So I've been gone for a while (sorry ㅜㅜ) but I'm back! And with a long chapter (and more chapters?). Since it's been quite some time, perhaps refreshing your mind by reading the previous chapter would help out a lot. This chapter starts right where the previous one left off. Enjoy (probably has a lot of grammar issues)

Here’s the thing—and it’s going to sound completely impossible and ridiculous— but I don’t hold Yoonmi responsible for “betraying” me. Now, listen, I know that she infiltrated our compound, wreaked havoc on the refugees, messed with Jongin’s memories, but there’s just something that makes me believe she’s not entirely responsible for the things that she’s done.

We enter the building. Immediately we are met with a rundown elevator and a stair case. Some people pan out to check the rest of the bottom floor but we mainly rush towards the stairs. I glance up and see coils and coils and coils of steps winding up to the top floor. From the outside, the building doesn’t look like much. But climbing up these steps I realize that this used to be something like SHC, an office building for a large corporation. Probably at least forty-five flights of stairs. Forty-five levels to search through for one person. I worry that this is going to take forever. 

We reach the second floor just as my phone vibrates in my pocket. I grab at it and unlock the unknown call.

“Aw, you brought the whole force with you. That’s not very fair, Daeun.” Yoonmi drawls. The way she speaks is different from her usual calm demeanor that I’m used to, and it makes my skin crawl.

“They won’t do anything to you because I still have to talk to you.” I lay off to the side so everyone else can push through to another level. 

“What else is there to talk about, hm?”

“This isn’t you, Yoonmi.” I recall all the moments where I felt betrayed by her. How I felt completely lost that someone that close to me would turn on me. Then I remember the doubt that settled in soon after. I felt unsettled, the itching in the back of my mind telling me that something was off. I didn’t realize it until she called me back at the hotel.

“There’s the address. Meet me there.” She had said.

“Alright.” 

“Preferably alone, but that’s a little risky isn’t it? Going all alone.” A laugh.

“Yoonmi, I-”

“You what? You don’t know why I’m doing this to you? Why I was your friend and then suddenly your enemy? You’re just a naive little thing, aren’t you? Just a-” 

There was a pause. I had thought that the line went dead until I heard a noise like someone was choking on something. Someone sobbed and it sounded remotely like Yoonmi. Then she said something in an almost strangled and heartsick voice that I didn’t expect at all. “Daeun, I’m so sorry.”

The call had ended with a click.

I hadn’t mentioned it earlier because everyone would’ve told me that it was just a ploy to make me feel guilty. But I know it wasn’t. She sounded sincere, genuinely upset and distressed. Although, I would’ve believed that it was a ploy as well if it weren’t for the dreams she used to get. About seven months ago Yoonmi complained about bad headaches, unaccounted for and random bruises on her arms, and weird but vivid dreams. “But they were more like nightmares,” she once told me. “Blood. So much blood.”

Looking back on it now, something was wrong. Something was bothering her.

“Yoonmi, I don’t really know what’s going on, but I know that all this trouble wasn’t caused by you, was it? Because this person talking to me right now isn’t you. It’s someone else getting into your head.”

Someone growls and the line turns staticky. She continues, “Top floor. I’ll be waiting. If you don’t get here soon, I’ll light this building and—“

Her voice is softer, urgent now. “You should really get out, Daeun.”

“Yoonmi!”

There it was again, the unexpected kindness. The Yoonmi who’s been seemingly hurting us all, isn’t really Yoonmi. I just know it. However, another part of me starts to panic because light the building? I search frantically in the sea of faces and I don’t know what or who I’m looking for until I’m staring straight at it.

“Jongin, I think there’s a bomb in the building.”

He stares at me with a puzzled expression. “What?”

I lower my voice. “Yoonmi just called me, and I think…I think she said there was a bomb, and that if we don’t find her soon it’s going to detonate.”

Jongin stirs. It’s like looking at a still image slowly merging into a motion picture. “Where?”

“Top floor.”

