CHAPTER ONE

PART XII

sinking.

Sunoo splutters because of the sudden question. He slowly looks up, finally paying her attention instead of trying to annoy her.
"What?"
The eye contact isn't uncomfortable, but it makes her nervous to the point where she ends up occupying her hands with a task.

"No, I—uh," she clears her throat and snaps her eyes shut, as if it would make the situation disappear. Her expression contorts for a second, his thoughts echoing in her own head. "Never mind. I'm talking nonsense."

"Jiwon."
The pale hand that shares a thermometer with her own grasp surprises her; his impatience in the moment a lot more than she anticipated. Her eyes meet his, filled with nothing but exhaustion and sorrow from her day. A part of her wants him to know, even though it'll leave her depressed for days, weeks, possibly even months. Longing coats the white of her eyes, glistening as if she's holding back the last of her tears.

From her clenched fist around the other end of the thermometer, the weak trembling of her arm as she barely holds herself together, the mane that falls into her eyes from being ruffled in distress, all the way to Jiwon's pout. Sunoo notices how the thermometer reads from just a glance—clammy sweat from her palms causing the mercury to heat and climb. Just like the metal in that glass tube, his concern for her only increased.

"Hey, what happened?" He instantly moves toward the edge of the bed, patting the sheet with his free hand.

Jiwon never thought that Sunoo could sound so kind. She didn't think he had it in him. It's so shocking for his baritone to actually sound calm, that she thinks it's a bad dream.
And yet, she bites her lip. Maybe it would've been easier for him to tease her—to bicker and make fun of her for crying like he'd always done. The older guy was always so abrasive to her and like a kid, she'd either laugh it off or bounce it back at him, but if he's like this all of a sudden?
She starts to feel weak.
Vulnerable.
Powerless.

She can hear his confusion, how he's worried about her. It echoes in the confines of her mind as she accepts his offer to sit down, staring at him like it's the first time she sees him. Her sight flashes between the foxy, sharp eyes filled with twisted curiosity and allure, the small nose, the unique curve of his lips and back up to his irises.
She never realized how easy it is to fall—drown in the hazel freckles of light. The brightness of it reveals the only innocence he has.

Intimacy.

Jiwon could feel it all in his eyes. He's lost. He can't go anywhere else, he has no one else, he has nothing else to lose.
The saddest part isn't that he didn't know how to cope all of this time—but it's how he pretends he does for his own protection. Sunoo doesn't know what he's doing, and in an aberrant way, she relates to him.

That's why she can't tell him. She can't bring herself to say anything without her own heart—the humanity that's left in her—stopping her.
She rips herself away from him in fear she'd become attached, letting go of the medical instrument altogether. She takes a deep breath, while the impatient nineteen-year-old pries.

"You can tell me, I promise."

"I can't do it."

Sunoo gathers his courage in a short breath, trying to hold in the underlying agitation from her stubbornness. "Jiwon, you look like you've been in pain since you've entered the damn room. I'd feel even worse knowing that the person who's supposed to be taking care of me is upset the entire time and is unable to work under the stress. I'd feel horrible if I can't do anything."

"You almost sound human," Jiwon squeaks out, forgetting to laugh at her own joke.

"Ji. Please."

The silence that Sunoo experiences is suffocating, but for Jiwon, her environment is too loud with his pleading thoughts and unsaid sentences. She has no choice. She's well aware that she doesn't, that her future is laughing at her from Hell, and still her lips tremble while saying the verdict out loud. The truth might be the hardest thing to say, but it's much more painful when you hear the thoughts of who you're saying it to.

"I hate you," she chuckles out of exasperation, avoiding his eyes. "I hate the fact that you're being nice to me now. You always manage to make things harder for me, somehow."

The sentence makes him sigh through his nostrils, the stuffy sound interrupting the ruffling mattress cover. He inches away, assuming that the close distance made her feel uneasy. He is happy about the fact that she's being honest, but the heaviness in the air isn't going away. Like an early morning fog, it shrouds the room with a shivering cold and covers their bodies with opacity. Jiwon feels it too, and he can only stare as she drags her pastel sleeve over the back of her hands.

"I mean, I don't have to be nice if you don't want me to," he falters. "I thought it would help you out a bit if I calmed down a little."

"Yes—no—ugh, fuck, I don't know," she curses loudly, making him flinch. She turns to him, not bothering to brush her hair back to see him better. If she saw the emotions in his eyes, she'd just break down all over again, so maybe this was for the best. "I'm sorry. I wish I knew what I wanted right now."

