On the soft, white canopy of snow, the spill of fresh blood is stark. It’s easy, the ragged edge of the knife cuts through the soft human skin with little to no drag, scarlet blood spilling between them to color the monochrome world with violence. The attacker lets go of her frayed hoodie, and Minjeong kicks him until he staggers back. Quickly closing the butterfly knife and tucking it into her back pocket, she springs into a run as fast as her feet can take her. One bigot means there are others around — she will have to find shelter. Quickly.

Minjeong wipes angrily at the stray tear rolling down her cheek. But the specs of blood on her hand taint her raw skin red, wearing now a sign of her cold-hearted cruelty like a badge of honor. Some things never get easier — running like a hunted prey, acting in self-defense. Killing.

The air is freezing in her lungs, the meek, shredded hoodie barely warming her up in the heavy fall of snow. It cracks under her sneakers, the fresh snow, and Minjeong hates that her first thought is that she’s leaving an obvious track behind herself. Heart pulsating in her ears, breath coming out in a puff of smoke, frozen limbs trying to push her forward and save her body, for a moment she wonders how long she could run. How long is it until one attacker grows into two, then three — each slashed down grows another two back not different from the head of a hydra — and then one too many to keep her luck pushing? How long until her body catches up to her mind to come to a decision it’s not worth the fight?

(How long is it until she gives up?)

There had been worse times, Minjeong reminds herself. There had been times when running away meant cutting through the gordian knot of people, taking lives just as they screamed she would. The lost futures of those humans burned into her mind like a film reel. If she closed her eyes, she still sees the bright futures, even brighter smiles — weddings, careers, kids. Taken away with trembling hands. Regret and hatred are a tricky mixture to swallow, and her dry throat closes around the heaving of her chest.

Yells arise behind her, footfalls drum, and alarms echo in the empty forest. Keeping up her pace, she could only hope this is not the end yet. Glove-clad hands turn into fists as she runs, but it’s just her dilapidating stamina against the sentinel and her purchasers closing in around her. Robots built with the bloodthirst of a human; the knife cannot cut through metal. She peers back over her shoulder — the heavy body of the sentinel emerges behind the treelines. The humans around it yap loudly like hounds, coming to witness the elimination of yet another mutant.

She’s slowing down. The edge of her vision is blackening, heart rate pumping deafeningly in her ears. Her eyes catch something reddish in the white layer of snow.

A wreck. An old car that has been eaten up by rust, every moveable component stolen to leave behind only a hollow shell. Minjeong immediately targets it. The windows are smashed in, the broken shards glittering on the floor of the car — she jumps in. It’s a futile attempt to get away. The sentinel will detect the X-gene in her without a hitch and hiding in the car is only making her a nicely wrapped gift with no way out. It doesn’t matter anymore. The game is up, and she lost.

She pulls her legs close to her chest, humming a song under her breath. It seems a lifetime away when she was playing her piano at home, in warmth, at peace, surrounded by love. Things change fast; especially when you wake up one day seeing the future of everyone that brushes past you. Her voice comes out in broken syllables, a strange calmness washing over her. The voices are growing louder, but something odd is happening — the cheerful yells of the people are coming out strained, almost angry.

For a second, there’s nothing. The silence is loud in Minjeong’s ears, a vacuum tightening around her brain. She screws her eyes closed, palm pressing to her ears to get rid of it. Pulling her legs closer, making herself smaller — maybe if she’s tiny enough, just a speck of dust in the universe, they’d let her live.

Then there’s a crash. The noise cuts through the deadly silence like thunder, and the fall of something heavy resonates through the ground. Voices growing more and more agitated, the loud pop of the vacuum is back. Minjeong has half a mind to peek out at the odd scene, hope fluttering in her chest like a butterfly, but someone walks into her periphery.

The woman standing there is dressed smartly. Hair slicked back into a ponytail, an elegant coat hanging from her frame, she looks like she just stepped out of a fashion magazine. She looks displaced in the middle of the snowy forest, in the middle of chaos where Minjeong is buying time, waiting for death. It’s funny, the complete calmness she carries herself with; the bored gaze, as Minjeong follows the line of her vision, that rests on the two other girls fighting off the humans, the sentinel nowhere to be seen.

