-Chapter 28-

Dreams

"Okay… we’re uh… here now…” Jongin quietly gulped. The boy’s hands gripping onto your chair’s push handles began to tremble ever so slightly, unknowingly shaking his entire body as well. Was it possible to make his own eyes quiver too? Because he just couldn’t keep them straight or focused to look dead onto the ominous house looming before the two of you.

He wasn’t exactly sure why… but your house seemed a little more unsettling than usual…

Finally finding the strength to break the unknown spell that had locked his eyes onto the house, he swiftly reached for his cellphone in his pocket. “Should I call Sehun to open the door?” After briefly searching through his contacts for Sehun, he paused and glanced down at you after not hearing a response. Blinking at you curiously, he noticed that you were unusually still… Did she fall asleep during our walk here? He thought, looking over you for a few more seconds.

Leaning forward and turning his head to the side, he saw that you were actually fully awake but something was off. You were just gazing up at the house; eyes wide open and unblinking, and mouth set in a firm line. It was… creepy… “Um… Jae…”

“No.” A bit startled by your sudden response, he looked at you with raised eyebrows.

“…Wha—“

“It’s unlocked…” It took Jongin a couple unnecessarily long seconds to comprehend, but he gradually stood up straight once again and stared ahead at your front door.

“…Really…?” Maybe Sehun really was expecting her… Shrugging off his burning suspicions, he firmly gripped onto the push handles and wheeled you up the front porch. With each step he took, he was beginning to get a subtle feeling of uneasiness. How was he supposed to explain this… in short it felt like…

Someone is walking behind me… The air behind him felt heavy and crowded, like there’s was another person walking just barely a centimeter behind him. Chilling goosebumps were slowly creeping up his exposed neck along with the annoying sensation that felt like this ‘person’s’ face was just hanging right over his left shoulder, watching him like some type of hungry hawk.

In one lucid motion, he stopped and looked over his shoulder; staring round eyed behind him. Heart racing and breath uneven, Jongin’s eyes darted in every which direction but saw absolutely nothing behind him. It’s all in your head… it’s all in your head… i-it’s all your imagination… he desperately reassured. Just keep looking forward, straight at the door.

Thankfully enough after all the internal suffering, he finally makes it to door. Stepping forward, he lightly tugged at the door. “Huh?” Giving the door a few more cautious tugs, he pulled his hand away. “It’s locked.” He looked down at you expectedly. “You said it was unlocked.”

“Just wait a moment.” You murmured, your eyes yet again stuck onto door and not onto Jongin much to his displeasure. “He’ll open it.” The older boy arched a questioning eyebrow at you.

Just then, a small yelp propelled up Jongin’s throat after he had jumped about a foot into the air when the door’s handle began to violently jiggle frantically, practically shaking the entire door almost off of its hinges. Jongin watched on in terror, breath fixed right at the very top of his lungs, until the knob suddenly came to an abrupt stop.

And just before Jongin could even allow a bit of air to trickle past his lips, slowly… very slowly… hauntingly slowly… the door creaked open. It swung to a complete stop once it was wide open.

The chilly winter wind whistled past Jongin’s ear, distracting and blocking out half of his thoughts from hysterically blowing up from within him yet amplifying the other half, rendering him both confused and paralyzed into a pile of dead goop. It wasn’t until he caught sight of you slowly wheeling yourself into the house from his peripheral that he finally came to his senses.

“This has to be a joke… t-there’s no way that just happened…” Jongin blurted out feverishly, stumbling back a few steps. On instinct he turned around and hastily walked back down the porch towards the front gate. But after only a couple of steps, he made a sudden stop in his tracks. “…I… can’t leave Jaeyun alone…” he halfheartedly admitted with a sigh. Swallowing hard, he his heel and speedily marched towards the house.

Meanwhile, you sat quietly inside your house, looking around at every little corner that you hadn’t seen in such a long time. Gradually reeling your eyes up at stare at the ceiling, your eyes lowered closed. Nostalgia was rushing past you at full speed. The overwhelming feeling was almost too much to handle, but just the fact that you were finally back here was enough to put you at a pleasant ease. But despite all of these vast emotions, you couldn’t possibly forget the real reason why you’re here…

“Jaeyun?” Jongin called out, taking a step through the front doorway. Looking both ways, almost resembling a terrified child crossing a busy street, Jongin took another step until he was entirely inside the house. Straightening up his back and posture to assure himself of his bravery, he began to walk towards you. “Look Jaeyun, I think we should just go back to my house. I don’t feel all too comfortable insi—“

Click

Jongin halted to a stop with a small gasp. “Please… please don’t tell me…” One firm step at a time, Jongin turned himself around only to have his heart completely drop down to the pit of his stomach.

The front door was now shut.

“Jongin.” At the sound of his name, he turned halfway and peered over at you who was now facing him straight on. Face not bearing even a hint of any emotion, without hesitation you said, “Can I ask you for one last favor?” Jongin let out a loud, audible sigh and threw his head back in exasperation. It was your ‘favors’ that got me in this mess! He irritably thought while scratching his head.

