hearing that you enjoyed his effort to keep your friendship made him calm.

“I can bake you more,” he said, his voice gentle with a croak. He leaned his head down to yours, bumping his forehead against your head. “Let’s never fight again.”

You giggled lowly in agreement before stringing onto him a sudden question, firmness swimming back onto your face. “Is Hyunjin okay?”

Felix sucked in a deep breath, concern crossing his eyes for a moment before shaking his head. “He suffered no internal injuries. He got a terrible concussion, though. But overall, the doctors said he will be fine as long as he rests.”

You nodded acknowledgment. “Can I see him?”

“Yeah,” he beamed, but his mood quickly dampened into something more serious. “Oh! But let’s call a doctor over to check on you first!”

Despite feeling hurried, you sat on the bed and waited patiently with Felix after he pressed a button to call a doctor into the room. You took the time to figure out everything that happened and what you should do after those events.

Checking on your friends first was a must, so the next people you must find were Hyunjin and Seungmin. If you could, you would fill them in on what happened, which was that you killed a councilman, and the possible repercussions of it to see what they think you should do. After that, you must find your belongings and call Minho for help.

The plan solidified in your head, and you wasted no time putting it into action. As soon as the doctor announced that you were all good to go, you had Felix bring you to see Hyunjin.

The boy, with confusing uncertainty, mentioned that Hyunjin might be catching on some sleep. You thought about it for about five seconds before deciding to shake him awake if he was. You needed to make sure he felt fine.

Seungmin was not in Hyunjin’s room when you two arrived, which Felix assumed was because Hyunjin was awake and well. He let his jaw drop, feeling slightly annoyed that while sitting stone-still in your room, waiting for you to wake up, Seungmin was taking a short lunch break to the hospital cafeteria. Letting your arm slip away from his, Felix closed the door and leaned against it while you approached the bed.

He pulled a face when Hyunjin met eyes with you after putting his phone on his lap. You watched his brows knit at the center, his lips arched downward, and your legs immediately paused. Why did you expect anything else from him? He was never going to give you a warm, welcoming hug. Scoffing, you resumed walking and stood where your knees hit the edge of the hospital bed.

“I came here to see how you are,” you said.

Hyunjin sniffed. He gave you a full scan before clicking his tongue. “You look better than me. That’s for sure.”

“Well, yeah? I–“ You paused.

Reaching for your pockets for your card of strings, you found nothing in there. It could be that your belongings were stored somewhere else because you were admitted to the hospital for treatment, though. But you were sure! You were sure your arms were damaged beyond repair during your encounter with the councilman.

Even if he didn’t fight you, the spell you used to kill him would have caused the strings to sink into your arms and leave terrible scars behind. You glanced down at your skin and saw nothing. You were fine. You just fainted and slept for a while.

Things were not adding up.

“[Name]? Are you feeling okay?” Hyunjin asked when you pressed a palm to your narrowed eyes. He leaned his torso over to you, a gentle hand hovering over your arm and not quite touching it. “I was just joking.”

“I–“ you shook off the thoughts and looked at Hyunjin–“I’m fine. How are you? You haven’t answered me.”

He leaned into the pillows behind him with a soft pout before he shrugged. “I’m mostly okay. I’ve never had something this heavy drop on me before.”

“You and me both.” You breathed out an airy laugh, twiddling with your thumbs. You tried to push the awkward knot in your throat out of your mouth to say something good, but all you could manage was an apology. “I’m sorry about what happened.”

He stayed silent for a while, his eyes softening only because you weren’t looking at him directly.

But he was never mad at you.

You chose none of this. He could never be mad at you about this. If he had been the one to be taken away, he would have risked his life to keep you here so you would never have to go back to your home ever again. Even after he was treated and woke up in a faint haze, most of his thoughts were dedicated to worrying about you.

He was never mad at you. He would never chase you out of his life. He helped you build a better memory here. That effort could not go to waste so easily.

Hyunjin pursed his lips and huffed. “I suppose I can forgive you,” he muttered, turning his hand so he could squeeze yours. He smiled. “Did you save the day? Are you still leaving us?”

“I…” You sighed. Things were made complicated by your recent revelation. There was a lot more happening under your nose, you believed. Things that just slipped your mind. “Can we bring Seungmin over before we talk about everything?”

