Chapter Twenty Four - Together When....
Project 86Chapter Twenty Four - Together When...
“And then the whole thing would spin and spin, and the cup itself would spin and spin…”
A young girl in a frilly pink dress was spinning around in place imitating the motion of her explanation, eventually beginning to move as her spinning took a track of a larger circle. Watching her was another girl in an overall light blue gown, sitting on the floor with her eyes open brightly fixed on the spinning girl wide with wonder and a smile on her lips.
The spinning began to become erratic and the first girl started to wobble eventually losing her balance and falling over from the dizziness. Both girls erupted in laughter as the dizzy girl attempted to walk over to the other with uneasy steps finally finding herself by her side and plopping down to sit next to her, the giggling and laughter subsiding soon after.
“Daddy said to not to go on after eating. You can throw up,” the pink dress said. “But otherwise it’s so much fun!”
“It sounds so nice. I hope I can one day try the tea cups too.”
“I’m sure you will! Daddy said that once you are all healthy we will go do these together. Oh, I almost forgot…” The pink dressed girl started to pat through her dress, eventually finding the conveniently hidden pockets that vanished into the folds and ruffles of her dress. “Here, I got this for you.”
She pulled an item out of her pocket and handed it over to the blue gowned girl. It was a little pink kitten plush keychain. It was excessively furry and fluffy tickling the palms of their hands but still soft enough to cradle in your arms.
“I asked daddy to buy it for me so I could give it to you. Do you like it?”
“I love it! Thank you, Fany!” She looked over and gave a huge hug to the pink dressed Tiffany who embraced the hug in return.
From the far corner of the room where the door was the familiar sound of a beep interrupted the two as the door unlocked and slid open. Inside walked a handsome man with a bright warm smile looking at the two.
“Alright girls, it’s time for you both to go sleep soon,”
“Awwww…” both let out a sigh in unison but didn’t fight the call.
“You have school tomorrow Tiffany and you Yoona,” he looked at the blue gowned girl as Tiffany walked over to the man, “you have a big day tomorrow. You need to rest as much as you can.”
“Yes Mr. Hwang,” Yoona, the girl in blue said as she stood up straightening her plain gown and began to clean up the toys that were strewn across the floor. Every evening before bed she had to clean everything up. It was a such a routine and she was an obedient girl, always had been.
“Good girl. We will turn the lights of in fifteen minutes. Now come on Tiffany time for us to go,” Mr. Hwang said grabbing hold of Tiffany’s hand to lead her out.
“Goodnight Yoona!”
“Goodnight Tiffany!”
As the two stepped out of the room the door closing and locking behind them, Yoona finished gathering the toys strewn across the ground. There weren’t too many and she was soon done with the cleanup. She quickly rushed to the bathroom to brush her teeth and wash her face before getting into bed tucking herself in.
Exactly fifteen minutes from when Mr. Hwang and Tiffany had left the room the lights turned off leaving on only the few red night lights that were placed in the bottom corners of the room. They were shedding just enough light for Yoona to walk to the bathroom but not so much as to disrupt her sleep.
As usual it didn’t take Yoona long to fall asleep. It was almost on par of willing herself to just go and she was immediately dreaming, floating in the ever exciting and strange realm of the dream world. She flew about in the whirlwind of the intangible, a sea of abstract and a storm of impossible, through the endless desert of the dream world. Her mind soon found her place in a familiar playground, a simple place surrounded by trees, grass and flower beds outlining a sandy pit with swings, monkey bars, slides, all the things that Yoona never got to play with in the outside world. Almost on cue her best friend in the dreams had appeared right next to her. She probably knew her sleep schedule by now.
“Hi Yoona!”
“Hey Sooyoung!”
They met up at a playground that was similar to the one they had played together as kids a long time ago, save for the fact that this one was pristine and new and not rusted and broken. It was a creation of Sooyoung however, as Yoona was so young when she left that she couldn’t actually remember it herself.
At this place of comfort and safety they would catch up with their events of the day, Sooyoung usually explaining something she herself did while Yoona’s descriptions more often than not were of what Tiffany had done and told her, and what Yoona had imagined all of that would feel and look like. She also shared the coming events of the following day, her anxiety of what was going to happen and what she could do.
“Oh, and Tiffany gave me a gift from the fair!” Yoona opened her palm and with her mind produced a copy of the kitten keychain gift that Tiffany had given her earlier that evening.
