The Afterlife

25) I Burn for Life, and I Burn You to Death

When Sihyeon had first woken up, she had not expected herself to be sat on a leather chair for hours and hours on starting the second she opened her eyes.

There was not a second she could spare to properly open her eyes before Mia, whom she found asleep in her bed the night prior, dragged her out of the room and put her into a taxi with a destination holding no name.

It was not easy to sleep knowing that the day to follow she was meeting with the person who slipped her life from within her hands in countable hours, and then it was even harder knowing she had to spend the night without Yeonjun in the same bed. She also had to lie, for the first thing Naeun asked of her when they met was if she had slept enough, but Sihyeon knew that if she was to meet that with anything but confirmation, the older girl would see no end to that but torment.

Naeun was there when the car stopped, and while Mia paid the driver, Sihyeon dismounted to pour the rest of her anger and discontent on her friend, since it was a losing game trying to get under Mia's skin.

Sihyeon could not tell where they were right away, but by the looks of the lines of luxurious cars of every kind, stacked like an army in wide circles in a huge parking lot, and by the way the white building stood high above lands of green, Sihyeon could tell it was where the party was supposed to take place.

Even from the other side, Sihyeon could still smell the ocean that was far from reach then; she could see the hints of blue peaking from behind the daring building, but all there was to magnificently view was the royal architecture of the venue.

It was white, but with the large gate opened, Sihyeon could see the brown that covered most of the insides. The lights were dim to leave space for the sun to venture, and the walls were the likes of that from a castle, carved into shapes that even Sihyeon's penthouse could not hold.

It was vast, but there was little that Sihyeon could see before she was ushered up the stairs that stood amidst the large ballroom and into one of the endless rooms. The room was no different from the rest of the venue, vintage in brown and written in the books with all of its vases and expensive paintings rising with the walls.

The leather chair took Sihyeon easily, confining her with no chains or ropes of any kind; instead, there were three pairs of eyes peering at her as she sat, theeatening to break a bone if she decided to stand back up before they say that the time has come for her to.

"Mia, for fuck's sake," after three hours, Sihyeon had enough of sitting silently while some ten girls rushed around her, touching her face and hair in all sorts of ways -from brushing to tapping to drawing over her eyes- and giving her absolutely no chance to see what they were doing, so she snapped, scaring away the girl who was working on her hair from behind, "this is sheer exaggeration."

"Hey," Yun frowned instantly after she had been staring for fifteen minutes straight at her mother with a full smile, "bringing you into a war type of party looking insanely beautiful is no exaggeration," while Sihyeon listened, she was not yet calm; she still had her fists on both arms of the chair, tight and ready to throw away the whole thing any second, "you need to impress them enemies, right?"

Yun was not asking Sihyeon but everyone else around her, who instantly nodded in an equally exaggerated agreement, some even mumbled and mouthed definitely and absolutely while Sihyeon exhaled and fell back into the chair.

"I will not sit here for another minute," Sihyeon closed her eyes, forcing the words from the spaces between her set tight teeth before she turned sharply back at the girl who was still two steps away, "bring me a mirror."

When the girl took a hurried step, she stopped at once again when Mia huffed, "no," she motioned for the girl to step back into work, and while she hesitantly did so, Mia gave Sihyeon a challenging look, and the latter cursed for a response, "you sit down," she said assertively, "and you stop complaining."