"Yongsun, wake up. Mr. Han is here."

"Attention," the same, gentle voice spoke once more albeit her volume considerably increased, accompanied by other noises – the click-clack of an adult walking, the screech of chairs moving against the floor, and the hushed whispers.

"Bow."

Yongsun suddenly remembered that the teacher hated students sleeping in his class. Her eyelids fluttered and the first thing she could make out in her daze was her saviour, Soomin.

“Return to your seat.”

She didn't stay within her view long enough for her to extend her words of gratitude because the homeroom teacher demanded that everybody was to immediately return to their desk. She turned around to find the other in her seat at the back and mouthed 'thanks' when she’d caught her attention.

Soomin smiled. One of the smiles many, including Yongsun, thought very befitting of a model class president.

"Okay, everybody. Read the first paragraph on the page 256."

All of the sudden, the teacher stopped the lesson with a stern expression on his face. “Son Soomin.”

“Pay attention to the board.” Having the teacher to call out Soomin was unusual enough that everybody, with the exception of the teacher, turned their heads to look at what Soomin had done.

She was doing nothing, which was precisely why the teacher was worried.

“Son Soomin, please pay attention. Your result is getting worse.”

She remained unfazed, head still hung low as she didn’t respond.

Yongsun thought she looked somewhat different, like a terrified rabbit, instead of a composed eagle like how she used to be.

Wait a minute… She should be looking at her classmate, not an animal.

Her confusion didn’t stop there when she turned to another classmate whose seat was in front of the rabbit and she found another animal in his seat, a different species.

Giraffe? Her eyes darted to the next person, or rather another otherworldly creature to which she couldn’t put a name. It wasn’t just a few of them – everybody wasn’t a human and it raised a question about her own appearance.

She turned to check her reflection in the window.

It was a dream. 

Yongsun woke up when she remembered the reality; she denied the possibility that she looked like a certain Pokémon. But the dream was the reflection of her memories except the part where the random transformation took place. When she recognised where she was, she almost forgot why she was in a hospital for a moment until she caught a whiff of white lilies. 

A symbol of peace for the dead; its lingering scent on her fingers reminded her that she’d bade her last farewell to her friend.

The eagle and the rabbit were never the same person. In the end, the eagle died and the rabbit disappeared.

She tried to shift her position on the bench when she belatedly discovered the presence of Seungwan, whose head was resting on her shoulder, sleeping soundly. How she got here and why she was beside her instead of her parents – those questions didn’t matter to her when she decided to move Seungwan to a comfortable place, preferably an empty bed.

She at least needed it. Yongsun knew how hard it had been on her since the news broke out.

She wasn’t the first to bring Min out of her shell. 

“Soomin!”

Min didn’t respond, avoiding looking at her in the eyes. Yongsun was aware that she was terribly shy and how unresponsive she was.

“Min!”

Yongsun barely suppressed her smile of victory when she saw the other flinched at her other name; the time she spent observing Min and Seungwan during recess finally bore fruit – the trick was to call her not by her first name but by her pet name, Min. She never knew why she preferred being referred by her pet name when most students would agree with her that having their pet names known in the public was embarrassing. Min, however, wasn’t ashamed of hers.

“Hello.” She broke into a big smile, giggling at the fact that she was the first in the class to get a reaction from Min.

“Why are you behaving shy? Reminds me of our first meeting.”

Yongsun was almost taken aback when they finally had a proper eye contact – she didn’t expect her to have such a childlike expression. Was she ever this innocent?

“Do you want to go to cafeteria?” She held out her hand for Min, strangely confident that she’d accept this kind of intimacy. Sure enough, she took it even though her mind soon went elsewhere.

“Wan!” How did she become a third wheel among the siblings in an instant?

That’s right. Seungwan was the first person to whom she truly opened up. 

Yongsun wondered how Min easily carried her sister; she was by no means a lightweight. The aching pain in her back forced her to ignore the mischievous siblings walking in front of her, a sight she often witnessed at school now became a mere figment of her imagination, and to focus on the younger sibling who was on her back. She was about to wave at a nurse who was passing by so she could get assistance in getting Seungwan a bed when she felt another tickle in her ear. 

“Min…”

“Seungwan?” When she felt the younger girl’s head hitched against hers, she realised that she broke the illusion that she was being carried by her sister. 

“It’s you.” A pang of guilt struck her. Seungwan requested her to put her down, which she obliged without a moment of hesitation before she sat on the ground, with the white wall facing her back. Yongsun couldn’t ignore how her lack of care for her black dress exposed her legs. Any more exposure would be inappropriate so she decided to help the other to fix her dress.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Seungwan.” 

