HUNTERS || ENHA/LSFM || - A K-pop Ghost Hunting Story

63. Depart

She had nothing to defend herself. Nothing against Sakura, who was perfectly capable of killing her already even when she had her weapon.

There was nothing more to do... than run.
And so she did.

She turned through the trees, and ran for her life.

...

Time: 22:15, October 23

It asked for his hand.

The solemn echoes reverberated in his ears along with the dying thumps of his heart. It felt as if there was nothing but him and the blood which gushed from his wounds. The irony aroma hung in the air and stung his eyes, which were already tear-filled.

His head hung back, and his eyes drifted down towards the dark abyss below him.
Sunghoon could see his hand, all just a faint, dark silhouette in his clotted vision. He could feel his blood running down the arch of his back and down his shoulder, becoming nothing but a small red stream that fell from his finger.

The voice came again.
Soft and angelic.
It compelled him to listen. It had a tone so smooth, almost like the graceful breeze from the wings of an angel.

"You need to live."

Its voice alone seemed to pierce through the shroud of desertion and isolation; it felt welcoming.
Like it cared for him. If he wasn't going to fight against the pull of death, it would do it for him instead.
And, in fact, he wasn't.
He wasn't able to fight against the pull of death, and his eyes drifted ajar. He took one deep and croaky breath, which he expected to be his last.

His world became darker.
And darker.
And darker.
Until the world was just a darkened slit through his eyes.

His eyelids hung on for dear mercy, tottering between the bridge of life and death. To Sunghoon, he had accepted his losing battle.

His hand.
The blood dripped down his hand.
One small flow, painstakingly draining the life out of him drop by drop.

It was over for him.
There was nothing more he could do.

...

The hand.
The hand became his lifeline.

It reached out to him, and took hold of his own hand, cradling it in its security. It felt like a song of fresh air against his skin, cooling it from the harsh atmosphere darkness.
His lungs, which had once felt like they had been torn and crushed, felt like they had been given a breath of their own salvation; a cool, heavenly breeze brushed over his body.

It pulled him.
It pulled him away from the darkness.

It broke him away from the hellish shroud, and it receded and receded into nothing. He was pulled into an abundance of warm light, some kind which was unearthly, but yet one he would be glad to call home.

He found solace in it. Some kind of unknown serenity and tranquillity. Sunghoon felt like he was floating, floating through some kind of clouds made up of sparking, gleaming crystals, about the size of sand grains, but as dense as a gold leaf. They hung around him in the air as he was pulled higher and higher, to heights he had never imagined possible. It was a pristine array of fragments held up like dangling ornaments, yet as lustrous as they were, they felt completely weightless as they brushed against his skin; it felt like they were never there.

Was this really true solace?
Or was it another one of death's games, waiting for him to let his guard down to push him down when he was weak.

The hand let go of his, and he drifted to a stop, floating in the air, the same way he would if he were in a body of water.

He wanted to hear it again.
The voice.
That soothing, calming voice.
He thought that it would complete him, complete his heaven.
Then perhaps everything would be alright. That he'd stay as he was for the rest of eternity.

He wouldn't have minded.

But the voice...
The voice told him otherwise.
"They need you. They all do." It told him.

Perhaps it was his mind's play, that the voice had come out distorted, twisted into his image of a heavenly seraph.
It wasn't what he had perceived it to have been. There was no solace to be in found in that voice.

In fact, he felt it to be closer to him than he'd ever thought it to ever be.
It brought him back to reality.

The voice.
The voice was desperate, not reassuring. It was begging him.
Emotion-filled.
It was too real to be other worldly. It was uncanny.

It was almost... human.
A wave of anemoia flushed through him; he could feel it. He could feel the emotions through the voice, and feel what its distress.

Concern.
It was full of concern. And some kind of emptiness. As if there were a hollow pit rooted deep down within his very soul. It made him feel like nothing but a shell.
It wasn't just a feeling of sadness or pity, it was something more than just that. Something much, much worse, like a haunting in a way.

It felt like regret.
Sheer and utter regret. Like there was something he wanted to dearly to change, but it swayed forever out of his reach.

"Please," came the human voice.

It's presence was strong, like there was really some kind of being in front of him, and not just some illusion.
What was happening, was really happening.
Perhaps it wasn't just his mind's tricks.
Maybe, even so, it wasn't the voice of death.

Maybe he wasn't going to die after all.

"... go now. Don't let them die..." the voice pleaded.

The voice seemed to quaver.
It felt like a long lost friend calling out to him, like some kind of fragment from his nostalgia. The feeling was surreal, unexplainable to any extent.

But he didn't know who it was, whatever the voice was.
He had never heard the voice.
But it spoke to him with such certainty, as if it had known his every move and the the ones of the people he knew.
But, regardless, he left himself to its will.

He felt its hands, weightless, soft, though still human-like hands come up to his face.

They moved to his eyelids, and closed them. He could still see the light through his eyelids. It saved him from the fear of the darkness.

The cold and hellish darkness.
He wanted to stay in the light for eternity and be safe. Safe from everything.

But the voice told him one last thing.

It told him a message.
A message it told him to give before he went.

To give when the time was right.