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...and that is why she is going to die today, Miyeon knows. She's but one of the many; it's statistically more likely, all things considered. She has seen the eyes of Sara Lee, and the curse which they bestowed upon her.
That had been clear, the moment those eyes set upon her. She had no idea what she was up against. She won't live to see the end of the month, it was written in them. Of the year, were she lucky; it's merely October. Now, it's clear. She has had an average life, if good: all things considered, she shouldn't complain. Exceedingly good grades. Food on her table. A roof. A bed. Work. Work. Work. A part of her has accepted it, made peace with it. It's- nothing. Law school was a fool's dream, it always had been. With her family history, she knew where her aberrant blood would have been spilled, all along.
"I'm out of essence.", says Penrose. Her strategy shouldn't have relied on his ability that much, but that only becomes obvious when all's said and done, of course.
"We should have called for backup, three streets ago. I knew it!" The blue-essenced boy pressed back, for about the third time. It's becoming unbearable. If Miyeon had a little less tiredness on her shoulders, and a little more training on her back- but that doesn't matter now.
Miyeon Sang stares, silently, at the building in front of them, sat on the ground beside her cellmates, their shoulders all leaning against the make-shift barricade, which will not stand a single, well-placed, hit. It's sad, she thinks, eyes tracked on that quaint musical store. It's a shame it will be destroyed. It had just opened. An instruments shop. In this city. Fool's dreams, hopes; everyone has them.
It won't hold for long, she knows, and time is ticking. They'll figure it out, eventually, the Rose Group. Sooner or later. And it will be her fault. This is the thing which burns the most, in the crucible of what is left in her chest: that she'll bring her cell down with her. It's unforgivable.
"It was my mistake." Miyeon says, before their blue-essenced cellmate has the chance to break their silence again. The Roses will be on them, it's bare minutes which separe them from the catastrophe, and she is the chief of the cell. It's time. Those criminals, scum of the city, nothing but thugs and violence and chaos; they will descend on them like wolves on a herd. "I alone should be the one to suffer the consequences." Her voice doesn't even stutter, this time. Her eyes avoid those of the three people next to her. The shockwave stuns them to silence. "Go back to the Headquarters. You still can reach it, if you run."
That's done. As the chief, the decision is made and- what?
Miyeon's head turns, and colour drains from her face, like something sapped of energy, like seeing a ghost. Hayoon, who hadn't spoken a word during the mission until now, is laughing. They're trapped, about to smear this thankless asphalt of their useless, aberrant blood, and she's laughing. It's- a giggle, like Miyeon has said something so amusing, she couldn't contain herself. What is probably the last sun they'll ever see, frames her head, her hair cast in an otherworldly halo.
A thrill goes through Sang. She is met with the unshakeable certainty that this pale girl- there is something about her that is undeniably, crucially different. And that she isn't meant to die here, now- if only the world was a just place.
She had tried- tried to make it so. But she was too weak. That is that. There are no second chances. She was a fool, and she will get what is coming to her.
"What on Earth are you talking about, Sang?" She says. Miyeon hesitates. It's like being face to face with an hallucination. Death's angel, descended to take her soul to unknown places, where the sun doesn't shine, where people's memory fades away into nothingness. What is she saying? Her other cellmates bristle. Miyeon barely hears them.
"I said, go." Sang repeats, mechanically, her eyes wide, fixed. "My mistake. My death." she says, like she's waiting for it like the judgement of a long drawn out sentence. Like a sword coming down upon her neck, with the dull inevitability of an executioner's swing.
Sara Lee's eyes- the white circles inside them, a spiral sinking, which has tied Miyeon like a dead piece of meat to an anchor, sure to sink down to rest on the ocean floor. Miyeon is weak. She will die here. They all will. Maybe- maybe Ahn will get to survive, after all, out of all of th-
"No." Ahn simply states, with a warm smile.
The blue-essenced boy on her right can't take this anymore. He whisper-shouts- "Are you crazy? Besides, Sang here is the chief and-"
"And I am telling you, no. No one of us has to die today." Her tone is calm, soothing, almost bored. They have no time.
Yet Ahn's eyes dart between the other three, as she weights her decision. In spite of everything, something at the bottom of Miyeon's resolve stirs. She holds her breath; barely registering in the sting of insubordination. Sang should use her gift, shove them away, and buy them time. Yet there is something in Ahn's gaze, in her stance. She is serious.
Ahn's eyes stop upon her, with almost solemn finality, resignation. They're very sad eyes, she realizes. Her own eyes harden. Miyeon nods.
"I vowed never to do this again. Well. So much for that." In a blink, Ahn's white eyes flash of a deep, bright yellow.
"Prepare your gift, Miyeon." She says. It's all the head's up Sang gets. Her armoured arm cracks into existence, comes to life just as-
A torment of orange pressure descends upon them.
It doesn't hurt, the quick thought burns like a match like an instinct, through Miyeon's head. Then she turns to her.
Hayoon stands with her full midsection above the half-wall the barricade is made of. Her arm is extended in front of her, and her hand grasps the face of one of the Roses.