“What is it?” he reluctantly asked, arms crossed over his chest. You looked over your shoulder, staring at who knows what for a moment before looking back at him.

“Can you bring me upstairs to my bedroom?”

“Upstairs?” Jongin gazed over at the staircase behind you on the other side of the room. After a slight moment of deep thinking and inner debating he finally said, “Maybe you should let Sehun help you upstairs. Speaking of which, where is he anyways? I thought he would be home right now.” Looking around but still not moving away from what he thought was his ‘small space of security’, he saw no sign of your older brother being home. In fact, it seemed like no one was here at all... “I don’t think… he’s here… Look, if he’s not here then maybe we should go back.”

Looking over at you because of the lack of a response, he saw you were staring at him, the seriousness on your face practically burning his own eyes with intimidation. With a loud groan, he unwillingly shuffled towards you and slipped his arm underneath your legs and back, hoisting you up into his arms.

As Jongin silently carried you up the stairs, he couldn’t help but notice something. Her body is ice cold… He thought. It sort of made sense since the two of you were both outside in the frigid cold for about a half an hour now, but your skin was abnormally cold to the touch despite the fact you were well bundled up. She feels ice cold. I’m getting chills just holding onto her. He subtly stole a glance at you and saw that your face was still as blank as ever, like you weren’t feeling a thing—emotionally and physically. She kinda feels about as cold as a dead… Jongin quickly rid himself of any ill thoughts and continued on up the steps.

Sehun carelessly plopped down onto a nearby wooden bench, the cold surface instantly freezing away at his jean covered behind on contact. Jongdae followed his lead and wordlessly walked past him to sit beside him, while Kris leaned against Jongdae’s side of the bench. There was a sort of depressing silence that was wrapped tightly around the trio, not one of them brave enough to break it with their own voices.

“Well… you got me here.” Sehun finally acknowledged. “What was so important to tell me that you had to drag me out of my own house for? Is anyone gonna tell me or are we all gonna play silent for another ten minutes?”

“Sehun, you need to calm down first before Kris can say anything.” Jongdae calmly said, placing a soothing hand on his back. “You won’t be able to process what he’s saying if you don’t.” How do you both expect me not to be angry when I’ve got so much to deal with?? After a while, Sehun finally took a deep breath and slightly calmed himself down. Seeing that Sehun was now more relaxed and less agitated, it was Kris’ cue to begin speaking.

“So do you remember what I had told you earlier?”

“What, that you’re a lunatic?” he defiantly challenged.

Kris glared angrily down at the younger boy. “Jongdae is this boy always this ing stubborn??!” Kris unconsciously barked, his patience momentarily lost.

“You wanna run that by me again??!!” He questioned, jumping onto his feet and stepping right up to Kris’ face.

“Calm down!!! Both of you!!!” Jongdae pleaded, yanking Sehun away from Kris and throwing him back down onto the bench. Running his hand through his hair and blowing out a long sigh, Kris calmly spoke again.

“No… do you remember how I told you that I was related to Luhan?” Just hearing the utterance of the name made Sehun an appalling combination of angry and absolutely disgusted.

“…You expect me to believe that?” Sehun miraculously managed to quietly ask.

“I’m not lying.” Kris quickly replied. “Why would I even lie about that anyways? What would I possibly gain from telling a complete stranger I was related to Luhan?” Sehun didn’t give a response. “Luhan never had any children of his own so that rules out me being his great grandson if that’s what you first insinuated when I told you. Luhan was actually a cousin of my great grandmother. Though this makes us distant relatives, we’re still related one way or another.”

“So you’ve got Luhan in your family tree, big deal.” He scoffed. “Was that all you wanted to tell me?”

“He hasn’t even scratched the surface of what he wanted to say.” Jongdae intervened.  

“With our family relation in mind, I think it’s pretty much a given that both Yoona and Minseok were somehow involved with my family one way or another because of him.” Sehun looked up at Kris in shock, finally realizing that connection later than ever.

“Based on what I’ve been told,” Kris continued. “Those two were pretty close to our family and fitted right in; especially Minseok. As you already know, Minseok lived the longest compared to the other two. He had lived so long that he was actually there throughout my childhood since despite what had happened, stuck around with my family as if we were his own. In a way… he was like a grandfather to me.”

Kris glanced over at Sehun who stared at him mouth agape. “What, no comment this time?” Snapping back into reality, Sehun glowered at Kris slightly but averted his eyes with a small grunt. Kris went on nonetheless.

“He was with me from the day I came into the world until the moment he left this one. So believe it or not, I was actually pretty close to Minseok. You know how people usually hate hearing old people go on and on about their life stories. Well, I guess I was different because I loved hearing him tell me about his long, eventful life.” Kris paused and smiled to himself, the memories of his grandfather figure flooding back into his mind.

“The older I got, the more in depth and deeper his stories became. Before he began his stories he would always say, ‘Yifan, you’re a lucky one. I never told these stories to anyone else but you.’” He gazed down at both Sehun and Jongdae. “I always wondered why he told me those stories until I had visited him on his death bed when I was in middle school. Barely able to open his own eyes, he patted my head and said ‘You’ve become a strong young man Yifan. All these years, I’ve used you as a small vault that holds all of my precious secrets without even realizing it and before I knew it, you had already grown up before my very eyes.’”

