| Fan Fiction |
by Katvangsta a.k.a Miss Keethie
“Ow,” I accidentally subbed my toe against the coffee table.
“Ow?” SoHee looked at me funny. “That hurts?”
“It's more painful than it sounded,” I replied, giving her a face in return.
“I didn't feel it,” YoungBae felt the need to say—obviously not catching my glare. Because, I wasn't kidding. It really did hurt. How could he not feel it?
Then again, that really makes me wonder about a lot of other things. (Other things meaning...*ahem* well, you know, last night.)
“Oh,” SunMi spoke up. “We still haven't talked about that subject yet.”
My gaze immediately shot over to her. Oh god, if she had read my mind just now—
“Recently,” she went on. “There's been a discovery that...well, four of us are no longer chained with the other.”
YoungBae's eyebrows rose. “Really? And how is that possible?”
“Well, uh,” SunMi turned a sharp gaze to SeungRi—asking for assistance in the situation.
SeungRi let out a sigh. “We're not exactly sure, but it's probably got something to do with the fact that we...ah, did it.”
My jaw fell.
“Did what?” YoungBae felt the need to ask. And, really, that question really made me want to just reach over and smack him.
And then maybe jump his bones—if we were alone.
“Sex,” they all said.
Having eight voices say that one word was really quite...something.
“Huh,” was all YoungBae said. “How is that possible?”
“That sex was the whole way out of this the whole time,” I scoffed. “Yeah, tell me why. I'm seriously curious.”
I seriously was curious. And I'm wondering if YoungBae and I are still linked. I doubt it...right?
“So no one knows how it happened, huh?” YoungBae asked.
They shook their heads.
He pulled out his cell phone. “Alright. Let's settle this once and for all.”
After a long second, Mrs. Dong picked up. “YoungBae?”
So that was it? Merely having your two hearts race together with the same feelings behind it? THAT was the whole solution??
That's harsh.
The fact that I'd never be able to communicate with my parents again didn't occur to me until two in the morning when I woke up to a bad dream.
And then I realized, that nightmare was reality.
My happiness of having a thin thread of communication with my parents had ended. That thread had ripped.
It was stupid to cry about, but I did anyways. I guess I got too attached to it, maybe.
“Hey,” YoungBae sat up on his bed and when he heard my sniffles—that I failed to stifle—he got out of his bed and came over to mine, sitting beside me. “Yah, why're you crying?” His hand took mine and he squeezed it. “What happened?”
I shook my head, “N-nothing. I-I just had a bad dream.”
He let out a sigh and let go of my hand so his hands could cup my face. “Min SunYe. That is not nothing. What was it?”
In the darkness of that room, while my eyes peered into his eyes—his eyes that once looked at me coldly—I realized how far we've come. We've went through a lot together.
“I-I can't,” I managed to get the words out before crying again. “I can't communicate with them anymore.” I took in an inhale before continuing on. “I know its stupid and selfish to wish for the impossible, but I still want to communicate with them. Even if it was just that short period of time, I felt as if they were still here again, you know? It felt like they...were still alive. It felt so real.”
I could no longer see YoungBae's eyes clearly because my own eyes were blurred with tears. “YoungBae,” I clutched onto his tank top, “w-what's so wrong with wishing for them to come back again? What's so wrong with having my parents and grandparents back?”
The tears fell as soon as I blinked.
“Nothing's wrong with that,” his thumbs stroked away my tears and then he pulled me to him—wrapping his arms around me. “Nothing's wrong with wishing for parents.”
I cried against his chest. It was stupid. Yeah, I'm so very aware of such a small matter, but I couldn't stop the tears. “I never even said goodbye,” I spoke to his chest. “It was my second chance at communication, a-and I never even said goodbye or th-thank you.”
Not even “I love you”. The words I've never spoke, I'll never be able to say to them.
“They know you,” YoungBae spoke into my hair. “They know you well enough. They know you care, that's all that matters.”
Now why hadn't I thought of that? They do know me. They do know I care. And if that's all I'm getting from them, that's all I'll take.
