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neo-shitty · 2 years

Text

slow dancing in a burning room — l.dh

description. the past ripples in the present, the currents of history crashing on the shores of the new day. in the halls of a place you’ve never been, you and haechan are caught up in a riptide—your paths always destined to meet, forever entwined and doomed to the same fate. is history really bound to repeat itself no matter how hard you try to change it?

pairings. lee donghyuck x female reader

genre. angst, suspense, fluff, established relationship!au, soulmates!au, reincarnation!au, museum!au

warnings. suggestive jokes, major character death(s), mentions of arson and suicide, reader’s discretion is advised.

word count. 14.1k

notes. 2022 really is becoming the year i finish ideas i had way back in 2020. i planned on making a playlist for this but, honestly, i only ever listened to all i wanted by paramore throughout the whole writing process. so go listen to the queen belt out one high note after the other and (try to) enjoy this fic bc i enjoyed writing it! :) | taglist: @rae-blogging @cavaree @late-minhours @soobin-chois @kkooongie @hyunkins @httpmuffin

Places you have seen but never been to hold a certain peculiarity to them, a veil shrouding its exterior in a mist meant to draw the eye in but never allowing anything closer. By virtue of human curiosity, you wonder what it keeps behind its closed doors, what entities fill the hollowness inside. There’s only so much you can draw out of your imagination, images concocted of what you assumed places like these would look like on the inside but you could never be certain.

When you look at places you’ve been, you see not only its windows and the solid walls that make up its exteriors. You see the partitions that subdivide it into layers, into floors, into rooms. You see the patterned tiles that people step on, the boards that line the ceiling, the doors that lead to other hidden nooks. Memories from before keep the place alive, each glimpse sending you back to the past in a half-second as you remember what you did when you’ve been there last. It’s normal, it’s human. Except when it shouldn’t be.

The mansion looms across the street from where the bus drops you off, its roof leveled with the rest of the buildings nearby, even dwarfed. What it lacks there, it makes up for in the way it occupies four lots until the next street—leaving no room for backyard neighbors. As you walk up to the front, past the shrubs that lined its front yard, its presence dawns on you. It was something that has been there long before you have, withstanding more tests of time than its modern neighbors that flank it.

When something is just there, you learn to underestimate it. The mansion turned museum was nothing but a view you passed on the way to the school, a break from the glass panes of skyscrapers and fences. The lot was encapsulated, shielded from the gust that aged the whole avenue through the past few decades. It has stood there since the 80s, built by the then president Na Minju as a guest house for foreign visitors who’d like to stay somewhere outside the capital city. You know little to none of its history, just how it nearly fell into ruin because of an accident and rebuilt for keepsake.

It’s the closest you’ve been to the mansion ever since but it doesn’t feel like it when you walk up the marble steps leading up to the entrance. Everything feels familiar, though you shrug it off thinking it’s because you looked at the mansion’s exterior enough that it’s embedded in your mind. Then you hear echoes of laughter down empty halls, the shuffle of heels and boots across a chessboard flooring, and a glimpse of an enormous chandelier dangling from the ceiling.

The images surge through you in a blink and they’re gone just as quick, vivid as a memory and fluid as a dream. You’ve never seen inside the mansion before but it feels as though you had it mapped out and memorized like the back of your hand. The feeling gnaws in the back of your mind, that unshakeable instinct that you have been there before, you just couldn’t remember when.

The others aren’t at the entrance when you arrive, the veranda empty and quiet. There are no plaid-bottomed people, no chatter of hyperactive kids burning patience to get inside. Your heels click against marble as you walk up to the tall entry way, its wooden doors open but unwelcoming.

“Are you here for the tour?”

You startle at the voice, skipping a few steps away from the direction it came from. The shadows by the door stir as a woman emerges, the pair of glasses balanced on her nose catching the bits of light from the outside. Without them, you would’ve barely seen her at all.

The woman studies you when you nod, her eyes falling on the patch on your left chest. She turns away, picking up a record book to hand it to you, “Fill it out. They can’t be far into the house, the tour just started.”

Nodding, you sign your name beneath other familiar ones. Even with your head down, you can feel her staring, the heaviness making you stiffen under her watch. Her gaze seeps through like she can sense your every motion, every molecule of oxygen that makes its way to your lungs, every pulse that drums against your skin. The heaviness of her stare is bone-chilling, making you just as aware of your actions as you think she is.

When you’re through with signing everything you meet her eyes and it’s her turn to startle when she’s caught staring. “Is there anything else I need to do?” you ask, handing the book back.

The woman shakes her head, “Go ahead.”

Your thanks comes out in a mutter as you turn your attention away from her and into the museum as your own tour of it begins. You still feel her boring holes down your back even long after you leave.

The grand entrance opens to a spacious hall, resembling nothing of a standard home living room. The room alone spans the width of the building with a ceiling too high for your own liking held up by off-white pillars. Blue velvet caked the walls in a muted lapis hue, accented by brown and gold that exuded elegance even at its age. Where standard lights should be are chandeliers, dangling in even intervals off a tiled ceiling, not as bright as they used to and leaving patches of darkness all around the hall.

There is nothing here but an unoccupied sofa set far too small compared to the rest of the room. You move along, your shoes tapping against the mosaic of tiles that made the flooring and echoing down the whole hall. The house is beautiful now, less beautiful than it was in its prime. The velvet walls have been recently refurbished and the pillars repainted, but there are indents and signs of wearing that were beyond fixing. It’s not hard to imagine how it looked back when it was just built, back when the president and his family walked the halls before it was left to rot. The house flickers where your gaze falls and you catch glimpses of how the house was like, what paintings hung on which walls, which doors led to which crevices. For a moment, you wish you visited the house earlier, back when its glory was in full display.

But the feeling washes out just as quick as it came like a wave crashing on the shore for a second before retreating back into the sea. Just as it would cost much to restore it, you knew it took a fortune to build it in the first place. The nostalgia for a place that you’ve never been vanishes, replaced by a twist that makes you sick. The house was built on a graveyard, its foundation the bones of those who were never allowed to step foot inside. It was pieced together, brick by boring brick, by those who worked tirelessly to make ends meet only to never receive the fruits of their labor; all of it funneled into the pockets of the rich and the selfish who never once lifted a finger beyond commanding those they looked down upon.

“You just got here and you’re frowning already?”

The call reverberates through the whole floor, the mansion’s closed structure only amplifying his voice. You turn to the end of the hall where the staircases are, twin snakes of steel twisting up to bite into the second floor veranda. Haechan leans against the railing, his figure standing out against the banister.

“Be careful, I heard they’re repainting.” It’s a white lie but it serves its petty purpose and he backs away from the railing, wiping his arm free of non-existent fresh paint.

“Funny.”

He waits for you at the top of the staircase and you take the time to climb up. The second floor follows the same motif; blue walls and accents of white and gold. On your left, the veranda meets with the mansion’s front wall.

“There’s nothing interesting there, just rooms,” says Haechan.

The pattern of doors and empty walls repeats until the end of the hall, this side of the floor nothing but a mirror of the opposite. “For a family of three, they have way too many rooms.”

Haechan tails behind you, shadowing your footsteps as you walk into one of the bedrooms. “They’re all guest rooms.”

“I can tell.”

“And they all look the same.”

Where you expect natural light to peek through was a window bolted shut, draped with a thick curtain spanning the height of the entire room. It was as if they meant for the place to remain untouched and preserved, mediating the effects of time as the years passed.

A single bed wide enough for two is pushed against the wall, adjacent to a tall cabinet with a full body mirror embedded to its door. The only other touch of life in the room was the low table that accented the center of the floor and the dresser pushed aside. Low things and high ceilings for not even middle-sized people.

You walk a door down, peeking through the doorway of another room.

“See, I told you.”