Minjeong tries to make sense of what she’s seeing — the sentinel was an old one, the lack of updates meant Minjeong could almost slip from under its nose if it weren't for the bastard noticing her, but it was powerful nonetheless. But then one of the girls opens up a portal, a black void to somewhere, anywhere — nowhere. So there went the sentinel.

The woman turns her feline eyes towards her, gaze boring into Minjeong’s. Being located by the sentinel was one thing. Knowing that you will die under the hands of a hatred-driven machine is final, undoubtful. Boots kicking away the broken, rusty pieces of the car, Minjeong is not sure if her savior arrived with good intentions. She quickly runs through the possibilities — running away is an option, but with the girl with portal-opening power, it’d be stupid. Staying is another option, even if every single muscle in her body strains to move, to run, to get somewhere safe. Teeth chattering from the cold, she’s about to push herself to stand when the woman steps into the doorway of the car. One hand resting on the empty vessel, she dips her head to have a good look at Minjeong. Her only emergency exit blocked, Minjeong reaches into her pocket to hold onto her knife.

The look of a soldier softens as their eyes meet and it almost gives a whiplash to Minjeong. Dark eyes hold her, but it’s so unexpected — Minjeong is used to the hatred, the vengeance that rests in people’s eyes when they look at her.

“I’m not gonna hurt you,” she says, tender in the harsh snowfall. “I’m just like you.”

Hand gripping the butterfly knife, she's ready to spill some more blood and run. It's an endless cycle; kill to stay alive. Stay alive to kill. Be the worst self of yourself to even keep on living. But the woman reaches her hand out slowly as one would towards a stray cat ready to bolt, and in the palm of her hand a little ball of blue flame appears. It’s warm as she offers towards Minjeong, warmth seeping through the thin material of her clothes immediately. The flames ripple on the surface of the ball like it’s a miniature ocean that rests between the palms of this odd woman.

Tentatively, Minjeong reaches her hands out. The leather gloves are her only possession, but she strips them off slowly to warm her frozen fingers. The ball elongates, ruffles up like a small animal, and escapes the hold, curling around Minjeong’s shoulders.

“What happened to them?” Minjeong asks, voice hoarse and scratchy. throbs dully, dehydration, and a permanent cold that has her bones chattering under the thin layer of fat and papery skin.

“The hunter becomes the hunted.”

Minjeong raises an eyebrow. “And what does that make you?”

She shakes her head, plump lips pulling into a secret smile. It would look grotesque on another person, but it marks her angelic; face carved into silky marble by rough hands.

“A realistic person,” she says easily. Minjeong has a feeling she has an answer ready for every question. “I’m Jimin, by the way.”

There’s a hand offered towards her, elegant, long fingers waiting for Minjeong to slip her hand into. But that’s not the way to go, not with her bare hands. Instead, she looks up at the stranger, trying to piece her together from the small fragments offered.

“Being anonymous is the safest way to exist,” Minjeong concludes.

“Oh, did you go to the mutant high school? The— Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, is it?” The mockery in her voice rubs Minjeong wrong, but she cannot raise any complaint about it. She didn’t really appreciate the existence of the school either. With a quick quirk of her eyebrows, she adds, “A lot of good anonymity did to you.”

“I didn’t finish the school,” she says curtly.

The deal is: Minjeong has always been alone because it is better to choose to be alone than set yourself up for disappointment. And Minjeong, with a gift or curse of a power, with the futures stuck in her head that could never happen, that were false, she always felt safer alone. That included the school for the likes of her — when people swarmed around her to tell how their lives would end, if they died between the hands of humans, if they survived. The screams of murder echo between her thoughts, and she’s unable to find if it’s her own memory or the future of others.

But it’s a die today or die tomorrow situation. And she likes it when the future is a little bit more concrete.

Jimin crouches down to be at her eye level. A lot of people tried to coerce her into joining different organizations, but Jimin didn’t even ask about her power. She’s waiting patiently, eyes as warm as the small glob of fire hovering over her shoulder.

“Which side are you on?” Minjeong asks. It feels like a defeat already.

“The one that keeps me alive.”