“Oh, sure.” Hyunjin nodded in agreement. “Jisung came by just then to talk to him. I’m sure they’re just down the hall.”

“Hyunjin!”

Felix watched helplessly as you thanked Hyunjin and moved toward the door. It wasn’t hard for him to put two and two together. He did not know exactly what happened that led you to forget who Jisung was, but he knew that this was not the state Jisung should greet you in!

You having no memories of Jisung would give him a heart attack! Despite protesting in his head, he moved out of the way to let you leave when you approached. Feeling his heart beating out of his chest, the sudden peek of your head returning to the room made him sigh of relief.

“Felix, can I ask for you a favor?” you asked with your palms pressed together into a pleading motion. “Please help me get my stuff from… wherever they are. I really need my phone!” With that, you were gone in a flash.

You peeked your head down the hall and frowned when you saw nobody familiar, but you doubted he could be far if he were merely talking to someone. Picking a random direction with a mumbled nursery rhyme, you spun on your heels and jogged to the right side of the hallway. Shuffling through nurses and patients, it took you more than just down the hall to find Seungmin sitting on a bench outside a random room. Next to him was a boy you’ve never met before.

“Seungmin!”

Jisung froze when he realized he had responded instinctively to your voice. As you jogged closer to where he sat, he wanted to shrink into the air and evaporate. He wanted to find an escape and leave quickly so he wouldn’t have to confront you. It was great to know that you were up and running, but that was to the extent he wanted to know about.

You could forget him on paper and in theory. He didn’t have to hear about you asking him for his name and who he was. But he couldn’t move. There was an affectionate weight on his legs that refused his decision to walk away from you, and it would stay there forever.

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you,” you huffed after coming to a stop. Glancing off to Jisung, you briefly noticed his bloodshot eyes, and then you panicked and turned back to Seungmin.

The grimace on your face was almost hilarious to him, and your whispers were even funnier. You pointed at the room window subtly. “Oh my god, I’m sorry. Did something happen to his family?”

Seungmin stared at you, both in disbelief and in shock. He couldn’t believe it, but magic truly surprised him more and more with how outrageous its audacity to interfere with human lives was. Jisung filled him in on everything that happened.

He already knew some parts of it, such as the rules of the soulmate string, but he never thought it was possible until now when neither you nor Jisung acknowledged each other. But how could that be possible? How could Jisung get wholly erased from your memory when so many things about you have come to be directly led back to him? The cognitive conflict must be immeasurable.

“No, this–uhm.” Seungmin cleared his throat and gestured at Jisung. He stopped to look at his friend for permission, but Jisung gave him none, so he scrapped the notion of introducing you to each other. Instead, he rubbed his thighs and smiled faintly at you. “You were looking for me?”

You hummed with a nod. “Yeah. We need to talk.”

“Oh, but I–“

“Go,” Jisung whispered with a shove of his elbow. “Take care of them.”

“Jisung…”

“Please?”

Seungmin sighed defeatedly. Jisung was right. Sitting around and discussing what to do about losing your memories of him would bring them nowhere far. If anything, the person they should consult regarding this issue should be you. He could figure out a way to discreetly ask you about it, but from the little information they have regarding breaking a soulmate string, it seemed that amnesia would be permanent.

More importantly, Jisung needed time to deal with this loss—the loss of you and, by extension, the loss of himself.

You watched intensely as the two exchanged a farewell embrace, and you had to shake yourself out of paying so much attention to a stranger’s face.

Jisung looked lovely, but more than that, there was a magnetic tug at your muscles whenever you looked at him. It was an unexplainable pull, a gravitational pull seemingly moving your body toward him. Something akin to what you believed seeing your soulmate would feel like.

You laughed to yourself. If you were going to find your soulmate, it wouldn’t be in random places like a hospital or a pedestrian road before a high school.

Seungmin watched Jisung leave before he turned to you. You teared up When you met eyes in a quiet corner of your own world. You fanned your face in hopes of stopping yourself from crying, but the more you thought about why you were feeling the urge to do so in the first place, the more your eyes urged you to open the floodgates.

Seungmin picked under his nails, a lingering pain in his chest from knowing what happened after you sent him away, and he took a step forward to trap you in a tight embrace.