That's all I CAN take.
I nodded, wrapping my arms around him. “That's all that matters.'
My tears came to a slow stop when sleep slowly crept back to me.
“YoungBae?” I said, my eyes closed, as sleep crept closer.
“Yeah?”
“Thank you,” I buried my head into his chest. “F-for everything.”
“That's not a problem,” he replied, holding me closer. “I'll always be here for you.”
I smiled. “YoungBae?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
* * *
I woke up two hours later to the sound of my cell phone ringing.
I tried to extract myself from YoungBae as quietly as possible to refrain from waking him up, but that plan failed because as soon as I moved, he was already awaken.
“Sorry,” I whispered to him as I picked up my phone—forgetting to look at caller I.D. “Hello?”
“SunYe!” cried the voice from the other line. A voice I realized as Kim's.
“Kim?” I asked. Simply by listening to her voice, I figured she had been crying. “W-what's wrong?”
“Th-th-they,” she stuttered through tears, “THEY TOOK KENNY AND LILY!”
They?
She couldn't possibly be talking about—
Of course she was. There was no one else she could've possibly been talking about.
Those bastards had been fishing a plan all the while...
Upon hearing what Kim had said, YoungBae got out of bed, cursing under his breath.
“Is Mrs. Dong there?” I asked.
“Y-yes,” Kim answered. “Sh-she's h-here.”
“Is it alright if I speak to her?”
The phone was handed over to Mrs. Dong and she surprised me by speaking rather calmly—despite the sniffles. “Yes, dear?”
“I apologize for bothering you,” I said, “but is it possible for you to get Uncle Joo and Aunt Kim to search the house for anything left behind?”
“Of course,” she answered. “Anything will do then?”
“Anything at all,” I replied. “And please call back when you find something.”
“Alright then.”
I closed the phone and got out of bed, following where YoungBae had went—to the closet.
“This is war,” he said, loading himself with ammo. He glanced back at me and smirked when he saw the expression I wore. “Its a good thing my brothers and I took all their artillery beforehand.”
A single cherry blossom bud. A bud, because, well, the trees obviously haven't bloomed yet.
That's what had been left behind.
And it infuriated me. I don't think, in my whole lifetime, I've ever been as angered as this very moment.
I didn't know MUCH, but I knew ENOUGH—as of this moment.
“Where're you headed?” YoungBae's voice came on over my phone that I had put on speaker.
“Just follow my car,” I told him, pressing my feet hard on the gas. A smirk found its way to my lips. “Let me know if we've lost you guys.”
He scoffed. “Please, baby, if I knew where we were headed, I'd be there hours before you.”
“Is that so?” I asked. “Well I'm headed towards the old church on the other side of Seoul.”
“And why is that?” he asked—clearly changing the subject from 'getting there before me'. “You picked that up from a simple cherry blossom bud?”
“I did.”
“Really?” he asked. “And how did the cherry blossom—your clue—end up on the floor of Kim's place?”
“Unni,” said SoHee from the backseat. “I-is it possible th-that—”
“There's someone with them on our side,” I said. “Someone that hated Han Kyung's escape as much as we had.”
“Han Kyung escaped?!” exclaimed everyone from the backseat.
Grandpa loved cherry blossoms.
Anywhere they'd grow, he'd be there, planting them. He'd spend hours simply gazing at cherry blossom trees.
Of course, I didn't remember much...but I did remember the feel of a small cherry blossom petal, delicate at my fingertips.
I had been here with Grandpa once and once only. We had spent a whole day here.
At the back of this church where he grew trees and trees of nothing but cherry blossom.
It had been the first, and only, plant he's ever been fond of.
“They're everywhere,” I said as soon as we stepped out onto the back of the church. “All five thousand of them.”
The ground was heavy, the atmosphere dark and drear.
“Split up and search for Kenny and Lily,” YoungBae said.
I nodded and was just about to take off in my own direction, when he grabbed onto my arm—holding me back.
“What?” I asked him.
