extricate (v.), to rescue or put out of danger's way

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i. She can do this.

 

 

“I see. When will I leave?”

“As soon as possible,” he answers.

“I'll leave tonight, then.” She turns back, feeling all the weight on her shoulders. She feels like she is being driven away. She pushes that thought off because she finds herself in front of the cold wooden material, before she opens the door, she asks, "Don't forget that I'm a bridesmaid. What if I don't make it?" 

They laugh, and for once, the atmosphere felt light; filled with bright yellows and the most beautiful hues of blue.

 

“You will,” he says firmly, “I believe in you.” Just like how I did from the very beginning.

 

She can do this. She is strong. And she is dumb.

Dumb for asking such a question. The wedding will go on without her, she is of less importance compared to Yifan's fiancé.

Oh, he is not Yifan to her anymore. He is the boss of this certain mafia family along with Kim Junmyeon.

 

This isn't one of those days where they both enjoy the perks of childhood together, where everything is okay, where the poignant tang of blood, guts and gore is absent. Instead, this is one of those days where men are afraid of spies instead of spiders. No joke, really. She lives in a world with men armed with real guns, not those illegitimate ones that shoot light and colorful crossbow pellets. 

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ii. He wonders if it's right to take this risk.

He has put his bestfriend's life on the line. She volunteered, is his reason, no one was willing to do this other than her.

 

You have no choice.

 

Scratch that, he has. 

He wanted to stop you there and then, but he couldn't. In the end, you would insist on doing this and would wear a smugly smirk on your face. And you'll say your usual lines, just like what you normally do when this famiglia was still earning its building blocks.

I'm one of the best assassins in the world. Trust me on this, and then you let out an upbeat harmony of laughs.

 

And if you are the best, he still can't resist the deprecatory cognitions in his mind, playing like a broken record. Because what if, just what if, you don't come back? 

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iii. “Will you marry me?”

He practices the lines in front of you, every day, every night, just so he can convey this to the woman of his own, that's definitely not you. Yifan makes you come to his office, whenever you pass by, you ignore Zitao's—his right hand man—sympathetic gaze and smile instead. You mull over by the fact that the other eleven men can read you easily like a book, but the one you have known for many years and opened your heart to can't. By that fact, you are profusely puzzled on how you should feel about it. Perhaps you are relieved, because it's not going to crumble a friendship, just like a tidal wave eroding the soil. Or you are amused, because for a man like him, he seems very oblivious to things. You are not quite sure if you are disappointed, because even if you are already standing under the shade of the spotlight—as a star does in the dark, blue sky—he looks at another way, somewhere distant from yours.

“You can do it. It's simple and easy. Say it with me!”

And you both say the phrases in chorus, phrases that only give one-sided pain. 

In that moment, you wanted to be deaf. Or you wanted time to stop and be the one to say yes, as you ignore the shattering sound effects of your heart in the background.

---

iv. One night, all twelve men went out for a drink near the base.

“Oi, hyung, who are you going to save if both of them are drowning?” 

Yifan thinks of something wise as an answer, but it takes him long enough for the others to notice.

“Don't tell us you're having doubts,” Jongin says.

“The one who can't swim.”

“That's dumb, what if both of them can't?” He hates the youngest's—Sehun's—curiosity for that. Because the dragon finds it harder and harder to breathe fire.

Yifan says he'll save her, his wife-to-be. He wanted to cite his reasons and practicalities, but Junmyeon interrupts. “Ah, but of course. One of them was already drowning, anyway. So, you think it would be okay to leave her behind.”

Each and every one of them instinctively shut up. Without words, there is and understanding in between. The other eleven knew you too well. Don't worry, you're not the only one who's bewildered by the concept of Yifan's blindness

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v. There's a knock on the cellar door. 

The brawny men clad in exquisite black suit give her looks of hypocritical disdain and warning.

“I'll go,” and she's surprised that she can still stand up at this rate—with wounds on wherever the eye of another beholder lands, with blood crackling and seeping through the fabric of her shirt, with broken limbs and blurry vision.

They grab her. And she thinks of Yifan and how she's going to regret not telling him. She wants to laugh at herself, her imagination and most of all, her incredulous belief in fairytales. Somehow, she envisions this as a movie, a black and white montage with dramatic music upon the framework. She waits for her prince charming to save her. 

However, in this story, she is not the princess. The princess gets saved first. So she pays no mind and walks away.

Because this is just another normal day where she gets left behind.

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vi. A bang pierces through the silence of the room. And all air intake ceases. 

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vii. It has been months.

Yifan misses worries about you. There is no update or contact, unlike the first few weeks of your given mission. 

That's when he asks Zitao to give him so.

 

“Boss.” He doesn't want to notice the solemn expression his right hand man has, because there is still hope. You'll be here, alive and well. He's going to marry you, have children and maybe grow old together in– it doesn't matter, wherever is fine, as long as he is with you. You are fine. Yes, yes, definitely. Because you promise him, many years ago, maybe more than a decade.

Of course I'll always be with you, what makes you think I won't be?

“Boss.” Zitao snaps him out of the fool's paradise. He's come to an apprehension that you weren't the one he proposed to, and it takes him too late to do so.

“She's gone.”

In this scene, there is color, fields of green grass and plump, orange poppies.

But that only happens in Yifan's mind.

In reality, all life has lost color, and it isn't even a sepia or black and white reminiscence.

Everything he sees is already black, empty and engulfed in darkness. And so it ends without bloopers and laughs. Its epilogue is a melancholy of—no, not unrequited love—everything in between. 

Always?

Always.

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a/n: I teared up while thinking about this, but when I wrote it I was like MEH I AM A SHARJRIEJDUDJTTY WRITER I AM THE WORST.