Author's Notes: Now I feel like I'm giving these girls too hard a time. But hey, it's part of the story. This is the first chapter. It's supposed to push things forward a bit and I'm really hoping it did for you. Thanks again for the support guys. You don't know how grateful I am. I hope you enjoy reading :)

CHAPTER I

Gravitational Familiarity

Fifteen years later.

'Your father wishes nothing but for you to eventually come around.'

Soojung sinks into her chair and sighs audibly.

A man sporting a suit and a clean cut drums his fingers on his desk as he waits for the girl to at least make a sound that wasn't her back pressing into the creaky office chair or another one of her uninterested hums.

He twists his lips and clicks his tongue. He was pretty sure the speech he just made was well-worded and well-phrased. He spent an entire night reading and practicing.

Another good three minutes went by and the young woman had yet to say something. At one point, the lawyer sees Soojung move but she only seemed to have bit her tongue behind her lips.

He sighs, noticeably louder than the last two aggravated breaths Soojung responded to him with.

'Listen, Miss—' he leans into his desk and pushes a brown satchel further away from him and closer to Soojung's end of the table '—I was only ordered to give this to you when you are ready. Legally, twenty-two is a considerable age here in Sol Invictus. I believe you are more than ready to take this.'

Soojung shakes her head.

'I am not interested, Mr. Kwon,' she says as she pushes the satchel back.

'Excuse me?'

'My father and the law wouldn't know when I am ready, or if I will ever be.'

'I beg your pardon, Ms. Jung, but I am bound by a contract here. Any personal belongings of my clients on the shelf at the back of this office should have been legally distributed by—'

'—burn it,' Soojung cuts in as she stands up. 'Throw it away. Tear it to shreds. I don't care. I'm just not interested.'

The lawyer closes his eyes and slowly takes in a lungful of air.

'I will leave it at the shelf. Come back when you think you are ready,' he answers, keeping the air in his lungs and the calm in his chest as much as possible.

Soojung bows her head and proceeds towards the door. As soon as she touches the door knob, Mr. Kwon speaks out one last time.

'I believe it's his research.'

Soojung doesn't speak. She doesn't even turn around.

'I believe he wants to make it up to you through this. By making you understand.'

Soojung could only stare at the copper door knob. She closes her eyes and grits her teeth behind her lips.

'Thank you, Mr. Kwon,' she says as she continues through the exit.

.

.

.

She told herself it should not hurt anymore, but here she was in the middle of the street, using the pouring rain to hide the pain insisting to be known.

She hisses as she furiously rubs her eyes into her already wet sleeve.

'Stupid, old man.'

The truth was she knew at least how her father's research began. It was just like this. The old man was also standing in the middle of the street at a stormy night, counting the claps of thunder and the seconds between them. He would stand in the rain and look from the sky to the pocket watch he always took with him. People thought he was crazy, but as his little girl, she believed in him very faithfully.

—that was until he left and never came back.

Maybe he was really crazy.

Soojung was still deep in thought when thunder roared through the sky.

It was loud—

—in fact, too loud.

Soojung looks up at the sky with alarm bubbling in her stomach.

What if he wasn't? What if – even for just a fraction – he wasn’t crazy?

For a moment, Soojung almost wanted to go back for the satchel at the local law office, but the weight of her chest and the pain in made her shrug the feeling off.

‘Stupid, stupid, old man,’ she repeated to herself as she unconsciously pulled her coat tighter around herself.

She had been giving him chances even in his absence — that maybe one day proof of his life’s work will be right before her eyes. She came to that point, the point of believing in the nonsense everyone around him saw just so she could have an excuse to forgive him.

But fifteen years was too long.

Nothing came.

She had given up long ago. It would take more than a satchel containing her father’s notes to convince her now.

Soojung let out a long burdened breath. Her heart has not felt this heavy for so long.

Just then, several claps of thunder viciously tore through the ashen sky. Pedestrians and bystanders alike stopped to look up. Others began running home.

‘Thunder is awfully loud today,’ Soojung says to no one in particular.

She opts to walk back home when a sharp pain seared through her being.

She gasps and struggles to keep herself up. She could feel something very warm — no, hot — scorch from inside her. It burned. Her fingers trembled and her veins felt like they will explode.

Soojung brings her hands before her eyes and nearly gasped at the sight of her bulging nerves if it weren’t for the equally burning pain tearing through .

‘W—what—‘

It was then when she heard her the sped up ticking of her own wrist watch.

Thunder was roaring louder this time. At this point Soojung could no longer tell if the pain was aggravating her senses or thunder sounded a lot closer, but she staggered to pull herself away from open space and into the nearest alley.

She gasped as the pain went up to her eyes, straining her lids shut and blurring her vision between blinks. As soon as the pain reached the core of her skull, Soojung was forced to her knees and into a battle to keep herself conscious.

.

.

.

Soojung woke up coughing a considerable amount of rainwater out of . She brings a hand to her throbbing head, nearly forgetting what pain she was in before she passed out.

Lifting her heavy eye lids, bits and pieces of what happened returned to her. She was still in the alley. However, the only difference was the presence of dark figures peering down at her.

She immediately backs away, pushing her legs and hands against the floor with what remained of her energy.

