Vivid | Lee Minho

•Scene 5•

"Y/n!"

The doors to the room burst open and you flinched, letting the slow, disbelieving intake of breath wash uncomfortably over you.

"This was your plan all along?"

He seemed to have a knack for rude interruptions, you observed, bitterly recalling your first encounter. The night that enabled you to come this far. Uncanny timing, indeed.

"This cannot be it. Y/n, please.."

"No, you are mistaken," you interjected his pleas, gaze fixed on the pristine dagger in your grasp—Ryujin's dagger. So softly, like the words were not entirely yours, you told him, "This is what I've always wanted."

That was right.

You had long wished for silence and a tranquil rest.

You felt it within your own heartbeat. With Renée gone, with your curse lost, you were mortal once again. Your life was in anyone's hands now, and the wish you had so desperately sought for decades was no longer an impossible dream.

This was the true finale you had been planning for from the very moment you opened your eyes to a new world. A hope to fade. To be at peace, not again awakened.

This was all you wanted.

And you hoped he would not be too hurt by the truth. This world was his to delight in, after all. You were only an inconsequential passerby.

"How—" was that emotion that stifled his words? "How can you expect me to believe you when your hands tremble so?"

Tremble? No, that could not be true.

You blinked at the silver blade you held so close to your neck and found that he had not lied. Your hands were shaking.

So defiantly, too.

Was this not what you had planned for all along? Everything you had done, you did for this very ending. To kill the cycle once and for all. To rid yourself of your unending grief, your measureless guilt.

To be freed.

Was that wish not your own?

"Please..." he did not dare step closer, as though any movement from him could shatter the world and its heavens. "Talk to me."

But what could you say?

This was what you wanted, no?

And yet, your body shook with such adamant refusal, your own thoughts revolting against you. Your death had been an easy notion all this time, but now it rattled you, tipped your mind so that you could no longer discern what you truly desired.

Was it not slumber, so long and quiet and free?

Your eyes stung as though set ablaze.

That hollowness you felt in your heart was like a chamber in which your emotions echoed, howling with no one to answer. They cried for the truth that made you tremble so much. They cried for an impudent desire.

You did not have to listen to know—that emptiness you felt was not the absence of a curse. When the twelfth hour neared and a chasm yawned in your heart, it was not the product of freedom that you were unprepared for.

It was a realization.

More than that, it was fear from a realization that stripped you of your lifelong purpose. It was terror and tremoring uncertainty, for what were you to become without a goal?

Everything that you had done so far would be worthless. All your careful planning and all your cautious scheming, it would be as your past lifetimes. Useless. Needless.