xxxviii. Merciless Strangers & Long-Forgotten Friends

He had changed.

While she wasn’t there, while she wasn’t paying attention, while she was plotting his very downfall, he had changed. She didn’t know how or why, she simply knew he did. Whether this was good or bad for the deal she had just so pompously proposed to him, as per her usual character, she couldn’t be quite sure yet.

“I agree.”

Just like she knew he would.

Woo Jiho was a fool.

A beast in human skin who knew nothing better than his innate instincts. His primitive urges. His natural reactions. She knew how to catch such a beast, though even she doubted the chances of her success within the limitations she had set. Accordingly, as he agreed to, his comrade who went by the name of Jang Dongwoo and the hunters under her command backed off, leaving them to settle their quarrel themselves.

A one versus one fight.

No interruptions. No reinforcements. No backing out now that he’s agreed to the circumstances.

And she, Jeon Hyosung, the one who proposed such a match, felt undaunted in the face of a creature whose strength was ten times her own, whose speed was so fast she would not be able to catch sight of him, and whose thoughts were reckless and impulsive. She never asked herself why. She never wondered where such confidence came from. She never questioned it until he did first.

Until Woo Jiho, affectionately nicknamed Zico, started their duel off with, “Why do you hunt us anyway?”

“Is it important why?” A response on her part in order to sway him from his point – an effect it failed to cause.

“Considering I might die for whatever reason or sense of justice drives your urge to kill me, I’d say it’s pretty ing important.”

She shrugged, not looking to waste anymore time, “Because it’s what we do.”

And it’s what she attempted to do right then and there. Pulling her gun from her waste, she pulled the trigger, aimed straight at his head. She hadn’t intended it to hit, it was more of a warning shot, a display of what she could do to him, but she also hadn’t intended for him to come sprinting towards her, swaying the path of her bullet by grasping onto her wrist and raising it upwards, high above both of their heads. Her bullet sailed into the air, anything but threatening.

“Using a gun doesn’t seem all too fair, don’t you think?” He asked, his fingers tightening around her wrist, the pressure bone breaking should he choose it to be. She dropped her gun, she let it simply fall out of her grip without a single ounce of resistance, as though he got through to her. As though he’d ever get through to her.

Showing off her ambidextrous ability to handle tools of his destruction in the hand of her choosing, her gun landed in her left hand, her fingers spinning it once before it settled in her palm and with the tug of a tiny muscle, she sent another bullet flying towards him. At a much closer range, with the much more broad target of his stomach, she intended for the bullet to hit.

Much to her dissatisfaction, it didn’t.

He had swerved around her, using his own, nature-given right to supernatural speed, an ability that far outweighed her use of a gun in “unfairness,” in her eyes. He caught her in a headlock, her right hand she had managed to lift to her neck milliseconds before his arm wrapped around her neck the only thing stopping him from cutting off her air supply. Whispering roughly, his hot breath flushing her ear, he said through a laugh, “You almost gave me a second mouth with that one, Hyosung.”

“The gun stays.” She managed back, the spikes in her intonation increasing at the middle of each word as her body wretched in his tight grip. To reaffirm her proclamation, she shot downwards, her left hand still free. The bullet lodged itself into the ground not even an inch from his boot-covered toes. It would have hit his pinky toe had he not jerked his foot backwards just in time. However, this caused his grip on her to loosen enough for her right hand to make room within his hold for her head to slip through and her body to follow.

She elbowed him with her left hand as she spun away from him, putting distance between them once more.

And after steadying herself, she her bottom lip, wetting it before, not a single laugh leaving her, providing him with the reason he never asked for, “We all have to play the hand we’re dealt, whether it’s a flush,” she raised her gun again, “or a bust.”

She shot twice, missing both times as he went ducking downwards.

“I suppose that’s fair then.” He smiled, bum rushing her all at once, his frame low as he wrapped his arms around her waist, looking to tackle her to the ground. Looking, attempting, and failing, as she lifted and wrapped her legs around his waist as well, tugging him to the right and shifting their positions as he fell first instead, landing on the ground with her straddling atop him.

But as soon as she leveled her gun to the space between his thick, black brows, his hand shot out, blocking her shot and causing her bullet to curve once more, burying harmlessly into the dirt beside his ear. She remained determined even as he knocked the gun from her hand and it went flinging to her right, immediately moving to get off of him in order to retrieve it – knowing she didn’t stand a chance against him if she didn’t. He overpowered her instantly before she could move an inch, unintentionally causing her to go falling closer to where the gun had slid, sparkling silver in a cushion of green.