“You're with me,” he said. “Don't forget. We are one, with or without that chemical crap.”
I don't think anyone was given a chance to even move, because in that very second, we were surrounded by all five thousand men.
“Hey,” I said, dagger and gun in each hand—ammo clung tightly to my belt, “I don't care if this is the end or not, but, I love you guys.”
And, with that, I charged into the crowd of black abyss, slashing with one hand and firing with the other.
I just hope it wasn't a mistake wearing black shorts. They were, after all, easier to move in.
Bodies fell with each passing second. But no matter how many of them were killed, the darkness kept pouring in. Men after men charged forward.
The only noise I heard were gunshots.
The only thing I saw were dying people. Their blood stained the buds of blossoms. The blossoms that my own grandpa had loved so dearly.
He'd spent years of his life growing these blossoms, and here they were, getting bloodstained and slashed.
I, myself, was getting bloodstained and slashed at. Just twenty minutes into this Armageddon and I already had opened wounds.
AND THEY DIDN'T EVEN HAVE GUNS! They had daggers and other sorts of weapons not involving ammo.
Its not like they were hard to kill, there was just so much of these a$sholes attacking one person... It was difficult to avoid getting injured and slashed.
“How're you...” YoungBae threw an arm around me and pulled me against him—shooting the guy that practically jumped at me from behind, “...holding up?”
Something warm ran down my arm. And I looked, even though it was dark out, to see blood run down YoungBae's arm.
He had slashes all over his arms!
“I-I'm—“ I spoke to him as we fired at the guys coming towards us. It was like they were robots. They didn't even think. They just attacked.
No, not even attack. They were mere...targets, practically running at us, FOR us to kill.
No matter how nice it felt to be in his arms just then, I fought the urge to give in. We were going to make it through this.
We had to.
We hadn't come all this far for nothing. Losing was not an option...
The same time I had thought that, a voice echoed in my head.
It was not a communication thing, but rather a mere memory just pounding to escape to my senses.
Grandpa's words: Never slash at the stems. There will be many of them. All stems feed on one thing. The roots. Find the roots.
“YoungBae ah,” I said to his ear—that was how close we were to each other, just watching the other's back, “go find Jo Won. Ignore these people and kill that guy.”
He took a slow step back from me—still shooting at the guys around us, of course—and his eyes held mine. His ebony eyes. “Alright,” he said. “And don't you even think about setting yourself up for death.”
I managed a scoff as I placed one hand on his cheek—the other hand held the gun that shot at the people behind him. “For you, I'll try to survive.”
We stopped shooting for a second. Just the second that he pressed his lips against mine.
And even though it had just been a second, it felt like eternity.
YoungBae gave a grin before he turned his back to me and disappeared into the dark.
I won't lie.
It took a lot to hold back my tears as I watched his receding back until it disappeared.
The well. The well beside the main tree.
He had to be there. That as$hole had to be hiding at the big cherry blossom tree.
But, as I neared the tree, it wasn't him that caught my attention. It was the two above him, tied and dangling by a rope on one of the stems of the tree—just above the well, the well that went deep into the ground.
Kenny and Lily.
Their mouths were covered, but, nonetheless, they were wide awake to this gore and violence of a scene. I don't think I could ignore the tears in their eyes even if I had tried to. They were, after all, being exposed to violence.
This would be the doings of an as$hole.
Han Kyung was, of course, the bastard that held the rope. His other hand held the gun that was pointed at me. So he had a gun.
He grinned. “I see you managed to get here—in one piece.”
In one piece? Yes. Uninjured? No.
It was as if I was bleeding to the bones. Or, so it felt that way.
Let me tell you, it is impossible to get through a crowd of approximately five thousand and come out completely unscathed.
“You son of a b!tch,” I spat out, straightening—my grip hard on the dagger and gun.
It hurt to even straighten.
He 'tsk'ed me. Seriously. “That's not something you should say to the world's greatest mafia leader.” He chuckled. “Especially if he had the lives of two children in his—”
He had been so caught up in making his little speech, I threw the dagger—full force—aimed at the stem of the tree that he had them hanging from and that stem, and the rope tied with it, fell. The sound of a gunshot sounded—the bullet got Han Kyung in the pit of the stomach.