“No… I’m sorry for mistaking you as my sis…” Yongsun looked up from the loose ribbon on her dress, concerned by the pause in the middle of her sentence. 

“I wasn’t dreaming of Soomin.” Seungwan burst out crying. “I-I was… She was the one I dreamt,” she spat, clenching her jaws and sobbing profusely. “Why am I being like this? This is unfair.”

Yongsun understood what she was talking about. As far as she could recall, those intimate interactions between the siblings began not too long ago; a contrast from how the siblings used to behave prudently prior to her disappearance. Many people discovered that they were sisters only after they witnessed their public intimacy.

“I don’t know if she is a bad person or not.” 

It was made clear to her that Seungwan was confused about her conflicted feelings. Truth to be told, she’d experienced the same thing when she heard the news. Unable to advise her, she sat against the wall, trying to console Seungwan by patting her back. 

“I don’t know too. But she never treated me badly.” 

Seungwan didn’t speak a word, leaning her head against her shoulder as Yongsun continued to massage her back, paying close attention to her shaky breathing.

“We don’t even know her name.” 

Yongsun watched over Seungwan as she began to confess her feelings. That during the time the older girl pretended as Min, she was a burden to her compared to Min, who was capable of many things. She bitterly admitted that she felt something for the girl – things Min never did for Seungwan before, she did them for her. While Min was a model student, she was a person full of tender affection. 

She couldn’t resist smiling by the time Seungwan ended her confession. The stories she told her brought her to a regretful retrospect. If only she knew what the girl did for her sooner, they would not have ended up less than friends. She already had a hard time dealing with her relationship with a senior, let alone dealing with gossips. The rabbit was loyal; even though they had stopped talking, she still followed her in a distance where she could not be spotted by her and chased others away when they tried to speak malicious words – which unfortunately created another gossip about how the crazy rabbit fell in love with her.

She regretted for not able to do more than a glance in her direction when the rabbit was around.

“Seungwan. What if she comes back?” 

She wondered if they would welcome her when she comes back - to which Seungwan fell quiet and decided that she should return to her parents’ side. As Yongsun accompanied her on the way, she stopped to admire the stars, a rare sight in the metropolis, and it reminded her of the conversation with the girl on the school rooftop.

"I found you, Son Soomin!" Yongsun saw the other shaking her head and took it as a sign of defeat. "It's too easy to find you. Should you step up your game if you want to stop buying me food?"

She laughed. "You still share them with me in the end."

Why did it feel like her victory?

Yongsun sighed, walking over to the other as she braced herself for the cold wind.

“What are you doing here again?”

“A reminder of who I am.” 

She couldn’t take her seriously, knowing how much nonsense she could easily spout. “Really though, why do you like this place so much?"

She didn't answer and looked up to the dark sky instead. Yongsun tried to follow the trail of her gaze, wondering if there was anything that beheld the other's attention but all she could see was dark clouds covering the sky – a starless sky.

"There's nothing there…"

Under the dim fluorescent light coming from the storage shed, Yongsun caught a glimpse of her wistful smile when she took a good look at her friend. It was at the very moment when Min made a puzzling statement.

"Because you haven't found me." A whisper so soft she almost failed to catch.

"Huh-- wait, where are you going?"

Had Min not ran away without a warning, Yongsun would have not misinterpreted the insecurity in her tone as a devious way to escape from her obligation to buy her food.

"Hey, what about my potato chips?! Wait!"

Yongsun was startled by the tantrums of a child who was begging her parents for potato chips and realised that she’d been dreaming again. As she waited for the traffic light to change, she listened to a corruption scandal news on her phone, which the discussion moved on to Soomin's case due to its close link with Soonmin's father, one of the whistleblowers for the scandal and the explanation about the removal of the impersonator, Moon Byulyi, from the list of possible suspects for Soomin's murder.

Moon Byulyi.

It clicked. 

Yongsun finally understood why the girl would always say that she had yet to find her when she found her even though she was the one who initiated a children’s game, why she preferred her pet name over her first name, and why she liked to watch the sky, or rather search for herself in the starless sky, in the winter.

She’d been searching for the wrong person the entire time. 

The rabbit was waiting to be found, not as the eagle. The rabbit didn’t want to be remembered under the eagle's name. The rabbit wanted to remember her own name.

She had a chance to find the rabbit again.

The traffic light changed to a go.