“The top floor…at this rate we’ll never make it in time to find her. Even the vampires aren’t fast enough…” He looks stricken, like he’s presented with two difficult choices that I don’t know about.“You won’t be able to reach her quickly enough.” Jongin almost yells. He says it like he’s trying to save me from despair, but the way he’s gripping on to my shoulders tells me differently. “If I go now, we might be able to have a chance to catch her and keep everyone safe. I’m asking for your permission.” 

I stare into his eyes. I stare like I would’ve done when it was just us two, perhaps with silence filling the room during the period of just waking up, the sun streaming in and illuminating the dust sitting in the air and suspending time. Breaths soft and muffled by cotton sheets. I nod. He makes to leave, but I grab his sleeve. I whisper, “Yoonmi isn’t the bad person.” He looks confused.

“What-“

“It’s too much to explain right now, it’s just…remember she isn’t our enemy.” Jongin nods slowly, comprehending my words but not getting the meaning behind them. “Okay, Jongin. I’m letting you go find her.” Somewhere in the back of my mind, or perhaps it’s actually someone behind me, shouts in protest. He could be betraying us. This could be a ploy. After his memories were swiped away, I have no way of knowing what replaced those memories. But what I’m more worried about though, is what if he doesn’t come back? Or the real question: what if he doesn’t come back alive? “But you better come back, you hear? You come back.”

He only nods, and then he’s gone.

JONGIN

I sway when I appear on the top floor. My balance is off and I’m completely unsteady. This rarely ever happens after I teleport. Something must be wrong. Surveying the area, it looks plain: furniture covered in dusty white sheets. No windows, but there’s a slight unearthly glow that enables me to see shapes and silhouettes. I shiver, but there is no one here. I swear I sensed a pulse of energy here when I teleported…

Just when I’m starting to think that perhaps I’ve landed in the wrong place, a shadow jumps out and hits my side. I react, but a moment much too late. The area along my ribs stings and I wince slightly. The shadow moves again and I swing my leg with precision this time. It connects the way I want it to, but it doesn’t do the damage I thought it would. A shadowy hand grasps my ankle and I struggle to free myself, jerking my leg and pivoting on the other. I start my fist forward, but the figure pushes me violently to the ground. The cement flooring is unforgiving and my side throbs. I see liquid seep into my shirt and turn it red.

“Who are you,” I exhale as the shape steps into the glow, my vision blurring and the coming back into focus. I don’t recognize the man who stands in front of me. 

“That’s not important,” he answers, his voice like metal scratching metal. “But you’re getting in the way.”

Yoonmi isn’t our enemy. That’s what Daeun said, right? “Where’s Yoonmi? And my memories?”

“I temporarily disposed of her. She seems to be resisting a lot more than I thought. Your memories…are such fragile little things. But they can drive a person insane. Are you entirely sure you want them back? You’d be better off with the ones you have now.” He says, crossing his arms. I nod, standing and taking a defensive position. “I want them back,” and he shrugs. “Alright. I’ll give them back.”

The man rushes forward with an incredible speed that even I have a hard time comprehending. He grabs my head, and I cough, a metallic burning scalds my mouth. “In exchange, bring Daeun to me. I want her dead.”

A painful light burns into my head, bringing me to my knees. The pain is overbearing. I notice briefly that the figure is disappearing.. Yoonmi isn’t the bad person. Then who is? Who is this man? I should go after him, bring him and all his schemes down but the pain…

It rushes all in at once. Several memories playing and replaying at the same time, overlapping each other in a cacophonous symphony. I see people I do and do not identify pass by me, blurring into a mass of names and personalities that rack my brain with an intense feeling. I feel the softness of Daeun’s hair between my fingers. I see Luhan and Kris chuckling at me while cleaning up the bar. I shiver in fear when the fire crackles and my parents melt away into something I do not recognize. 