“Seungmin, I killed someone,” you said, your voice muffled by his shoulder.

“Okay,” he replied, holding a warm hand to your neck. “Don’t think about it if you don’t want to. We can always talk about it later.”

You sniffed, nodding into his shoulder. You didn’t think you could delay talking about what happened for however long you wanted, but there should be a grace period between now and when the council found that one of their members had been killed.

Although, you did want to ask about your state when you were admitted to the hospital. It still didn’t make sense to you that you were left unscathed. But, between now and then, you wanted to heed Seungmin’s advice and not think about anything. Drowning in the safety net of your best friend’s arms was all you wanted to do.

“[Name]! [Name]!”

Seungmin glared off at the other end of the hallway as he pulled away from you. Felix was running toward you both, his sneakers creating an even louder commotion than his voice. He was forced to a begrudging stop when a nurse stopped him with a scold. When you squinted, you could see him gripping your phone.

“Oh my god! I’m so sorry. I didn’t–I didn’t mean to take the call for you, but your phone was buzzing nonstop!” Felix said between huffs of breaths as he handed you the phone. It was still on call. “But you’ve got great news! Your uncle is awake!”

You pressed the phone to your ear.

“Your friend already broke the news to you, so I’m kind of useless here.”

“Good to hear from you too, Minho,” you said softly.

“Oh, you’ll be even happier to hear from this guy.” There was shuffling on the other end of the phone. A static noise traveled when someone picked it up again, and the voice that sounded was one that surprisingly hadn’t changed much.

“Hey, kiddo,” Chan greeted quietly as if testing the waters.

“Uncle Chan…” you muttered, surprised and relieved, but then a sudden dread fell over you.

It has taken ages to break the curse that kept Chan in a coma. The only known way to wake him was by breaking the soulmate string, which Minho once said he would do. But Minho sounded cheery just then, meaning he hadn’t done anything as drastic as that, which would mean the curse broke through other means. You thought you knew how.

“Oh, I think I know why you woke up.”

“You do? I just thought it was a miracle.”

“It’s not–it’s… umm.” You pressed a hand to the speaker and looked urgently at your friends, who seemed equally clueless. “Uncle, there’s a lot we need to catch up on.”

As you unconsciously moved away to continue the conversation, hashing out plans to return to meet him, Felix elbowed Seungmin to get his attention.

“Hey,” Felix started, “I don’t mean to alarm you, but I think [Name] doesn’t remember Jisung.”

Seungmin puffed out his cheeks and sighed. “Yeah… we’ve got a lot to talk about.”

“Wait, wait, wait–“ Hyunjin waved his hands before his face–“wait!”

He had been a little concerned when you did not return with anybody to his room, but the solemn expression on Jisung's face and the somewhat heartbroken frown on Felix's mouth made him shut his mouth.

Seungmin had trailed behind the two, watching Felix keep his hand over Jisung's as they approached the single chair in the room. He had leaned against the shut door to try and prevent anyone from disrupting the conversation they were about to have: Jisung breaking his soulmate tie with you.

Hyunjin was having a more challenging time catching up than Felix, mainly because he never indulged in anything about soulmates. Even after learning from one of Felix's many romantic rambles that soulmates exist, he never thinks about it again. He was never a romantic at heart, he supposed.

But questioning why Jisung was so heartbroken over the fact that you and he were no longer linked by fate was not something he did as he got filled in on what happened. He was more worried about the state of Jisung's and your well-being after enduring the physical altercation.

“You got stabbed?”

“No, I got blown away, and I landed on glass. It–well, sure, I got stabbed,” Jisung said after rolling his eyes skyward to think. He could barely remember anything; his mind must have blanked it out to protect his feelings.

“And [Name] almost died,” Hyunjin added for clarification. “Healing you?”

Jisung nodded, his lips pursing remorsefully. “Yes.”

Leaning against his pillow, Hyunjin exhaled slowly and focused his eyes on a single spot on the wall across him.

That councilman was one hell of a maniac—collapsing a whole convenience store on his head, blowing Jisung and you away with explosive magic, indirectly impaling Jisung and causing you to exert yourself so much that you almost died in Jisung’s arms.

He held back his thoughts while listening to the story, but he felt no guilt now celebrating the fact that you decapitated the councilman. He would give you a thumbs up and buy you a drink when he sees you again.