Haechan is both right and wrong. While the rooms contain the same essentials—bed, cabinet, dresser, table—they are arranged differently. The bed is pushed against the opposite wall, the cabinet sits beside the ever-shut windows. Your patience thins when you reach the third door, finding the same things in different order and you no longer bother to check the other rooms.

“Let’s go,” he points down the hall to the other end of the veranda. Instead of a front wall, the other end is a pair of double doors leading further into the mansion. “They went through there.”

You find yourselves in another central room, one that opens into new rooms in each cardinal direction except from where you came from where a grand staircase led up to the next floor. To your left there is another reception area like the one in the floor below, a ratan set topped with the same signages that asked visitors to not sit on them. Haechan vanishes when you turn back, the central room going quiet with only your footsteps echoing against the marble floors.

“Hey, _____. I’m in here!”

His voice comes from the other room and it’s the giddiness laced in his tone that tells you this is where he left off the tour to come and get you.

Through an arch, the room branches into a closed annex—a conference hall. A long wooden table occupies the majority of the space, flanked with a couple of wooden chairs on each side. You find Haechan at the end of the table. “Sit across me,” he says, slowly pulling the chair on his end, wary of the way it scratches against the tiles.

Your eyes pan over to the other end, the offer tempting, but you catch another ‘Thank you for not sitting!’ sign. “I don’t think we’re allowed to.”

But Haechan’s already making himself comfortable on the chair down the table, the chair creaking every so slightly beneath his wait. “That’s alright. No one’s watching.”

There is no one else but the both of you this far out into the mansion. Outside, the second floor is devoid of any footsteps and the closest you could hear of anyone is the muffled voice of who you think is the tour guide echoing off the walls of the third floor.

Haechan cheers in silence, pumped fist and all smiles as you cross the room to where the chair is, watching as you squeeze yourself between it and the table before you take your place. The chair doesn’t give way when you put your weight on it, sturdy even at its age. Neither does Haechan’s, even as he leans against the back, his figure dwarfed with the chair’s enormity. It’s taller than the rest of the chairs, matching only the one you sat on.

“Do you think people still hear each other this far away?” he asks, and you hear him but that’s only because you were the only two people around.

“I never thought of that.”

You try to imagine a room full of people and then suddenly, you weren’t imagining it anymore. The chairs on either side of you are occupied with men and women clad in fancy suits and gowns, their secretaries coming and going on call but never staying. The image transcends to reality when you look back on the table to find that it’s no longer empty. Gone was the flimsy signage, replaced with a half-eaten banquet touched with only gloved fingers.

Across the table, Haechan is in a suit of his own, his head cocked as he listens to the man on the seat closest to him. The air is warm with the presence of other people, the chandeliers are brighter. Pairs of lips open and shut, their mouths moving as if to speak but their words never reach you. Their voices come faint and muffled, grumbled as if you’re hearing them from the bottom of a swimming pool.

“Haechan,” you call out, expecting your voice to come out just as muffled. But he hears it through the barrier and the water drains out when his eyes snap back to you.

Everything is gone in a blink of an eye; the people beside you, the table cleared, the room plunged back into the eerie darkness the rest of the museum had.

“Is something wrong?” he asks. “Is there a ghost behind me?”

The boy twists in his seat, his head turning a complete one hundred and eighty to study the vacancy behind him. There is nothing there, of course. The lack of a presence comforts him just as much as it bothers you. A second ago, the room felt suffocating with the number of people talking all at once. You hear the laughter, the clinks of metal against glass, the shuffling of people filing in and out.

Clearly, there was nothing there. It wasn’t inherently impossible for a room full of people to appear and disappear in a blink of an eye.

“It’s nothing.”

The conference hall falls quiet when you leave it, back in the still state it had been before you walked in. Haechan follows you out, passing you to peek at the last annex.

“There you are! Where have you been?”

Even the new voice seems familiar when you hear it, your vision floating between the present and the past in a foggy haze that puts you off. Jeno makes his way down the grandiose staircase, his stomps muffled by the carpet running up the steps. For a moment you don’t see him in uniform; midnight black where there should be plaid print, a button-down where his polo shirt was, holding a silver pitcher as he rushes on his way down. Then the vision fades.

You shake it off, looking over your shoulder to call Haechan back to the central room. He emerges from the shadows with a smile on his face, agreeing to ditch the boring annex for the next floor.

Jeno waits half-way up, a sly smirk adorning his lips when you meet him. “What were you two doing?” he teases, his eyebrows arched.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” Haechan answers.

You, on the other hand, don’t miss the chance to strike at the other boy’s chest when you walk past him.

The staircase spans the entire wall between the double doors and it opens to an even larger hole on the floor of the third level. The white marble of its steps is blanketed with a red carpet, its railings a brownish-gold. You feel the air shift when you reach the top and you’re unsure if it’s because of the climb up, or the poor ventilation. The air is thicker, humid now that you’re deeper into the house. Sweats beads on your skin but the surroundings keep it trapped in your skin, making you feel sticky.

The marble tiles end here, swapped with a mahogany floor glazed in a top coat that shines in the same way the tiles do. Your footsteps thud against its surface, the wooden bricks knocking when your weight shifts. The others are here, the floor noisier than the ones you were in. Haechan, on the other hand, is nowhere to be seen.

You’re left alone in the main room, the voices of the others muffled behind the walls. The right wall is holed with three arches, each one leading into the bedrooms of each family member—one for the president, one for his wife, and one for his only child. Paintings occupied the spaces between the arches, filling the vacancy of the spacious walls.

You make your way to the back of the floor where the main attraction of the room was. It was the sole piece of the house you’ve seen whenever you looked up the house. On the back wall was a scaled portrait of the three family members, framed by white spires drilling into the ceiling. No other light in the mansion illuminated anything else the same way it does the painting, spotlights fixated and shining so bright the masterpiece’s blemishes are drowned out by the light.

Na Yeongsuk sat on a throne chair; her hands bright with gold and her neck adorned in stones that glinted even in painting. She wore only the best, the painter paying special attention to show that the silk she wore was fine even without you having to touch it. Her hair was pinned up in a halo around her head, an ironic show of her rule as the wife of the fifth republic’s president. Her head was tilted to the front, her lips never smiling.

Beside her, the late president stood in full military uniform. Na Minju had a chest-full of medals, each one representing battles won by the nation, each one he never fought. He pressed his cap against his stomach with a gloved hand, the other draped over the throne where his wife sat. Like her, he stared straight forward—stoic, uncaring. The coldness of his stare transcends the stillness of his image, a mirror of how his presence lingers in the present in the shadow of those who remained loyal to him and his family.

Then Na Jaemin, the sole person in the painting with a tinge of a smile tugging on the corners of his lips. But there is no brightness in his eyes, devoid of emotions like the others with him. He was at his prime then, sharp jaw, wide-eyed, and the epitome of a gentleman. He grew up to be nothing like he used to, a shell of the charm of his younger self, a man on strings in the hands of a dead puppeteer.

The main room of the third floor is mostly vacant besides the grand staircase and its banister, but not as empty as the floor below. All four quadrants of the room are alight with paintings and tables, one space even occupied by a grand piano.

When the others file back into the room, Haechan heads straight to it. A sweet melody fills the air as his fingers fall on the ivory keys. It’s a familiar tune but it’s something you can’t quite put your finger on. He picks up, the pace shifting from slow to an up-beat waltz. Before you know it, your vision is stirring again and it feels as if you’re both in the empty hall but aren’t. The past swamps your present, the colors of the walls more vibrant. There is a rush of people around you, people talking with no sound and they’re not in the same uniform you’re wearing.

But Haechan misses a note and the vision breaks. He tries it again, only to find that the key itself was off tune so he leaves it be.

“I’ve said this countless times today but I feel the need to say it again.” A voice booms through the hall, louder than any other whisper. Everyone else falls quiet as the voice fills the room, chatter turning into hushed whispers as a woman walks through the last of the arches and into the third floor hall. “I’m reminding all of you to please refrain from touching any of the items in the house, including furniture, paintings, sculptures, and pianos.”