It doesn't take long for Sunoo to realize something. He holds her wrist, burning with heat, gazing at it while her fingertips turn into the color of coal. He finally speaks up, his typical brusque speech returning to his lips.
"Look at me."
Something's different about the harshness in his voice, the layer of urgency signalling something horrible. It bewilders her, but she just believes that he's trying to scare her.
"Jiwon, I'm serious. Look at me right now."

She obeys his command. They both stare at each other, Jiwon with anxiety, Sunoo with absolute horror. All of the color fades from his face as he stares at her, straight into her eyes. Her eyes gloss over, her irises losing all sense of pigmentation. Diagonal, disconnected burn marks trace from her cheek to her collarbone like a painter gliding across a textured canvas, and he notices how similar they are to a knife's slashes. The incisions glow under the leaking sunlight from the window, but there's no warmth. It's as if she's painted in tar, and it reminds him of when he collapsed during his fight.

"What? Why are you staring at me like that?" She questions with dread.

He wastes no more time. Rushing over to the first-aid box, he pulls out cotton balls, and sprints back to pat her cheek. Jiwon flinches away from the cotton.
"Okay, what the hell are you doing?"

"Focus on breathing. You're hyperventilating and your skin is burning to the touch."

His intense will to help her is transparent, and yet, Jiwon still uses her Alarm on him. She's unsure. She still hesitates. For what seems to be the first time since they've met, Sunoo allows her to see his thoughts, though he can physically detect her ability being used on him. It's uncomfortable to feel seen like this, to have that static of her presence in his head—that's why he doesn't want her to invade it. But this is an emergency.

Whenever she hears his thoughts, it's hard for her to leave. It confuses her, how much she wants to stay in a cacophonous, dissonant mind. How much she wants to just escape in there, despite how troubled and worrisome he is. It's inexplicable, but she almost finds the mess relieving. Maybe it's because she doesn't want to be in her own mind anymore. Maybe it's because she wants to find her comfort in his chaos.

She nods, granting him permission. A tiny pinch of a smirk shows up on his lips as he returns a small nod, but falls as soon as it's shown. A small bottle of soap floats over to them both, following a path from the sink in the back storage. He leans back, grabbing the half-empty bottle of water at his bedside while making a flicking movement with his free hand. The soap bottle opens and just as his ability disappears, he snatches it successfully. With all of his supplies ready, he presses the cotton over the lip of the bottle and flips it over to soak it. He then reciprocates the action with the soap in experienced swiftness. He presses it against her cheek, attempting to ignore her grimaced faces though they're a few inches apart from each other.

"All this just because I'm frazzled out?" She puzzles.

"I'd rather not have my nurse pass out in front of me because she's exhausted." He briskly says, not truly realizing the weight of what he just said to her.

"Your...nurse?"

The cotton pats trace down to her neck, but the speed is slowing down. Under the cotton ball, the edge of Sunoo's thumb tickles her overheating skin. She can't help but get lost in her thoughts for a second, watching him as he tries to focus on her reopened wound. She hasn't felt a difference in her temperature until now, the blood rushing up to her cheeks and the nervous energy settling in her hands while her lean fingers interlock.

In Sunoo's mind, he's trying not to get distracted by her intense glare. Replace cotton ball, a few drops of water, a drop of soap, and pat. That's all he's focused on, well, it would be if her stare wasn't so piercing. His first instinct is to tell her to look away, but he swallows that idea in case she gets agitated. He sighs deeply, the warm air brushing back a few threads of her hair.

"You're not focusing on your breathing as much as you should, you need to calm down," He advises as he turns back to grab another cotton ball. "I'm doing my best to keep your overheating under control, but nothing will change if you don't breathe."

'Overheating' is like a fever to an Anomaly, but with blood and a huge chance of fainting. It's usually a side-effect of extreme stress, anxiety, or excessive usage of one's Alarm. Overheating is not life-threatening, but it always mirrors the Anomaly's wounds when they died as a human. Sunoo suffered from this exact consequence after he fought Jaeyun—he had to get help despite his natural regeneration because of the severity of it. It only truly becomes dangerous when an Anomaly repeatedly overheats, but luckily for him, he hasn't gotten to that point yet. He prays that Jiwon doesn't get to that point either.

"I'm breathing." She counters.

"Clearly not enough," he places his hand on the side of her neck. "Your temperature hasn't gone down."

She scoffs at the curt man in front of him, at the way his hair sits over his nose and messily weaves into itself. Not even realizing that she's still smiling, the grin drops.
"Why do you care? I'm clearly not in my right mind."

"'Cause, I'm returning the favor. You got me in the infirmary to help me when I was overheating, even though I fought Jaeyun. If I couldn't help you like this, I would just be taking advantage of you."