Turning his head to look at Jisung, whose eyes focused more on his fiddling fingers than anything else, Hyunjin softened.

Those hands that erased himself from your memories must not have been fond to look at or own, but they were also the last of what touched you, so Jisung couldn't tear his eyes away from them either. His heart was yearning for pain, for the pain that was caused when he decided to cut the soul tie off because, at least back then, you were still in his arms, and you still remembered him.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Standing behind the defeated boy, Seungmin and Felix flashed him an exasperated stare as if he couldn't already tell by Jisung's hunchback and slugging around! Hyunjin shook his shoulders and returned the same gaze, not allowing mockery to be thrown his way before he could clarify what he realized was a valid question with terrible wording.

"I know you feel bad! That part is obvious! But it's just–" he sighed–"don't you think there is some leeway out of this?"

“Like a way to get [Name] to remember him?” Felix chimed in.

Hyunjin shook his head. “No, more like a silver lining. We are trying to look at this from the bright side.”

Seungmin scoffed, disagreeing. “It’s a bit tone-deaf to ask him to look on the bright side when it’s already happened, don’t you think?”

“It’s better than repeating that his soulmate forgot about him,” Hyunjin retorted before looking at Jisung, who sat stoically on the chair. He could see the faraway stare in Jisung’s eyes.

“Look, I know you can’t hear me right now. I can only hope your heart remembers what I say sometime down the line, but memory erasure aside–[Name] is still alive for a reason.”

The truth was that Jisung made a choice. He made a puke-inducing, heartbreaking choice. Between his bond with you and your existence, he chose you. He didn't pick himself. The soulmate bond would have meant nothing; your memories of him would have meant nothing if you died.

It was a choice only he could make for you, and he made it with your best interest at heart. Your being alive should mean something more than what he did, even if it couldn't now.

“You can still know them,” Hyunjin said. “They can still fall in love with you.”

Jisung sighed. “Hyunjin, I’m really tired–“

“I’m sure you were too when you had to snap the soul string in half,” he argued. “You fought for them anyway.”

“I still don’t understand how it happened,” Seungmin chimed in at the mention of the soulmate string. “Memories don’t work like that.”

“Is this really the time to question how it works?” Felix asked.

"No, but think about it anyway. Take the car crash that happened, for example. Remember when we first met them, and we decided to hang out after school?" Seungmin said animatedly. He has been thinking about this for too long. He has got to let it out.

"They still remember the incident, but it happened in the first place because they protected Jisung from getting hit by a car. Then we found out they are a magic wielder, right?

"Who did they do that for if Jisung is out of the picture? How did we learn about their identity in that particular alleyway, in that specific situation? Jisung being snipped out of their memory will make their life nonsensical!"

Jisung heaved a sigh. He shrunk into his seat and rubbed his face with his hands. Unconsciously, his hands traveled to his ears, and he muffled everyone else's voices in the room.

He closed his eyes, remembering your face to calm himself. He didn't want to hear about his friends' theories and discrepancies regarding how the universe managed to wipe human memories with a snap of a string. Not only did he want to stop thinking too deeply about it, but he would also hate to be given false hope that you might remember him somehow.

He saw you about an hour ago. He just saw you about an hour ago. You said nothing to him, talked away from him, and indirectly addressed him through Seungmin. You forgot who he was. There was no last stand of a miracle, a shining beacon of hope, or a benefit of the doubt. There was nothing left for Jisung except the daunting truth that he was gone from your life completely.

Everything he has done or said, every promise you have made to each other, every sense of touch you shared—gone, reduced to emptiness by his hands.

Jisung loved you from the beginning until the end, and he was the only one who had to put an end to it.

The room went quiet when Jisung began to sob uncontrollably into his hands. The only time they had seen him cry like this was today, at the school’s backyard, when you left him in a frenzy, and he fell face-first against the floor. But somehow, it sounded strikingly different.

The last one was apologetic, with sadness and longing haphazardly screamed into a bottle about to be lost at sea. The last time Jisung cried like this, he dragged himself through the mud to appeal to a higher power for forgiveness.

This one was different. This one was angry, mad, and screaming at a Godless void where God exists but chooses not to listen. Jisung was giving up this time, and he was so unbelievably angry at the hand he was dealt that he slit his own throat with a hoarse voice and streamy tears.