I fade in and out of reality. Remotely I realize I’ve stood up in the hopes of following Yoonmi. But she’s gone, her presence no longer near. I redirect my energy, stumbling through the halls—is this an office? cubicles? reminds me of SHC—in search of Daeun. Daeun. I remember now. All of it. Especially the look on her face as she realized what I’d done with Minkyung cuts through me. I had expected her to hate me then. It would’ve been a lot easier if she hated me, because I hated myself for doing that too. But there was no anger in her expression, no remorse. It was blank. Devoid of the warmth and passion that usually fills her face. This scared me the most: the idea that something as precious as her laugh or smile could disappear forever. And that I was the reason why.

The fear lingers even after the world blurs out and vanishes into pitch black.

DAEUN

“Jongin?” I search frantically when I’ve finally reached the top floor—against everyone else’s protests to get me out of the building to somewhere safer—sprinting through the hall and opening all the doors. “Jongin!” In my blindness, I run into someone and panic, swinging my arm in a defensive position. 

“Daeun! Daeun.” I stop struggling and look up. 

“Baekhyun?” I breathe a sigh of relief. “I-I thought you were hurt somewhere oh my god I’m so glad your okay are you hurt anywhere-”

“Calm down. Shh.” He says, patting my head. “I’m perfectly fine, see?” I nod, and then he grips my shoulders. “Listen carefully, okay? We’re going to look for Jongin, and when we find him, you two will leave the building immediately. Tell everyone to leave immediately.” 

We turn and start searching again. “You can’t blame Yoonmi, Daeun. She isn’t in her right mind. There’s someone messing with her head.” Baekhyun pushes a door open and looks around inside.   “A few months back, I noticed that she started to change. More irritable, more moody. I thought that maybe she was tired, over worked, stressed out. But then one day, as I was going up to her place to see what I could do to help, she was just leaving. I followed, but she wasn’t going to work. She arrived at a shady place where gamblers gamble their lives. It wasn’t like her. It just wasn’t her.”

“I believe you. At first I was scared. But everything makes sense.” I say and the tension in his body softens a little. His face is passive, but I notice the sadness gleaming in his eyes. Even though Yoonmi told me already, I wonder how I couldn’t have noticed it before. The shy smiles when they passed in the halls. How Baekhyun always seemed to be around when I went to go and deliver papers to Yoonmi before I scolded him to stop playing around and get back to work. It all clicks together. “You love her.”

When I say it, it takes him by surprise. His movements falter and his steps slow, but then he nods and smiles like it was so obvious before. “I do.”

We split up shortly after to increase our efficiency and probability of finding Jongin soon. I start to panic when can’t find him even after a significant amount of time. I’ve tried calling out to him, even tried reaching him through the bond. All I got was a terrible dead silence. A while back the hall separated into two pathways. Baekhyun and I planned to meet each other by the broken elevators that we passed earlier if we found Jongin or our hall turned out to be a dead end.

“Come on, Jongin,” I mutter opening doors in a frenzy. “Jongin, just give me a hint.” In the moment my heart falls deeper and deeper into hopelessness, he answers my plead. A flash of pain transferred over through the bond. It knocks the breath out of me and I worry that something terrible has happened to him, but the nudge has given me an idea of where he is. I break out into a run looking for a staircase. I hope I’ll find Jongin quickly and I won’t leave Baekhyun waiting too long.

Just a little more. My limbs ache with exhaustion from countless sleepless nights but I continue. I need to continue. I find a stairwell that I rush down to the lower level. Following the lingering sensation of pain, I take a left into a narrow hallway with walls that brush against my shoulders. The light grows scarce but the bond is like a pulsating stream of light leading me in the right direction. After a while, the hall opens up to what looks like the main office of whatever this building was used for. There are rows and rows of office cubicles that create a maze. Luckily the light leads the way and before I know it, it ends in the space between two cubicles. I slow in my tracks, swallowing hard and bracing myself for whatever is there. I peer cautiously around the corner of the cubicle closest to me and I have to hold back a yelp. 

Jongin lies unconscious, blood on his shirt, blood on the old desk and rickety chair of the cubicle. It’s messy and for a second I don’t see him breathing. And then his chest rises faintly and I release a breath I didn’t even know I was holding. 

