CHAPTER ONE

PART XI

read the telepath's mind

THIRD PERSON POV

Familiarity. A feeling that Jiwon is used to, but something she has yet to rid the fear of. She taps her lean fingers on the table that comforts her backside. A triplet follows her tapping pattern in a symphonic rhythm—it's almost perfect, but she hears her heavy breaths more than the hollow echoes of her own improvisation.

Jungwon stares at her from a rolling chair. He doesn't have the patience to interrupt her anxious movements—though he's beginning to get annoyed by it. He releases a small exhale as he drifts across the room in the seat, pushing himself off walls and spinning around with enthusiasm. He's like a child discovering he has free will, and Jiwon's the older sister wishing he hadn't found out. The need she has to just cease the creaks of his chair, the noise of the chair against the wooden floor. To make Jungwon stop moving. 

Just as she parts her dry lips, the door bursts open. In enters the man of the hour, his casual hoodie covering the blue and purple marks just under his wrists and on his arms. To the two teenagers in the room, it's barely even visible, but the color of his clothing only highlights how pale he's gotten and how the bags under his eyes sink with exhaustion.

He throws the satchel that's weighing down his shoulder, right next to Jiwon. The tremor of his bag shakes the table, and the potted Carnation near his hip teeters over the edge. He grabs it, holding it as if it's his precious child—the only thing alive within his vicinity. It's only when he places it back down with a delicate hand that he realizes that there are two other Anomalies in the room, both of them staring at him with concern. 

"Save it," Heeseung pleads, raising a hand to half of his face and wiping downwards. A movement he often uses to wake himself up. 

"When's the last time you took a rest?" Jungwon's gaze doesn't falter from his, even with Heeseung's brooding glare.

"I said save it."
The man moves the hand that massages his face to his hair, using the hair tie on his wrist to skillfully wrap it in a half-assed ponytail. Some strands fall into his face, and they could tell that he's holding in a groan of frustration because of it. "Unless you want to get kicked out of my personal space, I recommend you both stop staring at me like I'm homeless." 

"I mean–"

"Won."
Jiwon cuts off his untimely joke, shushing him with her eyes. He takes the hint, a frown tugging at the sides of his mouth. He attempts to hide it instead, perching his chin on his palm with his fingers concealing his lips.

She turns to Heeseung, hands squeezing the ledge that supports her. 

"What's this about? I have to get back to the infirmary soon." 

"To treat Sunoo, I assume?" 

She nods.
His sharp eyes linger on her, staring uncomfortably. Each time he does this, Jiwon can't help but feel the urge to cover the confines of her own mind, though he doesn't have the ability to read it. His eyes always seem to reach the depths of someone's being—their soul, reaching in to grab and suffocate the essence of it for the sake of truth. Curiosity. 
He's curious.
But why does this curiosity of his always make him seem so menacing? 

"That's why I called you in here, actually."

"What do you mean?" 

"Rumors are spreading," Jungwon interjects, not a fan of the tension in the room. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, fishing a broken padlock out of his pocket to fiddle with it. The shackle clicks repeatedly as he speaks, almost in the same cadence as his words. "We've heard about the fight that he had with Jake. It all sounds chaotic, so we thought it'd make more sense for you to clarify instead. We both know that Sunoo wouldn't say anything—and well—there's no use interrogating an injured person." 

"No." 

The youngest's eyes separate from his fidget toy, but not without one last click of the padlock to seal it. This is the first time he's made eye contact with her since he entered. He didn't do it before because talking to an anxious Jiwon is like interacting with a ticking bomb, but the simple response shocks him so much that he feels disoriented.

"What?" 

"I said no. I'm not doing this." She insists. "I'm sorry, but it's all too much. I'm still wrapping my head around it all."

Jiwon doesn't know what's more uncomfortable; the fact that Jungwon's staring at her like she just said a curse word, or Heeseung who seems to be analyzing her response in silence. The entire room is occupied by nothing but the sounds of stomping upstairs as other young Anomalies run around. 

Heeseung sighs with the weight of a father's disappointment. 
"Okay, look. I know it's a sensitive topic because Jake used to be close to you, but he was close to all of us. This doesn't make sense to us either." 