She knows she should be saying 'thank you', but she wants to curse at him for making her feel this way and cry out of gratitude. She wants to hurl insults at him for his kindness, although it's something she'd been longing for years.
What's wrong with her? What's this pain in her chest, the thoughts that wildly scramble whenever she glances into his eyes? What are these words that she can't hear beyond the glass? What is this hurt, the ribbon that's tying around her neck and pulling her about like a puppet with stage fright?

"I'd rather you take advantage of me."

He stopped in his tracks. He dropped the little bud, soaked in black from her own blood. His frown is unapproving, cold and silent, but it's enough to shake her up on the inside. He knows that she meant that sentence. The desperation in her voice was evident, though the dull tone contrasts with her tinted cheeks. He doesn't say anything in response. Sunoo just picks up the used cotton, the black staining any sort of pretty color it had and smudging it into a muddy, stringy mess.

He moves toward the plastic bin, dumping it lazily. The thump of the cotton against the bag is loud, resonating how much blood it soaked up. He cleans up after himself neatly, moving about as he returns everything to its rightful place. The stressed girl doesn't move out of uncertainty. If he needed help, he'd ask. She knows that much, but truthfully, she doesn't know what to do in a situation like this. Even through silence, he occupies himself, finding things to fill his mind. She doesn't have to do that, because it's easy to hear everything all at once. She envies him and he envies her, but for completely different reasons.

"Why are you being nice?"
She needed to ask. If she didn't, she wouldn't live with the fact that he's just being different for the hell of it.

He confesses after a short pause of zoning out. "Because I pity you."

"I don't need your pity, Sunoo."

"Yes, you do." She thinks he's assuming based on her behavior, but he's actually correcting her. "Look, there's something I have to tell you. I didn't say it before because it's weird—weird as hell, but—"

"Yes?" She cuts through his hesitation, like a knife cutting through butter. She doesn't want him to start rambling, simply because she doesn't feel like listening.

"—When I told you in the past to stop reading my mind, it's not only because I feel uncomfortable. I can feel your thoughts like you can feel mine, but it's all so muffled. It's frustrating."

Her upper eyelids relax, and his words demanded her attention.
"You can feel my thoughts?"

"Yeah. Mostly emotions. I can't hear them like you probably can hear mine, but I can feel all of them. All the way to the uncertainty, and complicated emotions I can't understand." His furrowed eyebrows loosen a bit as he flips his hair back and scratches it.

For her, this changes everything. At first, she assumes it's the link between their Alarms—his telekinesis and her telepathy—that's causing the connection to happen. It's a logical conclusion, but the entire concept of it is still causing a frenzy within her. Somehow, she has a really bad feeling about the situation and she can't stop herself from asking.

"Wait, when I read your mind a while ago.."

Sunoo's eyes avoid even looking at her silhouette. He's attempting to manage a poker face, but the hesitance in his expression is too obvious as he bites down on his bottom lip. A heavy curse word is dancing around in his cheeks, one that he doesn't even need to say for her to get it.

"You know."

Her knowing tone breaks his heart a little.
"I'm sorry." He apologizes, having the most emotion in that two-worded sentence. "I've overstayed, anyway. Can you blame them?"

"They're making a decision for themselves, not for the sake of the truth." She hisses. "They could've grabbed Jake themselves and gotten his perspective of the entire thing."

"Jaeyun ran away, Jiwon. They won't be able to find him for a while, so they just have faith that he's not the villain here."

"Blind faith. How are you not pissed about this entire thing?"

He was—still is. In fact, Sunoo could've just stomped out of the door and given them a piece of his mind right now if he wanted to. But he knows it isn't worth it. Jaeyun, though first on his hit list, was right about one thing. They'd never believe him, so it's no use wasting his energy on a lost cause. It's a shame, too—he was starting to have fun teasing Jiwon and having random conversations with Jungwon. He was really starting to like the dingy, peeling ceiling paint that'd shed onto his bed and have him sneezing for hours. He thought he'd have more time.

"I am, but I have a few reasons not to act on the anger just yet." He eludes, staring at her again with a small grin as he inches towards her. "Anger is just a precursor for change."

"Nice quote, wise guy."

"Yeah, yeah. You need rest, instead of boring yourself with this wise guy."

She smiles at his response, but can't help but feel like she's hidden inside of an iceberg. She's sinking—they both are, with no ledge to climb back up the ice. It's so cold that it hurts, and the looming darkness over the bottom layer frightens them. They're trapped in close proximity, with so much pressure that it's close to crushing them.
As long as they have each other, neither one of them should sink. Neither one of them should succumb to the shivers of ice, to the harsh isolation within wading waters.

...Hypothetically.