I've been gone for a long time (school is just an unwanted priority) and this chapter's a bit short but I wanted you all to know I'm still here^^. I'm not going to stop this story abruptly, and leave it unfinished. We still have quite a ways to go. Thank you for your support, and thank you for just being wonderful and reading this.

I feel silence wash over me like a steady drizzle of rain, until it’s drowning me all at once. 

The halls are dim, flashes of frantic shadows running, the alarms blinking angrily and illuminating everything in a veneer of blood red. Someone’s pulling my arm. When I look, a breath of relief escapes me to see that it’s Jongin. But his face is panic-stricken. His movements are tense and calculated.

I want to reach out, place a hand on his shoulder to calm him. But suddenly I’m falling, falling into darkness. The red light bleeding into black. I’m still moving with Jongin holding onto me, but I can’t see him or the halls we’re walking through. I can’t hear voices, or the hurried footsteps. I can’t hea-

Did you think it was real?

Yoonmi…Yoonmi. That’s her voice. That’s her-

I’m surprised you didn’t suspect me of anything. I’m surprised no one caught me at all.

My sight comes back and I’m met with the flickering red lights. Except now, Jongin is nowhere to be found. She walks into my periphery and I whip around to face her. Her figure is backlit so all I see is a shadow, but it’s unmistakably her.

“Yoonmi…” I start, thoughts bouncing around in my head. She takes a step, and her heel clacks against the floor.

“Daeun. Sweet, sweet Daeun. How are you?” Her voice slinks along the tiles and sends shivers up my spine. “Tell me, was I good friend while it lasted? I do take pride in my acting capabilities. This was the best role I’ve had yet.”

Another step.

“Why are you doing this?” I ask shakily. Unconsciously, my foot shifts a step back.

She giggles like I’ve just told her a joke. “Do you know how I entered SHC? It was the year just before you came. I got assaulted by a stronger, faster vampire and SHC found me nearly dead. There was a pipe that almost ran straight through my heart, and I couldn’t heal because I’d already lost too much blood. SHC nursed me back to health, took me in, gave me a job. I didn’t even know my own worth until they told me that I was a Division I. I was grateful, thankful; however I always looked over my shoulder everywhere I went. 

“But you know, there was only one person that made me feel less afraid. He was kind, he understood. Then you came along, and messed everything up.”

The alarms stop their warning, and the backup generators start whirring to life. Yoonmi looks terrifying in the cold, white light. She comes closer, circling me in a taunting way.

“I thought: how could someone so plain,” she wraps a strand of my hair around her finger. “So thoughtless, catch Baekhyun's eye? If only she had never existed.” A cackle of laughter sends ice running through my veins. “And then he came to me in a dream. He told me that if I found you, and presented you to him, I could have anything and everything I wanted. I could have you gone, and I could have Baekhyun.

“But how to go about doing that? How could I appease this stranger when I didn’t even know of your name? However, as lady luck would have it, you appeared without trouble. Everything just fell into my hands and I could see everything I had ever wanted.” Her fingers swiftly slide to my wrist and yank it up harshly. A cry falls from my lips as pain shoots through my bones. She fingers at the bracelet that adorns my arm, the butterfly bracelet she gifted me on my birthday, but I swear I wasn’t wearing it before... “How easy it was to slip past your barriers and make you believe. Make you believe I was your friend, make you believe that you had been wanting this bracelet when in truth you had never laid eyes on it before I handed it to you. Since you’re aware now, you notice it, don’t you? The strangeness of it, how you think you’ve wanted it, but now I’ve told you the truth and you remember.”

I remember now. Yoonmi has the ability to alter someone's memory to her benefit. The gold leers at me in an unfamiliar way and I have the strongest desire it rip it from my arm, cast it away as if it were a snake ready to swallow me whole. “What have you done?” I ask. The words are weak, fragile.

“This bracelet was our way in, dear Daeun, laced with a spell that opens entrances. We knew you’d end up here sooner or later, separated from the world and isolated in this underground city. It led us to you, and it led us right past the magic barrier that was supposed to keep us out.”

There’s a tugging on my shoulder, kind of like the sensation of being in a car and feeling the slight bumps it passes over. Yoonmi’s image flickers in and out and a frown sets on her lips. I furrow my eyebrows. No, this isn’t real at all. I breathe deeply, focusing on that incessant pull on my shoulder. Her lips curl into a snarl. “So you’ve realized that you aren’t actually here, hm? Well, I have said what I needed to. The illusion is no longer needed.”

I gasp for air like I’ve been underwater too long as the facade fades. That pull turns into Jongin trying to shake me awake, and when he sees my open eyes, a breath of relief escapes his mouth. “Damn it, Daeun. Don’t scare me like that.”

“Sorry,” I mutter. Then louder: “I’m sorry.”

I notice we’re in a moving vehicle—which seems like the crossbreed of an van and a bus—but everything’s so dark I can’t make out the other’s faces. “Did everyone get out safe? Luhan, Sehun?” The faint outline of Jongin’s head starts to nod until I ask again. “Baekhyun?” Movement of his head stops, and a cold sinking fear seeps into the pit of my stomach. 

“We don’t know for sure.”

“No.”

“He could just be in another van, Daeun. Calm down. We both know he can take care of himse-”

“No!” I wail. Some heads turn in my direction. “This is different. Yoonmi has him. I know she does. We have to go back, Jongin, we-”

“What are you talking about? Yoonmi? What? Yoonmi is back at Compound 3.”

Compound 3. One of the other underground workings. But that’s… “Jongin, didn’t you say that’s the Compound Danmi is in?”

I can tell he thinks I’m a lunatic, and he huffs impatiently. Something he rarely ever does, but happens when he’s about to treat me like a child. “Yes, but wha-”

“We need to go there now.” Sitting up, I groan as the stiff muscles in my neck contract. “Yoonmi isn’t on our side anymore.” Thinking about it, I shake my head. The action is more to myself, than for anyone watching.

Maybe she’s never been on our side.