“Wow it’s so cute!” Sooyoung exclaimed reaching out and taking the keychain that Yoona was offering her to look at it closer.
“It really made me want to go to the fair too… You know how I’ve never even been outside or to a park like this since I was adopted,” Yoona said waving her arms around at the entirety of their location. “I can only remember being underground forever and ever.”
The frown on Yoona’s brow deepened and her face darkened at the thought of this. The older she had gotten the more she wanted to go out too. She loved both Mr. Hwang and especially Tiffany, but she felt it was unfair that she could never leave even for a moment. Why was it so dangerous for her to go out? Her sickness couldn’t be that bad if Tiffany was allowed to play with her.
Sooyoung noticed the frown and sadness in Yoona’s eyes and it pained her equally. With her history of abusive caretakers and an orphan herself, she could imagine and relate the pain that Yoona was going through. Her situation was different as she had stayed in the orphanage for much longer and their lives had taken a different turn, but the limits to her freedom and the feeling of not having love or having any agency of her own was a very familiar one.
“So why don’t you just leave?” Sooyoung asked as nonchalantly as she could, feigning any suggestion on her part to make it Yoona’s own decision. She continued munching on her corndog and in between bites with a mouth half full continued talking. “I mean, you have like super powers and stuff. You could just go if you wanted to.”
“Leave? Where would I go?” Yoona mumbled into her dress while still sitting in the sand of the playground.
“Come live with me! I can help you get out, and then I’m sure mom will adopt you too! She is so lovely, and then we can be sisters again!”
On the upswing Sooyoung jumped out of her swing, the seat stopping in place in the air as she flew far forward from her seat over Yoona to the other end of the sandpit of the playground. The swing stayed in its upswing position floating in air unnaturally.
“You sure she would have me?”
“Of course! Especially since we were both lived in that same hellhole of an orphanage, if you could even call it that…” Sooyoung seemed to immediately fall into a sense of melancholy, the thought of the orphanage she had to live in enough to cause pain. Yoona had been taken out by Mr. Hwang a lot earlier when she was a lot younger so Yoona’s memories of the place mainly consisted of Sooyoung alone.
“I… don’t know,” Yoona replied her face full of worry and indecision. She didn't want to leave Tiffany but she wanted to get out too.
The frown on Yoona’s face wasn’t disappearing and seemed to be deepening. Sooyoung couldn’t have that. “Wanna go see this cool place I found?”
“Yes!” Yoona perked up. Sooyoung, taller but equally skinny to Yoona and a few years older than her grabbed Yoona’s hand and in that instant the two were transporting through the dream world.
All the colours of the visual spectrum flashed in their eyes in long streaks with intermittent breaks, swirling around together and depicting everything and anything that could exist within the dream world at the same time. It was as if when travelling the world was in a state of flux, like having thousands of images overlaid on top of each other so you couldn’t identify a single detail from any one image.
There was no air in the dream world so there was no real rush of the wind or sound distorted from the movement, just the silent hum of empty sound in her ears. An almost pristine perfect silence, a bubble of quiet as the landscape whirled around erratically until they stopped, and in an instant the sounds of the world were back as the dream world created things for their senses to perceive, and the sound that came was almost explosive.
They were standing at the edge of huge waterfalls running down both sides of a massive canyon and dropped what looked like hundred meters below. The billowing echo and crash of water down below reverberated all the way to the top of the waterfall where Sooyoung and Yoona stood, a single poking piece of rock ledge at the edge of this huge chasm, with few trees and pieces of ground and rock poking at varying locations along the edge. Where the water came from you couldn’t see; it was an endless expanse of ocean all around them, as if this was the edge of the world by the ocean.
“It’s amazing isn’t it?” Sooyoung shouted over the deafening roar of the waterfalls, Yoona barely managing to hear what she said. “I found it a couple days ago and wanted to show you so now you can come here whenever you want too!”
“It’s beautiful…” Yoona said staring out at the raging force of nature unlike she had ever seen. Even though she might not be able to see amazing things in the real world, at least she could experience something that was impossible there; she could live the inconceivable here.
“Feel better?” Sooyoung asked seeing that Yoona’s frowned forehead had smoothed out and there was a hint of a smile at the corner of .