The figures remained where they stood, seemingly observing her under the dark veil of their cloaks. The one standing ahead of the rest steps forward and kneels before her.

‘This is not who we are looking for.’

‘But the energy gathered around her, Major.’

Soojung looks frantically from the figures to just about everything around her, searching for anything she could use to run away. She was not even sure, but the way her senses tingled in their presence, she knew she had to get away.

The figure kneeling in front of her, apparently male judging from his voice, pulls himself up and pulls out what seemed to be an unfamiliar form of gun. Soojung could feel the pit of her stomach churn.

‘She is not the one. I sense no energy around her now.’

‘But it’s definitely close.’

‘Regardless, we have to dispose of this one. She saw us.’

‘My plan, exactly,’ the “major” answers as he points the weapon at Soojung.

In the same minute Soojung felt herself gulp down a fraction of her relentlessly pouring fear and uncertainty, the trigger was pulled and the pellet plummeted towards her—

She would have seen a flashback of anything memorable in her life or two, but the bullet stops right before her very eyes – literally inches from head.

As if the presence of the unknown figures was already strange enough, the bullet stayed suspended where it stopped.

Soojung lets out the breath she didn’t know she held and looks from the bullet to her unmoving assailant.

‘M—Major?’

The leader of the group wasn’t fazed. Instead, he turns to his subordinate who was now pointing a finger at something right past Soojung.

Soojung, numb and confused, stiffly looks past her shoulder and caught sight of another girl in her peripheral vision – dark hair, pale and sullied skin.

The stranger’s precise stare shot past her arm that was outstretched, palm open and hand trembling, to the figures clad in black.

‘Cdyo yfyo vnus ran.’

Soojung might not have understood what it meant, but she could have sworn she was threatening them to back away from her.

‘Major? Isn’t that—‘

‘—Fire!’

Soojung immediately dove head down to the floor at the Major’s command, shielding her head with her hands and arms.

Gunfire was relentless for a minute or two until what was left was the ringing Soojung could hear in her ears.

The clueless Jung peeks through her tousled her that now covered her face to see the figures slowly backing away. She could hear footsteps from behind her now. She lifts her head up to see bullets suspended in an invisible boundary inches from her.

The leader of the group makes a sound – it seemed to have been a very, very flat chuckle. He pulls out a tube-like object from his pocket.

Soojung’s unknown savior quickly sped past her, skids to a stop and lifts a fisted hand in the air.

Everything happened in only a minute. A shrill and earsplitting sound reverberated in a harsh wave across the alley, then the stranger takes her fist to the ground at an angle that effectively created a ripple of concrete rubble burrowing all the way to Soojung’s assailants.

The figures clad in black immediately scatter to avoid the unexpected attack.

Soojung almost hid her head in her arms again at another round of gunfire but her savior lifts her other hand in time stop the bullets, missing only a few that landed in grazes through her skin.

‘Retreat!’ the leader of the group said between breaths as he forces the sharper edge of the tube into the wall to his left. He lets out an aggravated grunt as he pushes himself out of the alley with a spring of his legs.

The metal tube produced rapid beeps, echoing straight into Soojung’s senses.

She gasps.

‘It’s going to explode!’

Soojung attempts to push herself off the ground only to slip back down as the explosive went off and the wall began to collapse.

This time, Soojung knew she was going to get crushed, along with the stranger who attempted to save her life. She didn’t even try to shield her head as the wall quickly flooded her vision.

Then, the same shrill sound nearly deafened her. In the next second, her savior stood above her and caught majority of the wall on her back and hands, the weight bending her upper body and knees lower and lower until her eyes were directly and mere inches from Soojung’s.

Gradually, the weight of the wall seemed to have settled well with the stranger’s strength as she stayed firmly in the position she and Soojung was left in.

Soojung’s bewildered eyes swum mindlessly in her savior’s. With the wall awkwardly shielding them from the endless rain, Soojung found the stranger’s deep hazel eyes eerily calm and intent-less.

Soojung gulps the accumulated tension in .

The stranger eventually scrunched her eyes shut as she carefully backs away from Soojung and throws the wall far enough to keep the two of them from getting crushed.

Soojung finally collected enough sense from being deafened by the endless string of surreal events and slowly pulls herself off the ground. She watches her savior’s drained form limp away from the rubble of the wall she disposed of.

Just as the stranger turned to face Soojung, she finally falls to the ground unconscious.

‘Hey!’

Soojung rushes to the stranger’s side in panic.

‘Hey!’

She taps the unconscious girl’s face. Getting no response, she lays her head on her chest to find a heartbeat.

It was faint, but it was there.

Soojung sighs in relief and sat back, ‘thank goodness.’

Hearing footsteps thud frantically at a distance, Soojung immediately puts the stranger’s arm on her shoulder and pulls her up with her. This was very hard to explain, and she didn’t think anyone would believe her given her father’s reputation.

Just as she took the first step to get them both out of the alley, the stranger’s knees buckled, and Soojung caught sight of a silver object that slipped out of the ed top of the other girl’s shirt—

It was a pocket watch, dangling from a chain around the stranger’s neck.

As the object turned, droplets of rain ran down the word ISAAC.

Soojung blinks at the watch’s fleeting familiarity.

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A/N: So did anyone notice the pun? Haha. Okay.