The woman eyes the corner where the boys were, only to find the piano vacated and the people nearby looking at anything just to avoid her gaze. The rest of the crowd reenters the main hall, their voices no longer muted by walls and partitions. The emptiness of the house is filled with indistinguishable mutters, however only partly. Even with a few dozen people in the same space, it doesn’t feel crowded.

Your friends greet you as they pass, their cameras flashing at the portraits hanging on the wall and at the nimble artifacts that decorate the other spaces. The tour guide points at a portrait of the president and his wife on one of the walls between the archways.

“Yeongsuk, whenever interviewed about their marriage, always answered that it was fated—meant to be,” the tour guide says, followed by a humorless laugh from the back of the room. “She recalls that when they first got acquainted, she saw a red string linking her to someone in the room which she soon found out was Minju. She said that when her eyes met, she knew he was the one he was going to marry.”

“And look where that got us?” Heads turn to the back of the crowd where the boys are. Jeno meets the gazes that watch him fearlessly, an eyebrow cocked with the mixed reactions that stirred his audience. “You believe in that? Maybe she didn’t see a red string of fate, maybe she saw his bank account full of money.”

“Full of money he stole?” Haechan adds, his eyes elsewhere to avoid the stares bearing down on him. Watered down snickers fill the room, even a giggle bubbles out of your lips at his comment. But the joke isn’t funny.

The tour guide quiets the crowd a second time but it isn’t because she had something to add to her description of the paintings. When you turn to look back at her, you know by her eyes she took offense to it—the joke scarring her for all the wrong reasons.

It was during the Na regime that the country saw one of its biggest recessions. Corrupt practices went by unnoticed under the corrupt leadership. While the rest of the country starved, the rich managed to live in luxury, their lavish living at the expense of everyone else’s sacrifices. It was one thing you loathed about the house; the image of their bodies slipping down these wide halls while others roamed the streets homeless, enduring the most inhumane places just to have somewhere to rest.

You can’t help but pity her, the tour guide and her furious stare at the boys who made those light comments. To see these pieces of history preserved disgusted you, to hear the Na regime glorified, even worse. You pity those who have cloth draped over their eyes, blinded by the same people they worship. But what could you do when you’re taught to never bite the hand that feeds you?

The whole floor is divided by yet another wall but isn’t empty like its second floor counterpart. On its surface is a painting, the white base of the canvas completely covered beneath layers upon layers of oil. Unlike the family portrait, there are no lights that draw your attention to it, the image blending into the shadows.

It takes your focus to make out its details and you understand why it’s left as it is. The painting is too grotesque, set apart from the rest of its kind. It paints multiple figures but a single one takes your focus at the center, a limp man being dragged away with a trail of his own blood trailing him. Beside him lie other carcasses, some abandoned and others crowded. It’s the sole one that draws a scene out of reality, where the subjects don’t pose to be recreated. It tells a tale of an underground, a picture painted from memory of someone who had been behind the scenes of a gladiator show. It means to disturb the comfortable, to remind them what expense others suffer for their entertainment. You think the Na’s kept it for solely its history, its purpose brushed under the rug.

The tour guide doesn’t even bother turning anyone’s attention to it and it remains out of everyone’s focus, no one caring enough to ask about it.

“Let’s move on to the next room, shall we?” she says, not even batting an eye its way.

She steers the crowd to one of the entrances to the other hall, and even with the towering wooden doors still shut, you already know what lies beyond it.

“This is the ballroom of the Na’s where they held their parties whenever their guests came to visit.” The massive room makes up the rest of the floor, the counterpart of the grand entrance on the first floor. The ceiling is tent-like, meeting down the center of the chamber and held up with arches spaced out to keep it from falling. The floor is spacious and devoid of obstructions, the walls velvet decorated with paintings like the rest of the house.

But its center-piece is a showstealer, a chandelier with an enormity befitting the rest of the room. It hangs from a web of beams, clawing down on the air like branches of a tree with light bulbs for leaves. It dwarves all the others in the mansion, ominous with its enormity in the middle of the room.

Distracted, you don’t notice it when Haechan slips beside you, hooking his arm around yours before pulling over. “Let’s dance,” he says and the squeak you let out when you lose your balance draws the attention of the people around you.

Giggles and whistles fill the air as you stumble after him. The tour guide lets you be, remnants of what happened in the room before gone completely. Someone in the room hums a tune, the same one Haechan never finished on the piano earlier.

There are no lyrics to it but Haechan sings it like it does. He leads you with a single hand, gently tugging you by your fingers when you don’t fight him anymore. Others join you on the dance floor but you barely make out who they are as he spins you around. When you come right back to meet him, he holds out one of your arms, your hands clasped, while the other rests behind your shoulder blade.

“I don’t know how to dance, Haechan,” you tell him. Your hold on him is flimsy, your posture crooked compared to his.

But he keeps you in the closed position, clicking his tongue as he leads you around. You feel the eyes watching you from the sidelines, seeing how you fall a half-step behind him. His steps are calculated, mapping out the floor even when he’s never been here, while yours are always too short and off-beat. He spins you one way, slowly inching you both closer to the spot beneath the chandelier.

Your hold on him tightens. “We can dance anywhere in this damn hall, just not there!” you say, whispering in the most aggressive tone you could manage without letting the others around you hear.

He peers at you for a moment, smirking and you know he’s only going to ignore your warning, steering the both of you closer and closer to the chandelier. But you drop your arms, letting him go.

Haechan chases after you, grabbing you by the arm when you walk away from him. When he spins you around to face him, you’re met with another face. No, it’s the same face but his hair is waxed in a way that reveals his forehead. His uniform is gone, replaced with a black suit with a tie to match it, and so is yours because of the lace lining your arms. The room is cold, the wind from outside sweeping into the room through the open windows. It’s dark outside and the lights in the room shine bright, a ceiling of faux stars over a sea of slow drifting people, all orbiting around the moonshine of the centerpiece.

He keeps one hand clasped with yours, the other resting by your waist instead of your shoulder. And it’s in the slowness of everything around you that you get a better view of the crowd watching, the mumbles they utter and the eyes that follow you as you sweep by. Couples flock around you but something tells you that you’re the center of their attention—you and the boy you’re dancing with.

“_____.”

The air feels humid again, the windows are shut and there are beads of sweat that dot your forehead. The chandelier hangs above you in its ominous enormity, looming overhead like it’s bound to come crashing down on you at any given moment. There are no eyes watching you now, no one besides the classmates who’ve lingered to take photos of the architecture.

You let go of Haechan almost too quickly, your hands feeling clammy from the prolonged clasp.

“You looked like you were enjoying the dance. I didn’t want to spoil it, but the tour guide said she’ll switch the lights off on us if we take any longer.” he explains, a humorless laugh following it.

But you only give him a nod, half-distracted, following the crowd out the ballroom and leaving him behind without meaning to. Still, you feel tethered to the spot beneath the chandelier in the same way a part of you remained seated at the end of the long table. Again, you try to shake it off, but the feeling lingers like an itch beneath your skin that you can’t satiate. It entrances you the same way deja vu does, tricking your mind into thinking that you’ve been in the same place even when you haven’t.

You walk out the ballroom through the other pair of doors, greeted by a wall of photographs—the only part of the mansion completely nonexistent back when it was still lived in. Numerous photos line the blank space, covering the wall from floor to ceiling. The photos are large, its content easy to make out even at a distance. There are photos from trips to other places, family photos of the Na’s along with equally powerful families, photos of the mansion back when it was first built, parties that have been held along with the guests that attended it. Dates and details were written in plaques beneath each photo, ending the series in the year 1984 with pictures from what was labeled as “The Last Party”.

“Trivia,” the woman upfront said, “the mansion nearly burned down in the 1980s during a party. Two people managed to sneak in, light a fire which nearly destroyed the whole place.”

Gasps, a lot of them, they fill the air before the crowd argues to call it an act of stupidity or a show of courageousness.

