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It took three short breaths.
Hyuna wheezes, her ears drumming to the sound of an ovation. Her lungs pricked from breathing, and sweat dotted her face. Her legs trembled from the pain from her hip, she squeezed to stop the bleeding but it soaked her hands. Her stubbornness kept her from titling, as she stared at him.
If she expressed her anger, it didn't show. All that animosity that has built over the years fizzled out. The days she chalked up the wall, the restless nights, the lavishness in her pleasures, was because of him. But when face of fiend at the core of her despair, she felt fear.
Another breath, her eyes flickered to find Mizi crouching over the contestant. She's sobbing uncontrollably, clutching onto their shirt with their tears soaking into their hair. Hyuna only thought twice to help her up, she's under scrutiny of him.
Running was not advised in the situation she was in. Hyuna had scaled the place before, analyzed the stage, checked every exit, but knew her death would be in their hands. Escaping with a limp? She'll leave with a trail. Be a decoy? How far will Mizi go? She'd glue to a corpse at the moment.
She rasped and things started to shift. The stage sank, descending slowly as the audience disappeared from her sight. The spotlights shutting off, the three being submerged into darkness. Hyuna's glimmer of light was the green dot on Luka’s headset.
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It was the annoying buzz that awoke her. She blinked away her sleep, facing the far off ceiling with florescent lights beaming down at her. She adjusted, but pain was a cruel reminder of her situation. One twitch and she gasped, her wound being strangled in a tight space where her arms stuck to her chest, it was hard to move around. She focused down her chest to see the binding of a straight jacket strapped to the bed. Each limb being held down by buckles, the Segyien took precaution to keep her from running.
A sharp intake. "Fuck."
"Stop fretting. You'll open your wound."
That damn voice. Long ago, she wouldn't mind being soothed in her sleep with a lullaby to her ear. That voice that sounded flat, but oddly alluring came to be a consequential figure in her life. A voice belonging to someone who she's felt their lips caress her earlobes while she’d slumbered long ago.
Now, those memories were crushed into the sands of the wasteland she resides in. "You're here."
Luka acknowledges this by coming closer. He leaned over the rail to inspect her. Bearing his stage outfit, he was without his headset and hair tie. Strands of his locs fell to his shoulders and covered his eyes. "I'm here."
She remembered when his hair was long
The first time he held the stage, created to see the crowd, but showed no passion to continue the onslaught. His name would boom amongst fans and he would be showered with glamor. But, those angelic eyes held nothing but discomfort. And somehow, captured the hearts of all who watched.
And again, the present is no different.
"You won." She said, bitterly
Luka's eyes slit. "You were watching?"
"I was there."
She saw how his eyes widened. She could see the tips of his ears faded into a different color. How intense his gaze became and bile rose in her throat. "You were always watching."
Seeing his face morph into a pacified state, a look of innocence and hope made her stomach turn. He had that wretched demeanor when he was first covered in blood. Pure euphoria on a young boy as his eyes fixate on her. She had felt the heat of his stare, but nothing had strained her attention from her brother. Her jewel, lifeless on the artificial grass. That expression was something Hyuna could never forget.
"Is this what you wanted?" It frustrates her how small her voice was. Her patience was growing thin, and fatigue was hindering her.
"More than you think."
Right. Hyuna knew. Even on the days she told herself it wasn't true. A part of her despises the negligence of truth, confusing her heart with her mind and allowing her past to middle her. She knew what happened, she saw what happened, what else is there to explain? This is his dream coming true.
But there was still hope elsewhere. "Where's Mizi?"
"Pink hair?" He paused. "Her mother took her."
Her breath trembled, she squeezed her eyes shut."I-Is that true?"
He'd not offer pity to her companion. "She was taken away. And the other was disregarded."
She had failed. That's how it was spelled out to her. She had failed, again. And nothing could lessen the blow of much she screwed up.
Hyuna took the kid because of a guy's feelings. That sickening feeling that warned her not to detour from the path she made. But it was the same feeling that pushed her to do something brash. She recognized Mizi's despair and only led a hand to her. It was only from that day she kindled a bond. And couldn't help but recognize patterns from her past. Mizi smiles, her go-to attitude, her self righteousness, she sees herself in her. She sees him in her.
Her body felt heavy, her throat was dry, her eyes sting, and all she could see was him. Hyun-Woo had reached for the sky and told her "That's where we belong" without any consciousness of what he said. He was the one to push her out of her pessimism when their guardian wouldn't come home. “If not now, then never” he would cheer. And he was the one who alerted her about Luka. But from his cries alone, he met a terrible fate due to her ignorance.
She failed. She failed. She failed. She failed. She failed.
Hyuna gulped, tears were springing from her eyes and fading into the bed sheets. And cold fingers wiped her cheeks. It didn't calm her down.
Her breath hitches. "What will happen to me?"
"You're mine." Luka said with confidence
In an attempt to ward away her sorrow? She doesn't know. "Nothing can harm you."
She saw the screens. Hyuna knew she and Mizi were back in this terror. But the unknown grips her into a vice, for her paranoia grows of what will become of them. It has never been done before,that's what really worries her. And whatever power Luka had gained, it's insignificant to her.
"That's not up for you to decide." It was true.
He was undeterred. "They can't hurt you."
But she can't hurt Mizi.
She couldn't protect Hyun-Woo either.
That was her final straw. "What if I don't want to be yours?"
That made him speechless. He stopped his pestering and really looked at her. All those years that had passed between them, there were times where she could read him. When he was upset, sad, annoyed, or happy. It was easy to tell from how he scrunched up his face or how the tone of his voice changed. But, the time apart made him jaded of what he picked up. The glint in his eyes telling her he knew more than what he led on.
And then he relays it to her, "That look says otherwise."
Her jaw tightens. "You're wrong."
"I've never been wrong." He thumped a loose lock of her hair behind her ear. "You've just never changed, and you think you did."
There were things she wanted to say. At the tip of her tongue, she was ready to counter his point until her dying breath. But slumped in the bed instead. There's no denying in his words. He knew her better than anyone after all.
She hoped, hoped and wished, that Dewey and Issac would keep her dream alive. In the freedom of others, she hoped what they could do is what she had lacked.
To her demise, her thinking shifted more as he brushed her hair. Her eyes drooped and she could faintly hear singing. All accumulating to lull back to sleep. The binds turn to a light throb around her body.
She really hasn't changed and that's why she still thinks fondly of him to this day.