𝐴𝑚𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑛𝑡𝒉𝑖𝑛𝑒 // 𝐿𝑒𝑒 𝑀𝑖𝑛𝒉𝑜

twenty.

     It had been too long; the harsh wind was beating down violently, Haneul didn't know if she could hold out anymore.

The boy had left long ago. At first she'd hoped that he would show his face again, maybe share his tangibility with her so she could feel something real again.

     But he didn't come back.

     There was no way to keep time there, wherever she was. Haneul could only sit and sleep on the rough ground, watching the dust swirl and dance in asymmetrical patterns.

     Her throat was dry, but as always there was no water to be had. The isolating environment caged her in even though a vast expanse lay before her.

     Haneul wished she was dead. She should have been already.

     It happened when she was sleeping. The slightest sound pricked her ears, but it could've just been another dream, and she stayed curled up on her side.

     "Haneul."

     The effort it took to open her eyes was worth it. His face was the most beautiful thing she'd seen in a while, and she was captivated.

     She could see his mouth forming words, but the wind snatched them away before she could understand. A look of frustration crossed his face before he grabbed her head and yelled straight into her ear.

     "We have to go, we have to go now!"

     Go? Go where? There was nowhere to run or escape. He was mistaken.

     The boy shook Haneul sharply, and she released a cry of surprise at his aggressiveness. Her head hung down, the small bit of strength left in her body beginning to wane. He seemed to realize that she couldn't move and swore, letting his head fall back and screaming something up at the sky.

     He was probably going to leave her again. Now that he'd seen the state of her, the boy would figure out that she was useless; there was no reason to save her from this strange place because she was just a burden.

     Every thought of being abandoned fled from her mind as the boy gathered her in his arms and held her tight, her stomach lurching as he took a breath and she felt like her body was being scattered into millions of pieces.

-

Haneul woke with a jolt, her heart pounding as she pried her dry tongue from the roof of her mouth. Her mind was scrambling for something; she was supposed to be somewhere else right now, to have escaped from something.

The more lucid she became, the more details of the dream flitted away like dust on the wind, and Haneul could only catch her breath and strain her mind to recall any scrap of it.

Her entire body was trembling, teeth chattering uncontrollably as her feverish body combated the adrenaline surge brought on by the vision. The tips of her fingers had no feeling, and she weakly rubbed them together.

The scent of warmth and spice filled the air, and in the back of her mind Haneul realized that Minho must've cooked breakfast. He hadn't done that since the morning he'd spoken about his mother.

Disoriented and shivering, Haneul blinked several times to clear her vision, her head leaning up to check Minho's chair. It was empty, his book sitting on the arm with a page marker hanging out of it.

A sudden sequence of crashing and swearing echoed from the kitchen, and in spite of her ailing state, Haneul rolled her eyes while Minho's string of obscenities continued.