“While most of the guests made it out unscathed, it was that act that sparked the revolt that eventually put an end to the rule of the Na’s.” The woman goes on to explain why the third floor barely resembles the rest of the building, rebuilt on substandard materials to preserve the mansion’s structure rather than its original glory. The Na’s never set foot in it ever since.

It isn’t new information but it isn’t because it’s the first thing that comes up when you look the place up. You were there, the single thought dawns on you like a bucket of cold water dumped over your head—chilling your whole body and cementing you to the floor where you stood. The fear holds you to the ground, its enormity beyond the eerie atmosphere of the worn down place. But it’s the familiarity of the black and white images, the memories that resurface when you stared at it too long. You remember it like a memory of something that happened recently, vivid in your mind even when you’ve seen only glimpses of it.

There’s a gentle tug on your hand, a feeling you mistake as the images draw you to them. It’s faint, a mere brush and you barely notice it with your attention fixated elsewhere. You’re staring at one of the photos from The Last Party, one taken from the ballroom. The first family sat on two throne-like seats, flanked by their guests for the night. It’s a panoramic shot, women by Yeongsuk’s side and men by Minju’s.

By the first lady, there’s a blurred face, the image of a turned head captured as the camera flashes. Even without seeing her face you feel the tethers tying you to it, an unexplainable instinct that you are the one in the image. Because you can remember what she’s looking at, you can remember the reason why she turned her head in the first place.

“It was said that the culprits were photographed in these photos so we chose to hang them here as a reminder to honor what they had done or at least what they were said to be fighting for,” the tour guide says, humorous and mocking. “It was a rather controversial case at the time but it died out when the other party refused to speak about it on top of the eventual ousting of Na Minju.”

“What happened?” A single voice asks from the crowd.

It’s nothing you don’t know, and if it wouldn’t be off-putting to answer it yourself you would’ve. But you let the tour guide continue, “The culprits have been said to have committed a double suicide to avoid questioning and arrest. One of them was identified as the child of Na’s trusted generals, kickstarting the rumors of a coup d’etat stirring the military. The Na’s, with their dwindling trust in their own people, resorted to taking matters into their own hands. But we all know how that ended.”

The revolution, the inevitable oust, the victory of the people. Even without her dropping names, their faces pop up in your mind. The generals who plotted against them, the ones who turned a blind eye on their crimes as a show of loyalty. You know which general suffered the weight of the rumors of the uprising, the bitter irony that he never once showed any opposition to the ruling family. You knew who was to blame, the one he referred to as a disgrace, and you pick him out of the dozen faces in the photographs.

The tug on your finger comes again, this time earning your attention. A thread was looped around your finger, twisting against the small extremity from another entity’s influence. But you’re not moving, your arm glued to your side. You stood unmoving before the wall of photographs, barely taking in the surge of memories that come one after the other.

A blur of movement sweeps your periphery, a pair coming up to stand by your side. “You see that? I told you he looks exactly like you!” The voice belongs to Jeno and you turn to find him pointing out a face in the panorama.

The thread pulls on you now, enough to yank the finger out of the order it rested against your thighs. It moves on its own volition, tickling your skin as it twists with more movement. The other end becomes visible as another person walks over, the loop tied loosely around another boy’s finger. When you look at him, the thread stops pulling. Instead, it bursts into flames like your gaze had struck a match and set it on fire. It nips at your finger but never burns, licking up the thread clinging onto your hand.

“Donghyuck.” The name isn’t his but it’s what slips out of your mouth naturally. The surprise on your face is mirrored in his, moments before his turn into a look of confusion. You’re unsure where the feeling is coming from, the surge of panic as if your lungs were filling with water instead of air. It burns when you try to breathe, your vision clouding up and your heartbeat erratic, even when you know you’re in open air. Your heart pounds against your chest, loud enough you hear it pulsing in your ear. “Donghyuck, we have to go.”

He doesn’t move but the panic is blinding. Your mind urges you to run, unknowing of what you’re running away from. Around you, the walls are crumbling, closing in on your twin figures standing by the walls marred with fragments of history the Na’s want the world to see. The feeling shrinks, the beams groaning as they lowered inch by boring inch. The flame looped around your finger now stings but it never seems to scorch your skin. It zips across the space between you and Donghyuck like it was laced in gasoline.

“Hyuck!”

It comes out as a hiccup but where the flame touches his skin, he shows no signs of feeling it. You rush up to him, finally freeing your body of your own mind’s prison. You pinch at it, tugging it away, pat it down to let the fire die out but it holds. When you turn to look around, you find that the thread isn’t the only thing burning. The room is on fire; curtains, paintings, carpet, walls. Everything around you is engulfed in a roaring bright flame, crackling as it licks up the spires swirling to the ceiling.

“We have to leave,” you say, adamant, your irritation rising when he doesn’t mirror your worry.

Donghyuck remains immovable, like his feet replaced yours the second you were free from the burning flooring. Like everything else about your visions, you see him talking but his words are gibberish to you, drowned out by your breaths and the pulse drumming your ears. This was it, you were doomed.

The smoke grows thicker as you stay there longer, toxins filling the spaces where oxygen should be. Your hand curls around his arm, your grip tight as you try to yank him elsewhere. But you’re now too weak, adrenaline already dwindling. The staircase down is close yet it feels like an impossible journey. The smell of charred wood is nauseating, feeling it weigh on your lungs with the ashes you’ve inhaled. You cough between your words, your attempts to lead him out nothing but futile.

Donghyuck shakes your grip off gently but it makes you lose what little balance holds you up, your fall prevented when he moves just as quick to catch you. He holds you upright to keep you standing, even as you begin to feel your body shutting down. His hands are warm against your cheek, the finger with the thread looped a tad bit warmer. He’s saying something, another thing you can’t make out in the haze of your dizziness. His face is the last thing you see moments before your exhaustion pulls you under.

The party is in full swing by the time the person you were expecting reappears back in the stock room. The heavy wooden door groans as it’s pushed open, your panic making your blood run cold until a familiar mop of hair pops in through the door.

“Put that damn pan down, it’s just me.”

Lee Jeno slips through the crack in the doorway, pushing the door back shut behind him just as quick as he opened it. The air seals again, stilling now that you’re trapped inside the cramped-up stockroom. It feels hotter now with another presence sharing the oxygen, or maybe it’s just your heart pumping erratically in your ribcage. Still, now with him here, you finally take your first breath of relief in what felt like hours.

Even with Donghyuck’s word that this annex of the mansion would be devoid of people, your paranoia doesn’t fall tranquil. Rightfully so because you’ve heard footsteps drumming against the floor outside, matching the pace of your heart whenever they came too close. What would you do if they found you here? Beat them up with whatever item you could find so you could escape? What would you do then if you stumble upon one of their guards? That’s a problem for another time. You scour the junk pile for something lightweight but hard-hitting, praising whoever was watching over you when you come upon their kitchenware set, wielding a pan for a melee weapon.

Still, things have gone in your favor. The man you were waiting for was here now and the realization of what you were about to do looms over you like a black cloud sinking. The steel pitchers sit on top of the craters, the thick scent of gasoline nauseating but you’ve learned to endure it.

“What took you so long?” you ask. You don’t really know how long you’ve been there, no watches or clocks to tell you how much time has passed. It felt like a while, time stretched as your anxiousness grew with every off-sounding footstep, even longer with nothing better to do but to inhale gasoline. “Did we need to wait for everyone to be gathered in the ballroom?”

But whatever sign the man on the top floor sent you, it was here now—the wait was over. In the minutes you spent isolated, the stunt felt less nerve-wracking; your fear dragged out and lulled into a dull hum in the back of your mind.

Jeno eyes you from across the room, which wasn’t too far with what little space the room had. Things piled in stacks on either side of you, all threatening to topple over with the slightest misstep. “Don’t get mad.”

“Take your chances.”

