remember me [kiho, kihyun x wonho]

-8-

Following his desperate escape through the forest, Kihyun discovers all too quickly that the outside, the freedom beyond the walls of the compound, the big beautiful world out there that he's always dreamed of and yearned for, is not quite the perfect, blissful paradise that he had expected. It's not any kind of paradise at all, really.

Well, maybe somewhere it is, somewhere further out, far from here, far beyond the reach of this forest and its thick, tall, endless lines of trees. Maybe somewhere out there lie the fields of wildflowers and the pools of clear, blue water, the brilliant orange sunsets and the wide-open crystal skies that Kihyun had always pictured when he had imagined freedom, when he had imagined what it would be like to be free. Somewhere out there was a world that wasn't destroyed, a world that wasn't desperate and hungry, a world that had survived and thrived, reclaimed itself from millennia of humanity destroying it, just waiting for him to discover it, just waiting to embrace him in its arms.

But here, here in the forest, Kihyun is just alone and afraid, confused and weak, unsure what to do, unsure how he even got to this point, his situation growing more desperate by the moment as he's quickly faced with the reality of what it really means to have escaped, what it really means to be on his own and out in the world and in such a vulnerable state, and not only is it definitively not paradise, it's anything but paradise.

He wanders for several days following his escape from the compound, the complete circumstances of which he still can't even begin to wrap his head around, but he figures that there will be time to figure that all out later, when he's found a place to settle, when he's managed to find the basic necessities for continued survival. And those few days wandering in the forest feel like the longest, most difficult days of his life as he grapples with physical, mental, and emotional hardship the likes of which he's never before experienced, and never like this, never so completely alone.

Because the thing of it is, there's something very frightening about being alone, being really, truly alone. Yes, he had always been the type to enjoy his solitude at the compound, to enjoy his books and keep to himself, to treasure his time away from the other hybrids, whom he had never much gotten close to. If he had been asked before whether he'd enjoy being alone in the woods, he probably would've said that yes, he'd enjoy it immensely.

But he's never actually been alone like this, with not another soul around for miles and miles, and he's only now realizing how the presence of others, of civilization, was a necessary comfort that he took for granted, and that being alone like this is more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.

The only way he's even able to keep track of how much time goes by is by some strange, unnamable instinct deep inside of him that he doesn't recognize and can't explain, something that tells him roughly when it's morning or afternoon even when the sky and the light from above are mostly obscured by the trees.

Beyond that, he finds it increasingly difficult to be able to tell exactly how much time goes by minute to minute, second to second. There are times when he stops to rest, unsure if he's been sitting on the ground for only a few minutes or if it's been hours, and there are times when he bolts to escape some menacing shadow or strange noise in the leaves, unsure if he's sprinted in fear for an entire day or for only thirty seconds.

The forest grows thicker and darker the further that he ventures in, the trees condensing, looming, seeming to slowly squeeze him in from all sides. It feels like the forest is slowly consuming him, swallowing him whole little by little, as if he's an insect that's blindly wandered into the folds of some great, carnivorous plant, slowly closing in, so slowly that he can't even feel it until it's too late, until all that's left is for him to be dissolved and digested.