The hostile aberrant withers in front of her eyes. His eyes sink, his skin loses colour, and his whole body crackles of a dangerous, tense yellow force. Hayoon's hand crushes the structure of her opponent's skull, like it's made of meringue. Blood oozes down, gushes in unruly jets, dirtying her white hair of red, while her essence- her aura- surges exponentially.
Miyeon has never seen anything like that. Not from her. Not on their level.
Then, this uncomprehensible force of nature turns to her, and smiles at her, with an half-resigned shrug.
And with a small, intimate flourish, she lets her hand rest on Miyeon's shoulder; the remainder of that essence, channeled now to her, in a blaze of yellow and green.
--
It's the talk of the headquarters, hushed between tense whispers and strange looks. Their cell, mere level threes, tore that Rose Group dispatch apart, almost literally limb from limb. Well, two of them did.
They think they are so slick. The sound of Hayoon's shoes on the linoleum silences stone cold the small group gathered just beyond the corner of the hallway. They look at her eyes. At her hair. Her skirt sways rhythmically, as she walks past them, with as much grace as she can muster. A twin pair of risolute taps match the sound of her steps, beside her, effortlessly catching up.
"You should stop antagonizing them, Ahn." Sang says. So business-like, and proper, and polite, and elegant and such, after the attempted martyrdom she tried to pull last week. Hayoon wants to punch her face in.
She forces a smile instead, but her eyes don't move. "Antagonizing? That's ridiculous. We just had breakfast together. We hanged out. We're basically besties."
Sang's silence grates against her psyche like an infuriating rash. It compels her to say more, to swat it away like a bug. She would have been an awfully great lawyer, out there. Or an old-style cop. Or a judge. "I'm not antagonizing them."
"Liar." Sang simply adds, matter-of-factly, peering down at Ahn beyond her glasses.
Her step matches Ahn's, her hands frustratingly tucked into her pants' pockets. She thinks what kinds of rumor that will lead to, if Ahn were to suddenly start to scream and kick her stuck-up, unbearable ass in the HQ hallway. Maybe that will get her thrown out of this place, finally. Then again, what other fucking future would there be, if not this? They'll kill her the moment they decide she's useless- or worse, a loose cannon. It's long death, drawn out, based only on the opinions of tired, stressed-out assholes. How is that really different from what's out there? Beside the lawfulness, that is.
Of course. Let's take all the wretched ones who can, supposedly, control what's inside them, and throw them, dead meat, against the criminals in our prideful nation. Let's pit the girl who got her life stripped off of her against the useless scums who drained her essence to make a profit. What a plan. It's good for the economy.
"Liar", why were you all alone when that group approached you? "Liar", why were you walking by yourself? "Liar", you were sooo asking for attention. "Liar", you probably followed them of your own will. "Liar", you were just looking to have some fun, and then it turned out to be more than you could handle, weren't you, ha! "Liar", the hair is so gorg and kinda fit you in any case, so, who's really a loser here, girl?
"Liar", she said. "Liar." "Liar." "Liar."
As if Hayoon can't feel Sang's rotten essence crying for help in her sleep, expanding unchecked in her dormitory, clinging to the space of their room on the brink of panic. As if she doesn't remember her face, just a couple of weeks ago, coming back from Baek's house. As if she wasn't the one who had to shake her sorry ass out of that useless pit of despair.
Who really is the "Liar" here?
"You should-"
"Oh yes, I probably should many things. Are you going to report on me, Sang?"
Silence. They keep walking. Figures.
--
The thing is, Miyeon is easy to lend essence to. She has quick, fast reflexes. She makes the right call, consistently. She is serious, and pulls no punches, and her hits almost never miss their mark. She trains like her life, and the ones of everyone around her, depend on each of her kicks, punches, grabs. She makes both of their gifts useful. It's infuriating, honestly.
So it happens again. And just like the first time, the barely concealed look of awe on her face leaves a bitter taste in Hayoon's mouth.
Her useless vow crumpled and left on the margin of the street like her tossed out cigarettes, she coils her essence, and she takes. She seizes, and does not let go. If it's stubborness or something more committed than that, she couldn't be bothered to say. Then she bestows on Miyeon what's left of the essence of that scum. There is nothing more to that. It's a take and give; the order of the universe, or whatever bullshit some people spill their guts about, remains unchanged.
It's as easy as breathing. Again, and again. Hayoon takes, holds, gives. Some of them don't deserve that. Some of them do. Essence flows from useless lowlives, and into the other woman's veins. Their other two cellmates look at her sidewise, but never say a word; the arrangement works. Purple isn't the right call to back up in a fight, after all. And while a blue sword could be worth enhancing, the other cellmate of theirs, Ahn simply doesn't like. If Sang sees that, she doesn't comment on it either way. Down go the criminals. Up they go on their rankings.
It's mechanical. For each head they sever or throw in jail, two more pop up. More kidnappings. More trafficking. More killings. News of this gets predictably shoved under the rug.
Sang, on her side, hardens. Makes fewer and fewer mistakes, and forgives others less on theirs. If she was asked, Hayoon might think, but probably would know better than to say out loud, that Miyeon doesn't really need that extra push from her side. She is strong, and yet struggles to see it. To seize it. Putting her own worth under that of a system which will work her to the bone; unless she develops an actual spine, and seizes it.
