𝐈 𝐂𝐚𝐧'𝐭 𝐆𝐞𝐭 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐎𝐮𝐭 𝐨𝐟 𝐌𝐲 𝐇𝐞𝐚𝐝

𝐒𝐢𝐩-𝐒𝐚

Returning to the academy couldn't have been more painful, but luckily people weren't harsh towards Ryujin. Everyone was not as surprised as Ryujin thought they would be. It was more like everyone could see this coming, they were just surprised that it was such a well respected pilot to break such a rule.

On her first day with her new mentor, she asked her other members how he is. They said that he's cool but not better than Yeji Unnie. Ryujin knew that already, no one could compare to the way Yeji led them.

"Nice to finally meet you, Ranger Shin. I am mentor Hwang Minhyun, I studied your file just like I did the other files that my sister left me, you are a very bright student. I have high hopes for what you'll do for the world in the future." Mentor Hwang was more traditional because he bowed to show respect rather than saluting like most of the other people here. Ryujin bowed back to show respect.

"Thank you, Mentor Hwang Sir." She responded.

He certainly is nothing like Yeji, but he's not the worst mentor. He's focused and has an agenda. He just seems to lose focus easily. Winter had to continuously stop the fun conversations so they could go back to training. He's a bit more carefree than Yeji, he's not stern or strict, but he seems to care.

But as the days went on, through training, through sleeping, through it all, Ryujin still couldn't accept how much her life changed. Drifting with Danielle is great, but Ryujin knew her and Chaeryeong were meant to be co-pilots. Training with Minhyun is great, but Ryujin suddenly lost so much motivation because she didn't desire to please Minhyun the same way she wanted to please Yeji. But that was the whole point.

For lunch, she would eat alone by choice these days. Sitting with Chaeryeong at her memorial in the hall full of other memorial profiles of other veterans that lost their lives. The memorial consisted of Chaeryeong's picture, her name, her rank, the year she started the program until her last year in the program, her birth year and death year, and a motto she was known for.

'Let's be a person who knows how to be satisfied.'

Ryujin sighed, finishing her sandwich and doing the next step in her daily routine. Days were starting to look the same, gray and fuzzy, only coming to color when she was with Chaeryeong at her memorial or when she read Yeji's letters.

However, the letters were dull because they weren't allowed to be lovey-dovey. Their letters were monitored before they were sent out. They were really just updates about each other's lives, but it was enough to keep them happy.

The purple haired one took Yeji's new letter out of her pocket and ripped it open carefully, taking out the nicely folded papers and opening them. To see Yeji's cursive handwriting was enough to make Ryujin crack a small smile, to know that Yeji wrote this herself.

She read every single word, finding patterns in Yeji's writing to see if there was a deeper meaning behind things, sometimes Yeji is struggling but conceals it. Ryujin knows how she changes her language when she's hiding something.

Personally, Ryujin always made two versions of every letter she made for Yeji. The one that had the true emotions of everything, all the lovey dovey, and the one that got sent out. The bland one. She wondered if Yeji did the same.

'I love you 3x my beautiful'  was how Yeji ended this one, of course she couldn't directly write 'my beautiful' otherwise the letter wouldn't be approved. But they had their own love language. An infinity symbol represents possessive words like 'mine' or 'my' and a small flower represents the word 'beautiful', and Yeji wrote an infinity symbol and a flower. Ryujin couldn't help but hurt even more, she just wanted to hear her say it to her.

The last of the contents in the envelope was a picture. Yeji was sitting on a bench that viewed the ocean. It didn't appear to be snowy and the words on the picture, written by Yeji in all caps, explained why.