Our Gift

CHAPTER THREE

Liberty

Paris, Europe

Minhyuk was sitting on his bed, head between his hands and legs stretched in front of him. Unfortunately the General called him for a hunting mission. Minhyuk was not trained for hunting. Heck! He wasn’t even under the authority of a hunter. Narsha was an assassin, and he would soon become one too. Well, he could tell goodbye to his promotion if he didn’t succeed in tracking those four Gifted. Of course, since two of them were stuck to each other – that Kris and Kai guys – it would be easier for him. However they had already escaped when the Organization had approached them a few years ago. Once again, Minhyuk didn’t understand why he was the one in charge of this hunting mission. They could have sent one of Gain’s trainees. Jokwon, Junho and Min were obviously able to take care of four Gifted. Alone or in group.

But life is cruel and you don’t always have what you want. Minhyuk understood that when he received the mission and even though he was anything but up for this task he didn’t have a word to say. If the General decided to send him after the Gifted he couldn’t protest.

The door of his room opened slowly and Narsha passed her head inside, glaring at her trainee for a good ten seconds. She then pushed completely the side of the door and entered the room, Gain following her closely. The two agents sat next to Minhyuk, Narsha on his left and Gain on his right. A heavy silence fell in the bedroom before one of the woman decided to start the conversation.

- So, you apparently have a mission, began Narsha.

She only received a low groan as an answer. Gain and Narsha looked at each other, Gain grimaced lightly while the red-haired agent only frowned.

- Come on Minhyuk, cooperate a bit will you? (Narsha paused when Minhyuk glanced at her.) You shouldn't be so down. It's only a mission, you don't even have to kill. Perhaps you won't even have to fight.

- That's precisely the problem. I am trained to kill not to recruit Gifted.

- I can give you tips and train you quickly, proposed Gain. Jokwon has also received his mission and I believe Junho and Min will soon have theirs.

Minhyuk sighed again. He was not really fitting into the hard-working category; the less he did, the better it was actually. However he decided to push his laziness aside for a while and accept Gain's proposition. Any hunting techniques would help him. The session was quickly decided for the following day and he would train daily with Gain until the official beginning of the hunt. Meanwhile he was also supposed to gather information about his targets.

The latter was done rather quickly; the Organization's library provided him all he could find, which was enough but at the same time not much overall. The file he received only physically described the four Gifted he had to find. His search at the library gave him scattered pieces of background. There was nothing about the girl with pink reddish hair, apart from her name, Park Hyomin, and her school. The two boys, Kris and Kai, had quite strange files. He had found medical records, transcriptions of meetings with several agents but anything about their family. The names of their relatives had been completely erased for some obscure reason. Minhyuk couldn't even access the real names of the two Gifted. Luckily, he had a successful result for the last one, Jung Yonghwa. The Organization conserved full records of his life. Everything was in it, from his birth until the present day. It was well detailed and Minhyuk understood that he was living with a childhood friend whom he considered as his own sister.

The beginning of the hunting mission was approaching. Minhyuk had decided to make Yonghwa his first target since he had more indication about him and his localisation. However what made him cringe was the fact that Yonghwa's Gift was apparently water. Minhyuk could already tell they wouldn't become good friends since he had the opposite Gift, fire. Quite an amazing coincidence if you asked him... But since the Organization's leaders liked to be entertained, there was no point acting too surprised.

Hyomin took a deep breath before throwing herself in the water. The sudden contact of the freezing liquid made her gasp. The air was cold too, winter was coming without any doubt. Lapping could be heard as Hyomin swam across the lake, her legs and arms never stopping to move. A burning yet icy sensation was hitting her whole body but she didn't slow down. Not until she reached the other side of the dark lake.

Across the water she could distinguish the distant shape of her family's mansion, illuminated by the stars. Cold and emotionless eyes searched the night. Hyomin had promised she would never go back to her family. Not when those parents she admired so much as a child tried to sell her for better political positions. Hyomin had always thought she was perfectly normal so when her school sent her medical to her father, informing him about the bizarre condition of his daughter she couldn't believe she had a Gift. And she still wasn't one hundred percent sure about it since she had never used nor felt it.