“Jongin, wake up. Jongin.” I pat his cheek lightly, brushing back strands of hair sticking to his sweaty forehead. He groans and moves slightly. “Okay, up we go,” I whisper to him, gently lifting him so that his arm is slumped around my shoulder and he’s in some sort of position to walk. “We’ll get you to a medic as soon as we get out of here-“

“No,” Jongin mumbles. His eyelids flutter rapidly. “He…he’s…get to you…bait. I’m bait…”

I struggle to get us back to Baekhyun. Jongin’s lean, but he’s still about five feet and eleven inches of (almost dead weight) muscle, a challenge considering my mere 5’ 4”. I’m starting to really perspire. “What…are you…talking about?” I puff in between gasps of breath. I dread the flight of stairs we need to go up to find Baekhyun. Just keep going, I think to myself. Just a little bit more-

Jongin slumps and I find myself unable to keep us from falling to the ground. I’m definitely not strong enough to support him. “Only a little bit more Jongin…please wake up.” I consider calling out to Baekhyun. Would he hear me? Then: who else would hear me? I panic because what if Jongin’s lost too much blood already? I glance back at the distance we’ve traveled. There’s a trail of red liquid. A thin trail I’ll admit, but one look at the wound on his side I know it’s not stopping any time soon. How to stop it? Something to wrap around it? Unfortunately I’m fresh out of bandages…

“Daeun?” In the midst of my worrying his voice, tired and gravelly, rings out. I can’t stop my relief from flooding through me. I hold him tight to me, almost close to tears.

“Jongin. You’ll be fine, we’re getting out of here.”

He registers my face, a smile playing on his lips. Then his eyes widens and he makes a move to shield me —“Daeun, watch ou-”— but,

Something hits my head and pain flickers throughout me, and then, like a candle snuffed out by a sudden gust of wind, there is nothing. Just a deep sense of mind-numblingly nothingness.

_

“-ake up. Wake up little girl.”

I register someone shaking my shoulder but it’s so far away I could just sleep…

Water is doused on my head and jolt up, body tense and rigid. The liquid blurs my vision momentarily and I blink and gasp to grasp reality. There is an overhead light fixture that only casts a dim light on the surroundings. Then a figure comes into view and it’s not Yoonmi. It is a man whose face is surrounded by shadows that seem to twist in the air and distort his figure. The world is still spinning even though I know I’m not moving.

“You’ve been very troublesome.” The man says, but the voice is chilling, almost mechanic and unearthly. “I thought it’d be easier to pin you down, make it easier to catch you if I used her,” he gestures in a vague direction, and when I turn my head I sob because Yoonmi is sprawled on the cold floor, bones and limbs sticking out in all the wrong places.

“But she didn’t prove to be much use, even after I managed to possess her, because you always found a way to slip away…how is that?” The man steps around in a careful circle around me, skirting away almost as if in fear from the edges of the sphere of light directed on me.

“It was you who was making her do that.” I choke out.

“Yes. I found a weak point in her mind, and I used it to control her. Unbelievably easy.”

It seems like my mouth is reduced to simple questions, even though there are so many running around in my mind. “Why are you doing this?”

He gets closer. “Because you see, I am not afraid of the world. But I do have one fear: you.” Something is leaking from the side of my head, and when I touch the tender flesh my fingers come back red. “There is something in your veins that can kill me. If it were to be used against me, I would surely die. But the very thing that can kill me, can also save me. I was given eternity, but not eternal youth. However your blood is able to give that to me. And finally…finally I can have it.”

The stranger steps closer and I crawl away. He’s wearing a black suit, crisp, nice, very unfitting for the occasion. Unless, perhaps, it is very fitting for the occasion for him. This man who has been hunting me down…surely my death would be a celebration to him. 

“With you gone, I’ll be able to control the world. I’ll build an army of revived vampires, more powerful than you have ever seen. I will be invincible. I will not fear anything anymore. I have lived too long in fear.”

