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

65. False hope

She screamed the names over and over again.

"Sakura, Kazuha!"

And over again.
And again.
Again.

Until her yells were nothing but a whisper in Jungwon's ears.

...

She screamed and screamed and screamed.
All until her mouth felt parched to the point of bleeding, despite the pouring rain beating down like hellfire.
They were a cries of desperation.
Or perhaps utter denial.

She was fearful, as if a chilling, gripping hand had grabbed her and frozen her all the way down to the marrow of her very bones.
Yunjin stumbled through the trees, each step more unstable than the last. Her lungs ached, and it felt like her rib cage was being crushed deep down into her heart.
Her body burned, begging her to stop. But her mind was just too focused.
She was just too determined, too set on it. Much too much for her sake.

"Kazuha! Kaz- Kazuha! Sakura!" Yunjin cried.

She wanted to hear something back. Anything other than the beating rain, or the wind which seemed to carry her voice into the endless abyss of the darkness.
She needed to find them. She'd find one to find the other.
Yunjin refused to stop, even the with the state of her, in such a vulnerable position, with nothing but her desperate willpower and her sword to fight whatever she was going to face.
She didn't care whether there'd be someone to fight alongside her or not. It just didn't matter any more.

She was going to put an end to everything, even if that meant that she was going to give up her life for it.
It was a promise she had made to herself and everyone long ago. And she wasn't going to go back on her word.

Kazuha.
She was going to save Kazuha. Even if nobody was there to help her, even if they were against her decision, she knew deep down in her heart that it was right.
She wasn't going to abandon Kazuha or Sakura. Not like what they did.
Even if there was nobody.
There really was nobody.
Nobody to help her.

She was truly alone.
She was-

A strong, sudden force clasped upon her shoulder.
Yunjin didn't expect it. She was caught at the moment her guard was down. There wasn't even time for her to grab her sword from her sheath.
She was yanked backwards, propelled like a rag doll, against the side of a tree. Yunjin slammed back first into the trunk, and her head whipped backwards, colliding with a thud before she fell to the ground.
Her vision went hazy, but it didn't matter.

Not to the other person.

Then came the words, fiery and lit with utter rage.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!? Are you trying to get you and all of the rest of us killed?"

Yunjin didn't need to see their face to know exactly who it was.
Everything down to the demeanour and the tone, she had heard it many times before.

Heesung.

She looked up at him, trying to squint through her disorienting vision.
His face matched his voice; even through the darkness, she could see that his face was completely ablaze. It looked to her as if, even with the amount of anger he was showing her, he still seemed to be holding himself back, for his and her sake.
His face showed all but a fragment of his fury.

Heesung raked a hand through his hair, seemingly wanting to rip it all away from his scalp.
He despised her.
He despised Yunjin for what she had done.

She wasn't making their situation any better, and instead making it worse, making it much more difficult. She was making them lose the battle they were bound to concede.

And she had hurt him. She had hurt Jungwon.

Heesung was giving her a taste of her own poison.
His own sweet, sweet revenge, in a way.

Yunjin struggled back up to stand, glaring at him.
She reached for something with her hand.
Her sword.

But not for the reason he had first anticipated.
Instead, all she did, was turn, and start to walk away from him.
Who was she kidding?
Who did she think she was?

Heesung reached out, and grasped the hilt of the sword, tearing it away from her grip.
Yunjin turned to him, shoving him with her hand.

"Give it back-"
She reached out to grab it, but he shunted her away, dropping the blade down on the ground next to him.

"HAND THE SWORD BACK TO ME, YOU BASTARD-"
She reached out once again, trying to push him out of the way.

And this time, he broke.
"ARE YOU TRYING TO GET YOURSELF KILLED, YUNJIN?!? WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU? CAN'T YOU SEE? IF YOU FOLLOW THAT GIRL, KAZUHA, IN HER EXTREMELY DELIGHTFUL DECISION OF RUNNING OFF WITH THAT MONSTER, YOU WILL, ABSOLUTELY WILL, GET YOURSELF KILLED ALONG WITH HER!"

He stared at her right in the eyes.
The veins on the side of his head looked as if they were about to burst, a rage in his eyes that perhaps blinded him from everything else in the world.

Yunjin stopped.
"She's... She's not..."

"SHE'S NOT WHAT, YUNJIN? THERE'S ABSOLUTELY-"

"SHE'S NOT DEAD! SHE- SHE'S NOT DEAD! WHY ARE YOU ALL ACTING AS IF SHE IS? HAVE WE GONE THROUGH ALL OF THIS JUST TO LET KAZUHA DIE? AFTER ALL WE'VE DONE, YOU'RE JUST SUDDENLY WILLING TO GIVE UP? WE SHOULD BE SAVING HER, NO MATTER WHAT!"

She kicked him square in the torso, and he fell back, sprawling down in the mud.
He was just as rage filled as her.
But she never gave him a chance to continue, picking up her sword from the ground, shouting at him so loudly that he even felt hints of being slightly taken aback.

"AND- AND SAKURA?!? WHAT ABOUT HER? YOU- YOU'RE ALL LIARS! YOU ALL SPAT LIES! ALL OF YOU AGREED YOU WERE WILLING TO GIVE YOUR LIVES FOR THIS! BUT- BUT IT WAS ALL JUST FALSE HOPE!"

She hurled the tip of her sword down to the ground, impaling deep into the mud, dangerously close to Heesung.
"LIES! IT'S ALL LIES!"

Yunjin turned away, tears rolling down her face more than the rain.

"Lies... That's all you are. You're just lies..."

She wiped it away with her hand, her brows still furrowed in immense anger.
"You- you just make promises you can't keep..."

And she left, storming away into the darkness.