He purses his lips, braves himself to tell you. It couldn’t be that bad, right? “Donghyuck waited for his parents to leave.”

It’s not as bad as you expected but the news leaves a bitter taste on your tongue. It wasn’t something you'd call off the plan for, nor something you’d hold against him. You take it easier than Jeno thinks you would, the simple ‘okay’ not being the reaction he was looking forward to. Maybe it was the nerve-wracking task ahead that made you think straight, rationality overtaking your pettiness. The difference in social classes comes clear at the final moment. You’ve spent a number of your dates hating the rich, loathing those who have the power to help others yet choose not to because who were they if there was no one to look down upon?

The thought of Donghyuck coming from a family like that annoyed you, even when you knew he couldn’t do anything about it. There was an irritability towards him that you couldn’t explain to his face, maybe even an internalized insecurity fueled by the hierarchy of social classes.

When he first started showing up to the rallies, you were skeptical about it, a lot of you were. Everyone skirted around him, avoiding him entirely whenever he tried to get more involved than he already was. There was an unspoken consensus, that he was not an ally but another attempt tof the government to source out who to question for information, a key to dismantling the growing resistance.

Looking back on it, everyone’s perspectives were valid. But it took guts to be the general’s son and to be openly at odds with their parents’ loyalties. Now, he was the ticket to the execution of your plan, the love-child of hatred towards lavish snobs and a collective worn out patience for a better governance—unachievable under a selfish man’s rule.

“_____.”

“It’s fine.” You tell him, trying to be more understanding of the situation rather than lashing out.

There was no time to police Donghyuck for giving his family a free pass when he was the reason you even made it this far. Far from what you’ve long grown up to, family was still family to him, curse his soft heart for thinking so. But of the three of you, if things went south from here, he had the most to lose. Turning a blind eye to this was the least you could do.

You turn your attention to other matters, moving to the pitchers lined up on top of the craters. One aisle of pitchers is filled with Coca-Cola, fizzled out with how long Jeno took to get back here. The ice you were keeping had begun to melt, the styrofoam boxes’ floor covered in a thin layer of freezing water. You fill the pitchers with ice one by one, the ice numbing your shaking nerves. It isn’t the best way to momentarily calm yourself but it works.

“These hold actual drinks,” you tell him, pointing out the distinctions. “These have gasoline.”

You pop one of the lids up, the smell of gasoline comes up like a fume that jams your nostrils. Jeno cringes. Having two people pouring gasoline around would be too inconspicuous so the other had to orbit around along with the other waiters to serve actual beverages—the both of you switching roles every other pitcher.

The stockroom is adjacent to the kitchen and you walk out to a flurry of service people, coming and going to fulfill their roles. You exit out of the annex, into the central room of the second floor. The grand staircase is decorated, its entryway accented with bows of cloth. You easily blend in and it kills you to bow at every elite you brush into.

Jeno follows you out but you lose him in the hall of gowns and suits, never imagining the third floor to be as crowded as it was. There aren’t that many people, you assume the rest are behind the closed doors—lost in the hypnosis of the ballroom. The guests here are chatting while walking, drinking and talking. The piano is put to use, ivory keys simulated by a man, and a soothing tune fills the room. It’s meant to calm those who've begun to drink too much, to let the mind rest, but it makes you restless.

You begin your roleplay of playing waitress, bowing at men in suits and girls in dresses and offering to fill up their glasses like the other waiters. Across the room, you see Jeno casually making his way around, mirroring your actions of bows and greetings. These rich people are simple-minded creatures, they love having their egos stroked. Any show of submission blinded them with a sense of superiority, everything else goes unnoticed. Jeno pours the contents of his pitcher on the floor instead of the glasses on the table—everyone who’s close to noticing, you sweep away, steering their attention away from Jeno as subtle as you can. Both of you work in tandem, in a harmony you didn’t expect you’d pull off that easily. You weren’t there to pour gasoline in the waiting room alone, the best people weren’t even here.

Some time into the second cycle, you decide to give it a rest, both to recuperate and rethink your strategies. Your sources were diminishing by each round and the ballroom remained inaccessible. You momentarily set the pitcher down on a table in front of you, taking a moment to breathe away from the gasoline.

But when you turn back around to the table, it’s gone—both the pitcher and the table you set it on. The room shrunk around you, the wide hall of the third floor turning into a meter-wide cubicle. A mirror hangs on the wall in front of you, the sink a clean slate of marble laid out where the table was. Your face is wet, water dripping down your cheek where you splashed it. Your blood boils beneath your skin, frustration mixing with your anxiousness that you went this far for nothing.

“If I didn’t come out, I wouldn’t have known you started with the plan.”

You spin around and find Donghyuck standing by the doorway. He leans against the frame, dressed in a manner different from how you always see him. He’s dressed in a suit, the classic black and white elite wear. He’s recognizable but not easily, his hair swept up where it should be patted down.

“The ballroom doors are locked, I don’t think they’ll let just any waiter in,” you answer.

“I got that covered. I’ll get Jeno in, but I need someone in the room along with me,” he says.

When Donghyuck comes into the light, he isn’t empty-handed. A gown unfurls itself before you, its skirts swaying when he lets it go. The dress is almost the same shade as the lapis hue that coats the walls, more vibrant and studded with silver that grint in the faint light. It’s a beautiful dress and while you know it’s something he’s offering you to wear, you’re not sure if you’ll suit it. Your disbelief tumbles out of your lips, your gratitude falling short.

You run your fingers along the bodice, the fibers fine against your skin. “Where did you get this?”

“Connections. I happen to have a lot of them,” he says, scratching his head as you check it out. “Try it, I think it would fit you.”

“I don’t think it would suit me.”

“You look good in anything.” When you look back at him, he isn’t looking. His eyes study the dress as he hands it, meeting your gaze only when you take it from him. You notice the moment he realizes what he let slip out, the dilation of his eyes when it occurs to him that he was thinking out loud. But he doesn’t add on to it. “Meet me inside. I’ll find you, don’t worry.”

He doesn’t wait on you, leaving you alone in the dimly lit comfort room. You strip out of the waiter’s uniform, disposing of it in a garbage chute beneath the sink which was impractical if you didn’t want to leave any traces. But if you succeeded with what you were about to, you didn’t have to worry about anything you would be leaving behind.

There is one thing you keep from it, a small packet in a ziplock bag that you kept in your breast pocket. You pat down the dress for any pockets, surprised to find a shallow one by the side that’s visible beneath the pleats of the skirt. You scramble through the dressers for anything, makeup to touch yourself up with, colors to smear on your lips, anything to make you a bit more presentable than haggard. Your hair isn’t as bad as you think it is, holding its place even after your rounds as a waitress. It takes a knock on the comfort room door for you to rush out.

Unbeknownst to your knowledge, you open the way to the ballroom. The chandelier centerpiece holds much of the decor, the meters upon meters of cloth meeting up in a swirl in the middle of the room. Tables full of guests make up the border around the dance floor, empty with no dancers swaying about. At a corner, musicians play jazz to accompany the chatter that fills the room in a consistent buzz.

When the tune switches from jazz to a more mellow song, the crowd woos. From his family’s table, Na Jaemin rises, ushered by the host to pick a girl in the crowd to dance. But the room is crowded, it isn’t an easy task. His eyes pass yours easily, not even expecting them to linger on you for longer than a second. He picks a girl from one of the tables close to you, noting that the girl hails from a family on par with the Na’s in riches. It doesn’t take long for you to piece that it’s scripted, a chess piece nudged by Na Minju to retain power over fields he doesn’t fully control.

You don’t move away from the doorway just yet, so you notice it when a familiar figure walks in. Jeno was now clad in a black vest, a permit for entry into the ballroom for those who were serving. When he passes, you catch a quiff of the gasoline—one of the pitchers he carried holding it, but you hope that no one else does. You try not to turn to where he slips into the crowd, doing his work in stealth. It feels like walking on a tightrope, how everything could be ruined by a single mistake.