Hayoon shouldn't care.
They share a dormitory. It's quaint and carcerial, and everything you might expect for state-sponsorized cannon fodder. One night, their first as a level fourths, it happens again.
Hayoon's eyes crack open and alert, in the dead of the night, reluctantly shaken awake. It's a lump which grows like something infesting and rotting, on the other side of their room. The green essence pulses, and festers, like a rotten mist of dread. It sickens her.
Hayoon shouldn't care.
"What are you crying about?" Ahn whispers loud enough for it to echo inside the awfully plain walls of this room, her face turned away.
There's a wave of essence shocked still. A rustle of cheap blankets moved, a barely-there clearing of the throat. Caught red-handed, huh?
"You either die like this or get your shit together, Sang." Ahn adds, too tired not to.
There is another sentence, tucked there. She doesn't want to say it. Something in the silence that follows, in the terse way that the green essence retreats, and gathers itself together on the other side of their room, makes words tumble out of her mouth regardless. "And-" Don't-
It's too late, isn't it?
"I don't want to see you dead." Ahn's shoked by her own admission. Pitch-perfect lawyer, Sang would be. Or cop. Or whatever else, to make lives worse and more complicated for others. She really has a knack for that. What a waste.
What a cruel way to convince someone to submit to the chains binding them.
"I..."
"You don't have to say anything." Ahn stresses, regretful, harsher than she meant.
"Thank you." Sang says, regardless. Always fair, always with her to-each-their-own attitude, always fucking unbearable. As if the world was a just place.
Ahn pushes her face down on the pillow, wishing to smother herself in it, and cease to exist.
"You shouldn't thank me for this."
"I know."
Miyeon's answer punches back faster and firmer than she expects, so much so that Ahn actually has to work on stopping and tamping down the sudden wave of yellow aura manifesting her shock. She wordlessly pulls her covers up to her ears, and wills herself to drift back to sleep.
--
"Why did I agree to come here, again?"
Hayoon fakes a gasp, raising her free palm up to her o-shaped mouth in faux-shock, the other idly holding a glass with a predicably yellow-coloured drink inside. "How can you say that? Because the "graduation" cerimony's night is about the only time we get to have a day off, maybe?"
"I'd much rather be back at the headquarters training, instead of... whatever this is supposed to be."
"Come ooon," Hayoon says, an enchanting smile curling on the edges of her lips, tugging playfully at the sleeve of Sang's coat, her own yellow dress' slope flowing naturally with the curves of her body. "Don't tell me you're scared of a little, healthy, round of socializing..." She mocks, with a sing-song lull to her voice, which Sang half-struggles to hear, over the thumping and bubblegum pop blasted through second-class stereos, and the loud, way-too-cheery chatting going on in such a tight place.
Miyeon sighs, throwing another frustrated look at the cheap 'whiskey sour' in her hand. This thing has probably only seen the shadow of a lemon once, in a dream. It's an half-chopped, alcoholic syrupy disaster, probably made by an overstressed and underpaid barista, selling the shittiest produce of the day under the counter to make ends meet.
She looks up, and squints, as she spots their red-haired cellmate whispering something in an older man's ear.
Her hand tightens around the glass. She supposes she should be thankful it's not styrofoam, on top of that. They shouldn't be here. This whole... 'party', should not have happened in the first place.
This place- what looks like private rooms turned into a public, illegal, business, is stuffy; its dark-red wallpaper wants so badly to be antique, while missing the mark atrociously. Something which screams: "We wanted to be classy and cool, but on our budget, this was the best we could do". Much about this place does. The old, torn leather couch smells of cigarette, and looks like it was dragged out of a dumpster. It doesn't much seem to be bothering the boy currently passed out on it. Sang recognizes him as the leader of this year's level threes.
A girl - level two, Sang's pretty sure - stumbles out of the bathroom. She seem to still have her work shirt on- she at least had the decency to do away with the tie, for the evening. They should report this place.
Who knows what could happen, were one of them to decide on a stupid, foolish, alcohol-induced endeavour. How could they forget their status? The fact that at the mere blink of an eye, this place, this building, and everyone around them might be in mortal danger? So many trainees, drunk, and unwise, all in one place. There seldom has been a more stupid idea than this. If they're dead meat in broad daylight, then now, this is just inviting something to happen. If-
A quick thud and a light pain- Ahn jabs her in the ribs with her elbow.
"God, Miyeon. Stop thinking so loudly."
Sang only throws her a sour look, the acidity of which gets promptly tempered by the sugar-fizziness of Ahn's good spirits.
"Aw, come on. Stop resenting me for dragging you here. You are clearly having so much fun, thinking yourself so superior to all of these people, fantasizing of all the things which could go oh so disastrously. Am I wrong?"
Sang diverts her eyes as nonchalantly as she can manage, quickly downing another gulp of her cursed beverage, almost biting more than she could chew. The sweetness of it coats the back of her mouth unpleasantly, sticking to the roof of it; the liquid turns in her stomach the wrong way as it goes down.
Hayoon laughs, her shoulders and elbows hitting the wall behind them, her chin tilting up, her throat bared; her hands still cradle her suspiciously highlighter-bright drink. Sang is not looking at her.