Finally, I find my voice and take a hold of it. “Who are you?” I want to comfort Yoonmi, check if she can still be saved in her condition, but the thought of what happened to her makes me sick. I can’t stand to look at her without seeing the twisted limbs, the bruises.

“I am the Original,” the voice slithers around me. “You have something that belongs to me, and I plan to collect.” I am lifted by the collar of my shirt, forced to stand, and than lifted off the ground. 

This is where I believe I’m going to die, because as the figure steps into the light the eyes that stare back are ice, black, and full of death. Scars mar the disfigured face, the mouth an angry slash with sharpened teeth. I’m going to die, and I still have things I need to do. Like take care of my parents to make up for my disappearance, tell everyone just how much they meant to me…tell Jongin that I’ve loved him since the day we met and that I have never once stopped loving him. 

It’s funny, isn’t it? How life works. That we go about forgetting and taking for granted the things that mean the most to us, and then when we finally realize it we don’t have the time anymore, we’re gone. 

I wonder vaguely where Jongin is, if he’s okay. That head wound looked really bad…he lost a lot of blood…I still didn’t buy that shirt I promised to buy him. 

The mouth inches towards my neck, its goal probably to shred the thin layer of skin into pieces.

Sehun…at least I got to see him again. At least he’s alive, and he’s doing fine. Luhan knows how to take of him since they get along well. At least I’ve seen my parents again…even if there won’t be a second time.

I can already feel the pain even if it hasn't arrived yet. It’s sharp, almost blindingly painful. I can imagine the warmth as the blood spills over and out of my heart, stopping the flow and leaving only ice cold emptiness in its wake.

But it doesn’t come.

Instead I’m thrown to the ground, and I register faintly a low growl and a pained yelp. Who is that pushing me to get up? The face isn’t clear, my eyes struggling to adjust to the light and darkness. Then I see Baekhyun, mouth moving and hands waving in front of my face. The sounds fades in and out.

“-et up. Daeun…needs you…Jongin needs you now…ave to leave.”

“Wait, Baekhyun…”

“Luhan is on his way, leave with him.”

He stands up quickly and I see him and the stranger fight, even though they’re moving so fast it’s hard to follow all their movements. Baekhyun’s fist connects with the the man’s face, then the shoulder, a kick to the abdomen follows. I crawl towards Yoonmi, delicately placing my hands near her nose to check for breathing. When that barely shows anything, I gently put my head on top of her chest, praying for a heartbeat. I begin to count to 10, and on 7 something thuds behind her ribcage dimly. I sigh in relief, but before I can do anything, there is a sickening crack and I turn in horror. Baekhyun slumps to the ground, and I make out his labored, staccato breathing. He tries to get back up but I can see it physically pains him. He turns towards me, begs me to leave. His face is bloody, and I feel my stomach twist into itself. Then there’s the anger, the feeling of being sick and tired of being unable to fight back, unable to control my own fate without disfigured shadow men messing with my life. 

I shake when I stand, partly because I hurt everywhere, but also because of the fear fluttering in my heart. The man, this Original, moves like smoke. Here and then there, there then here. Then everywhere all at once. But I look at the eyes of death without succumbing to that fear, because I still have things to do and I’m not ready to die yet. I realize that I’m opening my mouth and like it has a mind of its own it speaks in a voice I do not recognize as my own, “Alright then. Deal with your one and only fear.”

I hope it's satisfactory and then some. Sorry about such a long wait. I'll probably post something on my tumblr some time soon explaining my incredibly long absence, if you would like to know why I've been MIA go ahead and check it out. This was written and finished at different times, so excuse grammatical errors and inconsistentcies. I'll correct them later on. On a side note: I've missed writing and interacting with everyone! There have been a lot of comments that I simply have not replied to yet, and hopefully I'll answer/reply to them all. If you have a specific or general question about ATT or whatever else and I didn't answer them in the comments, or you just wanna say hi, message me at my tumblr ^^ Thank you for enduring my lengthy absence.