She wrapped her hands around the grip and spun around, moving to a squat, not expecting him to be right there, on his knees, right behind her, his face so close, his breath so hot, and his expression a blur as she shot twice – the second of which made only an ill-boding click as she pulled the trigger. Her body had reacted on reflex, on her unexpected surprise. He wasn’t fast enough to counteract against her impulsive fear of his closeness, his hand right over the barrel as the bullet went exploding from her gun, piercing the skin of his palm all the way to the bone.

He staggered back onto his ankles, the pain immediate, his fingers pulsating, tensing and relaxing on their own, shockwaves traveling from one to the next. His bones felt like they had were being hit with a hammer over and over again, like a xylophone a child couldn’t get enough of. He got lost in it, the cacophonic sound ringing against his ears.

And she took advantage of it, standing up fully, knowing his friend who had yelled for him multiple times, his voice drowned out by the sound of impending war, was too busy preserving his own life to help him. No matter how much he struggled against the hunters who came down upon him, wave upon wave of guns and blades and fists, Dongwoo couldn’t help Zico.

Zico, whose life was now in Hyosung’s hands as she steadied the barrel of her pistol at the center of his forehead, keeping him from moving any higher from his kneeling position. With a flick of her head to the right, her bangs shifted out of her eyes. She reveled in it for a moment, biting down onto her bottom lip. She relished in her victory over him, her breathing coming to a settled pace with time. Time she spent staring down at him, her expression unreadable, her finger on the trigger.

“Any last words?” She asked, her voice a mere whisper.

“Not particularly.” He responded, fingers pressed into the dirt beneath his feet, the look in his eyes, wet and dewy, reflecting her image back at her, gun poised and ready to fire, unwavering.

He had changed.

He was no longer scared of her. He was no longer lost in the entire rush of excitement that came with this fight – with all fights. He was in control and she could see that now. He was sure of himself. He was sure she wouldn’t shoot him.

Not because she didn’t want to. Not because she had somehow fallen for his supernatural charm, bewitched by his inhuman good looks, committing the very act of forbidden love in all of its cliché, infamous, and melodramatic tendencies.

Because she couldn’t.

Because, as her finger pulled back on the trigger, as that audible click snapped against her eardrums, they were still there. She was still standing, and he was still kneeling before her.

She couldn’t kill him because, to be frank, she was out of bullets.

He knew. She knew he knew. So, she couldn’t hold back from laughing out loud as she immediately went falling backwards, landing upon the ground as he pinned her down, having won this fight as soon as she sent that last, seventh, impulsive bullet flying through his hand. As soon as that empty click the whole world must have heard sounded off as she tried to shoot an eighth and failed, his victory had been determined. And that same hand was now tightened around her neck, filling her lungs with the smell of iron before forcefully pressing down onto her windpipe. 

Choking her.

Killing her.

And she wondered briefly what she looked like in those eyes of his now; involuntary, salty tears blurring her vision.

Jeon Hyosung was a fool.

Considering the sudden turn of the tide, the sheer amount of hunters that now ran at them through the trees, Myungsoo considered Kyung’s odd, and slightly narcissistic, sense of humor a blessing. To laugh in the face of death was the highest form of bravery. Or, perhaps, it was the highest form of stupidity. Either way, he was thankful Kyung was there to lighten the mood. The more he focused on smiling, the less he focused on the physical pain his body endured as he strode on, a third bullet landing in his right leg as he failed to dodge it like he had done with almost all others.

In this situation which put him at Kyung’s and Woohyun’s side, Myungsoo was their tank.

Their very own bullet shield as they tore through hoard upon hoard of hunters wielding knifes, daggers, swords, axes, and he could even have sworn he saw a mace whipping its way through the air towards Woohyun not long ago.

This is what he trained for with Zico and Sungjong hour upon hour upon hour. He wasn’t as fast as the latter, but his ability to anticipate the moves of others made up for the speed he lacked. Of course plastic bullets didn’t hit as hard or fly as fast as those of the silver, Wolfsbane-laced variety. Still, it was training he was grateful for as he swerved around the extended arm of a pistol-wielding hunter, landing a crippling blow of a high knee to his gut that sent him falling over, effectively knocked unconscious. And so, Myungsoo continued on to the next, and the next, and the next.

And Kyung’s jokes were there, one after the other, “We work so well together,” he paused as he peeled the body of a hunter off of his extended fist, his deadly right hook the last thing Myungsoo wanted to be on the receiving end of, “we should come up with a name for this little trio of ours.”