"Oh, your face!"
"Stop." Sang says, a beat too slow, joining Ahn by leaning her back against the wall.
"That's so why I insisted you'd come."
"What, to make a fool out of me?"
"Dear me, no. Think of it as a team support effort. You're working too hard. I need to watch out for my cell leader, no?"
"I'm working the right amount. If everyone else seems to have taken this job less seriously than it requires, it's not my problem." She forces another harsh, sickly sweet gulp down her throat, then twisting her face in a grimace at the aftertaste. The sourness of the lemon, it turns out, was all curdled up at the bottom. "They'll be dead before the end of the year."
"Who tells you we won't be dead by then, too?"
Sang turns to her. Ahn's smile fell; her pale face, now shrouded in semi-darkness, without the usual air of glee, makes a shiver run down Miyeon's spine. It's a rare look on her face.
The image of Baek's daughter's corpse, slumped at the dinner's table in such a domestic, horrifyingly familiar way, rushes in her head again. Sang's eyes flash green, behind her glasses. She wills the memory back where it came from.
"Because we are not going to die like that." Miyeon states. Simple as.
Ahn still stares at her, her eyes squinting in an inscrutable question, weighting her answer. Sang lets her essence disperse.
Hayoon chuckles, looking down; and it looks more tired than she had let herself come across as before.
Sang frowns. Her voice comes off quieter than she plans, almost covered by the glossy-pop song. Somehow, she accidentally times her words right, catching a moment's silence of it. "You don't think so?"
Ahn's silence drags a couple of beats longer than she'd expect. Then-
"I think we're so stupid for musing about work the one time we get off it- get time off, I mean. You should try this one, actually!" Ahn says, raising her awful-looking glass up, before Miyeon's face.
It smells like fruit. Among other, non-descript, things. "Absolutely not."
"This one's good actually, I swear."
"You're lying. And I'd rather not mix things-"
Ahn's hand gracefully keeps pushing the thing towards her. "It's not as bad as the other stuff." Sang's sure it'd taste like a worse sugary bomb with-
"Oh God. What's that smell? Pineapple? Seriously?"
"What, not classy enough for you? Ohhh, look at me; I'm Miyeon Sang and I can't drink a little sip of Piña Colada because it's "too girly" for me!"
"Are you-"
"No-no, please, instead hit me with the shittiest hard-boiled stuff you've got. Straight up whiskey. No ice. No, wait! Coal, while we're at it. Just pour some 90% Vodka over it, thanks."
"Oh fine. If that will make you shut your mouth-"
Miyeon grabs the half-full glass; Hayoon's hand surrenders it gently. She feels white eyes tagged on her, with full attention, closer than before.
The drink tastes bad. It's as much of a sugar bomb as she had predicted, and the pineapple in it had evidently reach a too-advanced state of maturation, leading to even more sweetness. Before she can think clearly about it, Miyeon takes two full gulps of that.
"Told you, didn't I?" Hayoon says, with a weird, transfixed look on her face.
-
"Told me- Shit. It's awful, Ahn." Miyeon says, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, with an accusing gesture which is a little too clumsy to warrant full sobriety. A drop of the drink has dropped down her chin, running down her neck. Hayoon watches.
Sang's not wrong. Lately, she seldom is. For all they know, by the end of tomorrow, all that's left of them might be a cold body on the asphalt. It's been a close call too many times to count, already. The other level four cell, which should have been here today, has been leveled out just a week ago, by the Sea Wolves.
Hayoon watches with rapt attention that drop follow the slope of Miyeon's neck.
Hayoon is used to this; the slow climbing, the grinding of her teeth, the sweat and pushing herself until the very last drop of essence. Wake. Train until her body feels numb. Pass out of exhaustion. Rinse and repeat. One does not climb back from such a thing as essence harvesting without it.
That is part of what makes this calvary all the more frustrating. The constant fear that all the hours spent trying to summon yellow force from the depths of her, to inch further and further away from the abyss of drainage, will have amounted to nothing. That death will come just like a snap of someone's fingers; all she has ever done, swatted away like a paper castle, before even having had the chance to do something which she truly cares about, before that.
Then along comes Miyeon Sang, and her promises, and her relentless, tireless drive to persist.
Hayoon could almost believe that, if she hadn't set in stone within herself that believing it would be the fastest route to getting gutted to pieces, to bleeding to death across a nameless sidewalk. A distraction such as hope, is a dangerous thing to have in a fight.
Ahn looks up at Sang- her eyes slightly widened, her gray irises cautious and careful, her hand still halfway up in the air.
God, Hayoon thinks in frustration, she could almost- she could almost do it. Allow a piece of her ruined trust to settle on this.
This realization comes to her wrapped in a shroud of terror.
Her reflexes kick in aimlessly, and with a nervous twitch her smile widens, her throat tenses and contracts, raising her voice's pitch.
"Oof. Well, a trouble shared is a trouble halved, isn't it?" Hayoon says, as her eyes lightly soften, if just a tiny bit artificially.
"Which is still- a trouble." Sang says pointedly, handing the drink back.
