You were drifting in and out of consciousness. Darkness filling your vision as you struggled to make sense of your surroundings. You knew you were lying on the ground because you could feel the sharp rocks and roots sticking in your back which should have been painful, but slowly a pleasant numbness was taking over your body chasing the pain away. Something heavy was pressing you down, almost suffocating you, but you couldn’t find the source of it even though your eyes kept searching.

You couldn’t stop blinking, eyes mindlessly darting in all directions, focusing on random elements of your surroundings – a leaf, a bird, a dark cloud, and then suddenly a pair of hollow black eyes followed by sharp teeth dripping with red revealed by a grotesque smile. You had only a fraction of a second to gasp before you became acutely aware of the searing pain in your chest as long jagged claws were retracted from the now open wound there.

There was blood everywhere, dripping, gushing out of your body, choking you. Suddenly the owner of the malicious eyes was flung off you and the heaviness pressing you down disappeared, leaving you to gasp for air but only to end up jerking in agony, choking on your own blood that was filling your lungs.

And then he appeared next to you.

Junmyeon.

He was looking down at you, his eyes the familiar pale grey but this time instead of the usual tenderness they were filled with obvious pain and regret. He was kneeling next to your body, carefully hovering, as if his very presence would cause you pain.

He was talking, you could see his lips moving but you couldn’t hear anything, incessant ringing in your ears muffling his voice. You wanted to say something back, you wanted to say sorry, you wanted