The stem, I told myself, didn't matter. It would grow again with the help of the roots.
Kenny and Lily fell to the ground with a thud and my dagger landed not far from them.
“SunYe,” said the black figure that came up beside me.
“JaeHwan.”
“You,” said Han Kyung, “you traitor. You dare backstab your own grandfather?!”
JaeHwan's jaw tightened. “I'll never claim the man that killed every one of my relatives as my grandfather.”
“Yah,” I whispered to him—my gun raised and pointed at Han Kyung, but my other hand pointed to Kenny and Lily. “Can you help me get those two out of here?”
“Sure,” was all he said before he made his way over to the two and threw them over his shoulder.
“Don't you dare shoot,” I said to the bastard who stood across from me. “I'll blow your brains out from this distance.”
He smirked. Even with one hand cut off and a bullet in his stomach, he had the nerves to smirk.
It made me sick.
“Today's main target is not them,” he said. “Its you.”
JaeHwan tossed me my dagger back before carrying them off, leaving only me and Han Kyung.
This place—where the big cherry tree grew—was not within the church's premises, therefore, none of his minions should be able to get here. At least, not before I kill him.
He fired and I managed to dodge it. Of course, I knew, he wouldn't just hold a gun aimed at someone and not shoot.
And that's what he did. He shot at me like crazy.
I shot back with each dodge and he would dodge it as well—until one of the shots got him in the shoulder.
This guy. This guy that had recently escaped from jail.... This 'mafia leader' fool. He was amateur in fighting.
It wasn't fighting that he'd excelled in, but rather power. He had power. He had people.
Only rarely would he carry out his own task...
Han Kyung. A coward.
As soon as the shot got him in the shoulder and he paused in that second with a flinch, I took many other shots that hit him—in all useless places—as I neared him.
He fell to one knee and I stood a couple of feet away. My gun pointed to his head.
For someone that lacked aiming and skills, he could endure quite a lot.
He chuckled. “Y-you,” he said. “You're an odd one. YoungBae fights with skills. He fights with motivation. You, on the other hand, you fight alongside fear and anger.”
Fear?
“You fear death,” he went on. “You fight to stay alive. You fight to seek revenge. You're so pent up with anger that it just—”
His hand shot up and he fired. “—kills you from the inside out.”
“You missed,” I said.
“Oh did I?” He asked, slightly amused. It wasn't until I heard a grunt behind me, that I turned around and saw JaeHwan.
JaeHwan who lay on the ground with blood seeping out from his chest. He didn't breathe. He couldn't. He had opened his mouth to say something, but because he couldn't, he decided on a second-long smile.
And then he managed to say one word. He said one word last word before he stopped breathing completely. “Sorry.”
Tears were quick to form in my eyes, but these tears didn't have a chance to fall. The moment I turned my back to that as$hole, he had attacked me. Stabbing a dagger into my back.
It jolted through me like static for that instant and then the pain dispersed slowly throughout my body. Numbing me.
He yanked it out.
I fell. And just like that, I fell.
“You're really easy to read,” that bastard chuckled, raising his gun at me. “Rule number one in assassination, don't let your guard d—”
Another gunshot pierced him dead center in the chest, cutting him off mid-sentence. And he went down quite as easily as I had.
That was how Han Kyung went down.
“It seems you don't know the rules yourself,” came a voice I recognized oh-too-well. YoungBae knelt down beside me. “And you. I thought I told you to not provoke death.”
I looked up at him, looked into those eyes of his, and smiled—despite the pain that throbbed through me.
It was like that pain—on Sunset Coast—all over again.
“H-hey,” I said to him. “Y-you're bleeding all-over.”
He had cuts and scrapes all over him. There was not a place on him where I didn't see blood—excluding his face. His face, nonetheless, didn't fail to leave me breathless.
He grinned, brushing the back of his hand on a cut on my leg. “You are too.”