"I suppose." Ahn says, discreetly throwing a look at Miyeon's other glass. In the background, one of the pop hits of a couple of decades' past gives way to the brief, shaky silence between two tracks.
Hayoon raises her own to her lips, and quickly, maybe too quickly, drinks down two gulps of her own, to match. "Now," she says, clumsily poking Sang's shoulder, "we're even."
"Are we?" Miyeon says, and a lagged perplexity on her face tells Hayoon that it was spoken too quickly for her standards, it lacks the polish it would have otherwise. It still has a sort of raw quality to it, a quality which Miyeon's words usually lack. Hayoon latches to that, immediately.
"I don't know, Miyeon. Are we?" She parries the rough sentence with a coarser one.
Taking, holding, giving. A touch of life requires fine balance, in order to maintain overall equilibrium. Hayoon can feel the aura of most people of the room, packed as it is, and careless as they are. Yet, she currently can't feel Miyeon's. That is to say: despite the hour, the full day of commissions and training, the alcohol they both drank, Miyeon's will to hold the reins tight is still stronger than her will to let them go.
"You need to ask me something concrete if you want me to answer."
Ahn focuses her energies on breathing at a normal pace.
She resists the temptation to reach out and grab Miyeon's wrist, her shoulder, her hip, to touch her face, something of her, and just- not to take, nor to give, just to feel her essence there. To convince herself that she's not dying and dreaming this up, delirious with painkillers, that they truly are still alive.
"It's your question," Ahn shrugs, a little too quickly, unsure of the pace, unsure of- what she is hinting at, and too scared to probe deeper.
"Ask yours then."
Miyeon's gray eyes are close- too close. Steady despite all, they level down Hayoon's. Fuck, Ahn's thoughts begin to cluster wildly in her mind, her hold on them slipping out of hand. Has this woman been able to see through her this whole time? Since when? And- how much of it?
The balance of them rendered precarious, this is- Hayoon's need to restore this equilibrium roars inside her, her sense of panic rising once again. Almost unconsciously, she lets her eyes flash of a harsh yellow, with a crack which snaps louder than the sound of the music.
Miyeon stops, and takes a step back. Hayoon notices eyes watching from other colleagues in the room, the few still sober enough to be attentive. This includes Penrose, too. Eyebrows raised, questions; easily fixed.
She looks their way, letting a charming smile slide on her face, convincingly. "It's okay, don't you worry! I was just-"
Before she can add anything, a teal-essenced boy, the bird-talker detector of the group, pipes up, in a hurry. Someone shuts the stereo. "Sorry, the- I think the night shift's coming. It's- two clear essences, near by- a sparrow said that it's them."
Silence paralyzes the room.
"Clear out," Penrose hurries, raising his voice and warping them a way out in the back- "NOW."
--
Morning comes, and finds the two of them laying both in Miyeon's bed, limbs still heavy of sleep. Still fully wearing the previous evening's clothes, dress and shirt and straight-lined trousers and all, their legs tangled together, with covers and sheets, it's unclear where the body warmth of one begins, and when the other's ends.
They had presumably crashed there, uncaring and exhausted, on the first available horizontal surface they found, they'll reason each on their own, after miraculously getting in one piece in the HQ, after the unspoken yet very much enforced curfew. All of these, details deemed by both clearly unworthy of being dwelled upon.
It's easier to pretend not to remember it, or to have gaps where clarity could technically still have been preserved; yet it's plausible for haziness to set in, so they let it. The weird static tension of the evening, the faltering words coated with hazardous patinas. At the thought of that, confidence slides into more uncertain territories they'd both tread lightly on. On a final review, it's a manageable equilibrium: Sang doesn't ask, so Ahn doesn't have to answer.
After missing all but the last alarm, and an alert look at the situation, they wordlessly rush to clean up and put on their work clothes, before swiftly making their way to the first drill.
Fragments of warmth and panic hover around Hayoon's memory. Dejectedly, she lets them. It's-
Hayoon's fingers momentarily stop, as she's buttoning up her shirt, she looks over at Miyeon, who's turned the other way, as she ties up her hair with quick gestures.
We are not going to die like that, she said. Hayoon looks back down again, fingers finishing their task briskly.
The rest of the fixing is routine, and quick. After a final straightening of her blue tie, Hayoon walks up to the door, grabs the handle and opens it. She stops, quietly, halfway through the door. A stubborn force compels her to linger there a second more; her hand tightens on the metal.
"I'll take you on your promise, Miyeon," she says, face turned inside the room on her way out, a gentle crack in the silence of this hurried morning. Sang's hands stop halfway of fixing her tie, and her eyes rise up quickly, alert, watching her carefully though her thin glasses.
"Don't you dare to die on me." Ahn adds, leaving.
--
Their blue-essenced cellmate dies in a mission shortly after. That same mission, Penrose goes missing in action. Sang had passed out due to injuries by the Sea Wolves' captain they were up against- the report of it, left up to Trainee Hayoon Ahn.
Mission completed - the scarce but completed report will state, along with a description of the actions taken, of the reasoning behind some decisions made, with charming logic yet perhaps too vague of a wording; yet their superiors would add among themselves, as the meeting came to at a close: but at a cost. Her superiors raised their eyebrows, sure, but nodded. They had bigger fish to fry- and something huge, as she will learn later, was on the horizon.