Minjeong often feels like she’s made out of glass shards; broken to the point of unsalvageable, sharp to the point of cutting deep into the flesh of those who try to touch her. Now, Jimin looks at her with her inconvenient truth, just as sharply.

“I’m Minjeong.”

Jimin lets out a small snort as a laugh. The hand between them still hangs there, in the air, and Minjeong is still adamant about not touching her. Jimin lets it flop to her side and steps back to give way to her. Minjeong's muscles scream as she moves, thighs trembling under her lithe weight as she pushes herself up standing. Back ramrod straight, ready to bolt any second the other woman moves too quickly, she finds herself staring into mischievous dark eyes.

When Minjeong peeks over the rotting vessel of a car, the two other women wave back at her enthusiastically. However she tries to find the bodies, the people who wanted her blood, the sentinel that was designed to kill her upon detection, but her eyes only find a fresh layer of white

snow. Existence erased, opens to ask what happened but Jimin is quicker.

“Have you also got that fancy name of yours? The one the school gave to mask your identity?”

“Vision.”

***

The soapy bubbles roll in the washing machine with her only set of clothes and Minjeong has a hard time tearing her eyes away from the sight. The cotton T-shirt and sweatpants on her are comfortable, but it holds a foreign scent and every fiber of her being is screaming at her for letting her possession into strange, unknown hands. Running away is still possible, she reminds herself. Stealing the clothes hung in the wardrobe of her room is possible. She tucks her bare hands into her pockets, feeling completely without the gloves.

“You will get them back,” Jimin says, mischief resonating back from her voice. Her hips leaning on the machine, she watches Minjeong with hands folded over her chest.

Minjeong gives a terse nod, eyes immediately sticking back to her soaked clothes.

Jimin doesn’t like to be ignored. That’s one of the first things Minjeong learned about her. So she steps between Minjeong and the washing machine, blocking the sight. Reluctantly, Minjeong looks up at her.

“But you do know that the other clothes are yours, right? We bought them just for you.”

Minjeong presses in a thin line. “I don’t like owing to people.”

The response triggers a laugh out of Jimin. She tilts her head to take Minjeong in, a half-smile staying behind on her lips. Minjeong hates being the center of anyone’s amusement, but she will take it for now.

“You’re free to leave whenever you want. We’re not holding you hostage,” Jimin explains easily.

“It’s odd when someone just takes you in and offers you everything.” She waits, watching for any reaction that would give her a clue about underlying motives. But Jimin is a plain slate and Minjeong claws to stay atop of her genuinity. “Especially nowadays. What do you want from me?”

She shakes her head. “Gosh, you’re like an untrusting stray puppy. But yes, kindness is still an existing thing. Especially when we’re made out of the same material.”

Minjeong thinks back to the fallen bodies of the mutants she used to know, still feeling the throb of the invisible scars on her heart they left. And while she decided to build a fortress around her heart, Jimin is doing the exact opposite. There’s just something magnetic that pulls Minjeong in; maybe her gentle confidence or the power she seems to hold that makes her feel — safe. But again, Minjeong, with all her distrust, never really prided herself to be a good judge of character.

And if they want something from her — she can still outrun that problem when it arises.

“I’ll need gloves. I’m not comfortable touching people without them.”

It happens in a second. Just like a snake striking down on its prey, Jimin grabs her hand. Minjeong’s immediate reaction is to screw her eyes closed, to prepare herself for the onslaught of bits and pieces of a future that feels wobbly, feels incomplete. But—

“I—” Minjeong furrows her eyebrows, trying to find an answer in Jimin’s eyes, “I don’t see anything.”

“You would see… thoughts? Past? Future, maybe?” Minjeong weakly nods at the last one. Jimin clicks her tongue. “You won’t see mine. My brain had been tinkered with.”

Jimin pulls her long, black hair behind her ears and there they are. Long, silver scars rest on her temples, running into her hairline. Minjeong hesitates for a moment, foreign to the feeling of wanting to touch someone else, but catching Jimin’s eyes, the silent agreement there, she runs her fingertips over the scars. They are rough under the touch, old but still protruding like they were fresh — whoever did this, it wasn’t their cleanest job.