“Yes, thank you for bringing me here Sooyoung.”
“I’ll be looking out for you tomorrow on the other side okay? If you need help just shout for me and I’ll help you out anyway I can.”
“Okay. Thank you. I don’t know what I’ll do but, if I need it…” Yoona looked at Sooyoung with a smile, already feeling a little better about the coming day. “I think I’ll go to sleep sleep now. I don’t want to be too tired tomorrow.”
“That’s a good idea. I should probably sleep too.” Both of them stood up from the ledge they had been sitting by and faced each other.
“Goodnight Yoona,” Sooyoung reached out and gave her a big hug, “just remember to call me if you need me. I’ll be there.”
Yoona responded to the squeeze lingering in the hug longer than usual, releasing all her anxiety about the day ahead, eventually loosening Sooyoung from her grip and waving her a final goodbye. With that she disappeared from the waterfalls and allowed herself to rest, letting her mind naturally dream in the random existence of the dream world.
Sleep was unusually restless for her and waking up in the morning her body didn’t feel fully rested. Everything ached just a little bit and her neck was a little stiff. Having been woken up in this kind of a state Yoona was crankier than usual and her eyelids weighed heavily on her, barely managing to keep them open when her breakfast was served.
Muddling heavily through the usual morning procedures she was eventually brought into the laboratory dressed in her white gown and seated onto a big reclining chair that was buffed up with cushions for comfort. The seat was part of the huge machine behind it, a massive structure that was cylindrical in shape and towered from floor to ceiling, with wires and pipes running along the sides. Yoona sat at the edge of the chair as Mr. Hwang arrived and kneeled down in front of her.
“Did you sleep alright? Today is a big day and I need you sharp.”
“I guess it was okay. I’m still tired though…” Yoona whined rubbing her eyes as the lab technicians in the room began to place nodes to her temple and different parts of her body for data capture.
A hand brushed through Yoona’s hair and moved the loose strands from the front of her face behind her ears revealing her face from behind it. Yoona immediately perked up and she seemed wide awake. “I need you to focus for me okay? This is very important, for you and for me, for everyone in here.”
Yoona glanced around the room at all the people there mostly lab technicians in masks mostly people she didn’t recognize. There were a few familiar faces of people who had been there for years, some of them taking care of her, bringing her food, doing her physical checkups, helping her in tasks and very rarely, played with her. This place was the only world she truly knew, at least here in the real world.
There was a whole other world out in the dream world though and for a second she felt that maybe she could just escape there from everything for a while. Get some alone time and freedom. Experience all she could on her own, think what she wanted on her own, play how she wanted. Once she was done she could just return here. But as exciting as that thought was it was equally scary and doubt nagged at her, telling her that maybe she could wait a little longer. She really didn’t want to make Tiffany sad, and disappointing Mr. Hwang would do that. “Okay. I will try to focus.”
“That’s my girl,” he tapped her gently on the head before standing up and motioning with her hand to the technicians around her. He walked off and out of the main room leaving Yoona behind to be helped up by the technicians into the huge reclined chair. They adjusted a head cap on before a huge helmet like contraption, a headgear was lowered onto her head.
“We’re going to hold your hands with these straps for your safety okay? So you don’t accidentally scratch your head and pull out a wire, that could be dangerous,” one of the lab technicians told her gently to which Yoona nodded. She didn’t recognize his voice.
As the latches locked into place around Yoona’s wrists there was a small rattle of metal against metal coming from Yoona’s left hand. The technician looked over to the source of the sound, seeing a little keychain poking out from in between Yoona’s little fingers.
“What is that in your hand?” The lab technician said as he noticed Yoona’s clenched left fist holding tight onto something.
“It’s nothing.”
“Yoona, please show it to me,” he asked, holding his hand out close to Yoona’s hand since her wrists were now tied and she couldn’t move her arm.
Yoona loosened her grip, the little pink kitten now revealed and dangling loosely in her fingers.
The lab technician reached out and took it from her hand.
“No it’s mine, it’s a gift! Give it back!” Yoona screamed in panic as the precious gift that had been given to her by Tiffany was taken away from her.
“Yoona, you need to tell us everything remember? This can damage the machine.” He began walking away from Yoona who immediately attempted to free herself from the straps that she had been latched onto the chair with.
“No please, give it back…” tears had now formed at the edges of her eyes as she pleaded with the lab technician.