"No, it's not that," Jiwon's gaze darkens. "This isn't a typical crappy stereotype where the outsider is the troublemaker. This isn't a children's book where the new guy is automatically the bad guy. Everything does make sense to me, but that doesn't make it any less painful." 

The rigid leader knows what she's insinuating. It's something that she doesn't want to say out loud in fear of causing an uproar—chaos. It's the same reason why she's chipping off the ledge, splinters poking into the bottom of her palm. It's the same reason why she can't look at him or Jungwon. 

Embarrassment. Shame. Regret. Anger. She feels all of these emotions so deeply that it swirls into each other, creating a vortex of something she doesn't want to cause in the first place. They've never seen her mask get so shaky before—no, not shaky—broken. 

And yet, they ignore it. Are they so wrong? After all, the end of their lives, hell, maybe even the world—draws near. Jiwon's emotions are always shrugged off by the only two that have cared for her for the past five years. Because of their objectivity and logical values, they fail to realize that the telepath just wants her mind to be read for once. She just needs someone to tell her what she wants, instead of having to search for answers through others' egocentric brains.
Are they so wrong? Or is she just asking for too much? She could never find the answer to it. 
Today, she finally figured it out. 

"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Jungwon questions with an arched eyebrow, a smirk struggling to be suppressed. "There's no way that's possible, Ji. Come on."

"Jungwon's right." The auburn-haired figure trudges over to a bottle of water by a bookshelf. He carelessly opens the bottle, resulting in a few book covers getting soaked by the splash. He lazily wipes off the water from the varnished wood with his sleeve.

"Let's be realistic. What's the likelihood of Jake—who's been here for almost three years—being an undercover officer or spy for the project, compared to Sunoo, who just got here about a month ago?"

She's always hated how matter-of-factly Heeseung is. She wants to argue with him, but she knows that she's fighting a losing fight again. He's always won, so what makes her think she'd win this time? Is it the fire in her throat that's tickling her nerves, burning and squeezing it so tightly that she's close to coughing? Or is it just a desire to speak up for once?

"Very low." 

"Exactly—"

"—But not impossible." She counters. "I've kept an eye on Sunoo most of the time. If not me, then Won. Has he ever raised any red flags to you?" 

She turns to Jungwon with high expectations. He stares at her for a bit before shaking his head. 

"Exactly. Along with that, you thought it would be a great idea to make him resourceful while he's here. You sent him to comfort me when I lost my necklace because you two couldn't even get over the fact that I was being 'moody'." 

She got so riled up, she didn't even realize that she's now directly in front of Heeseung, face flushed with anger, her index finger pushing on his chest. He looks down at her, his glare enough to shrink her ten sizes down. Icy and uncaring, he waves her finger away and leans down to match her height. 

"It's just a necklace. I sent him because I didn't want to waste my time dealing with someone who searches for trinkets on an active battlefield." 

"Okay, break it up, break it up!" 

The anxious lockpicker pushes them both apart, trying to be a mediator in a situation that's already escalated beyond what anyone in the room could handle. He looks back and forth between his older sister figure and his leader, trying to offer some calm words while they just continue staring at each other with pure savagery. 

"I don't want you both to fight. Please. I know this entire thing is confusing as hell, and you both are frustrated, but fighting each other is the last thing we need right now." 

Jiwon doesn't say anything in response. No words of apology, nor any provocations. With a simple 'tsk', she tears away from the intense eye contact and inches toward the window. The cold leader takes a deep breath before doing anything. With the scrunched water bottle in his hand, he pours the remainder of the water over the pink Carnation at his table. Placing the crackling bottle down amidst the silence, he turns to the teens with hands buried deep in his hoodie's pouch. 

He glances over at Jiwon, and Jungwon follows suit. The truth is, he didn't mean to say all of that so harshly. His temperament got in the way of communicating with her, and he doesn't know how to apologize. So he stares, in case she'll look back at him. Jiwon often looks away when emotional—crying in front of people is embarrassing in her book. They all know this, so it only adds to his guilt that she doesn't even turn her head an inch. 

