Their new apartment rented just a week ago, awakens them with the terrible shrills of pigeons outside of their bedroom window. Sungjong’s the first to open his eyes and squint at the impact of the brightness. He turns his head to the side to look at the bed bound across on the other wall, where a petite girl snuggles under the warmth of her blankets.

The brother groggily stands up and stretches from lying so long, brushing the strands of hair covering his sister’s face. He’s always been the one to admire her the most, always the one to want to shield her from the harms of reality. But she’s so independent, ever since she was just a small little girl, and Sungjong doesn’t have the privilege to hide her from the dangers of life, especially when menace swarms the air everywhere they go.

He gently shakes her shoulder to wake her up and Nayoung grumbles incoherently while Sungjong goes straight to his morning preparations.

The girl’s the next to flutter her eyes open, but instead of taking in the light, she soaks in another one of her nightmares. This has been going on for months now and when the nightmares were still fresh to her, Nayoung had always woken up screaming. She didn’t know what to do at the time, constantly paranoid that once she shuts her eyes, she’ll be ranged into another bad dream.

The horrors always came back with a single pattern, one dream repeating over and over and over again,

Today like any other, she had received the pleasure of drowning. But what was always the strangest thing was that she wasn’t drowning from the outside, but from the inside. And it wasn’t like she was swimming at all! No, she was drowning internally. And the gruesome part was that she wasn’t out of breath from water, she was choking to death with her own damn blood.

The taste of the sour bitterness conquers her senses and even with how use she is to waking up in the middle of the night with sweat pounding against her forehead, she can’t make of it. About why is it always the same old nightmare that keeps perturbing her mind. Why does it keep on happening the same order every time? What’s so important about it?

First she’d busy herself with something along the lines of cleaning the house, shopping around, or maybe even like strolling around the park. And it’d seem like an ordinary dream, until somehow, no matter how hard she resists, she ends up going to an area where she’s completely alone. Nayoung had tried over a millions times to stop the nightmare before it happens, one time being where she even hugged her brother tightly around his waist in ambition that she wouldn’t depart from anyone, tangling her body with his. But no matter how hard she tries, it’s hopeless.

One way or another, the final results are the same.

She’s alone, and her blood’s creeping up to suffocate her.

The abhorrence is too much to take and she suppresses her thoughts by going to the restroom to brush her teeth. Moments later, Nayoung invites herself to the kitchen where her brother’s fixing breakfast. The smell of pancakes tingles her nose in satisfaction and she her lips in hunger.

Once they were able to break in a few months of immortality, they figured that the two were bound to learn how to cook. With the crisis of earning money and all, it’s common sense to pace their cash income and intake, since they’re going to live for quite a while— ‘a while’ being a huge understatement.

"We need to go grocery shopping." Nayoung points out, scanning the empty food shelves and drawers. "I can’t eat pancakes without honey."

"There’s a supermarket one or two blocks from here."

"Oh is there? I’ll bring back some stuff then."

"Hurry back. School’s gunna start soon."

It’s a bit pass Autumn, counting that the sky’s a firmament of a loose powdery gray. It somehow reminds Nayoung of mashed potatoes from her stay in the U.S., with the clouds all swirled up between mushy and fluffy. By now the doves and pigeons are fully awake, flying in circles around territory marked as their own. The girl turns away at the spots where they perch above, in case they poop on her.

A good amount of people cruise around the side walks, mostly citizens above middle age, and Nayoung can only avoid their stares when she crosses paths with them on the streets. She blows a stretching yawn from the stuffy aura of the lazy morning and catches sight of the market her brother was talking about.

It’s a surprise that the store’s open so early in the day, where the workers are already stacking new merchandise and eating breakfast during their shifts. The first thing Nayoung does is read the sign labeling jams, which is in row nine, and inspects her watch that signals it’s time to go. She finds an open register and to her deep astonishment, finds one of Sungyeol’s friends.

"Myungsoo?" The tattered girl comes a little closer to get a better look, doubting if she’s seeing what she’s seeing.

Her consternation’s answered when the man she calls raises his head in perplexity. For a second, he blinks at her, unable to make of this situation.

And while he’s at a state of confusion, questions dumbfound Nayoung’s head. A wonderment that presses against her fragile aged mind.

"You work here?"

The choppy haired teen points at his work uniform, informing the obvious to her. The ambience becomes horribly inconvenient and thorny, and it turns worse when he’s the only cashier open. And so she endeavors to make the air less tense with a smile, pretending to cough when she hands him the pancake condiments. Myungsoo checks them out and when she hands him the money due, she gasps when he grabs her wrist. As she’s about to pull her hand away, his eyes reaches her own and the only thing Nayoung can hear is her breathing.

From the moment their hands touched, it felt like nothing existed but them, and yet even though Nayoung wishes for that feeling to stay, even just for a second, the idea is more than surreal. And when she grasps on what he’s trying to say, the girl nods her head in mutual agreement. His secret is safe with her. Because no matter if she was just born right now or if she’s been living for a million years, the pain in his eyes is real. And for the first time in more than twenty years, the hurt in there overwhelms her indestructible heart and she can’t help but permit the tears she’s been holding on for so long to shatter down.

The photography classroom is plenty hectic for such a calming topic, with the teacher gluing his eyes on the computer screen and the students chatting amongst themselves. Dongwoo and Sungyeol are the only ones in the group taking this class, whom Sungjong and Nayoung found out are the weirdest out of everyone. The instructor, Mr. Chen, introduces them to the entire class and he explains that in his opinion of teaching, he always breaks down the first week of school with a free schedule so the scholars will get the chance to know one another better (Sungyeol had told them he was a huge pushover).

The desks are divided in groups of fours, two desks on each side facing one another. Sungyeol had somehow hassled the previous students sitting with him and Dongwoo to move aside for the siblings and it made Sungjong feel bad, but the persistence in the chipmunk cheeks is strong.

"So where are you guys from?" The sharp haired one asks. Nayoung is dazed by his incredible smile overflowing with a certain quality that makes his happiness contagious.

It makes her want to give him a hug.

"From one of the farther cities in Korea, but we’ve traveled almost everywhere. We just came here from California actually." Sungjong replies in support with a nodding sister.

"Oh wow, that’s pretty cool! I’ve always wanted to roam around the world. And that explains it!"

The two siblings tilt their heads in confusion of what he’s just said. "Explains what?"

"Why you guys are so good looking!" Sungyeol bursts aloud, almost a bit too loud for the other classmates to glance at them.

Sungjong’s the first, as always, to respond with such an awkwardly random comment by laughing his socks out. He covers his mouth later on when he realizes that his outburst is gaining the attention of the people around them. However his reaction contrasts with Nayoung’s bewildered face, pondering if people really do think she’s pretty. Of course she knew that her brother has a face of an angel, what with his mixture of feminine and manliness, it’s hard to resist him. But is she?

"Thanks?…You guys are good looking too…" Oh how awkward this is for Nayoung to compliment them.

And with that said, the conversation gets rolling and before the two realize it, school hasn’t been passing by this fast since a very long time.