But after all was said and done, Hayoon knows how this works; it's all a game of balance. Essence is pulled, essence is given. It was a life-or-death situation; as she made her choice, there were no doubts in her mind, and as the consequences of her actions ensued, her heart harboured no regrets.
Penrose didn't seem to agree, and left, before- anyway. That was a shame.
The Sea Wolves were dead. Penrose was gone. And if her blue-essenced teammate was too weak to withstand a few pulls of essence, how was she to know?
And Miyeon? Miyeon was alive. That's what mattered.
--
She knew Ahn would be bound to the yellow ties, once she got to five. So Sang made it a point to train with other offence and support oriented aberrants. Getting familiar with their gifts and fighting styles, to avoid being suddenly thrust in a mission with utter strangers, was bound to be a good strategy.
So the fights get more bloody each day. It's subtle at first- but very soon, Sang finds herself parrying, with ease, blows which would have severed her head clean off her neck just months before. Muscle memory, and the long- tortuously repetitive exercises, and blows- each hour she had chosen to spend training, it shows up, diligently, in her reflexes. It's a very simple mechanism: as the dutiful link of a web of chains, she shows up, she fights, and justice gets executed each mission. There are no complications; there is no alternative.
Hayoon is- the air has gotten icier between them, for no apparent reason, out of the blue, and it bothers Sang like a thorn in her side which she can neither see nor pull out. Ahn's attitude has not changed; if anything, she has become friendlier. Maybe friendly is not the correct word, she reasons. There is a charming layer to her, sure; But there is something darker to it, which Sang suspects most can't see. With as many hours as they have spent together, understanding her had come to be as easy as training; now, the shape of something unseen has settled between them.
The borders of this shape are fuzzy and haze into unknown territory, and that bothers Sang most of all. She shoves the thought back.
Another enhanced punch lands in the square solar plexus of a distracted aberrant- causing the latter to tumble several meters back. There is no life beyond the corps, the unspoken rule of the land. The eyes of their instructor hover on them from above, wordlessly, reminding them of the unspoken surveillance.
Miyeon's muscles are trained gears in this machine, just like the good part of the rest of the corps' resources. They are unleashed against threats, and patted on the head when they come back from the hunt. It's less obvious with some, more so with others. Miyeon knows, but has accepted the trade-off. Their actions are the thankless cogs keeping the system running. At least that's what she has chosen to accept as truth. Hayoon's eyes - sparkling with gleefulness - don't betray the cynicism with which she embraces the corps' cerimonies- but Miyeon knows her better than that.
She chooses to avoid that knowledge. She does.
She's a big fan of this thing she had learned about and became fascinated with, in a forlorn Western Philosophy course she had taken in her school years, tucked between the introductions to Criminal Law and Civil Procedure Cases. The Occam's razor. She thought it brilliant at the time: the simplest solution is usually the best one. The solution which can be constructed with the smallest amount of data- universal knowledge sprouts from few, simple terms.
It is a strategically better move to man a mission with few, well trained officers, than to throw a thousand trainees at an objective. Miyeon aims to be in that few. But that's not where the versatility of this rule ends.
So it is one day, on the eve of the cerimony of their fifth level, after too many bottles and too much nostalgia for their lost naivety, when Miyeon's resolve cracks, and the razor tumbles away from her hand, its dangerous edge coming too close to her, to feel comfortable.
"So what if-" Miyeon utters, on the edge of delirium, to Hayoon, after a long silence. The rest of her thoughts, cut away from her speech, in the depth of the night. Only a small table lamp lights the room, against the stillness and darkness.
"What if... what?" Hayoon says, in a vague tone, her face turned and obscured, hazy through the shadows.
Miyeon wants to cut at that, too. She wants to hack those shadows, clean cut to a recognizable and measurable shape. She has started tying her hair tighter and tighter, almost uncomfortably so, and so she has done, today.
"What?" Hayoon repeats, after the silence which ensues. The glass bottle she has in her hands is empty, yet she keeps it in her hands; now, she tightens her grip on it. Nervousness slithers in her tone, shifting into uneasiness.
Miyeon herself, is not sure of what she is saying. What if what? What if there was another... what? She thinks, her thoughts stopping short of the tight border of her imagination. Tomorrow, their ranks will change, their tie won't match anymore.
They'll die with their tie looped around their necks, and Miyeon realizes with horror that she is not surprised with this realization. So what if what?
"What other... fucking thing, is there, Miyeon?" Hayoon says, like she has read her mind. The white-haired girl turns her head, and her eyes pierce Miyeon's like daggers. It's extremely unlikely for two aberrants of the same cell, having survived up to this point. They did.
So what other thing is she thinking of, exactly? It's not like there is anything else they can do. They already have made it. They survived the worst of it, haven't they? It's like Hayoon can see what Miyeon is trying to wrap her head around, while Miyeon can't, and it's jarring. It makes her head hurt. She wants to slice easier, into something she can reach.