She's looking outside, and she can feel their stares on her back. She doesn't make a sound, the sleeve of her white cardigan brushed against her eyes to catch the hot tears that stream past her cheek. 

He has no choice but to finalize the closed meeting that went horribly wrong. So he clears his throat, and licks his dry lips through the awkwardness. 
"Sunoo has to go, he brought all of this trouble with him in the first place. If Jake really and truly attacked him and not the other way around, he'd follow him on the way out. If Jake's still here after that, then that gives me reason to suspect that Sunoo's on the other side, and we dodged a bullet either way." 

He peeks over at Jungwon for confirmation, making sure he paid attention.
"Gotcha, Hee." He salutes, playing around with the padlock in his fingers.

"Jiwon?" 
They both don't expect her to respond. To be honest, he only called her name to see if she'd signal anything with her body language, since she's too upset to verbally confirm. To their surprise though, she confirms with a stale monotone—a tone that's never been heard from her chirpy lips. 

"Get Kim Sunoo out. Yeah, sure. Whatever."

She would be lying if she said she wasn't upset. She spoke up, only for it to go to naught. This is the first time she's ever been silent in general, and she's getting a few stares as she stomps back to the infirmary. She hated that meeting. She hates the fact that Heeseung got to her head. She hates the way he says his points as if they're the truth. Most of all, she hates the way that she can't hate him for his words. 

Because he is right. And she'd never admit it to herself. That necklace truly is just a trinket she placed an emotional connection to. Something that she had pathetically clung to, knowing that her sister was murdered by her own hands. Knowing that trying to deny it would just stain her hands with guilt and tie her neck with a rope. 
God damnit, she knows she's pathetic, but it's so much easier to put on a smile and drown in her past by herself.

She opens the infirmary door, ignoring the poster hanging over the glass that reminds her daily to sterilize the syringes. Sliding it aside, she instantly meets Sunoo's eyes. He's sitting up on the side of the mattress, doing God knows what. However, she had a feeling that whatever he was doing, God felt ashamed of. 

He's doing the classic 'I-definitely-did-something-I-shouldn't' face that a patient does, the very look that would send doctors in a frenzy. But for Jiwon, it's a common practice as Sunoo can't take his healing time seriously. His eyes squint a bit more as he catches her expression, noticing that something's gone awry. He hasn't been around long enough to learn the changes in her behaviour, but something felt off. Instead of asking her what's wrong, he figured it would be better to find out the only way he knows how. By annoying her like he has for the past two days. 

"I can hear myself think, that's weird."

"There's more where that came from." 

The monotone stayed in her voice as she ambles to the backroom, sending chills down his spine—and not the good kind. Her voice, usually sing-songy and annoying, is now just grating and emotionless. He rubs the outside of his ears with his palms, just to make sure it isn't an auditory hallucination. 

"Okay, what the hell is your problem today? You sound different." 

"I don't have any problems."

"Don't lie to me. Jiwon doesn't speak to me like that. Who are you?"

"Knock it off." 

"Was that a challenge?" 

"Warning." She corrects. 

"Ooh, I'm so scared." 

She stares at him, trying to relay her annoyance. The funny part is, she could use her telepathy on him, but she isn't in the mood to get any more upset than she already is. At this moment, she remembers why she reads his mind in the first place, and she cracks a small, thoughtful smile. 

For someone who doesn't smile much at all, Sunoo seems—soft. Malleable, like a piece of mochi. He's intimidating as he is, yes, but there's just a part of her that's curious of him. If he wasn't suffering so much in this life, how much would he have smiled? Would he and her have become friends then, too? Would he be less serious? 

He's so vague, and yet, no matter how many times she gets curious, no matter how much she reads his mind, she never receives the answer. All she receives in return, every single time, is a mirror. Blocking insiders from the outside, blocking outsiders from seeing anything but themselves. She reflects him, but he always bounces off. 
Just as he's distant, he bounces off of the mirror again. And again.

And again.

"What?" He questions, frowning.

"Nothing, just thinking." She cleared her throat, with her voice returning to its regular octave. 
She hesitates, placing down a scalpel on the medical tray. "Sunoo, I want to ask you something." 

"What is it?"

"Do you think we'll ever meet each other again while we're still alive?"