Hyomin spared a last thought for her younger sister but she knew the girl would be alright. Unlike her she was not Gifted and while Hyomin was the child her parents never wanted to have and an "accident"; Areum was everything they had hoped for. Luckily Areum was not part of those bratty girls who lived only to annoy their siblings. The youngest was sweet and caring, she was the only person Hyomin talked with since she was an ultimate antisocial weirdo. Or so that was what her fellow classmates called her. She was not one to be hurt by bullied but at the same time she was not fighting back or trying to defend herself. That was, in her opinion, pointless and she perfectly knew that those insults were caused by jealousy. How much her classmates envied her for being a Gifted. Having a power and being part of the Organization gave you that "untouchable" status amongst the population, however Hyomin was not an agent, nor a trainee. And for all she knew, Hyomin didn't want to wait to join the Organization, even though she couldn't sleep properly because she feared someone might hurt her while she was asleep. By experience she knew it was likely possible and it wasn't something she wanted to try again. So she decided to leave, to escape. She didn't make any plan, she only took with her a rather small amount of food and water, a thin blanket and a set of spare clothes. It was the middle of the night and Hyomin remembered her parents would not be awake until the rise of the sun. In the meantime, she had to put as much distance as she could between the mansion and her.

She went through a bush of plants she couldn't recognize and reached a road. Hyomin didn't have time to spare so she decided to walk along the path. She would reach a city at some point and then find a way to go as far as possible from her departure point. Roads connected cities with cities. The only people living in the countryside were the farmers and the elite. Hyomin's parents were in the last category, as well as the families of Hyomin's classmates. They had connexions, political weight, money. They ruled the country, but were themselves under the control of the Organization. The system was perfect, Hyomin often represented it as a well-working machine, the lower class of the society being the fuel and the elite being the cogs. The machine can not work without fuel or cogs, and the two elements need each other to have a sense. Hyomin had learned at school that she was born to rule to keep the society protected. And not even once had she refuted this idea; this was an evidence to her, something that was deeply anchored in her vision of the reality, a part of the world she lived in. Of course, she considered herself lucky for being born and raised in an elite family.

The horizon seemed so close and yet so far. Each step was a torture, thousands of metaphorical needles making their way under her skin. It was painful but Hyomin knew that kept her away from the sleep. The last thing she wanted was to close her eyes and lose her - oh so precious! - time. The sun still wasn't awake and she roughly had conscience she still had about one hour of obscurity. Hyomin liked obscurity. She always had. She liked to feel protected, to believe that anybody would see her in the darkness. She felt free. And freedom was an unsatisfying feeling, when you understand the pure notion of liberty and touch it, you never wish to let it go.

Hyomin always had her own little ritual. Every night - for as long as she could remember - she would wake up and silently make her way to her window. She would then open it very slowly and carefully, ears attentive to any kind of disruption. That was the hardest part, not doing a noise because the silence of the night was similar to a trap. Each sound that pierced it was projected even louder against the dark wall of the mansion. Hyomin would climb on the roof, jumping slightly from her window to the closest part of the tiles-covered surface. There, she would just let her gaze wander on the neighbourhood of the mansion. The garden, the forest, the lake, ... As far as she could see. She would only go back to her room when the first rays of the sun menaced to appear and wake the maids up. Hyomin would always be scolded for being sleepy in class but even when her teacher menaced to have a talk with her parents, the little girl she was never stopped her nightly encounter with the stars.

The gates of the town stood in front of Hyomin, their height hiding the timid awakening of the sun. The shadow of the human construction exhaled its cold breath and Hyomin could softly percept the whipping sound of invisible flags dancing in the wind. She let out a sigh and closed her eyes, head thrown back. A man and his son exited the town and brought suddenly Hyomin back to reality. The two strangers nodded to her as a welcoming sign and she quickly answered back by the same gesture.

A dozen of steps and here she was, inside the walls of a city she only saw on the map of the country hung in her room. When the sun gently her forehead and eyelids, the weight of reality abruptly crushed Hyomin and she understood that from now on she will have to draw her path by herself. A familiar feeling overwhelmed her, blocking , compressing her diaphragm and the light burst into her eyes as the realization sunk. The wind, still cold, muttered in her ear only one word: liberty.

OMG! Finally I did it xD I think a lot of you gave up on this story, and I thought I would too. But here I am, after I don't even know how many months, with a new chapter. I know it isn't the most exciting thing ever but I like to work slowly at the beginning to place correctly my characters in the story and develop their personality.

A lot of discovery about Hyomin and her background as well as a little view on the society.

Please comment ^^ I would love to have your opinion to be able to improve my writing and my story :D

And here a little bonus, I usually write with music so here is the list of songs I listened to :

►Let It Rain - SNSD / Girls' Generation

►Born To Be a Lady - SNSD / GG

►The Story Only I Didn't Know ( with pianist Kim Gwang Min) - IU

►Haru Haru (acoustic ver.) - Big Bang

►He Won't Go - Adele

►Talk That - Secret

►Lonely - 2NE1

►Planetarium - Ai Otsuka

►Comeback When You Hear This Song - 2PM

►Time - Troublemaker

►Burn It Down - Linkin Park