Everyone else’s attention is still elsewhere, on the pair making the most out of the dance floor. It helps that the people here are half-intoxicated, senses dulled and easily hypnotized.

Jaemin, entranced as he was, turned his head too often to the crowd. His head would snap in a certain direction, eyebrows furrowed as howls of laughter erupted from the audience. With his patience thinned, he drags someone out into the dance floor. “If you’re such a loudmouth about it, come here and dance!”

The man he yanks from the seats stumbles, his head bowed in petty laughter. Jaemin stirs himself and his partner away, leaving the poor boy at the mercy of his friends by the table. But right as he’s about to take his seat again, his chair is occupied, leaving him standing at the edge of the dance floor.

“Looks like we have another young boy willing to dance!” announces the host and the crowd cheers, others laughing while others woo him. “Is there anyone who wants to share a dance with General Lee’s eldest son?”

He looks around the room, lost in the sea of attention. Mothers offer their daughters, never really meaning them in genuine interest in the boy himself, but in the influence of his family. Donghyuck stands at the center, his eyes searching the sea of people. He looks far and wide, turning in directions where you aren’t. When his gaze does eventually pass you, you feel your heart drop when he looks on in the same way Jaemin did.

In the seconds it took him to look back at you, you started rethinking whether he only needed you inside the ballroom to help Jeno with his work—the dress a mere prop to look the part. You feel the blood rise to your cheeks, the sheer embarrassment of getting your hopes up making you want to curl into a ball.

But his eyes find yours again, a second late as if your mind failed to register it was you the first time he looked around. He makes his way to the crowd, eyes following him where he walks until he finds his way to you. You try to drown out the wave of whispers you’re overhearing, the backhanded compliments both from the people around and the host whose voice was amplified by his microphone. He bows, shy and awkward, the way he would greet a complete stranger.

In the eyes of the people around you, you are a new face, nobody’s daughter. It’s all an elaborate act and you’re just there to play along. You’re hoping the Na’s wouldn’t pay too much attention, the strangeness of your face tied with the rationality that you might just be one of the people they knew by name not by face—not someone scheming on something.

The crowd woos as he takes your hand, leading you to the dance floor. The song is slow, befitting for the swaying that Donghyuck guides you in. His hand rests on your waist, while yours hesitantly brush his shoulders, free hands clasped together as the dance begins. You can feel the people’s eyes on you, even with the president’s son on the same floor as you were.

The eyes follow you even as he spins you around, catching you and guiding you as you waltz over the carpet—the ominous chandelier dangling over your heads but out of your worries. Donghyuck still belonged to a prominent family, his charismatic personality a show-stealer in conventions. But who were you? Whose daughter were you?

“Screw this plan, Donghyuck. We’re drawing more attention,” you whisper at him, your voice drowned out by the music.

“That’s the point,” he answers.

From the corner of your eye, you catch a dim figure moving through the crowd like a shadow, behind rows of distracted rich folk. Chatter envelops the room and with the music overlapping it, everything else in between was brushed under the rugs. You stiffen when the Na’s themselves rise from their seats, joining the people on the dance floor.

Donghyuck feels the shift in your hold, adjusting his hand to keep them clasped comfortably. “Keep your eyes on me,” he whispers, never looking. He squeezes you through a closing gap between two couples, spinning you at the next free space to guide you further away from the crowd gathering on the dance floor. But the audience who remained seated still have their eyes drawn to you, the swaying of black and blue still hypnotizing in the sea of dazzles.

You know his actions are calculated and it takes you longer to take into account why he was eager to steal the spotlight. He carries himself with a confidence that exudes his being, though it spills over and splashes on you a tadbit. It’s in the middle of the dance that you realize that he wants their eyes on him, on the both of you—the spilling of gasoline going right under their noses as their eyes are drawn to the subjects at the center. There’s the president and his first lady, the president’s son and who could be his future wife, the right hand’s son and the girl from nowhere.

He knows the controversy that smears his name, the rumors that he befriended one of the leaders of the resistance and became one of them. Of course, that wasn’t the entire truth, but does that really matter if it’s not what the people believe? Their version of the truth, the one glazed with half-truths and scandals made to appeal, would come out eventually—probably sooner than you both think. Your faces will be plastered on papers and shown on TV screens, regardless of how tonight ends.

In that moment, you realize that Donghyuck wants to be seen, your images embedded in their minds long after the night is over. He wants them to know that if this all goes up in flames, he wants them to remember that you’re the two people who planned it. Whatever happens, whether you get out scathed or die trying, you’ve done what you could to fight for what you believed in—for the betterment of the whole at the expense of a few sacrifices. Here, with your hand in his, the fear feels distant, your desire for a freedom withheld from you by the people inside the room clouding the possibility that this might be your last night alive. Then so be it.

A camera from the corner flashes once, capturing the dance floor and the couples locked in embrace. When it flashes again, you’re no longer on the dance floor and Donghyuck is nowhere.

The dance floor is empty, the ghosts of the tipsy dancers the sole things lingering. The air hangs heavy, alcohol mixing with the scent of gasoline. It’s a nauseating mix, the figures in your vision lagging whenever you turn other ways. You stand at the end of a row of women, squeezed against the body of someone you don’t recognize.

“Madam,” the man behind the camera peeks behind the mechanism, “move, if you want to be included in the photo!”

Complaints down the row urge you to move, pressing yourself up against the next girl even when you don’t want to be situated beside her, nor in the shot they were urging you to be in. You never belonged there in the first place. Even with your bodies pressed together, you feel the social divide. What you wore lacked in luster, your entire being not befitting the socialite status. They don’t even know you, but the mystery clouding your being doesn’t even suffice in making you pass off as one of them.

But the photo is the last thing you need to stick around for, the time bomb ticking its last seconds.

Then you hear it, the clink of metal against metal and your head turns. A lamp mounted on one of the tables toppled over the edge, shattering just as the camera flashes to snap the photo and before you know it, you’re running. Jeno’s silhouette slips from behind the crowd, out the door before the people around could realize what happened. The lamp’s glass shatters as it hits the floor, the fire inside meeting the thin coat of gasoline at rest on the floor. An explosion rattles the room, shaking the windows by the corner where the lamp fell.

The whole room erupts into chaos, the air growing hotter as the fire spreads across the floor. Panicked screams echo around the chamber, each person scrambling for the exit—but you’re already there, slipping past the door Jeno left open. You slam it back shut in their faces, hearing the doors on the opposite side swinging shut as Donghyuck comes out.

Behind the doors, you could hear their panicked screams, the exits barricaded by a wall of fire with doorknobs slicked with the same oil burning the rest of the room. You know the fire is spreading but not fast enough, because the hall outside the ballroom remains untouched. The guests outside look at you, their foreheads creased in confusion. The cacophony of screams is distant but audible. You don’t have it in you to act like you managed to escape before the others did, you’re no saint in the situation. You’re not here to clean your name, you’re here to burn the mansion to the ground with everyone in it.

“What’s going on?” a man asks Donghyuck as he passes him. The young boy doesn’t answer, his eyes fixated on you. He holds something in his hand, a gold rectangle fitting snugly in his palm. Without a single word exchanged, you get him and what he’s suggesting, the fate you’ve decided for everyone who chose to attend the ball.

You find the pitcher you set aside from earlier, taking it with you as you march to the top of the grand staircase leading down. It’s half-empty but it’s enough. You spill its contents on the floor by the steps, Donghyuck strikes it just as the doors to the ballroom burst open with a herd of people spilling out.

A single bodyguard catches your eyes, his face twisted in a permanent scowl. His arm is draped protectively over the president, the powerful man reduced to a spitfire of curses. He’s the first to identify you as a culprit, his face knowing that he’s looking straight into the eyes of the one responsible. It explained the stranger in the crowd, one he chose to ignore. And if he survives the night, he’s one of the few whose fates are tied with yours—who was he as a bodyguard, if he let things like this slip? You hope he realizes he’s a mere pawn in a bigger game, easy to lose.