The technician didn’t listen and walked away, placing the little pink cat plushie into a tray to the side of the machine. It was still within vision of Yoona and she kept staring at it, now having completely lost focus on what she was supposed to do today. All she wanted was her little plush back.
“We’re ready to begin sir,” another technician announced having been given the all clear from the other technicians on site.
Perched in his observation deck behind a glass window Thomas Hwang nodded. Seeing that Yoona was acting nervous and sad, crying for her toy he leaned in and pressed on the speak button for his microphone, his voice echoing into the test chamber.
“Yoona, there’s nothing to worry about,” he said and looked out the window to see if he had grabbed her attention. Yoona was looking up from her seat now no longer crying or shouting after her toy. He always had her attention. She considered him her father after all.
“Just focus for a little bit for me okay? Then you can get your kitten back and we can go play and have ice cream, okay?” He smiled looking at her and gave a wave.
In her seat Yoona could see Mr. Hwang behind the window, waving and smiling at her. She looked over at the toy, then at the lab technicians around her and finally back at Mr. Hwang. She didn’t want to disappoint him. She was a good girl, she was going to be the best girl. She was going to get out of here, somehow. One day.
One day. Why not today? Maybe Sooyoung was correct and she had the power to just leave. Why did she have to stay here in this laboratory, never allowed to leave? What sickness did she have that could infect others? If she was so sick then how could Tiffany and Mr. Hwang be able to be with her, how did they not get sick? She couldn’t be really infectious then right? She wouldn’t spread her disease if she left this place and went out into the world.
“Turn it on.”
The machine behind her whirred to life with an ever growing hum snapping Yoona back to reality as the light buzz of the machine under her tingled her fingers.
“Power at twenty percent.”
She looked at the lab technician to her left who was reading and shouting the dials on the screen following the powering of the machine. She didn’t want to do this. She wanted to leave.
“Forty percent. The rift is begging to open up.”
What if after this she no longer could see Sooyoung? What if after this she no longer was herself? She didn’t even fully know what was happening, she just trusted Mr. Hwang but this was scary. It was terrifying.
“Sixty percent. The tether has reached through the other side. Connection established and the bridge is forming.”
No. She didn’t want to go. Yoona concentrated harder with her mind calling out to her friend, to Sooyoung. Her concentration completely now shifted from her task with the machine and instead focused on calling out to her friend, trying to find a connection, calling for help. At the edge of her consciousness she felt a tingle, just a little tug. There was a hand reaching out and with her mind she reached out and took hold of it. Sooyoung!
“Seventy percent, but we are seeing an anomaly sir. Something is ripping the tether.”
Just as she took hold of Sooyoung’s hand something began to further pull her back. Their grips tightened and she battled to keep her concentration on her friend, but her hold was slipping. The machine was too strong. She didn’t want this. Not this. No, no, no, no…
“No, no, no, no… NO!”
With a scream from the very core of her being Yoona felt she was losing herself and in that instant whatever it was that was pulling her asunder snapped and she felt free for just a second, the weight that was on her disappeared.
“Sir! The tether has snapped and bridge collapsed, we can’t redirect the power!”
Her surroundings were beginning to distort, her hands warped into unrecognizable extensions of her body and she no longer felt the pressure of the machine, the pressure of wrist and ankle straps around her, the pressure of gravity itself. Around her trays and carts and eventually the lab technicians slowly began to lift off the ground around her as pens and clipboards began to slowly make their flight away. Her pink kitten keychain also lifted off the tray it had been set aside on and Yoona felt weightless, she felt free.
“Yoona! No!”
Her eyes snapped open from the shout of Mr. Hwang over the speaker as he also had been lifted up by the gravitational anomaly and was holding onto his microphone to keep himself from floating away. She could see the panic in his eyes and for a moment she felt regret, that she had done something bad and that she needed to stop this. But in her mind’s eye she could see Sooyoung holding her hand, sense the warmth and comfort waiting for her. The possibility of a family outside. The whole world outside waiting for her. She wasn’t going to let that opportunity go, risk forgetting everything. Risk being forgotten.
In that moment she saw at the furthest left corner of her eye the image of Tiffany. She shifted her head over and there she was, her best friend Tiffany was here in the labs, practically the only family she had. She was supposed to be at school Yoona knew this, but instead she was here. Yoona had told Tiffany how scared and nervous she was of this day so she must have come to support and comfort her.
