III (1/1)

"Have you ridden a horse before, Sehun?" Yet another bomb explodes nearby, shuddering the very earth and giving birth to innumerable screams. Smoke, fire, carcasses and chaos suffocate every breath the two choke in."No---""Then get on behind me!"Swiftly, Haejung mounts her brother's black colt and shortens the reins, struggling to keep the badly agitated animal still. Reaching out a hand to Sehun, the man nods gravely and grasps onto it, heaving his sturdy frame up onto the horse. "Alright, let's---"The frightened horse neighs frantically and rears back onto its hind legs as gunmen open fire within hearing distance. "Ah!"Sehun slips from the sudden imbalance and Haejung quickly grabs a handful of his hanbok, but the panicked horse shakes its head and rears once again with a loud whinny, resulting in the reins being ripped from Haejung's grasp and tumbling the two onto the hay. This will catch fire in an instant, Haejung thinks as she lands bone-jarringly against the ground, head first. "Wait no!" Following Sehun's line of vision, Haejung gets up in time to see the colt, their only means of fast escape, galloping out the blasted stable doors."Are you alright?" She asks desperately with tears already clouding her eyes. Blood mats his hair and trickles down the side of his forehead. Nodding his head, Sehun automatically reaches for her hand again, pressing his other hand to his temple in pain."Let's just get out of here quick; the hay will catch fire and so will the manure," he calls out to her as they duck under the fence and make a run for the doors. The sky is painted an angry red amidst a canvas of black. There is no moon tonight to witness the atrocities taking place on Mother Earth; even the stars have shut their eyes to the bloodshed. But under such heavens, Haejung and Sehun run and run and run, feet bleeding from debris of destroyed homes, heart bleeding from witnessing corpses of both old and young, rich and poor, guilty and innocent.They run, hand in hand, until something stings painfully like a snake's bite at the back of Haejung's shoulder, and everything goes back to black.  Warm, humid air flushes into the lungs of an awakening soul and prompts a pair of shut eyes to fly open. The summer-scented breeze is most likely considered as something soothing to ordinary, sane people, but Haejung can only feel panic rising up her throat like bile. Why is she staring up at a brilliantly starlit sky, fractured by pillars of smoke in the distance and underlined by silhouettes of treetops. She isn't supposed to be here, she isn't supposed to be anywhere.Dewy strands of grass tickle the bare skin of her neck and she inhales a sharp breath at the cold sensation. With aching limbs, she  pushes herself off the ground, eyes darting to and fro and scanning the woods surrounding her with fearful suspicion until they land on herself. Hesitantly, Haejung pats her left hand on her torso (for her right hand is paralyzed), wary that the silvery moonlight may be playing tricks on her eyes. But her fingers glide across the silky, yet grimy fabric covering her and she immediately recognizes that she is wearing a traditional hanbok. She is hit by another pang of confusion.She is also reminded of that dream. That kind of baffling, alarming dream, which wasn't much of a stranger to Haejung anymore but still left her breathless and chillingly dazed. This must be the third time, the girl remorses. Which means that I'm still alive. A mellow wind combs through her tangled locks and Haejung's heartbeat begins to thump louder in her ears, as if to smother out the whispers of swaying trees. Hysteria steadily crawls up her windpipe and Haejung could feel the hot tears threatening to spill over the rim. She didn't have a clue to as where and what and how and why she was still existing, and the absolute lack of answers greatly pained her soul. Disoriented realities had been Haejung's undesired companion from long ago (as side effects of strong antidepressants), but tonight, her tolerance level for such things was less to zero. The world was spinning faster and faster before she was given the chance to buckle her seatbelt, leaving her tumbling and stumbling in the abandoned aftermath of things. And she really couldn't take it anymore. With a fractured breath, Haejung begins to crumble down in the most metaphorical and literal sense. How strongly she had wished to return to dust, to rest in the dark arms of Mother Earth and never wake once more---"...Miss? What are you doing out in the open?"Spinning around on her feet, Haejung nearly screams at the sight of a monster. Said 'monster' quickly clasps a large hand over her gaping mouth and yanks her close. Gawking up at the black, muddy, leafy creature, Haejung can only stare terrifiedly into a pair of brown eyes that pierce through the hideous mask. But then the gem-like orbs waver, then collect in pearly moisture that sparkle under the silvery moonlight. Those eyes---just those eyes---send chills down Haejung's spine along with a hint of déjà vu.The foul-smelling hand drops from Haejung's mouth and the girl doubles over to gag and cough, then attempts to fling away the arm around her waist and make a run for it. But her wrist is caught by that same hand again and she's yanked into a broad chest."W-Who the hell are---""Mi Ok...Mi Ok...Is It you?" The man smears away the camouflage paint from his face and tugs her closer, brushing the strands of her hair from her eyes.   "Don't you dare touch---""It's you." And then Haejung is thrust into something desperate and overflowing with emotions called an embrace. The man's arms wrap around her and squeeze tightly as if trying to glue back the broken fragments of his heart, and Haejung is too dumbfounded by the muted sobs that wrack through his body to do anything in retaliation. "Mi Ok, Mi Ok-ah, it's you..."The man pulls away to look into her eyes in utter disbelief and monumental relief. Haejung is frozen in place from the illogical turn of events, but she loses her breath to the man's eyes. Leaking silvery droplets of tears, his deep set orbs appear as if they are melting from the heat of profound emotions that had been locked up for ages.But when the man suddenly cups the side of her face and swoops down to seal their lips in a kiss, Haejung's state of immobility is nullified in an instant. She jerks away and hesitates no longer than a millisecond to slap the man full in the face. The momentum sends him stumbling a few paces and causes her hand to ache, but she is too agitated to care any less."Who in the world are you?? What---What in this messed up world is happening right now? Why---What the hell---What is going on?" Haejung rages. "Okay don't lay a single freaking finger on m---""Shhhh!" The man ushers, clapping a hand over her mouth once again. He hugs her arms together to stop her from struggling against him and glares into her eyes with an urgency and fear of danger that Haejung hadn't noticed in him before. "The Reds will hear you!" Haejung furrows her brows together in utter confusion, then puts up her hand in a sign of surrender. "What!?" She drops the volume of her voice to a furious whisper."The Reds! The Communists! The North Koreans!" He hisses back, rubbing a frustrated hand against his temple. With closer inspection, Haejung sees wrinkles on his forehead and the corner of his eyes, and guesses him to be in his sixties. Maybe he has some kind of Alzheimer's disease, she broods. "We need to return to the hideout; let's go." He tugs her bad hand in the direction of the woods."Okay, don't touch me and one thing at a time mister. Where the hell are we?""In the unoccupied outskirts of Seoul.""Uhhh okay. Then what's the date?""June 28, 1950.""Yeah. Sure. Of course it is, huh.""Won't you stop it with the sarcasm? It's not like you! And let me ask you, why in the world haven't you aged?""What?" She stops in her tracks. The old man reaches for her hand again but Haejung shies away, clutching her limp right hand to her chest with the other one. She hated to have it touched by anything and anyone. It was a mangled, hideous thing and she couldn't feel anything with it. She could never tell if someone was holding her hand gently or digging his/her nails into it and drawing blood, and it scared her.But when the man turns around to face the flustered girl, her gaze trails down from his right shoulder down to his arm and further to his wrist, where it stops. He was missing a hand. A right hand."Your hand..." He glances down to where her gaze is pointed at, then raises his arm to show her a scar-ridden stump. "Been gone for forty-five years. As with you."  "What?""Do you not remember? How I lost my hand?""How would I know? I've never met you bef---""Do you remember how you died?" He steps closer."W-What? Am---Am I---I'm dead?" Completely baffled, the notion drenches Haejung like a bucket of ice water. "I---I stepped off a building---a twenty-one story building---wait, so I'm---am I really dead?" "No, Mi Ok, that's not---that's not...," the man stutters, gripping her shoulder and pressing the nub against her arm as if to cling on with invisible fingers. Tears adhere on his dark eyelashes like morning dew on strands of grass, then dampen his skin as he blinks. "You---You died saving me." "I-I'm sorry to disappoint you but I'm not Mi Ok. M-My name is Haejung...""No, you're Mi Ok...You're Mi Ok..." The man's chocolate orbs waver in battling disbelief and conviction. Pity strikes Haejung's heart, for she thinks to herself, How sad, he must of loved this Mi Ok so much...Mi Ok...Mi Ok...Mi Ok??"W-Wait, how do you know?" Haejung gasps. The name finally rung a bell from her distant dreams. Her strange nightmares. Her visions. "W-Who are you?" "I'm Sehun! Don't you remember, Mi Ok-ah?" The man inquires desperately, peering into Haejung's eyes with so much hope that it strangles her heart. "Y-You're him...from the dreams...you're---""Yes, I'm Sehun! But this isn't a dream, this is reality! I'm real, I'm here, with you, Mi Ok-ah!" "No! That's not what I mean, I mean, I'm from the twenty-first century, I'm not supposed to be here."Now it's Sehun's turn to gape at her in utter confusion. "What? Elaborate."Forcing in a deep breath to calm her nerves, Haejung tentatively explains, "I-I was born in 1996 and I've lived an ordinary life there till now. I know I stepped off a building though. But I'm here, right now. I-I don't understand a single thing that's going on. Am I---am I really