“Red eyes, he had red eyes, Sica. I’m gonna teach that little bastard. Who does he thinks he is? Messing around with me,” Yuri growled under his breath with a confused Jessica seated next to him.

It didn’t make sense. Why would Sooyoung attack Yuri? Choi Sooyoung? Jessica refused to believe it, but Yuri wouldn’t have it any other way. He kept on insisting that Sooyoung was a demon, or worse, ‘the devil’, and had planned an attack on his on purpose. Jessica found all that difficult to believe, of course, knowing that the warm and docile Sooyoung would hardly hurt a soul. But something else was bothering Jessica’s mind.

“His eyes were red. No, no exactly red. It had tinges of black around the irises.”

Red…red. Why was Sooyoung angry? What had angered the boy so much that he attacked Yuri? Jessica was curious as to that as well, but had not seen Sooyoung for the entire day. Her heart had been leaping when she entered the classroom, hoping to see the familiar windswept, chestnut hair with intense brown eyes, but was only disappointed when she found the seat next to hers empty.

~~

Sooyoung was watching from afar, his vision minimising by the second as his energy diminished. Most of what was left had been sapped away from the fight, leaving him weak and exhausted. He observed Jessica through the transparent windows, watching from the nearest rooftop, which was across the school, a road away. He noticed how her face fell when she stepped into the classroom, her eyes darting to his empty seat as she slumped on her own seat, propping her head with her elbows on her desk. He noticed the disappointment on her face as the teacher went through the attendance, and how miserable she looked when the lesson began. Or was it just a hallucination? Sooyoung could not tell for sure; his eyesight was failing him and he could only hear a pounding in his ears. His vision was tinged a dangerous red, but it bothered him the least. He had pasted some pain-relief patch on his sore rib and had gauze under his chin where the skin had torn after Yuri had punched him. He looked shaken at the very least, but that didn’t stop him from spying on Jessica.

“Jessica,” he played with her name on his lips, enjoying the sweet familiarity of it.

Strangely, he felt his heart ache when he saw Yuri standing at the doorway waiting for her as the bell rang for lunch. It felt as if it was on the edge of shattering as he watched Yuri take Jessica in his arms, enveloping her in his warmth that should’ve been his. Sooyoung let out a snarl that shook his bones and rumbled in his chest. It was the primal snarl of an animal protecting its mate. And that was silly, seeing that Sooyoung was unable to do anything about it. Strangely, Jessica’s eyes lit up in curious amusement and scanned her surroundings. She seemed to have heard the low snarl despite being a good kilometre from him. She squirmed and wriggled out of Yuri’s embrace, and took his hand instead, swinging them back and forth childishly in a form of compensation. Yuri smiled at Jessica, and gladly obliged, hands swinging as they walked to the cafeteria, the crowd creating an aisle for them as the school heartthrob passed through.

“What’s this I’m feeling? Why can’t I talk to her like how I can talk with other females? Why is she special? Why do I lose sight of myself when I’m with her? It’s like I…like I’ve never made the mistake at all, it’s like what Soo-Yeon made me feel,” Sooyoung muttered to himself, his head bowed, watching the cars and the crowd of people below him.

~~

“Babe, aren’t you eating today?” Yuri took another hearty bite out of the burger, staring at Jessica with concern.

Jessica was just watching Yuri eat, not in the mood to even touch her food. Tiffany was seated next to them, playing with hers. She was fiddling with her sandwich; taking it apart and putting it back together as she stared blankly at it. Yuri eyed the both of them with a confused expression.

“Is something wrong with the two of you?” he asked slowly.

Tiffany raised her eyebrows, and Jessica looked at Yuri strangely.

“No,” they intoned together.

“Okay,” Yuri shrugged.

~~

“That ,” Sooyoung spat. “If that were me, I would try to convince her to eat. She’d be starving for the entire day and Yuri would just shrug and continue to eat his own food?”

Carefully, he eased himself off the ledge and climbed back onto the rooftop, his feet touching the solid concrete. Sooyoung wondered where his brother was now, and what he must have been doing. Faintly, he remembered the day he parted from his brother.

“I’m leaving. You can follow me, or lead yourself into damnation,” Sooyoung’s brother snarled, extending a hand out for Sooyoung to grab, but he only looked at it.

“It sounds as if you have given up on all your chances of Redemption,” Sooyoung remarked.

His brother’s eyes flashed the deepest red Sooyoung had ever seen. It flared for a while, before his doused the flames.

“Forget Redemption. It will never come,” his brother simply said as he tucked his hands in his pockets, away from the biting cold weather and walked off, leaving Sooyoung staring after him.

Sooyoung had to hold onto the ledge to keep himself from falling or staggering unstably. Slowly moving towards the open door, he found himself full, not with food, but with the revelation that Jessica Jung was actually disappointed that he wasn’t there.

Readers’ Note:

It’s like watching your boyfriend/girlfriend go out with someone else. It’s that feeling. But it’s worse for Sooyoung’s case because he has to suffer in the silence. How much longer do you think I’ll make him wait? ;)

Thank you for reading!

Yours Faithfully
Jazzign