"I..." Miyeon says, frowning, removing her glasses in frustration, letting them fall on her chest, hanging by their string holder; and she rubs her eye with her hand. "I just-" She tries to cut it into something simple. Tomorrow the sun is going to rise, they'll both go their own separate ways, and there is no alternative. They are the cogs of the hand of justice, and everything is going exactly as it should.
That is simpler, isn't it? Then why does it sound like something is missing?
"I don't know. I just think- If we- Isn't there something else?"
The empty bottle Ahn is holding clutters on the table with a loud and violent noise, almost cutting that sentence short. "Don't-" Ahn's voice, Miyeon, suddenly alert, realizes, is shaking.
"Don't be stupid, Sang." She says, after a beat. "This is all there is. And that's that." Ahn smiles, but it's wry and dry, and her usual shine is gone from it. "So, don't-"
--
What can she even say? Don't get our hopes up. Hayoon thinks, with an inner, mirthless, chuckle. Don't make me believe in something which could never be. Don't let me trust in something which could never exist.
Hayoon feels an hysterical laugh bubble in her throat, and the burning of tears in her eyes, and doesn't remember which one would be more suited for the occasion. A distraction such as hope, is a dangerous thing to have, after level four.
Miyeon. What are you thinking? Leave it. Leave that thing on the ground. Leave it there. Please. I can't bear it.
Something similar wedged itself in Hayoon's chest anyway, and she feels her heart too heavy to drag herself to the infirmary to remove it. She has accepted it. But with Miyeon saying that, it starts to twist again, and Hayoon is not sure she can still endure it.
Miyeon, on her side, looks at her. She looks at her, in a way she hasn't done in a long time, shielded by the cover of familiarity. Sees her white, pale hair, again. What they have took from Ahn.
"Forgive me," Sang says, suddenly, in a voice softer than it has any business to be. "You're right."
Ahn bristles, as her thoughts stop dead in their tracks, turning to Miyeon fully, as a thrill of dread crawls up her spine. Not like this. It's like seeing something wither before her eyes, or growing stronger than she'd ever seen- Hayoon's not sure. It's both. "Right? About what?"
"This is all there is."
The haze of dread around Hayoon's chest grows tighter. A smile, almost as a reflex, curls the edges of her lips.
She feels her heart fall. "That's right."
Silence coils between them, trickling down, ugly like sewage water.
Hayoon picks up the bottle again, to have something to fiddle with. She feels Miyeon's eyes on her, too close, and unnervingly steady.
--
Later in the night, tumbled in careless exhaustion in the same bed -not unlike a night many months before - after their first, and last, kiss, Hayoon pulls the collar of Miyeon's shirt close. Their foreheads rest one against the other, as they catch their breaths.
Miyeon will find out about their teammate's death, eventually, it's only a question of time. Her stupid fucking attitude will carry her farther than most; she will survive, and she will rise even higher in the ranks, Hayoon knows it in her bones.
For the love of them both, Hayoon does the only thing that she can. She holds her last hopes of- whatever this else is- in her hands, and... cuts. Takes, holds, and kills. She imagines the blood of the last gasps of hope coating her hands, and refuses to bury them. The stench of rot will remind her to stay away from it, anyway.
Their tie, after all, won't match anymore.
--
It has become a nightmare, a sort of morbid obsession: It's not like she goes looking for it, yet her eyes have become trained to it, expectant of it, unwillingly.
Months pass.
Miyeon keeps seeing yellow everywhere.
She keeps glancing at things, at objects, at people, at clothes, at items. She looks away each time, with a soundless snarl, in regret.
The days start. The days end.
The work continues, the knife twists, the razor cuts.
Hongsan Island happens.
Eventually, her eyes catches that shade less, and less.
--
Miyeon finds out how her teammate died, eventually, in the back of an old file report. She does not tell Hayoon, but by the way her jaw tightens the already scarce times that they happen to brush past each other, or the harshness she can't keep from her voice when they talk, Miyeon figures that she has picked it up, if that even matters anymore.
The truth is, she does not know what to make of it.
-
"Stop beating up your trainees."
"Good morning to you, too. They have deserved anything that I have given them."
"It's unnecessary. You're just dropping more work on my lap."
"It might have occurred to you, that it is my job to train them. If they cannot stand that which I throw at them, I don't see how they can survive what is out there, nor being useful for maintaining order."
"Infirmary rates of training injuries have risen by 60% since you became an instructor."
"My point stands, Ha- Ahn. What injures them in training, would kill them in the streets. You know full well how the Sea Wolves operate. Especially after... If anything, I am doing them a favour."
"At least- you need to talk to them."
"What use would that be?"
[Click]. The phone call ends, with a frustrated sigh.
-
Sang ultimately decides that people die, and that's it.
Sacrifices are made. At the end of the day, she is here, their old teammate - and the vast majority of people she used to know - are not.
--
"Trainee Chang, here again, already?" Officer Ahn chimes, with a smile on her lips. "Don't tell me you have grown fond of the infirmary...!"
Her white eyes run over the long-haired girl's hunched form- and spot the presence of a huge, claw shaped wound running down her right arm. Her eyes squint in recognition. There's no mistaking it. She knows it's Miyeon's.
"I would very much like not being here, officer!" The girl answers, straining a smile. Oh, cheeky. "Uhm. No- no offence-"
"Aha- None taken."