“We’ll make Minhyuk jealous!” Woohyun yelled from somewhere to the right, bodies littered around a hunched over figure all that Myungsoo could make out of his peripheral.

Kyung’s signature laugh, uneven and untempered, filled the air, “All the better!”

“Any ideas?” Myungsoo questioned with a guttural yell, dropping one hunter after the other, his image a blur amidst the dark greens and the darker browns of the forest. He was up for any kind of distraction, no matter the effect it would cause in the long run.

Kyung hummed out loud, thinking about it. Woohyun hummed along with him, even if he wasn’t thinking about anything at all. Myungsoo listened to the two, thinking about everything and anything else.

And, once more, Myungsoo reminded himself to thank Kyung later on, when this was all over.

Because he delivered light-hearted laughter again, his conclusion absurd even for him, and yet effective in its purpose nevertheless, both Woohyun and Myungsoo smiling at Kyung's next words of, “How about The Three Cabawereros?”

“And here I thought the Springfield werewolves would be doing anything but fooling around like a group of your average schoolboys,” a woman’s voice spoke from behind where Kyung stood. Tall and poised, with legs that seemingly stretched on forever, with brown combat boots crushing down into the ground at one end and a disheveled head of bronze at the other, she appeared with the charisma of a warrior princess, as though she were the sole heroine of the current tale being told.

And with a grin splayed across her face, she said, “But you three’ve got moxy, and if there’s one thing that Choi Sooyoung likes, its boys who’ve got the balls to prove they’re men.”

And in that instant, the predators of the day became the prey, blurs of different colored hides stampeding past her with the unrelenting force of a tsunami. 

It all happened so fast. One second, you were being led towards the others by B-bomb, the next, you came to a stalling halt as hunters blocked the path before the two of you, the next, they had you surrounded, and the next had you running. It didn’t make any sense.

The entire fight seemed so static up until this point, so unchanging, the hunters’ numbers increasing in density the further north you went into the forest away from the center of Springfield. But, now, they were charging forward. They were seemingly making an effort to penetrate the forest as deeply as they could, to cover as much ground as possible, like a flock of birds flying south. Like they themselves were running from something.

A hypothesis you didn’t have time to reflect upon as you rounded back around towards where you last saw B-bomb, whom you had lost in the final second previously described. You had deduced it the most logical plan to undertake, as the last thing the hunters would expect you to do is run off only to run back towards the epicenter of the ensuing chaos. Besides, on the way, you could lose the hunters that were on your tail since you first separated from B-bomb – who had the same idea as you as he went fleeing in the opposite direction as soon as he realized the hunters had outflanked the two of you. 

It was a plan that was working, for the most part, had it not been for one hunter: who happened to catch you, by some unlucky twisted of fate, as you rounded back, and was now hot on your trail as you ran onward. To say you were tired would have been a vast understatement. To say you were more focused in the face of this, more determined and stubborn, would be a lie.

You were only human.

A human who made a stupid mistake as you tripped at the worst possible time, a result of the rock the male hunter who was tailing you chucked towards your legs. The sharp edged stone impacted against the back of your knee, causing a shockwave of pain to overcome you. Thus, you tripped. Thusly, said quick-thinking hunter, speaking some language you didn’t know, closed in on you.

You willed you legs to put off the pain, the weary tiredness, for just a bit longer as you stumbled forward, pushing yourself into a stand, prepping your body to run before you were even in a viable position to do so. Taking advantage of your slight mishap, not willing to let you get away a second time, the man reached out, grabbing onto anything he could, holding you down with whatever he could get his hands on. And, for the second time, it seemed Luck was anything but on your side.

The nameless hunter successfully grabbed a fistful of your hair.

Retching it backwards, he dragged your head towards him, hyperextending your neck backwards as you let out an unearthly yell of pain. He spoke again, more words you didn’t understand. You fought against his grip, feeling as though he’d rip your very scalp off if he tugged any harder. His words were garbled nonsense. The entire situation seemed to reach above the realm of reality as he subjected you to a seemingly unending cycle of agony. He’d pull this way and that, upwards and downwards, sideways and around, and all you could feel was the pulsating of your skin that felt like it was being systemically burned away bit by bit.

He made it real, however, as he pulled a shiny object from his waist with his free hand. A knife, long and clean, directed and held at the base of your throat.

More words came flowing from his lips as you couldn’t manage a single one from your own, your throat cowering in fear at the flash of his knife beneath the light of the moon.