When Minjeong draws back her hand, Jimin sighs, letting her hair fall back, obscuring her face. “The people who did this to me thought I would be a better weapon if I wasn’t sensitive to other mutants who can get into my head.”

Minjeong heard about mutant experiments. Jimin looks so young, so comfortable in her skin. She stands tall, offers sincerity — Minjeong would expect someone broken into pieces, someone who is only an echo of her former self.

“They failed a lot of experiments,” hatred flashes through her eyes, “but not this.”

The past few years had made Minjeong’s social skills rusty. So when she’s about to offer any consolidation, words get stuck in . But then Jimin looks at her, understanding lighting up in her warm brown eyes and she realizes she doesn’t need to try that hard.

Instead she says, “I never actually thanked you for saving me.”

Jimin tilts her head, a smile softer than the tee on her back pulling on her lips.

“Because you don’t have to.”

Rebuttal sits on Minjeong’s lips — because if she learned something from being hunted is that everything is an exchange. Just as she has a hard time accepting this little group not wanting anything from her, that they just give clothes, food, and shelter over her head because of the goodness of their hearts — she has a hard time accepting saving her life is just another thing not worth mentioning.

But then Jimin reaches out again and Minjeong flinches. Years of keeping her hands tucked away don’t just disappear, even if she consciously knows Jimin won’t leave an imprint of a terribly intangible future. And Jimin’s grip is tight around her hand, like she hears the echo of tens and hundreds of lives in Minjeong’s mind.

“We’re looking out for each other because who else would?” she explains. “The world is collapsing on itself Minjeong, and we only have each other to rely on.”

Minjeong pulls back her hands. She tucks them away in her pockets because she fears that the mere touch of warm palms on her would open a dam that took too long to build.

“I heard the same sentiment from Xavier’s school as well,” Minjeong says, to set up a trap. And Jimin falls into it, with the slight scrunch of his nose to be compared to them. A small puff of laugh escapes her lips. “You don’t like them.”

“I never said that.”

“You didn’t have to.”

“I just don’t agree with a few things,” Jimin shrugged, non-committal and reluctant to share more. But at Minjeong’s searching look, she adds, “Especially the hiding away part.”

The washing machine stops, a tiny melody cutting into the conversation. Minjeong uses this time to turn away from Jimin, to keep her secrets to herself before she asks why she left the school. The scent of the detergent lingers in the air and it calms her — the scent of her childhood home makes her shoulders drop.

Jimin clears . “As I said, you’re free to leave anytime. But if you want to stay, you’re more than welcome.”

Holding the still warm, wet clothes to her chest, she longs for a night without waiting to be attacked in the cheap, dilapidated motels she used to stay in. A night when her body doesn’t wake her for every miniscule noise, for every car stopping in front of the motel. Her grip tightens around the clothes — she doesn’t necessarily trust Jimin, but the butterfly knife still rests in the pocket of her sweatpants, a comforting weight even if using it brings little comfort.

“I’ll stay,” Minjeong says, “today.”

Jimin grins, all pearly white and toothy, and it’s surprisingly gentler than the way she carries herself. Minjeong flexes her hand behind her back, silently scolding herself for being pulled in by a kind stranger like she wasn’t burned like this multiple times.

“Wanna see the rest of the building?”

***

One day turned two, that turned three and Minjeong realized she’s been sleeping in this awfully soft bed for a week now. Arms reaching towards the ceiling, her joints crack after a long night of sleep. The routine is always the same; Minjeong waking at 7 am sharp to the delighted chatting and loud footsteps filtering in from the corridor. She will allow herself ten minutes of sorting through her thoughts, calming the quick chase of her heart and the phantoms looking over her with the intent to kill. She's in one piece and that's what is important.

Jimin’s sharp knock comes as she's braiding her hair. She's leaning against the doorframe with the usual childish smirk resting on her lips.

“Have breakfast with me?”

Jimin keeps her distance. She doesn't try to touch Minjeong, but physical distance is the only thing she respects. Minjeong likes having meals with her, spotted throughout the day to escape from the restlessness that comes with being confined to the four walls of her room, but Jimin tends to ask uncomfortable questions that barge through whatever mental barricade Minjeong holds up against her.