There was equal panic in Tiffany’s eyes and she was screaming out Yoona’s name, although she couldn’t hear it through the soundproof windows of the laboratory. Tiffany was the only one Yoona was certain truly loved her here and was worried for her as a person. She was now crying and Yoona could feel the hot tears on her face as well. Leaving her would be Yoona’s only regret.
“I’m so sorry Tiffany, I want to see the sun too.”
With a final push and release of everything she had; every fiber in her being and every ounce of consciousness and soul, she pulled away from the machine reaching out and pulling onto the outreached hand of Sooyoung that she could see in her mind. Her way to freedom. As if slowly dripping through filter paper, she slipped out of her body seeing everything in the room at once and being lifted out of her seat. Down below were the shocked expressions of the lab technicians and Mr. Hwang all staring at her body, time had stopped and it was serene. For a moment.
With a violent jerk worth hundreds of G’s she felt a ripping force pull her back into her body and like an overwhelming flooding river all her senses were overloaded with every possible stimulant and irritant and her ears were ringing, eyes burning with light and she tried to scream, but no sound was coming out as was on fire and vocal chords felt shattered and singed. Ever increasing in intensity she started to writhe and go into a seizure in her chair as her mind fought the machine; this battle and breaking of the tether had completely twisted reality in this area.
Only her mind was barely intact and she kept grasping out, reaching for something out of here to release her from this pain. One final push as pins on her skin pierced, as her eyes no longer could see anything but burning light like the surface of the sun, the ringing in her ears deafening.
In the throes of the worst pain she had ever felt she wished to die, something she had never in her life thought about before. Yoona was ready to completely give up, to give in to the pain as it strangled her ever tighter and tighter. The squeeze was trapping impossible amounts of energy into it and she felt like she was going to explode; and then there was a crack in the constriction. The dam had broken.
There was a shockwave of energy in a perfect sphere that expanded out of Yoona with the speed of sound running through everything and everyone before rapidly imploding on itself, focused back in to the centre of this sphere; into Yoona. Just as rapidly as this shockwave had expanded it similarly disappeared in on itself and Yoona with it.
All that was left was a perfect sphere of a hole in a five hundred metre radius with every building, equipment and non-living article having been consumed, somehow disappearing out of existence leaving scores of unconscious and lab technicians and scientist at the bottom of the sphere, including Mr. Hwang and Tiffany.
Yoona was nowhere in sight, nowhere to be found.
---
The soft and warm fingers no longer touched her forehead and the constant comfortable perfect warm temperature had changed to sweaty overbearing heat. Underneath her she could feel soft fabric that covered well formed rigid cushions and across her chest she could feel the pull of a strap that ran from her right shoulder down to the left side of her hip and she was in a low lying seated position. Was she still in the machine? What was this feeling?
Her eyelids weighed on her and she found it difficult to open them up as if her muscles had suffered severe shock and almost every muscle in her body ached somehow. There was a dull hum as her ears rang from an almost perfect absence of sound, except right at the edge of her hearing there was something; a muffled clanking, a toned dragging, a shallow cry from surprise. Focusing on these sounds she willed herself to move, willed herself to open her eyes, to wake up.
It was the grey canvas interior of a cars roof that first greeted Yoona. She looked down from the roof and saw the windshield of the car and from her reclined angle saw out of the window the black and dark grey swirling sky and the outlines of trees along the edges. She craned her neck down along her body to see a seat belt around her and also noticed she wasn’t a child anymore, but a tall adult woman.
She reached out with her aching arm and fiddled around with it to unlock the seat belt. It was difficult, her fingers barely responded to her commands and it took all her effort to lift her arm but she managed to find the button, the belt rapidly swinging up and around off her.
Her right arm reached down the seat to find the buttons to adjust seat position and used it to assist her to sit up, the backrest slowly rising with the rapid whirling of an electric motor. Slowly her sightlines changed and she could see over the dashboard and out into a gravel yard packed full of black cars parked around the edges, the yard outlined by trees and forest on all sides; the forest filled with pairs of yellow eyes staring and following something. In the midst of these cars she could see what looked like human bodies strewn across haphazardly and random equipment laying about. Peeking from behind one of the cars lifting something and moving about she could see another figure.