Felix had to take a few steps away from Jisung's chair. He watched as Jisung swallowed himself whole, practically scratching his face off, and he could do nothing.

This was not the time for comfort. If anything, Felix had no idea if a soft hand on the shoulder would come across as anything other than pity and a poor attempt to get Jisung to stop screaming down the hospital hall. He walked away and approached Seungmin, reaching for the boy’s hand to hold and letting his tears fall silently as he stared at the floor.

Jisung was so fond of you, and Felix felt you were the same way. You two were soulmates. He still remembered the joyful laughter that reverberated in his ribs when you told him about it, not just because you proved to him that soulmates are real but because he was grateful his friend found one he would love for the rest of his life.

You were both so fond of each other, and with a simple snap, everything was gone, and Felix vicariously lost his hope in romance.

Seungmin squeezed Felix's hand, causing him to look up. The grim expression on Seungmin's face made Felix realize one thing: this would take a while. The healing could take a bit, perhaps even forever, because Jisung loved you.

Jisung loved you, from the beginning until the end, and he would continue with no exception or mistake. If there was no place for him to give you his love now, the least he could do was store them where they belong—in his chest, heart, eyes, tears, hands, touch, and always in him.

Looking away, Felix met eyes with Hyunjin from his bed. Hyunjin pursed his lips together and gently leaned into the bed for support.

This would take a while.

You startled Chan and Minho when you teleported straight into the hospital room.

It was, unfortunately, a force of habit. You spent most of your visits to Chan, which wasn’t many, but he didn’t need to know that, in the form of sneaking in and out of the hospital and the city. Being extra cautious that you wouldn’t leave any magical traces behind made most of your visits brief.

Not that there was much for you to do back then anyway; Chan was in a coma, and you were talking to a sleeping log. Supposedly, now that he was awake, you would no longer be in the vulnerable position you once were, and you should be able to walk the city freely. But, again, habitually, you have chosen to do a quick teleportation spell unannounced.

You raised a brow at how Minho immediately retreated his hand from Chan’s. He jumped to stand away from the edge of the bed, looking nervous before he recognized you. Then he scoffed. You ignored him. “Was I interrupting something?”

“No.”

“A little bit, yeah.”

“You didn’t interrupt anything. Don’t listen to him,” Minho reassured with a glare directed at Chan’s boastful smile. He turned to approach you.

Having deduced what happened after receiving information from his parents on the implication of Chan’s awakening, there was much he needed you to fill him in on, but mostly, he wanted to know if you were feeling fine. When he was within reach, he pulled you into an embrace. “How are you doing?”

You gasped inwardly. You hadn’t anticipated this reaction from Minho, and it took you a moment to feel his solid chest. His arms were grown and confident with strength, unlike Seungmin’s, which were frail and comforting.

With Seungmin, hugging him was like standing on common ground. Hugging Minho was being embraced and shielded by someone who knew more and better than you. They both felt safe, but for once, it was relieving to have an adult around to think for you.

“I’m fine. My friends are all fine, too,” you replied.

“Your friends were involved?”

“They’re all human, right?”

Minho released you to face Chan. “Technically, we all are.”

“You know what I mean,” Chan retorted before fixating his eyes on you. “Were your friends involved in what happened?”

You fiddled with your fingers. You wanted to be able to greet your uncle in a much lighter circumstance, but the timing was unfortunate. “They were,” you said. “But they already know I can use magic! They won’t say anything.”

“It’s more complicated than that. A councilman died–got murdered if we want to be specific.” Minho hummed as he shook his head. “You did it. That was you?”

You shrugged, feeling accused. “Yeah.”

Minho nodded with acknowledgment. There was no other display of emotions. But if he could, he would have been thankful that you killed the old man because that directly woke Chan up. His death broke the coma curse; it was his idiotic mistake for linking it directly to himself and not a vessel.

“This is going to be investigated unless we intervene, and one little slip-up from any of your friends who saw what happened–“

“Nobody saw! I sent them all away to the hospital!” you exclaimed as you waved your hands.

“Hyunjin was injured after a convenience store collapsed on us, so I sent him and everyone to the hospital! Nobody saw anything. Felix didn’t see anything. I told Seungmin I–“ you dropped your voice to a whisper–“killed someone, but he wasn’t there to see it happen.”