“You said your power is seeing the future, right?” Jimin asks off-handedly, digging through her food and stuffing a spoonful of porridge into . She only looks up at Minjeong when her silence stretches long.

Minjeong gives a terse nod.

“How is it?” she pushes, despite sensing Minjeong’s boundaries. Comfort zone, for Jimin, is just an obstacle to jump over and the more she pushes for answers, the more Minjeong wants to fight against it. But she’s also the victim of warm, brown eyes on her and survival instincts always kick in a beat too late in the company of a pretty woman.

She tries to play it off, stuffing a spoonful of porridge in to buy time. “Honestly? Useless.”

Jimin furrows her eyebrows. “Is it now? It doesn’t sound like it.”

“It is, though. But I have to admit, I do have a knack for lotto numbers,” Minjeong tries to joke, hoping Jimin would drop the topic.

With the way Jimin stares at her, Minjeong feels transparent under the fluorescent light of the canteen. She wonders if she’s as easy to read as Jimin makes her feel.

“Has Xavier taught you how to control your power?”

“There’s little to control about the future,” Minjeong says, just to be difficult. The way Jimin talks about the mutant school and the professor leaves a bitter aftertaste in Minjeong’s mouth, like she herself was the one bashing them — the school that took her in when no one else would, fought for her when everyone else turned against her. Minjeong could’ve had a chance there if she allowed herself the luxury to feel at home. Even though home ceased to exist when she blew out the candles on her birthday cake as she turned eighteen.

“Weird,” Jimin pauses. “I beg to differ.”

“How so?”

She shrugs. “I mean there’s a way to control every power. Maybe you could concentrate on pinpointing one aspect of the future. Maybe you could control it so you didn’t have to be afraid of touching others. I know very little about your mutation, but there must be a way to bend it to your will.”

“No need.”

Jimin’s hand stops in the air and she tilts her head. “What do you mean no need?”

“I don’t want to use it.” Minjeong stabs her spoon into the bowl, stuffs to kill the bile rising in the back of at the thought of going around touching people. “It leaves a mark on me, like a band or something. Every future I see stays with me like a ed up mark. And there are things I don’t want to remember.”

“Powers are always exchanges.”

Minjeong’s hand stutters. “Does the fire hurt you?”

Without saying anything, Jimin lays her hand down between them, palm facing the ceiling. Burned off fingerprints leave her fingers looking synthetic, almost like plastic under the harsh light.

“Yes. I don't know if you noticed but the mutations are not without sacrifice,” she says, words spiteful. She wiggles her fingers, marking each word with shiny burnt skin. When she’s satisfied with Minjeong’s reaction, Jimin pulls her hand back, laying it on her lap.

“It's not a fair exchange.”

Jimin scoffs. “When was life ever fair.”

But it’s really not fair, Minjeong wants to say but opts to stay silent. Because I never asked for this.

She never asked for a power that left her feeling like a stranger in her own body. She never asked for a power that made her left behind, made her abandoned by the ones she treasured the most. It’s not a fair exchange when she got something and paid the price — the balance tipping to one side heavily, sacrifices piling on top of each other for a power she never wanted.

“I like concrete things,” Minjeong says out of the blue, stuffing full. The occasionally stolen food never tasted so good. Jimin smiles at her, pushes her own metal tray towards Minjeong and she takes it. “The future… It’s always changing. It shows one thing now, and one decision later, another. It’s very slippery and kind of hard to understand.”

“How so?”

“You might see a future that you like, right? But as I said, one wrong decision leads to the collapse of the whole.” She chews, reaching over to steal a piece of spicy radish from Jimin’s plate. “It’s like— it’s like a game of Jenga.”

Jimin snorts. “You’re so unserious.”

Minjeong looks at her, the curiosity shining in her eyes and sighs. She never liked speaking of her mutation; if anything, it only brought misery on her and a complex about needing something constant in her life. But also never speaking of it tainted her mind bitterly, kept her churning on her own unfortunate life, reliving everything like a reel.

Suddenly, stomach full and heavy and uncomfortable, Minjeong leans back in her chair. She cannot decide if it’s the sudden intake of food or the bile-tasting topic that is weighing down her belly. Under the table, she feels a slight nudge at her calf, and she crumbles too easily for Jimin’s curiosity.