“Get them!” The voice is hoarse and deep, only the first of the series of commands that labeled you as enemies of the state. Seize them! Kill them!

The orders are barked not by the head of security but the president himself. You don’t get to glimpse at him longer, the floor burning up as the lighter hits the floor. You rush down the staircase, never looking back. Heavy footfalls chase after you, thundering across the top floor as they try to catch up. The counterflow of people is harder to navigate but you make it to the annex where Jeno mapped an exit route free of waiting guards.

“Help me with this!” You look back to see Donghyuck trying to push a wooden cabinet to the kitchen doorway, a temporary blockade to give you more time to run. The wood splinters your skin but you can’t bring yourself to mind it. A single gun fires, the bullet completely missing you. It won’t be soon before they rain bullets on the room.

“That’ll hold, come on!”

You make it out of the mansion, slipping out a fire exit, an unguarded back door. The backyard is an empty lot, nothing but a helipad and a stagnant swimming pool. Once you’re off property, the soldiers would be easier to lose in the maze of houses. You try to hold, even as your shoes carve against the skin of your ankles.

Your vision shifts too many times for you to count. The place changes with every doorway you barge through, with every alley you slip past, with every corner that you turn. You run through the trails of a forest, down the sidewalks of city blocks. There are endless roads and confusing mazes, sceneries you couldn’t enjoy in your panic. Your feet throb beneath you, the switches in terrain wearing you down until you would rather chop them off than run any longer.

But finally, you stop somewhere. You don’t know how long you’ve been on the run from the world, unknowing of who to trust and which people to turn to. Donghyuck no longer wore his suit, your dress long discarded. The clothes you wear are inconspicuous, rendering you both invisible to the eye at first glance. Where you got it, you refuse to recall it; the thought of the extent you’d go for your own survival too horrifying.

You’ve dreamt about this house countless times before, the darkness no longer shrouding the face of your companion in a shadow. This part of the nightmare is always vivid, its ending unchangeable no matter how hard you try to change your choices. It happens everytime; word for word, detail by detail.

You’re not sure where you are in the city but you know that you haven’t made it far. The town you live in is small, the borders heavily guarded ever since the incident happened. There are trucks roving the streets night and day. You have nowhere to go, no one to trust, nothing else you could do but wait it out. But you couldn’t hold on another day without food, your throat dry permanently. Your feet hurt when you tried to walk, bleeding whenever you put too much weight on it.

It could’ve just been hours, a few days at most, since you set the mansion on fire. The whole city is on lockdown, searching for the three known culprits of the fire. You haven’t seen Jeno since he slipped out of the ballroom and with the tabloids still looking for three people, you know he hasn’t fallen into their hands yet. You could only hope that he was doing better than you both were.

You were stuck inside a room of an abandoned home, the first place of solitude you managed to find in what felt like days. By the doorway, Donghyuck listens for anything that could indicate that the soldiers were close by. In his hands was a pistol, a single one he managed to snag before you left the mansion. You haven’t had the chance to use it yet, saving the numbered bullets for the worst of emergencies.

You’re seated slumped against the wall opposite to him, your feet unrecognizable with the pattern of blisters on your skin. You lost your shoes today, your soles heavily wounded with the terrain you covered. The mere act of standing is an insurmountable task, shifting your weight even worse. You had no choice but to rest and while your feet throbbed sore, you could no longer feel the pain of the open wounds.

“We can rest for the night,” he says. “Then we can try moving again tomorrow, we might just run into Jeno.”

Or worse, the police. He’s been saying this for days now, his means to cope with the dawning consequences of your actions. You think it’s naive for him to keep believing that Jeno was still out looking for them—Jeno, whose family didn’t abandon him the way Donghyuck’s did. But you think it’s his sole beacon of hope, the light at the end of the tunnel. You don’t blame him for anything, his upbringing in silver spoons and rose-colored glasses clouding how bad your situation had gotten.

After the uproar from both sides, you might as well assume that you were on your own. There was no knowing who were trying to save themselves from the government’s wrath and who were genuinely looking out to help those who needed it. They were hunted down either way, unsafe in unfamiliar territory. There’s an uprising waiting in the horizon, a coup d’etat suspected in the ranks stemming from General Lee’s involvement. Whatever you sparked, it’s not large enough to overthrow the administration yet—the fire doused just as easily as it was started, in the same way the mansion fire died that night despite your efforts.

“We don’t have a night, Donghyuck.” The boy remains quiet, his shoulders slumping as he considers your words. “They’re bound to find us here. If they don’t burst in now, it could be any time soon.”

You know this because you slowed your progress down significantly today, catching eyes with countless military folk in this side of the city. You know they’re watching, they know where you are. They’re only waiting on the perfect chance to make the catch.

Across the room, Donghyuck doesn’t add on to it. It’s been an argument you’ve been having for days now, today worse than others with the weight of your injury. You barely made it through each day without being trailed, it’s a miracle you even held up for this long. But you’ve finally been backed into the corner, your feet utterly useless and you’re both tired fighting off something inevitable.

Tonight, he finally looks helpless—unbelieving of his own belief that you’d cross paths with Jeno and miraculously escaping the clutches of the military. The past few days show on his skin, sunken cheeks and dark under-eyes. You’re both worn out, will to continue going on diminished.

“How about you try to get away while you still can?”

Donghyuck’s head snaps in your direction, “And leave you here? I won’t let them take you.”

His voice fills the room, the first distinguishable sound besides your breathing. It shatters the silence momentarily, falling back into quiet as if it had never happened at all. It was a mistake, a dead giveaway that you were both in the house, in that room in particular if the right ears heard you. But it seems that you’ve come to terms with it, and so did he.

I won’t let them take you. It makes you smile because it used to work. His dad in the higher ranks, regardless of his reputation to maintain, let you off along with the others whenever he could. It was easier done than said, an automatic blind eye. Now that he was suspected for being involved, he was nowhere, not even bothering to look for his son. You figured that if this was the end, there was no way of justifying the means. To what extent did the general love his son, where did his loyalties really lie?

“They won’t take me.” The packet feels heavy against your breast pocket. You pat it out of the pouch, holding the plastic before the both of you. The pills hang suspended in the air in between, three lethal doses of a heart-stopping drug you kept in case the worse happened. “Not alive at least.”

Donghyuck turns the lock, hooking the latch on as the door’s last stand to anyone barging in. Walking over he keeps his gaze on either the floor or you, never once on the packet. The look he gives you is solemn, his face painted in moonlight.

“I can’t force you out of here, huh?” he asks, stopping by your feet.

“I don’t think I can take another step without falling over.” You wriggle your feet, wincing when a wound reopens. “You have a shot out of here, so take it.”

“And what if I don’t want to?” Donghyuck mumbles. “I dragged you into this, I planned the whole thing and you think I’d run away? If you think I’d do the same thing my father did, I won’t. I mean I think about it, but I’m not doing it.”

You find him staring at you in the darkness. The days have worn you out enough that his sadness doesn’t even show on his face. Where there should’ve been a gnawing grief for a life to be lost, there was relief. This was the end of the line for you, the consequences of your actions awaiting you like the jury’s judgment. You’ve reached the point of no return, the ending clear as day with only the matter of getting there.

Even when you know how this ends, you don’t skip through the few moments. The night is quiet, too quiet. The paranoia seeps into your mind and it has every reason to. You know how the night ends but you didn’t know that then, and you had seconds before you hear the first signs of them coming for you.

Donghyuck takes his place, tucking his feet beneath his legs as he sits on the space next to you. It occurs to you that you’ve never had him this close before, or you never cared enough to notice. Your hostility towards nepotism kids is mediated when it comes to him, albeit a little too late.