I reached up to touch his face, but ended up turning over—so he was the one on the ground and I sat on top of him. He let out a painful groan as he hit the ground.
Sorry.
Behind me, Han Kyung stabbed the dagger into my back again.
He used the same tactics. Cheap shots.
The pain jerked me and I had to fight to hold back from screaming out in pain. There was just so much pain wrecking out from me.
And time played in slow motion.
The blood, as well as life, from me began to slowly drain out.
There was just this sudden urge to collapse. My whole body felt heavy and it was just dragging me down.
Until a voice echoed through my head. Another memory; Grandpa’s voice.
“When you guys are fighting apart from each other and thinking you’re alone, promise me you’ll remember these words. You guys are never alone. No matter how dark, how drear, how empty you feel… I will fight alongside you guys.”
The words seeped in harder than they should've. Physically. This pain was taking a toll on my life—and body.
Nonetheless, I stiffened at those words. Mentally. Physically.
I would do this. I would finish this through if it had to be the last thing I do; if I had to use my last breath to do it.
For Grandpa. Grandma. Mom, Dad, YoungBae, my sisters, his brothers, Mrs. Dong, Kenny, Lily and even JaeHwan.
With all these reasons, for all these people...
And this whole epiphany had happened in less than a second, because when time returned to normal, Han Kyung's dagger had just made it deep down into my back. For the second time tonight.
The fact that I felt this pain disgusted me.
I gripped onto my dagger tightly and, with one quick move and a half-turn, slashed at the man behind me.
It slit his neck pretty deeply, if the blood that squirt on my face was of any indication.
Han Kyung fell backwards with a loud thud. He had been bleeding before I even slit his throat. YoungBae had, after all, shot him in the chest.
I forced my weak legs to stand as I reached into my back and pulled out the dagger he had stabbed me with, throwing it aside. I dropped my dagger to the ground. In the end, his blood had stained my dagger after all.
Ignoring the pain that prodded deeper into me, I bent over and grabbed Han Kyung by the collar, lifting him up.
“This face,” I told him as his eyes fought to stay open and blood poured out from his neck. It was disgusting. In all my years of killing, this was the most disgusting sight I've seen. It could've been him, or it could've been the state he was in. Either way, it disgusted me to the last drop of blood within. “Remember this face, the face of Min SunYe, because it'll be this face that haunts you as soon as you close your eyes.”
I dropped him the second his eyes closed.
That was it. All my life I've waited for this moment. I've trained for this very second, and yet, even when the moment I've waited for arrived...the only thing I felt was pain.
Pain that throbbed through me uncontrollably. Pain that choked me.
I tried. I really did. I tried to not give in to the pain, but it took over within seconds. It dragged my body down and I fell. I fell backwards, into the arms of Dong YoungBae himself. He stood behind me the whole time.
The blood on his chest smeared on my cheeks and he wrapped his bloody arms around me.. For some reason, even through the pain, it felt nice.
That just goes to show that there was something truly wrong with me.
“I-is it,” I forced myself to choke out, “over?”
I laughed when I realized I was crying. What should've been the happiest moment of my life...and I was crying. Laughing, however, made the pain throb even more.
YoungBae took his arms off from around me and lifted me up—carrying me to the big cherry blossom tree.
For someone so covered in blood and slashes, it must've taken a lot to have even lifted me. But he didn't complain.
There, at the big cherry blossom tree, he sat me down with my back against the tree and he knelt in front of me—holding my face in his hands as he wiped the smeared blood away. “Its over,” he smiled. “Its over.”
It could've been what he said, or it could've simply be that he looked so beautiful even after such a fight and blood-covered but, either way, I smiled at him through the tears.
If this was how the last couple seconds of my life were going to end... I wouldn't mind.
Is it a sin to have said that? Is it bad? Why had it felt bad?
I stared deep into his eyes—even through the tears that filled mine—feeling the life and blood draining from me, faster than before. With each passing second, I grew weaker.
So this is how dying felt like. This is how having your life drained felt like.