dead?""N-No, you're---you're here with me, and I'm alive, so you must be too...But why did you step off a building? How could you do such a foolish thing?" He asks with furrowed brows.His piercing, overly-concerned gaze strikes a defensive nerve in Haejung. "I hated life and I wanted to die, okay?""Do not commit such rash mistakes!""Don't tell me what to do!" Haejung spits back, hot tears freely flowing down her cheeks. "The only mistake is that I'm still alive and not buried peacefully in a grave already, okay? And I'm not gonna be lectured by some figment of my sick imagination either, so go away and leave me alone!""Do not say such things, please do not," the aged man pleads. Tears roll across his wrinkles and disbelief and inexplicable sorrow are ingrained in his expression. "I have been praying every single day and night since you disappeared, without a rest, for a chance to just see you and hold you in my arms just once more, and you cannot imagine how relieved I was to see your lovely face again, but you have changed, Mi Ok-ah. You have changed so much and you have been marred by so many scars that I do not know of, and it breaks my heart just so. Even if you aren't the same Mi Ok from my memories, your pain is still my pain. I be---"A wet splatter and a pained grunt wake Haejung from her haze of burning tears. Eyes blown in horror, her throat constricts at the sight of glossy crimson reflecting the moonlight. Sehun instinctively clutches his right shoulder in pain, but hastily reaches for Haejung as something whizzes past their ears in a high-pitched whistle."Run!"And run, they do. Heart thundering in her ears, Haejung races as fast as her feet can possibly take her, sticking by Sehun like his shadow as he tugs her hand and weaves his way through the woods. Her lungs feel as if they will explode at any given second, but white-hot terror courses through her veins at such intensity that her mind singles down to the one and only command: run, run, run."Jump!" Sehun hisses, then suddenly lets go of her hand. Fear consumes Haejung the moment his heat leaves her palm, and so she doesn't show any hesitation in jumping down the muddy ridge (or more precisely, a small cliff) after him. A yelp escapes her lips as she lands on her shoulder, but she hurriedly scrambles up and desperately reaches for Sehun's outstretched hand again. And they run again.Running in the dark forest with constant, never fading terror nipping at her heels, a dim light of recognition ignites within her befuddled mind. She is caught by a strange feeling that maybe she had ran and ran and ran like this before, holding tightly onto a large, warm hand. Perhaps it was Sehun's, perhaps it was not..."In here!" The wheezing man points at a tiny cave-like opening under a few uprooted tree trunks, then pushes her in first. It's such a tight fit that her chin presses against her bent knees on the ground, but Sehun manages to squeeze in next to her and reach out to gather fallen leaves and branches to cover them. The two hide with bated breaths, their pounding heartbeats the only sounds breaking the silence. After a handful of uneventful minutes, Haejung is about to shift her position just a bit because her legs are going numb when she hears the growing rustle of many feet and a thickly accented voice calling out, "They couldn't have run off too far with an injured man. The Summer of Terror has only begun, boys! Runaways are communists; catch them all for the public execution tomorrow!"Haejung's blood nearly freezes within her veins. Not even daring to breathe, she can only keep still and pray to the gods that the North Korean troops will pass quickly---Haejung's eyes widen even further at the realization. The troops coming after them were not North Koreans. Although she never paid much attention in school, she remembered the fact that Syngman Ree, the South Korean president, ordered his military and special police forces to eliminate the threat posed to his regime by political prisoners and leftist dissidents---any runaways, to be exact.Fear consumes her small frame and Haejung can’t help but to tremble in fright. Yes, she had wished to die, but not in a brutal, public manner. There were still mysteries to be solved as to why she had time-slipped from the past and who exactly this ‘Sehun’ and ‘Mi Ok’ are to her.A scream nearly slips past her lips when something touches her mangled hand. Although she has no feeling in her right hand, the ends of her wrist can detect movement to a certain degree, and she knew something had definitely touched it. At an agonizingly cautious pace, she turns her neck to find Sehun intertwining his fingers around her limp ones, pressing it against his cheek in a silent prayer.Hours of deathly silence, stillness, and darkness pass by. Until the first rays of sunshine peek through the treetops and cast its warm light into---   “---jung! Haejung! You’re gonna be late for school! Are you too retarded to even get out of bed?”With a loud gasp, Haejung shoots up from her…her pillow and bed? Looking around frantically, she only finds the ordinary sight of her bedroom and her sister leaning against the door frame with an irritated scowl.“S-Sehun?”Haejung jumps when the door slams shut with an ear-splitting bang.