The front seats sunshade was partially pulled down and she reached out to fully lower it to look in the tiny mirror embedded into it and was greeted with a welcome sight; she was her adult self and from the sensations of pain she was feeling she was fairly certain she was back in her physical body, back in the real world. She had survived the memory recovery of the events eleven years ago; Sinuhe had been succesful and was probably back in the Anchor still holding onto it to keep it and the dream world from total collapse and catastrophe. She had to be quick so she could help him.
There was a flash of wincing headache like the shooting pains of your teeth as the thoughts of her recovered memories resurfaced. She could remember everything from before eleven years ago again, she could remember her awakening and escape from the labs. She could remember Tiffany and Sooyoung as they were, she remembered Mr. Hwang and what he had done to her. Yoona wasn’t sure if this had yet opened her powers or if there was more work to do, but that was a worry for later. For now she was supremely grateful she was finally back in her own body.
Having recovered enough strength in her muscles to move Yoona decided to see who this figure was, maybe they could help her. She had no clue how she had ended up in this car, so she had to be careful about approaching this person. There was no way of knowing if they were friendly and she would have to determine whether she had to act like she was Saebyuk or not in case they were one of Mr. Hwang’s lackeys.
Yoona opened the door and slowly inched her way out of it, standing up and walking around the car door while still holding on to it for support. The figure she had seen earlier had crouched behind a car again before standing up once more and appearing in full view once more.
“Seohyun?”
Behind one of the black SUV’s, Seohyun stopped walking with the gun she had in hand and slowly turned her head to look in the direction of the voice calling her name. She definitely recognized this voice.
Standing by the Luna’s car was Yoona, breathing and talking and walking. The seat where she had left her was empty, so she was fairly certain that this person was no apparition or figment of her imagination. For just a moment a smile crept up on her face as her first instinct was the happiness of seeing Yoona walking and talking again, but the subtle smile was short lived. This could be Saebyuk awoken once again, prancing around in her precious Yoona’s body.
“Yoona or Saebyuk?” Seohyun shouted, still standing behind the car giving her some protection and now straddling the rifle in her hand. Not that she knew well how to use it, or that she could ever shoot anybody least of all Yoona even if it was Saebyuk in there. If she killed Yoona’s body how could the real Yoona ever return to it. It was more of a confidence booster for her, something to grip to keep her nerves in check.
“Is it that uncertain?” Yoona asked. She had thought that finally seeing each other would be a loving and heart-warming reunion, but here she was being questioned for her authenticity. Then again looking around her maybe that was the only sane things to do. Maybe she should be questioning if Seohyun was real.
“Look around you, after everything that has happened wouldn’t it be stranger for me not to question it?”
“True…” Yoona admitted, her head now dipped a little from the tension. Around them the hundreds of pairs of yellow eyes stared at her, watching her every move. The gray swirling skies and the gray streaks of what looked like spirits whirled in and out of the forest. The dream world really had collapsed on reality. It must have been terrifying.
“You told me once,” Yoona started, her eyes still trained on the ground before looking back up at Seohyun. Tears were forming and she faltered to continue.
“That time we got caught in the thunderstorm out at the Deer Sanctuary National Park, remember? You said you were found and unconscious at the national park by your family, that they adopted you after your own family couldn’t be found anywhere, that they suspected they must have been lost while hiking. That you couldn’t even remember them from the amnesia you suffered and that we went there because you wanted to show me where you were found and wanted to share this with me, your best and only true friend.
“When you told me this as we huddled under that little rock canopy to get even a little protection from the rain, we both cried for an hour together, remember? I was so sad for you but also so thankful that you were my best friend because you understood exactly how hard it would be to not remember. To not have a past or your real family.”
The gravel under Yoona got its first drops of moisture in weeks as tears were raining down from her cheeks. Equally across the parking lot Seohyun’s cheeks were a flooded river and she attempted to wipe them away with her sleeve, but it wouldn’t stop coming. It was Yoona, it was really her. Yoona…
“You’re back!”
Seohyun dropped the gun she was holding and ran towards Yoona who equally did her best to hobble and hurry towards Seohyun even with all her aching and sore muscles. The two impacted in a long embrace, holding each other like it had been years since they saw each other, even if it had barely been a week since all of this started, since Yoona lost her body.