“Y-youngBae,” I fought the pain in my arm to be able to reach up and touch his face for the last time. And that thought made me cry. Knowing I could never touch him again, see him again. “I-I—”
“Don't,” he placed a hand over my mouth. “Don't talk, please? I need you to save your breath.”
Without waiting for a response from me, he reached into his coat pocket and pulled out two rather miniature bottles, popping one of them opened.
“C'mon,” he held it to my lips, his other hand at the back of my head supporting it. “Drink.”
Drink? Drink what?
But I didn't ask. I obeyed. With no energy left in my arms, I parted my lips and drank whatever it was in that bottle that he held against my lips.
He tossed the bottle aside after I finished and popped the other one open. He, himself, drank it down and tossed it aside after he finished it as well.
Curious, I had just opened my mouth to ask him what it was when he covered the small space between us.
He hand a hand on either side of my head when he leaned his face closer to mine so that our foreheads touched. “This,” he began—was it just me, or did his voice sound sultry? Whatever it was, it worked at distracting me from the throbbing pain—if only for that second. “Min SunYe, this will be the longest kiss you've ever experienced.”
I had SO many responses to that, but none of them got out, on account of the fact that he had pulled my face to him and my mouth to his.
My body had collided with his so hard that we fell backwards. YoungBae let out a grunt against my mouth when he hit the floor but that, surprisingly, did not break our mouths apart.
It was like that kiss on Sunset Coast all over again. It was like that first kiss we shared. We were wounded, throbbing, and yet we kissed like it would be our last.
Or, at least, MY last.
Dawn approached beautifully that morning—in the nick of time—and it reflected beautifully against every feature on YoungBae's face.
I told myself to keep my eyes open, for closing them would bring me closer to...death. But the way YoungBae's mouth and lips moved with mine...it was just about impossible to not close my eyes.
And so I let them drift. I didn't count the last couple of seconds until everything would black out on me. That, itself, was something hard to focus on when his lips kept challenging mine.
It wasn't until a long while has passed that I realized...or rather, I asked myself, why wasn't I...you know, dying?
Not that I WANTED to, oh god no. Its just that I didn't understand what was going on. Following that bewilderedness was the fact that the pain began to lessen.
LESSEN.
I pulled away from YoungBae to discover another mystery. We had been kissing for quite a while now and neither of us were breathless.
“Yah,” I sat up against the tree—feeling no pain at all, “what...”
YoungBae brought himself to a sitting position and grinned. “Glad to see you're alright now.”
I gave him a questioning look.
“SeungRi and SunMi achieved in making a useful chemical,” was all he said.
“Chemical?” I asked, because, obviously, you don't just leave me hanging like that.
“It works similar to those that linked us together,” he answered.
“How?”
“It does the work of the curing part,” YoungBae explained.
Meaning that kiss had healed? Seriously?
Then again, that explained why he was kissing with such passion.
“And it obviously worked,” he chuckled, looking me up and down. “You're proof.”
I glared at him. “So are you.” Then I realized... “Where're YooBin them?! Yah, they're alright, right?!”
YoungBae did something unexpected next. He came over to me and pulled me into a tight hug. “They're alright. The fighting stopped as soon as you killed that man.”
“W-why?”
He chuckled. “Why? Because they're useless without a leader and none of them are really all that fond of him in the first place. They had always feared him.” His breath tickled the back of my neck when he laughed. “And now they fear the crazy beautiful Min Sunye.”
I brought my arms up around him. “Not as much as THE Dong YoungBae.”
He laughed again, holding me closer. It felt nice. It felt perfect. It was perfect.
Behind him, the sky began to grow lighter.
YoungBae let out a sigh into my bloodstained hair. “I really thought I'd lose you, fool.”
I laughed, despite the tears that began to form in my eyes. It felt right to laugh. “Please, you couldn't lose me if you wanted to.” And before I'd start crying again, I added, “Yah, let's watch the sunrise together. It looks rather beautiful today.”
Because today was a new day; the start of a new beginning.
“I can just look at you,” he grinned.