“I heard the mansion’s fine. Third floor was charred but no one died.” he says. It’s strange to feel relief at the news when you haven’t thought of them back when you doused the floorboards in gasoline. You heard the rumors too, but with the family’s history with lying to the media, you don’t trust their word on it. “Did you regret what we did?”

It takes you a moment to answer, torn between which part you were supposed to regret on—making it this far, or letting your conscience mull over the innocent lives that could’ve been lost if the house did burn up in flames.

Still, you shake your head. “No.”

“Even with the state we’re in right now?” Stuck inside a bedroom of an abandoned house, resting against filthy walls and seated on filthy floors. You haven’t had a full meal in days now, proper sleep for far longer.

Again, you answer with a shake of your head.

“Even if we die tonight?” Donghyuck asks, his eyes glinting in the moonlight as he looks at you. In the pools of darkness lies fear, right in the center of it.

Then you hear it, the first knock on the front door, the arrival of an unwanted guest. The fist rattles the wood, the thuds deep and whole. You can hear the jingle of the lock barely holding, the sound of a bolt falling off its hook.

“They’re he—”

He never gets to finish it, his airway jammed with the pill you chucked into his mouth. His hands fly up to yours as you reach for him, an instinct triggered muscle gripping on your wrist but eventually loosening. He remains quiet, never once shaking his head to get the pill out. You lift his chin up, watching gravity pull the pill down his throat, Adam’ apple bobbing as he swallows.

“I would’ve taken it without your help,” he says and you notice the pill taking effect almost immediately when he breathes slower, his words staggered between breaths that run out too quickly.

“I won’t leave you,” you tell him as his body slowly gives way to the drug, slumped against your upright figure. “Even if we die tonight.”

He never answers again.

You take matters into your own hands, untangling his slim fingers from the gun he held. Outside, the bangs get louder, no longer a singular force trying to break it down. The barrel is cold against your temple when you hold it but your fingers never bring themselves to pull the trigger. You’ve tried this before, always stopping on the second before you put your strength to it. A coward, even in your final moments.

So you resort to the pill, the two remaining pieces finding home in your tongue as you down them. It feels like the opposite of coffee, palpitations in reverse. You feel the drowsiness immediately, the world around you blurring and fading as the side effects kick in. The thud of the front door comes muted, their footsteps muffled as they race up the stairs to the only bedroom that showed any signs of living. If they wanted to, they could’ve stormed you through the windows. Why they chose not to was beyond you.

They try the doorknob once, then twice, concluding that it had been locked the third time. But even with the doorknob detached, the bolt remains intact. You’re thankful for the few seconds of extra time. Donghyuck’s head rests limply against your shoulder and you sandwich him in between—your own head against his. If you didn’t know any better, you would’ve thought that he was just sleeping. But there is no breath fogging up the air but yours and soon enough, that would disappear too.

You die with the secrets of tonight buried with you. You wished you didn’t have to take the pill tonight but it was heaven compared to torture; death by your own hands a thousand times better a death from someone else’s. There is no cruelty beyond your shortened time, but you knew the consequences of your actions long before you agreed to execute the plan. You feel the wave of fatigue pulse through you, almost like the gentle waves that sweep the coast you lie on. You stared at the door until your own eyelids gave in.

You only hear the door being knocked down, the bolt finally giving. The footsteps drum against the wooden floorboards, louder than your heart when the latter was supposed to out do it. Voices fill the quiet room. To this day, even as the dream replays itself in your mind over and over, you still can’t make out what they’re saying.

When you open your eyes this time, the view is different, but you feel just as bad. You wake up with your chest tight, your heart pounding. The bed beneath you creaks as you shoot upright, tears spilling out of your eyes from sorrow you couldn’t quite place. When you cry it leaves your throat dry, your lips trembling. It felt like the first gasp of fresh air when you break the surface, all the while remembering the ache as the water filled your lungs. Your cheeks were damp in a streak to your hairline, you must’ve been crying for a while now—trying countless times to wake yourself up from the nightmare. You remember nothing but the heaviness that weighs down on your chest, the way it tricks you into thinking that whatever the dream was, it was real.

Even when foreign skin touches yours, you still feel alone, stuck in the space that your mind has trapped you in. The cage is further now, its iron bars off in the horizon, but it’s still there.

“Hey, I’m here. It’s over.” Is it?

You wander the fog of your mind, the anchor keeping you steady distant in the bottom but its presence keeps you tethered. The bed shifts as the voice moves closer, the tinge of familiarity sending a wave of relief through your unnerved system.

“I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I won’t leave you.” You wonder if he’s saying it in response to something you were saying in your dream. His arms wrap in a shell enclosing you, melting into him as you let his warmth course through you. He rubs circles against your back, quelling the storm that clouded your mind. He whispers reassurances, each one barely getting to you with the haze you were still trying to navigate through.

But you catch a quiff of his perfume, the muskiness of it colluding your system, and it’s the last tug that pulls you back to the shore. You’re here now, not in the void of the dream you couldn’t piece together.

You peel him away from you, one arm at a time. While your breaths shudder, cut every few inhales, you’re feeling better now. You’ve run out of tears to cry.

“Where are we? What happened?” you ask, brushing the back of your palm against your cheek.

“Outside,” Haechan says, “inside the emergency response team’s tent. You were saying things back there, I couldn’t remember what exactly you were saying, then you passed out. They said it must’ve been the poor ventilation.”

You nod, remembering the feeling of the room closing in on you, the thickness of the air and your chest constricting. A cacophony of voices echo in your ear, too many people talking at once that you’re barely making sense of anything. Even when it makes sense, you feel that the explanation lacks something.

“Why did you wake up crying? Did you have a bad dream?” Haechan’s hand brushes against your cheek, thumb brushing where another tear threatens to spill.

Why did you wake up crying? When you breathe, your airways are clogged, your inhales reduced to sniffles. The tightness of your throat hasn’t gone yet, even as you downed the glass of water handed to you. Most of the ache is still there, the feeling looming like a dark sky over you. Your chest felt trampled upon, the leather soles pressed against your helpless body even as you tried to stand. There is a heaviness you can’t shake off, one weighing your shoulders as you try to piece together the image of your dream from the sand beneath your feet. No matter how hard you raked your mind for the reasons, you just couldn’t remember.

“It was bad,” you tell him, “but I can’t remember what it was about.”

Haechan seems satisfied with your answer even when you aren’t, it wasn’t something that hasn’t happened before. “Maybe it was the place, the whole house was pretty but it gave me goosebumps where we went,” he says. You can’t see the mansion from here, the tent’s white walls blocking the view. You remember how the house looked, the ambiance, the regal majesticness of a piece of the past preserved in the present. The richness of its history bled through its walls, haunting even after decades. “If you’re feeling well enough, we can leave.”

“The tour’s over?” You test your feet slowly, your lower limbs shaking as you put your weight on it. Your soles burn when you press them against the floor, but you manage to keep yourself upright.

“You alright?” Haechan grabs you at the smallest sign of imbalance, his hold keeping you steady. “You want to go back? And if you faint again?”

“What about you?”

Haechan just shakes his head, the subject dropped without another word. You don’t question it then but you realize that you should have. There was something about the place, something about an inanimate object holding just as much personality as a person would—maybe even more. Something about the place and the tethers you feel towards it even when you were a mere visitor.

You walk away bearing a heaviness you can’t put a finger on, the ache in your chest rooting from something you can’t bring yourself to remember. You forget about it soon enough, just another bad dream better off left forgotten. But it resurfaces when you pass it on your way to school, leaving you wondering what about the place keeps you drawn to it.

Curiosity was one thing, a centrifugal force that propels the entire human race forward. But you were no influential person, your curiosity wouldn’t lead you places no one else has ever been. It was something you could shove aside for the betterment of your well-being, even when it gnaws every time you pass the mansion by.

Ignorance is bliss. Like an instinct, something in your mind tells you that things were better left off that way, knowledge locked away out of your reach. You don’t ask him about it, but things have never been the same between you and Haechan ever since.

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