“I missed you so much and was so worried when I saw the dream world collapse,” Yoona mumbled into Seohyun’s shoulder, tears dripping down onto her shirt. “I’m sorry it took me so long to come back.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for,” Seohyun cooed while Yoona’s hair. She tried to sound as cool as possible but the hot tears could be felt on Yoona’s neck and her speech was marred with the drool from crying.
The embrace lasted for a time uncountable as the collapsed dream world spun around them violently. They felt safe now, they felt whole and happy again. No matter what stormy weather outside was like and how it raged just like at the national park that night long ago, together they could push through it.
Eventually the tight embrace loosened into a gentle tug of each others waists and the overwhelming tears had stopped their flowing, just a few lingering droplets and sniffles oh their now runny noses. Yoona looked about at the well armed people and the weapons strewn about the gravel yard.
“Who are these guys?”
“They are Mr. Hwang’s and Luna’s men. They were here to take our friends at the shrine away. I was trying to gather all their weapons and equipment and lock them away in the car and then tie all of them up in case they wake up.”
“Luna?”
“She is from the government. She is the money behind Mr. Hwang.”
“Ah, well let’s finish doing what you started and then go see how everyone is doing.”
The two together worked quickly and efficiently, tying up the men and gathering all their weapons and equipment locking them in bags in the trunk of the SUVs and taking the keys away with them to throw away later. While doing this they shared their experiences these past few days since Yoona disappeared into The Beyond.
Yoona shared everything about The Beyond; Url and Zun, the fissures during the dream world collapse, hearing Sooyoung, the infinite struggle of trying to get out, the Anchor and Sinuhe, and finally Sinuhe’s and her past memories that she had lived through and now were burned into the core of her memory, and which had finally awakened her and let her come back.
Seohyun in return recounted being taken to the secret lab under their office building, finding Mr. Hwang and Luna were the culprits behind the coma epidemic, how they had hooked her and Saebyuk to a huge dream machine and something had gone wrong so she woke up alone in the labs, before escaping through the collapsed dream world hell-scape with Yoona’s unconscious body here to the shrine.
“You dragged my body all the way here from the labs?”
“I couldn’t leave you there alone in case you woke up as you. I just… I couldn’t leave you.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you didn’t.”
“So am I.”
They had finished the tying up and collecting the weapons. None of these people would be able to break free without outside help arriving. With aching muscles the two began the exhausting trek up the steps to the shrine. The stone lanterns that lined the steps at equal distance were lit with blue smoke, like soul fire, illuminating the path forward with a gentle light blue hue all the while right next to them hidden in the green trees along the steps were the ever present yellow eyes, hundreds of them, blinking and following their movement up the steps.
It took a lot longer than their first time climbing up as both of them were exhausted before embarking on the climb and now even more so after. Reaching the top they saw the shrine as they had left it, no damage to the structure of it, just as beautiful and serene as it had been before. They walked up to the front porch Yoona taking careful steps onto it before calling out. “Hello, is anybody here?”
After a minute of silence they decided to move in. The place was eerily quiet with the duo’s careful steps being the only sound that gently tapped on the rooms wooden floor as they moved in deeper, into the kitchen with recently washed dishes and then turning the corner to find the shrine rooms sliding doors closed.
Seohyun ushered Yoona behind her since if their friends were awake they wouldn’t know if it was Saebyuk or Yoona in her body. She carefully slid the doors open and found a room dead silent with the bodies of all their friends on the floor.
Hyoyeon and Jessica were furthest in the room close to the centre where the cushions were set up in a circle, the two holding each other’s hand on the floor. Close behind them was Sooyoung and Sunny, with the latter tucked partially into Sooyoung’s arms as if she had been protecting her. It looked like they had been watching something out the window before attempting to get away from it as closest to the window was Taeyeon, collapsed with her phone in her hand. Following behind her were a metre apart each Yuri and Tiffany, all having fallen while trying to get away.
Yoona and Seohyun immediately rushed in to check up on their friends conditions. They were all thankfully still breathing and alive, just rendered into a coma much like how Seohyun had seen was the case for everyone; all the way from the lab through the city to the shrine.
“Let’s get them comfortable for when they wake up, get some blankets and cushions for them.”
“You sure they will wake up?”
Something tugged at the back of Yoona’s head, like a little string being pulled through a wall that had enclosed who she really was.
“I’m certain.”
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