But, you didn’t think this was it. You didn’t even ponder upon your will, what would happen to your car, would you give it to rebellious Ricky or responsible Niel, would your mother want to keep it to remember you by, or perhaps Zico would appreciate the gesture more? You didn’t even spare a single brain cell to thinking of how your friends would take the news of your death or how this entire series of events would play out in the anything-but-normal town of Springfield without you because, frankly, you didn’t think you’d die at all.

You didn’t believe yourself to be immortal.

You didn’t believe yourself to be anything but human.

You simply believed in yourself. Your tenacity. Your stubbornness. Your determination.

You believed you could get out of this, pulling your sleeves down as you managed a throaty, “I’ll talk, just put the knife away.”

And the hunter himself both understood and believed the first part of your sentence and pieces of the second. He must have, as the knife lowered from your throat, just slightly, and you thought it was now or never. Now or never as you reached upwards, risking a cut across your palm, receiving not a single mark due to the thick sleeves of your jacket you had tugged down seconds before, and grabbed a hold of the knife by its sharp end. You twisted it away from your neck, shifting left under and out of its range as you tugged your head forward, attempting to wrangle your hair free from his hold. He reacted volatilely and impulsively, swinging his knife down even if your immediate person was no longer under his blade. He lost his hold on it as a result, sending it falling to the ground and his body propelling backwards, though he unintentionally accomplished something else.

Striking down just above where his fingers tangled themselves into a knot in your hair, his knife cleanly removed him from you and two thirds of your hair from your head.

You could feel the blade shredding through each strand, one by one, and the sound of a piece of paper ripping in two filled your ears. Within seconds, a short time period that felt like an eternity, your head went springing forward, detached from the grip of the enraged hunter, separated from the years of your past. Three, long, trying years of ponytails and long braids. Of experimental up-dos and careful management of t dead ends monthly. All gone within a matter of seconds.

Your long locks, scattered across the forest floor.

A sight that left you stunned momentarily, the feeling of loss hitting you instantly.

And then, the feeling of frustration, as you were still caught within the metaphorical grasp of the hunter before you.

You spun around, picking up and baring his knife defensively in front of you as though it were your own, your heart aching for the heaviness that you no longer felt weighing down on your shoulders as your mind focused on the logical. The here and the now. Three years nothing in the face of the threat of immediate termination.

He went running towards you, fingers flinging away and feet kicking up the remains of your past, one calloused hand reaching out for your own, attempting to wretch his blade from you by force, clearly underestimating you. So, you sent, with a single flick of your wrist and a swipe of your arm as he got close, a gaping cut across his cheek. Breathing roughly, you planted your feet firmly into the ground as he stumbled back, his nerves screaming out in agony at the incision. You watched him with steady eyes, not giving an inch. Hoping this new scar upon him would be enough cause for him to back off on his own. Knowing it wouldn’t be. Hating the fact that until his heart ceased to beat and his lungs ceased to breath, he’d dauntingly run towards your blade-wielding hand.

If it came down to it, to killing him, you’d run.

You wouldn’t kill him. You couldn’t kill him. You neither knew his name nor his context. He didn’t deserve to die at the hands of a stranger. You should never be pushed to take up the title of murderer, no matter how much you knew, without a doubt, that you were stronger than him.

In this moment, this very moment as the world seemed to slow and you saw his expression change from one of shock to anger once more, you were stronger than him.

Instinctively stronger. Emotionally a mess. Logically a stronghold.

You were only a human who made mistakes and lived with regrets.

Yet, at this very moment, that didn’t seem to matter.

You readied yourself to dodge whatever he had in store next, hearing yells for him that didn’t sound as far off as you’d like. He may have been faster than the others, but, in his current state, if you ran, the chances you’d get away were the farthest from slim. So, as you prepared to do just that, to run, to give yourself up to chance for the umpteenth time, albeit good chances, you couldn’t have been more thankful for who showed up then.

Like your very own guardian angel, he swooped in from the tree line above, knocking out the injured hunter with a knee to the back of his neck. Your angel was at your side in an instant, his large hands cradling your dirt-smeared face. And as you stared into his tired eyes that reflected in them the frayed ends of your less-than-tidy, new haircut, he began with, “I’m too late,” and while sweeping his thumbs across your cheeks, he smiled despairingly, “I’m sorry I couldn’t save it, Jojo.”

“Do it,” Hyosung croaked out, Zico’s hand wrapped firmly around , frozen as black, manicured fingernails, chipped and worn, struggled to wrap themselves around his own. To grab ahold of him, weakly and pitifully. Her voice was but a begging plea as she looked up at him through brown eyes smeared by thick black eyeliner and thicker golden flakes of eye shadow, urging him, “End this.”