Minho nodded. “And Jisung?”

You look at him incredulously. You didn’t think Minho might have been talking about the same boy you saw at the hospital, but everyone had asked about him.

“Why is everyone asking me about him?” you asked grimly. “I don’t know him.”

“What are you talking about?”

Chan watched as Minho’s face gradually descended into a mixture of confusion and, increasingly so, pitiful despair. He shifted his gaze between you and him, unclear why Minho had such a severe reaction.

Following closely as Minho swiped two fingers across his neck, revealing a burning hieroglyphic mark once concealed, he moved his head about to keep his view from being blocked by Minho’s back after the man grabbed your hand in his.

“What?” you tried to snatch your hand away, but Minho kept a firm grip. “Minho, I don’t know who Jisung is. I met him for the first time today!”

He should have been more suspicious of what happened since he knew nothing. There were a million possibilities of how the councilman could have died, many of which did not involve you using magic that could hurt you, but also a lot where you would have to. He should have questioned how you could arrive unscathed; there was no injury on your body.

You could have healed yourself, but that potential was eliminated when you told him you didn’t know who Jisung was. The boy you almost fought him for, your soulmate, your lover—gone in a trace.

Chan raised his brows in realization when Minho discreetly pinched your pinky finger. The red string was gone. Your soulmate must have broken it. Judging by the event that preceded it and how Minho reacted to it, your soulmate had broken it unwillingly.

Chan’s shoulders slumped. He knew the implications of severing a soulmate string. But, seeing your clueless face, he was glad that the one suffering from its impact wasn’t you but a boy he’d never met before.

“Oh, [Name]…” Minho dropped your arm and sat beside Chan on the bed. He chuckled then, recalling the meek-looking boy pushing himself to your defense the first time they met. “Well, I’m not surprised he has the guts to do it.”

“Oh? He’s that kind of boy?” Chan muttered.

“I don’t know. I didn’t meet him for long.” Minho shook his head before turning to smile at Chan. “But I know he overestimates his abilities to stand up for [Name].”

“Or he knows he’s not qualified. He just doesn’t care.” Chan hummed with approval. “I like him either way.”

You crossed your arms at their whispered conversation. You made a quick trip here to catch up with Chan and discuss what to do now that he has woken up. If he and Minho wanted to have alone time together, they should have arranged for you to show up later, and you could have stayed with your friends longer. But, despite your impatience, it was touching to see them happy.

“You know, I can’t wait to have health insurance again,” you pointed out as a joke. “Not that I cared for it when I did have it.”

Chan laughed as he broke away from Minho, who rolled his eyes at the reminder of all the legal errands he would have to run with Chan after his full recovery.

Scooting back on the bed, Chan beckoned you over to him and opened his arms as an invitation for a hug. You moved without another thought, but your face remained hesitant until you touched him with your hands. He patted your head twice for comfort you wouldn’t know you needed.

“I’m sorry you’ve been alone all these years,” he said.

“I met good people,” you said as you shook your head to dismiss his apology. “I have friends who would fight for me.”

Even though you haven’t met them for long, the life they have given you thus far has somewhat overshadowed the terrifically lonely experience you’ve suffered.

Time fast-forwarded in the mending of your heart; Hyunjin and his motherly instincts, Felix and his soft-hearted nature, Seungmin and his covert loyalty, and—your hands twitched when Jisung’s face flashed over your eyes, specifically the way he had looked at you when you met him a while ago.

You hummed, wondering how Seungmin had never introduced him to you before, considering he has no other friends.

Or maybe he has. He just never told you.

“You should bring them over sometimes,” Chan suggested as he pulled away. “It would be nice to give them a proper thanks.”

You grimaced judgementally as you stared at him. You didn’t think it was necessary. Besides, you have talked about Chan to your friends in such an urgent way (for good reasons) that you felt they would be disappointed seeing what Chan was actually like. Feeling subconscious, Chan returned the same expression but with more vigor.

Not even a day had passed since he woke up from a coma. He was still delirious, but he held his mind to greet you anyway, and this was what you give him—teenage attitude. He rolled his eyes into a faint smile after. This was better than a pitch-black doom, at least.

“What do we do now?” you asked.