“Really. The future is very fragile. Everything is interwoven with each other. It’s… complex. They are only the reflection of a certain time and place. Possibilities, if you will.” She shakes her head. “Sorry, that’s all I can tell you. I’m no expert in this, I never really thought too much about it.”

“Isn’t it sad, though?” Jimin starts, her honesty a scythe to severe the head of her self-pity. A smile. Snip-snip. “That you keep pushing away this part of yourself?”

Minjeong knows her only for a week now, but Jimin doesn’t try to woo her by stepping around sensitive questions. Sometimes she’s standing behind Minjeong to catch her during a trust fall, sometimes she’s the one who’s pushing her to fall. Busying her hands to tear away at the napkin and roll small balls between her fingertips, Minjeong refuses to acknowledge the questions. Not even with Jimin nudging her under the table.

“It’s my turn to ask questions,” Minjeong declares, to which Jimin only raises her eyebrows. As there is no strong opposition she says, “You are the leader of this organization.”

“This is not a question,” Jimin points out. Minjeong catches on that she doesn’t disagree. She’s noticed the first time they met — the authority that lingers around Jimin, people turning towards her in question, in plea for getting straight orders. Even now, Minjeong feels the eyes waiting for them to finish their meals, the unofficial end of their little hangout, so she can be discarded and Jimin can attend to more important tasks.

Yet, Jimin takes her time. She picks up her mug of coffee, blows away the steam. Ignores the people looming around them, watching every millisecond of the exchange.

“What kind of organization is this?” Minjeong asks finally.

Jimin peers over the rim of her mug. “Do you want a pretty lie or the truth?”

“Truth, obviously.”

Jimin sets down her chopsticks, waiving together her fingers to rest her chin on them. “I want to protect the people whom I like. If it means I have to turn into a monster to do so, I will.”

“So you kill people?”

The slight curl of her lips that seem to rest there permanently, freeze. “Be careful, Minjeong. You're tethering on hypocrisy.”

It's Minjeong who crosses the bridge between them, and burns it afterwards. She's the one who reaches out, fingertips leaving a phantom of a touch on the back of Jimin's hand as a miserable attempt at truce. She’s so unused to touching that she missed the smooth fingertips, but now, more conscious but still just as oblivious, she runs her thumb over the burn marks. It’s a clumsy venture, especially as every fiber of her being screams at her to pull back.

But the truth is less sweet than the melted edges of Jimin. Rushing from the endless cycle of killing and staying alive, into intentionally planning to eliminate certain groups — because, if Minjeong is honest, if she’s not pretending to turn a blind eye to her surroundings, she could see it without confronting Jimin about it.

Because if she looks around she sees the military precision, the clear hierarchy between the members; could see the same clothes hanging on bodies to symbolize the unity of the organization. And there are more blatant things — the training rooms, both conditioning in power use and physical strengthening; the ease with which they collected Minjeong, saving her from a bloodthirsty group and a sentinel in a three-to-too many fight.

Minjeong ignored them, to enjoy the softness of her mattress and the gentle smile of Jimin.

“You think differently of me now, don’t you?” Slowly, Jimin retracts her hand, slipping out of Minjeong’s hold. Physical distance, she can understand. Minjeong goes back to tearing away the napkin.

“Do you want a pretty lie or the truth?” Minjeong repeats Jimin’s question.

The chair scratches against the floor, loud like a thunder even in the lively hum of conversations in the canteen. It’s a slippery slope, wanting to reach out to fight off the icy layer frosting over Jimin’s benevolence. Minjeong always fumbled when facing kindness.

“It’s rich coming from someone who’s not stepping out of their room without their knife.”

***

It doesn’t get better in the next few days. Jimin gives her the cold shoulder whenever they pass by each other in the corridor. She doesn’t appear in the morning, playful mouth already pulling into a smile to ask Minjeong for breakfast. Instead she receives polite nods, because everything Jimin does is painfully polite and hospitable even if her feelings are hurt.

