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I left.
When I first heard those words, I was surprised to feel a deep weariness instead of dread, like a bone-deep ache that throbbed every time my heart beat. My body sighed, like an instinctive reaction to the news, and I felt the need to get out of the room before I was crushed by yet another avalanche and yet another earthquake before I was swallowed whole.
So I left.
I got up, my hand slipping out of his so smoothly that it felt like he had never even held it, and moved to the door. Taeyong didn't move to stop me—he must have known I was going to react this way, or he would've tried to obstruct my path. Instead, he watched as I left, not moving a muscle, with a gaze so heavy that it felt like a blanket draped over my shoulders.
There was much I needed to know, but I didn't feel like I had the space for any of it. My heart felt full of knowledge and brain empty with ignorance, but whatever was good for me, I didn't know. I felt numb, like I had fallen into a pond of icy water and the tips of my body were beginning to freeze over, the blood rushing to my core. As if I was beginning to get used to the feeling.
Even as I turned away, it seemed that instead of walking away from something, I was walking towards something else. Doom, probably. I was always walking towards someone's doom.
"There you are." I glanced away from the floor as I heard footsteps approach, seeing Ten reach me at the bottom of the stairs. He looked anxious but hesitant, with his hair standing at the ends as if he had run his fingers through it over and over. He came up to me, keeping a good distance of a few feet. "Jungkook wants you at the table."
My hand was colder than the knob of the stairwell's railing as it rested over it. There was only one table in the safe house, and it was always covered with maps and knives and magazines—not the reading kind. "Can't I skip this one?"
"I don't think so." Ten pursed his lips. He seemed like the only one who had barely changed ever since my father had been killed, but that was maybe because he had already been intimidated by me before the incident happened. "He got someone to talk back at the casino, and he wants you immediately, though I don't know if it's because you have something to tell him or if he has something to tell you."
'Getting someone to talk' was pretty widely-known code for torture. "I really don't feel like it, Ten."
"I think we might be moving onto the Lee territory."
I froze. Something dormant had jerked awake inside of me, and I was struggling to contain it. "Ten minutes."
He nodded, already beginning to turn around, as if he had known I would agree even before I did. "Ten minutes should be enough."
I followed him into the empty room on the floor below, clenching and unclenching my fists as I tried to focus on appearing normal. After the incident at the casino, I don't think anyone would have liked to see the vengeful spirit rise again, and I felt that I had succeeded in tricking them into believing that it was gone, at least for now.