“You–“ Minho touched your shoulder–“don’t have to do anything. The legal things are up to him now. You just worry about catching up on your education.”

The thought of school haunted you. It has been years since you last stepped foot in an educational setting to learn something new.

You have been operating on some foundation of an adult—occupying yourself with jobs and earning money to fill your stomach—and you have trauma relating to being forcefully chained down, so you weren’t sure if you could adequately cope with being restricted by another systematic authority. Not to mention, people knew who you were! They knew your face and your family!

The only way for your school life to be peaceful is—

“I’m not going to school here.”

—to go somewhere where nobody knows you.

“I thought you might say that,” Minho pointed out as he slumped on the edge of the hospital bed. He shrugged, ready for a bargain. “You can attend the school your friends are attending–yeah, I know what you’re thinking about.” He squinted at you. “But unless you test into their current grade level, you won’t be graduating at the same time as them.”

“I’m being held back?” You would never hear the end of this from Hyunjin.

“No, you’re starting alarmingly late,” he said. “You can choose. We can give you some time to prepare for the grade assessment, or we can do what I initially planned–“

“I’m not going to school here.”

“I was planning to get you homeschooled.” Minho got up to flick your forehead. “You can work at your or the teacher’s pace–I know someone who could help. That way, school won’t keep you from seeing your friends.”

Chan tilted his head. That sounded like a solid plan he had no part in concocting, but if Minho thought it was a viable idea, he wouldn’t chime in and possibly make things worse. Looking at his soulmate, he gradually relaxed into the bed as he watched you chat with Minho about future plans.

A soft sigh left his chest; he hoped Minho wouldn’t overwork himself to accommodate your needs. You deserved a regular life from now on, but with the staining guilt that he hasn’t been of any help in the past, Minho might overexert himself to make everything perfect from today on.

“Oh, can I get some strings to teleport back?”

Minho looked at the empty cardboard in your hand. He shrugged. “Sure, you can buy them at the store like everybody else,” he said. “I know you have money.”

“My family owns these strings,” you sneered, then you pulled back in shock at the realization that the family business was still running.

“Your family, not you. There’s a pharmacy downstairs. They should sell some,” he retorted with a grin. “Remember, your friends are probably in school right now. Also, don’t spawn in the middle of a hospital!”

Chan laughed when you bluffed a punching motion at Minho, who stood stoically on his spot. When you slammed the door behind you, Minho held back a scoff of disapproval and rolled his eyes. He turned around to give Chan a tight-lipped smile as he stumbled to the bed and, once again, plopped down on the edge. He could sit on it more comfortably now that you were gone, his back arched as he met eyes with Chan.

“You know I almost snapped our string to save you,” Minho mentioned.

Chan raised his brows. “I’m surprised you didn’t.”

“[Name] talked me out of it,” Minho replied softly.

There was a moment of silence. Minho thought about you promising him before that Chan would wake up and when you urged him not to break his soulmate string to save him. He felt he should have been there for you when yours had to meet a tragic fate. He stared at the ceiling light.

For some reason, he wondered how Jisung was holding up.

Jisung almost kicked the school gate for his frustration, but he was too tired to do so.

This day has been the worst. There could not be even more little tragedies hidden between everything that happened. He thought he had some choice in that. All he needed to do was to stop caring, and he could begin attending school. He was already halfway there, anyway.

After returning home from the hospital to give his parents a thorough explanation of why he never returned home, he barely dragged himself out the door to go to school again. He kept his hair disheveled, and his breath probably stinks of the traumatic near-death situation.

Standing at the back of the bus line, he rubbed his eyes drowsily and didn't try to open them any bigger than his defeated state. He stood before the closed gate, indicating he was late to school. He stared up at the climbable pattern and sighed. He could not be bothered. He would rather die.

“Hey! Do you need a hand?”

Your voice rang terribly in his ears. He thought he was hallucinating but instinctively turned his head to where your voice came from anyway. You stood a few steps behind him, grimly glancing at his messy uniform. Jisung's heart hammered in his chest, its palpitations so grandiose he could feel his whole body shake.

This felt familiar, hauntingly familiar.

The sun's rays slowly began to drown atop your face, like he remembered. They left spots of faux freckles on your cheeks, brightening the judgemental soul in your eyes, like he remembered. The wind glided across you two, artificially knocking the breath out of Jisung's lungs, like he remembered.