Kris placed a hand on his chest and closed his eyes. “He told me to always keep those secrets with me and to never open this ‘vault’ of his. But… he suddenly said one last thing to me before he passed on for good. He said… ‘It could be tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that—maybe even years from now, that you will find someone to share these secrets with. I have a feeling that this person will need to know these secrets more than you and I do. You’ll know who that person is when you see them and when you do, don’t hesitate to tell them because I know they’ll know exactly what you’re talking about.’’”

Meeting eyes with Sehun once again, Kris put a hand on his shoulder despite the harsh brawl the two of them almost shared not too long ago. “I waited years for that day to come when I would finally understand what he meant and now, that day has come.” Sehun slowly pulled his gaze away from Kris to look down at his own feet.

Uneasily he said, “…i-if he told you everything, then that means…”

“Yes. He told me what he’s told no one else in the world. He told me the untold story of Luhan and Yoona’s death.”

Gently, Jongin placed you at the edge of your bed making sure to put your healing legs in a comfortable position. With you now situated in your bed, Jongin sat down beside you and heaved out a tired sigh. “So… why did you ask me to bring you to your room anyways? Did you miss your bedroom or something?” Jongin attempted to casually ask to calm his still uncontrolled nerves. Without any hesitation, you shook your head.

But, it’s not like you could feel hesitation right now anyways. In fact, you didn’t feel anything right now… The way you felt outside with Jongin (dazed, not yourself, numb), you felt the exact same way but instead it felt… worse. In simple terms, it almost felt you were in a dream. You couldn’t tell if it was a good dream or a bad one exactly— it was just a dream; something that you were experiencing where you couldn’t really control a thing but was fully conscious of.

Sitting there feeling so much mixed confliction in your mind, you cringed to yourself a bit when you suddenly felt a sharp stinging pain grab onto the back of your head. While you were silently wincing in pain, Jongin decided to take out his phone to try and contact Sehun.

I gotta text him to tell him we’re here. I just hope he isn’t too hard on me when he finds out I was the one who brought her here… Turning the screen on in his phone, he was taken aback to see that he phone’s battery was almost completely drained. “What the hell…?” he whispered to himself, examining his phone. “I could have sworn my phone was at 90% battery when I had last looked at it outside. Now it’s only at 8%...” He didn’t want to think too much about it, but it almost seemed like something has completely drained his phone’s energy…

his teeth, he shoved his phone back into his pocket and casually glanced over at you. He suddenly became alerted when he saw that you appeared to have been in discomfort. “Hey… you alright? You got really pale all of a sudden…”

“I-I’m… okay…” you breathed, bearing through the pain. Reaching over, Jongin placed the back of his hand onto your forehead to check if you were getting a fever. But not even a second later, Jongin yanked his hand back. Ice cold… She feels ice cold…! He thought, rubbing his hand. How is that even possible for a human to get that cold…?!!

“Um… well you’re not warm… so you’re not sick, I think…” he uncomfortably mumbled. The pain that you were experiencing in your head was getting far too strong for you to clearly hear Jongin at this point. Your vision began to blur in seconds and your ears weren’t picking up anything but white noise. But the thing that was hurting you most was the recovering wound on your abdomen, the place that you had unwillingly pierce with a knife not too long ago…

You were just a few seconds away from falling unconscious until through all the chaos, you heard something loud and clear in your head and undoubtedly, you knew what it was.

We can finally be together my beautiful Jaeyun.

It was getting dark and hazy and each breath you took pulled you deeper and deeper away from consciousness. Without even realizing it, you had collapsed onto your bed. Eyes half lidded, you could just barely make out the sight of Jongin leaning over you and frantically shaking you.

You could slightly hear his muffled, distant sounding voice. You didn’t know what he was saying… but he sounded scared…

Slowly you would blink and with each blink, your vision would get foggier and you would hear even less.

Jongin looks worried… I need to get up…

Everything was rushing at you too fast and was becoming too strong for you to overcome. You couldn’t fight this suffering you were drowning in right now anymore. You just had to… give up…

We can finally be together.

Just moments before you completely lost conscience, you caught a very brief glimpse… of items violently flying off your tables and shelves.

We can finally be together. I just need… him.

At the sound of Jongin’s terrified scream, everything turned black.

It was dark.

And it was silent.

Wait… you heard something. A familiar voice…

At last, after four long years, we can finally be together.

It was Luhan.

And there’s no one that can come between us now. Not your mother, or your father, or your brother… or even Yoona.

“…Yoona…? Sehun told me about her. She’s the evil spirit that you were keeping away from me, right?”

He chuckled.

That’s right, I was keeping her away from you. But now, you don’t need to worry about her anymore. And I don’t have to worry about her either.

“What do you mean?”

He chuckled once more.

At this point my beautiful Jaeyun… Yoona can’t protect you from me any longer.

`Author's Corner

*Clicks Save Chapter button and runs away like a maniac*

btw guys, I'm annoyed writing Jaeyun like this too but it's all for the sake of the story ok lol