Her vision blurred, going in and out of focus as she trudged through the barely lit empty streets, her breath coming out in laborious pants with only one thing on her mind: escape. She had managed to evade the men whose persistent footsteps still rung in her pounding ears. Leaning against the wall of what looked like a downtrodden hut of some sort, she let her feet stop for a while; the excruciating pain shooting up from her ankle forced her to bite down on her already bruised lip to keep from crying out loud. She did not remember how she had hurt herself there. It might have been the many times she had tripped and fallen on all fours, determined to lose her pursuers.

Tears finally rolled down her face, soft yet desperate sobs escaping her lips. Sliding down the wall, she let her head fall back against it, allowing all those pent up tears to flow freely. Finally. Finally she was away from them… those men, those monsters.

What had she done to deserve this? She shook her head when the self-pity driven thoughts crossed her mind, wincing at the pain that the action caused – after all, her ankle injury was far from the only one she had. Thoughts like that were only pointless musings that would get her nowhere.

“Over there!” The loud bark of a voice only too familiar jolted her up to her feet, panic taking over her every nerve. They had found her!

Run! Her mind screamed at her as a whimper of horror mingled with pain escaped her while she struggled to drag her exhausted feet up. Her heart pounding against her chest, tears dropped furiously from each corner of her eyes and her vision still blurry, she ran.

Yun Mi ran with all her might, but to no avail. The monsters were gaining on her.

“Ah –”

She did not know where she was anymore as the pain overwhelmed her; blocking out nearly every sense in her body. Somewhere at the back of her mind she could feel the filthy hands of those monsters on her skin, clawing at her, scraping off layers… there was screaming as well before something was forced into – the dryness of cloth on her tongue told her that. Her eyes struggled to blink away the blurriness as her head spun with the pain. The pain. She didn’t know where it was coming from anymore. She just knew she felt it. Maybe it would kill her, she hoped. Maybe the pain would take her life away before the sounds of them ripping off her clothes stopped, before the monsters break her bones completely, before –

A voice…

A voice that did not belong to the monsters spoke; somehow managing to reach her ears through the pounding and the sea of sounds that failed to make sense. Her barely functioning ears picked up the angry words the angelic voice. The world around her was spinning and she felt herself stumble out of the monsters’ grasp, falling onto soft ground. Was that scurrying feet she heard?

“Are you alright?” the angel’s voice drifted through the foggy haze of sounds. With as much strength as she could muster, the young broken girl pried her eyes open, fighting to keep breathing. was relieved of the blockage and with the last ounce of strength she had left, she looked up to see her saviour’s face; her last thought before everything was consumed in darkness being one of pained recognition. Her angel was Onew.