You were pretty as could be, like he remembered.

“Oh, Jisung! Seungmin’s friend, who he never told me about,” you exclaimed in recognition, with the last part muttered low for self-satisfaction. Then, you looked behind him at the school gate and frowned. “Are you late?”

"I–" he looked behind him at the gate, then back at you– "Yeah, I was gonna climb it."

“Oh, yeah, I’ve seen a boy do that before,” you huffed out a smile of acknowledgment. Clapping your hands, you offered, “I can help you.”

He stood baffled, still hung up on what you said because he thought, just for a split second, you may be subconsciously talking about him. Bringing his crooked hand to his face, he waved with a half-hearted smile. “It’s okay. I don’t want to trouble you.”

“It’s no trouble! I got you,” you insisted as you walked forward. “Turn around.”

Jisung widened his eyes. You seemed more cheerful than when he first met you. Perhaps it was because your uncle was finally awake. That was good news to him. “It’s fine, really.”

“I am going to hoist you up, and you are going to climb over the fence, okay?” you said, linking and twisting the red string in your hands that you had shoved in your pocket after you bought them at the hospital pharmacy.

Jisung shook his head at your blatant ignorance. You let him go the first time! He had to double back and ask for your help as you left!

This was beginning to turn from feeling nostalgic to uncanny. He would tell you to keep watch of your strength, but he wanted to know if you would throw him way over the fence like last time. He turned around and let you put your hands over his waist, feeling you close to his back. He hovered his hands over yours; he couldn’t hold it, not even for support.

“On three!” You gave his waist a firmer grip once as a signal to prepare before you moved your legs into a better stance. “One, two, three!”

You moved your arms up while Jisung jumped to aid your action. Jisung groaned when his body lunged forward over the gate, weightless and lacing any clear momentum. He braced himself before falling onto the dusty floor.

It was as he expected. He rolled his eyes once the pain began spreading over his muscles—uncanny but hilarious that you made the same mistake twice.

Leaning forward, you gave Jisung a concerned scan before shouting, “I’m sorry! I miscalculated!”

“Grossly!” he called back as he stood up and wiped his uniform of its dirt.

You kept silent as you observed him, your hands gripping the gate poles. When his attention returned to you, you smiled apologetically. He received your smile with a brief glance at the floor, trying to hold back the souring sensation in his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” you faintly beamed. “Can you tell Seungmin to wait for me after school? I have something important to tell him!”

Jisung raised his brows. He wondered what it was? Seungmin already knew your uncle was awake, which would eliminate that as important news.

Plans for the future? He looked at you, his fingers playing with each other. He wanted to know, too. He wanted to know if you've got a home and someone who could care for you better than he ever could. He wanted to meet your uncle and see the man you've put effort into saving. He wanted to know where you'd be going, even if it didn't concern him anymore.

There were so many things to know about you. The idea made him remember what Hyunjin said at the hospital—that he could still get to know you and make you fall in love with him.

He didn’t want to hear it back then, but accessing the situation now, it was clear that this was precisely the beginning of when you two first met each other: him being late to school and you helping him over the gate. Maybe everything would be the same. All he had to do was start over.

“Actually,” he started hesitantly, still unsure why he thought to say this. He only knew that he wanted to know and love you still. “We’re planning to go to a cat café later. Do you want to come with me?”

You paused—the cat café! You almost forgot about that. Felix was the one who suggested the place a while back, but you guys never made it there! Then there was Minho’s unannounced appearance before you stopped talking to everyone for a few months! You tilted your head and squinted your eyes. You forgot why you stopped talking to everyone, though. The more you thought about it, the more things were not adding up. You have meant to chat with Seungmin about it, preferably without any stranger’s presence.

“I don’t think I–“ You licked your lower lip at the ringing in your ear when you watched Jisung. Something about his face continued to infatuate you. You felt like you loved him a little. “You know what? Sure, let’s hang out.”

“Okay.” He smiled as he reached his hand over the gate. “My name is Han Jisung. What about you?”

“My name is [Name].” You giggled, reaching out to shake his hand, only to feel a light electrocution at your arm.

You snatched your hand away from his with a surprised yelp. When you looked down at its source, your red string glowed.

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