For some reason, it was as though she was asking him to kill her. To end it because she couldn’t with her own two, trembling hands. Because this was the hand she was dealt, and she wasn’t allowed to fold no matter the stakes involved. No matter how much she enjoyed it, relished in it, it’s as though she knew, her chapped, pink lips smiling as he tightened his hold. It’s as though she knew that, one day, and it didn’t matter when, it would have to end.

That, otherwise, it was endless. For the hunters, it was a constant battle without a single moment to catch their breaths. Always on the hunt. Always watching their backs. Always anxiously waiting for the day when their prey would catch them off guard and put an end to it all. For some reason, he couldn’t see it any other way.

For some reason, he didn’t want to kill her anymore.

A desire that rose not out of the spite to go against her request, but out of empathy.

Because, at one point, at many low points in his life, he had wished that someone would come down and smite him.

That they’d blot him out of the universe and erase him forever.

That he could simply die right then and there.

Such thoughts hadn’t occurred to him within the past seven months or so. But, that doesn’t mean he forgot what it felt like to drink Wolfsbane with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. To listen to a politician who cared neither for what he was nor what he wanted. Since the old man’s death, the man who first brought him to Springfield with the others, Sunggyu’s very own grandfather, he was adrift without a paddle. And he was sharing his pitiful dingy with six others.

Thanks to Sunggyu, to his nagging yet supportive ways, him and his pack were now sailing across the seven seas with ease. No matter how many icebergs they saw in the distance, no matter how many near misses they had, he hasn’t even once entertained the idea of a quick and easy death, of an immediate erasure.

Of an end.

Of forcing someone else do it for him, because he wasn’t allowed to simply give up.

He had responsibilities to perform and honor to uphold.

Hyosung, the woman whose life he could end with the simple twist of his fingers, who he could end with one snap, with five fingers, was much more like him than he originally thought. Much more similar than even she had claimed in the past. Much more than he would ever admit out loud, no matter how many times his mind inwardly concluded it as he stared down at her.

“Woo Jiho.”

Her voice broke on the last syllable, its previous grungy roughness nowhere to be found.

He didn’t want to kill her.

“Zico!”

Dongwoo yelled for him as he fended off hunter after hunter from burying their knives in his back and their bullets in his head, hurrying Zico in his task, completely unaware of the conflict his conscience now faced.

He didn’t want to kill her when they were seemingly two peas separated from the pod at birth. She’d rather him do it than a stranger whose name she didn’t know. Thus, they arrived at an impasse. Though, honestly, he wasn’t supposed to anyway.

No lives lost, Sunggyu had said.

“No lives lost,” Sunggyu now said, his voice echoing through the forest, bouncing from one tree to the next, leaving behind a momentary hush that caused both Zico and Dongwoo to wonder if they had imagined it. If some playful ghost had spoken it or if it were merely a trick of the forest’s leaves which rustled against each other above them now as though laughing at their shocked expressions.

Such apprehension only lasted for that single moment, as from the brush came flurries of four-legged beasts, charging through the hunter’s ranks and scattering them out of the clearing like cats on their own hunt for cowardly mice. Those hunters who had surrounded Dongwoo more closely, who could not get away as quickly as the others, now had their hands full as a battalion of wolves came to his rescue, jaws snapping and claws slashing.

And there, standing before Dongwoo and Zico as werewolves continued to rush by, giving chase after the retreating hunters, was Sunggyu.

“I’m back,” he spoke, looking just like he did when he left – minus the slight sag of his shoulders, the shorter crop of his brown hair, and his clothes which looked as though he had stolen them off a hunter he had beaten not even moments before. Gesturing to the two women at his side, smiling to the point where his eyes disappeared into happy slits, he spoke again, “And I brought reinforcements.”

And Zico released Hyosung from his stranglehold, feeling her body relax under him against the thick, green grass, watching as her eyes fluttered close, and staring on as she gave herself up to whatever fate had in store for her.

That is, until he whispered a single word that sent her stumbling into the depths of the forest right after.

“Run.” 

He didn’t want to kill her.

But, he certainly didn’t want her to fold her hand just yet either.  

A/N:

What? I finally finished this chapter? Wait, what? Just in time for the New Year? What's that? You're going to comment on Illusory because it's your last chance to in the year 2013? And you're going to take to the forums and leave messages there as well? Well, aren't you the sweestest. What's that? I'm just talking to myself? Poppycock. Anywho, Merry (late) Christmas and Happy (early) New Year! This was my gift to you all, you know? Stay warm everybody!

Sunggyu! I missed you, bud!

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