Chang's eyes rise up to look at her. A single clip on her blue tie, Ahn notes. She raises one eyebrow, unnoticed. Well. Time will tell.
--
Weeks pass, and Trainee Chang shows up again. And again. And-
"I swear!" Juni Chang almost shouts, "Instructor Sang wants me so dead." she says, lowering her voice to mention the instructor's name in a half-whisper. That alone says a lot, on how the Trainees see her.
Ahn tilts her head, with a smile. "Dead, you say? Oh dear. I very much doubt it." She says, wrapping a gauze around trainee Chang's leg. She sees Juni's blush deepening, and she thoroughly ignores it, as she is used to. She pushes for more information instead.
"What gave you that impression, trainee Chang?"
The infirmary's silence holds, broken only by a few coughs in a far away bed, and Hayoon's efforts to clean blood away. Juni hasn't activated her essence to heal, she notices.
"I- I'm tired. I am honestly tired." Juni says.
Officer Ahn looks away, continuing her job. "Hm. How so?"
At that, curiously so, Juni's voice shifts drastically; from dejected and low, to positively enraged. As much as she prides herself to be mostly good at reading people, Hayoon did not see this coming.
"I- Oh my god! That- CUNT! She has been on my- on me, again and again, on how I should train more, and more, and has me training from dawn to evening- she doesn't even-! All the 'get BACK on your feet', and the 'This is over when I say it is' bullshit, and- I can't even rest."
Trainee Chang hides her face in her hands, with a frustrated, admittedly whiny sigh. "I can't throw a kick right, apparently, it's just- my legs hurt. It's been- weeks of this. I can't even sit down, and she shouts at me to get up again, it's hell, officer. God, I'm honest to god tired, I just want to-"
Hayoon raises her eyes; perhaps she hasn't quite shielded her grievances right, as Juni Chang's speech comes to a halt, and she gulps as soon as their eyes meet, seemingly remembering who she was talking to.
"Fuck- Sorry. I'm sorry- I hope you don't know- I didn't mean to-"
Miyeon is picking on this trainee, is the thing, on Miss Chang. But the reason might not be what Chang thinks it is.
This scrawny girl looks like she could give up at any moment. Yet she is still here, bold enough to bitch about an instructor with a fellow officer. It's about the right thing to guarantee to get on Sang's nerves. Hayoon smirks, and for once, it's genuine.
"No worries at all," Officer Ahn says, in the cheeriest tone she can muster, "we have all been there.", she lies.
"Rest and recharge plenty tonight, miss Chang. Use your essence, and heal. I think you are going to have a long traineeship ahead of you." If you manage to survive, Ahn adds in her mind, but says not.
"Wait- heal? With my essence?"
...Oh. Of course.
Hayoon sighs. Here we go again.
--
Would it be cruel?, Hayoon thinks. A faint smile curls her lips, her hands lightly placed around Miyeon's neck. The woman watches her closely, beyond the barrier of her glasses. Sang's gray eyes don't leave hers.
She knows that it won't happen like that. Either she won't let her do this, or Hayoon won't arrive to that point anyway, but in any case- Would it be cruel, were she to die like this? At the peak of her curve. At the best she could ever be. In a familiar way, the breath of life eased away from her gently; a tender pull is all it would take. Tugging at the margins of her essence, wrapping the consciousness in a comfortable blanket of oblivion.
They both know the only alternative. Aberrants, as the saying goes, never die of old age. There's no else anyway. It all died a long time ago, over a sharp edge's cut.
"Officer Ahn?" Miyeon says. Her eyes squint, ever vigile. Isn't she tired? Isn't she ever-
"Oh, so we're back at 'officers', now."
The answer comes as naturally and harsh as a rock crashing down a hard surface, moved by the unevitable laws of physics. Nothing less would do, of course. "Why, what else would we be?"
The question is heavy, yet it rest between them, in mid air. Sang still hasn't stepped away. This used to mean something.
Hayoon lets essence coils around her. She's used to summon it as quick as the emergency requires. The movement would be easy, little thought behind it. Not now; she wills it: slowly, languidly, she lets herself feel it, rising from the depths of her. Energy rises from the depths of her chest, she wills it.
Her yellow essence reaches her hands; yet it's only a gentle touch. Not taking, nor giving. This equilibrium is hard to maintain; yet Ahn didn't reach this level out of luck. It's akin to feeling Miyeon's heartbeat just under her skin- her green essence, so familiar and clearly hers.
Holding. Holding. Then- releasing.
Ahn rests her forehead on Miyeon's chest, in relief, and slowly, very slowly, retracts her hands. Miyeon does not move.
"I don't know." Ahn whispers, with a tired smile, her eyes closed. "Anything else. Wasn't there something else?"
"Ahn." Miyeon simply says, not unkindly, narrowing her eyes, and stepping away from her, slowly. Of course. What did she expect?
"Hm. Of course." Hayoon murmurs, a small sigh hidden in a tight smile.
They have work to do, as expected.
"See you around." Ahn intones, her hair swaying slightly, as she pulls back.
Sang nods, not as curtly as she might have.
They walk away, each on their separate ways. The machine won't run by itself, after all.