“You’re here,” Hwayoung breathed.

Every puff of air out of was agony, but this sort of pain was different. Pain, soft and warm, lapped in waves at her feet like being lulled to sleep. Its soft touch threatened to pull the girl out to sea. Hwayoung’s normally sanguine lips were blue, her face one with the color of the snow; and yet, the girl felt as though she was sitting in front of a hearth. Death was welcoming, and the dark clearing in front of the woods was fast fading.

            Live, Jongin’s voice was pleading in Hwayoung’s ear. Or was she just imagining? Hwayoung, please live.

            Nevertheless, the ground was cold, and the girl didn’t have the strength to lift her head. With every breath, she felt the arrow’s horrible twisting as it dug deeper into her ravaged abdomen, and that pain kept her conscious-only just. Hwayoung wanted more than anything to let the warmth drag her down and into its embrace completely, but those yellow eyes in front of her were an anchor. Eyes that were fixed with open hostility on the stark figure emerging from the trees.

            “I’m dying,” Hwayoung felt a sticky substance on her tongue. Metallic. “Minji, please.”

            The girl, her life flickering like a flame at the end of its wick, was unsure what she was asking of her sister, but something was keeping her grounded in the snow- in the land of the living. Hwayoung was so tired, and with every quivering convulsion of her muscles, she knew her body was, too.

            “The moon always collects its debts,” Minji was standing over Hwayoung, her face flickering in and out of her view. Shadowed, unfocused. The sister’s voice was the cold monotone it always was.

            “Minji,” Hwayoung felt her consciousness slowly lifting from her body, like peeling away sticky parchment. It felt as though the lips moving on her face were not her own. She felt her hands move to her abdomen, cupping the arrow piercing her stomach. The pain wasn’t so hard to bear, anymore. “When I die, will I be with you?”

            “Perhaps.”

            Impassive. Her sister’s head wobbled dangerously on her torso. Horrible rot, barely a face, anymore. Minji’s hair was falling out in clumps, her cheeks shriveled and shrunken into her skull. This horrible figure was a corpse, not Hwayoung’s sister- surely this was not what awaited Hwayoung beyond the grave.

Beside Hwayoung, the wolf growled once more with raised hackles and bared teeth. However, it made no attempt to draw nearer- the beast kept his posture taught and aloof. Minji paid it no mind, her rotted eye sockets fixed upon Hwayoung’s pathetic frame lying on the ground.

The snow was no longer a dusting, and it was blowing across the clearing with new strength. Small, powdery drifts gathered at Hwayoung’s feet, but she was oblivious to the cold. It fell from the sky like the blossoms did from the trees on windy spring days; so many pieces falling to the ground to create a hushed blanket. The feeling of something sacred, the feeling of something harrowing. The delicate flakes were stained with the copper blush of the blood seeping from the girl’s torso as they framed her dark figure in the snow.

“Was it like this,” Hwayoung barely had the strength to say more than a thin whisper, but Minji heard her. “Dying?”

“It was fast,” Minji droned. Her head fell to the side with every word. “Like falling asleep.”

This gave the dying girl a small sense of relief. Her eyes fluttered, and her abdomen convulsed. She was shaken from her trance by the sudden outpouring of dark, sticky fluid that expelled itself from and dripped down her chin. Slow beads soiling the white shroud of snow.

“Jongin,” Hwayoung choked. She somehow hoped that her words could be understood by the wolf in front of her and the boy with the sun-kissed skin would know how she felt. “I’m sorry.”

The wolf’s yellow eyes burned like hot embers, but he did not move. Like a sentry he stood watch over the tragic scene playing out before him. Waiting- for Minji to leave or Hwayoung to die, it was uncertain.

Minji’s hand outstretched, and automatically Hwayoung’s hand closed around the object given to her. The familiar dagger she had taken from poor Taemin, his body still lying just in front of the interminable trees, glinted in the dampened moonlight. Hwayoung, in confusion, frowned up at Minji’s gruesome face.

“Minji,” Hwayoung held it with cautious hands. The blade was cold, and this time Hwayoung felt the chill. “What would you have me do with this?”

“Leta warned you,” Minji’s voice was fading, as though she were speaking from behind a wall. “The moon always collects its debts.”

“Minji,” Hwayoung closed her eyes, simply focusing on her breathing. In. Out. “I don’t understand what you are telling me.”

“You do,” For just a moment, Hwayoung swore that her sister’s voice sounded alive again. In it was the familiar and warm mixture of affection that Hwayoung re