Long Journey || ATEEZ

A Bowl of Malinna Noodle Soup Left Untouched

He is standing in an alleyway – the one that he had been in just this afternoon. Except now, all the searing heat of the day has disappeared, and all that is left is a chilling cold. An unsettling cold.

A familiar stench of blood is in his nose, his mouth, everywhere.

He feels sick.

In front of him, are two bodies, identical to each other.

Rouge-red lips and worn down scarlet nails. She is in a grey hoodie jacket...and dead.

Her blood on the walls, the floor, all over her two identical corpses – it is a scene all too familiar to him.

Revulsion and an inexplicable fear takes hold of his heart, and he runs off. He can't be here. It's dangerous and if he doesn't get out right now he'll—

He's now inside. Inside his home, though he has no idea how he got here.

But he cannot be here, either. Once again, it is dangerous, his brain insists.

He heads for the door, reaching for the handle, but it turns on its own and the door opens. In front of him is a man, his features covered in shadow, with a face that's familiar, but he can't quite seem to place from where. He raises his fist.

The man has manic eyes and a face contorted with fury, and that's all he remembers and sees, before there is a flash of lilac light as he brings up his arms in defence.

There is a thud as the man's body topples forward.

Then the man starts to change.

A girl with bright orange hair, and a pretty burgundy dress with a black corset.

She gets up, her face pretty and petite.

Then suddenly, she coughs, and blood spurts out her mouth. Then it's coming out of her eye, her right eye, a relentless torrent of red that is gushing down her face like a river.

He backs away.

"All...your...fault...!" she chokes out, her voice distorted and guttural and full of contempt, and he is on the floor crying as he wishes it to stop, pleads for it to stop, begs for it to stop before—

Seonghwa sat up in his bed bolt upright, a paralysing fear gripping him, before sighing as the fear that had been gripping him tight began to loosen, and ebb away.

It was morning.

And he'd had yet another bad dream.

He had been getting those quite often these days.

He didn't know why.

He'd been taking those tablets Hongjoong had gotten him for the past few months now, and they definitely were effective. Seonghwa was getting more sleep in the two months he had been living with Hongjoong than he had ever had in his entire life – or, at least, in his life after Big Grey.

But as the nightmares began to return, the tablets became a curse, of sorts.

They'd force him to stay asleep until he'd had eight hours of sleep at the very least, whether he liked it or not, and he'd be left helpless; even when he knew that it was all just a dream, he couldn't do anything to pull himself out of his nightmare.

He sighed, and lied back down again.

The night had not been kind to him.

Like always.

* * *

"Wow, I can't believe it's been four years since we started this place," Yeosang commented, leaning on the counter casually. "We were literal kids when we started up this place."