But what takes Minjeong by surprise is her own behavior. Guilt corrodes her insides, slows her heartbeat to an echo. And she still stays. She stays, folding clothes after she watched the washing machine roll her soapy, wet clothes over and over again, as she labelled and stores these feelings in her mind, burying them deep so that they don’t interfere with her decision. A bed, food, safety — was she also participating in the brewing war by using Jimin’s organization for her own good? Knuckles whitening under the pressure, fingers digging into the soft material of the sweater she’s folding, it’s a hard bite to chew on.

“I thought you had already left.” The voice breaks her out of her daze, making Minjeong drop the sweater from her hands. When turning back, she’s faced with the woman who was with Jimin when they saved her, leaning on the doorframe. Without extending her hand, she nods and introduces herself, “Aeri.”

“Minjeong.” She mirrors.

“I know.”

Minjeong ignores the comment. “Should I? Leave, I mean. I feel like everyone expects me to run away.”

“Everyone expects it because we’ve been in your shoes. Coming to terms with this,” she motions all around the building, “is hard.”

“What?” she deadpans. “Living in a military base preparing to break out a war?”

Aeri tilts her head, her gaze searching Minjeong’s face. “You know just as well as I do that the war has already started. It’s just not yet called by its name. And now, it’s about who’s winning it.”

Minjeong leans down to pick up the fallen sweater, slowly folds it into a perfect shape, then stuffs it into the wardrobe. She takes her time, just to hide the rising quickness of her breathing at the mention of a war; of killing ever being justified with the promise of freedom. Tainted to the point of feeling like a noose around her neck, freedom means nothing.

“Believe it or not, this is not a killing spree,” Aeri reasons when she gets enough of waiting for a reaction. “But I get it. I was skeptical too.”

She takes a deep breath, leans against the wardrobe. She watches as Aeri, without any invitation, walks into the room and perches herself on the top of Minjeong’s carefully made bed.

“What’s your power?” Minjeong asks.

“Intangibility,” Aeri says, inspecting her nails. Her feline eyes snap up at Minjeong as she’s nodding in understanding. Then Aeri adds, “Astonishing. Ice. Why does it matter?”

“Just curious.”

Jimin called her an untrusting stray once, but looking at Aeri, the woman reminded her of one as well. The instinct of a prey is to master evasion and survival — never in her life Minjeong would’ve thought she’s the one triggering a reaction like that from another mutant. The passing thought makes her soften on the tenseness of her shoulders.

“By the way, I’m not here to make you miserable,” says Aeri.

“Are you not?”

Aeri snickers as she dusts invisible dirt off her uniform. She stalks closer, the waft of her perfume is warm in Minjeong’s nose. For a second, she doesn’t know how to react. If she should prepare for physical intrication for not wanting to get involved in this, if she should expect a farewell hug. But Aeri stops a few steps away from her, safe distance for the both of them. She shakes her head with a hint of a smile.

“No I’m not. But you’re a funny guy, Minjeong. Actually I’m here to deliver these.” From under her jacket, she pulls out a small box and reaches it out for Minjeong. The box is tied with a black ribbon, a bow sitting on the top of it. Minjeong doesn’t move to take it. “Jimin sends it to you but she’s too stubborn to do it herself.”

It’s enough of a reason for Minjeong to take the box. Slowly, she pulls the ribbon and opens the box, revealing a pair of leather gloves.

The gloves are pretty under the neon lights, black and shiny as Minjeong pulls them on. It's like a hug from an old friend, fitting snugly on her hands, not limiting her movements. Aeri watches her, eyes telling she knows much more than she initially lets on.

"Don't forget to thank her," she says. Minjeong looks up at her, quizzical look setting on her features. "Jimin. She's been distant in the last few days. I guess it has something to do with your small dispute from the other day."

The heat in her cheeks betray her because Aeri lets out a sharp bark of laughter.

"I knew that was the reason behind her moodiness. You don't have to be embarrassed, Jimin is an easy person to fight with. She's a little bit — too idealistic." Minjeong reckons seeing a slight twist of but it disappears just as quickly as it came. "Now if you don't mind, I'm taking my leave."

Aeri turns around, done with the conversation. But before she could go, words tumble into Minjeong's mouth and before she knows they fall out.

