Dead End | Jun-ho

13 | Signs of Affection

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Her feet dragged along the hallway, dreading the day she was about to endure. She was doing everything she could to slow it down, feeling aggravated she was being forced to do it. "You know you shouldn't force people into doing things they clearly don't want to do." Aera rolled her eyes, enunciating her words.

She wasn't happy with him. If saving her was such a good idea then why couldn't she just relax after the trauma she'd been put through? He was selfish, making her do this, after seeing what the games had done to her.

Aera wanted her answers, she craved for them. She deserved an explanation, many to be exact. But she was starting to think it wasn't even worth it. Ignoring his rambling about obeying him, she'd thought it over and over.

"And life isn't fair." The man said in an unconcerned way, continuing to walk along the hallway. His boots echoed along the floor; a normal sound, but it made her irritated even further.

He was so difficult. Not once had he truly listened to her. Aera expected differently of him, after doing so much as saving her, she thought he might have cared more.

She bravely spoke back to him, retorting sarcastically, "And, now is not the time for you to be reciting some pathetic inspirational quotes, J."

He looked down at his boots and chuckled to himself, smiling beneath his mask. "Calling me J now, huh?" The man opened a set of double doors, leading to the eye-blinding room full of staircases.

"Can you stop?" Aera demanded, tightly clenching her jaw.

J had walked through the door, waiting on the other side to follow. Aera held the door open with her foot, not walking through it. His constant remarks had gotten to her, something inside her snapped, and it all came crashing down. "You don't get it do you? I don't find it funny that you're joking around with 'life isn't fair' and sure, it isn't. But this, I should get a choice. Forcing me to work as a guard in this disgusting place is so low. If you really are all about saving me and being a nice person, you would have taken me back to where I was before I came here." She wanted to catch her breath, but she had no time to, "Oh wait, you've never been a good person because you're fucking working in a place like this." Aera mocked him, feeling her own rage at its highest point.

He placed a hand into his pocket, leaning back slightly as he watched her scream out her pain. To no surprise, he didn't react. "What is with you? You were fine a minute ago, Aera." J tilted his head slightly, bewildered at her sudden outburst of a truculent attitude.

"Get my name out of your filthy mouth." She spat, pushing his chest. As usual, he didn't even slightly move. Her fury sprang to life, realising that no matter what she did he would never care. The man was probably blank staring at her, laughing to himself at how pathetic she was. Aera didn't care, she'd remembered when they'd first met. J shouted at her, making her feel belittled and helpless and so it was her time to do it back.

The man sighed, "What does this even come down to?" He questioned, curiously.

They were two opposites: anger and ignorance. And, they certainly weren't getting along.

"I DON'T WANT TO GO!" She screamed, every ounce of sanity removing itself as rage consumed her. Aera was like a disobedient child, shouting at her mother that she didn't want to go to school, but this was a much more serious situation; she couldn't bare to look at those innocent people again.