"Why do you stay?"

Aeri stops in her tracks. She doesn't move, only turns slightly to peer back at Minjeong. Dark eyes settle on Minjeong’s body like heavy chains and she immediately regrets ever asking. Yet, Aeri’s expression melts into a somber mellowness, more approachable than ever before.

“Because I would be lying dead somewhere already otherwise. And I have not one bone in my body that is hoping for martyrdom.” Aeri straightens her back. She tilts her head, a small curl of her lips mocking Minjeong. “Do you still think we’re that different?”

The question lingers in the air for a few seconds while Minjeong opens and closes in response. Without ever coming up with an answer, Aeri takes the silence as a reply and leaves.

***

The warmth of the gloves burns the palm of her hands as Jimin passes by her in the corridor and only nods at her. Minjeong, as it turns out, likes being ignored even less than Jimin.

“Thank you for the gloves. They’re really pretty,” she says quickly, words rushing into to give them out as a truce for Jimin’s cold war. It’s enough to make Jimin stop, just a few steps away from Minjeong. Her back straight, uniform crisp on her form, hands tightened into white-knuckled fists, she doesn’t turn towards Minjeong.

“You are welcome. Please use it well.”

Her voice comes out like a soft caress despite the tension raging in her body. Attachment is an odd thing — a small seed rooted in hopelessness, a string knotting her to Jimin’s pinky. She barely knows the woman but she still feels hollow being in the line of her ignorance.

“Jimin,” Minjeong says. She takes a second to recollect what she wants to say, but the moment Jimin turns around, these thoughts fall from her outstretched hands and scatter everywhere. Instead, she scratches her cheek and looks away. “I don’t want to pretend to understand your ways of doing things. I don’t think I’ll ever agree to the notions you have, but I’m sorry for trying to act superior over you. My hands are as tainted as any other person’s here because that’s the only way to stay alive. I still have the knife in my pocket because I don’t trust people easily, especially not when I don’t have a physical power and almost everyone here can overpower me easily. I’m sorry that I am like— like this, when you are the sole reason I am still standing here today.”

Maybe there are more things to say but the familiar warmth behind her eyes makes her stop. Her heart grew a row of sharp teeth, snapping at anyone who came close. A cowering animal, she realized she is. Because she can only hide the bleeding if she’s loud enough, if she snaps her teeth voraciously enough.

“Minjeong,” Jimin’s voice is soft against the hurt, “you don’t have to be anyone but you.”

That’s the problem. Minjeong shaped herself so much to fit in — as a student at the mutant school, as a normal person in the human society, as a villain of humanity — that she doesn’t feel like anything anymore. She’s an amalgamation of everyone she ever touched. She’s made of plasticine and stuffed into different shaped molds, different fingerprints marring her skin to make her what she is today. A shapeless lump of memories. She exists and she doesn’t.

She nods, though.

When Minjeong feels brave enough to raise her gaze, Jimin is searching her face and by the look of it, she finds something that doesn’t sit well with her. Turning around to finally properly face Minjeong, the tight set of Jimin’s shoulders released a bit.

“You can stay. You don’t have to be part of the uprising.” Jimin’s words come out stronger. “I didn’t rescue you to be part of something you don’t want to fight for or to draft you to be a soldier to work off the price of your life. I just didn’t want another one of us to fall to unfounded hate.”

If I watch it happen and I don’t do anything, I’m still involved, am I not?

She can ask the question endlessly in her head, torment herself with the weight of her decision — but. But she already decided to stay, unconsciously as she worked down her fences to small hurdles for Jimin to jump over. Minjeong might be unused to the selfless nature of human interactions but she’s a quick learner.

Jimin heaves out a tired sigh. The dark circles under her eyes are heavy, dragging down her eyelids for a few milliseconds of rest. She fights exhaustion by shaking her head to sober up.

“Why are you so nice to me?” Minjeong asks.

The question seems to surprise Jimin and it gives a little satisfaction to Minjeong. Jimin lets out a small puff of laugh, disbelief evident on the way her tired eyes glint at her, and walks closer until she stops right in front of Minjeong. Slowly reaching out, she takes Minjeong’s hand in hers, peeling a