Treasure - an ATEEZ story

Hongjoong's Dream

I need to go back. To right my wrongs, to make sense of our mistake, my mistake. They say that we each have a destiny and once a choice is made it cannot be unmade, but I know otherwise. The masked man told me it was possible, he showed me the way to rewrite history, so I must take the chance. Take it for myself, but more importantly for my crew; although I can't help but wonder, at what cost? Will I lose them again? This time, will I lose myself? It feels like I am playing with fire, making a deal with the devil, and in doing so exposing the darkest parts of myself, but I cannot, I will not, allow them to make the same mistakes we did. Someone must do it right, someone must survive and if this is the price to help them, then I will pay it. We are going to win this time, I don't know how yet, but we will, we have to. I know the consequences now of our mistakes, of our greed and lust for power, of our lack of unity. I know our weaknesses and I know how they will be exploited. I have witnessed it firsthand. I sat and watched from the sidelines as this world slowly burned.

The hourglass is sat in front of me, the one the masked man gave me in my dream. Why did he help me? I don't know, and that uncertainty shifts uneasily in my stomach. It doesn't make sense, but I know that I have no choice but to do what he says. It is too late for us, but I need to make sure it is not too late for them, the other version of ourselves. I just have to hope that in this new dimension, this second chance, we can make better choices. I refuse to let them down this time. I do this for them, and only them, my lost boys, for the potential of their survival I will leave this whole world behind and start again. I can't help but think it is true what they say - that love is a burden, my love for them is certainly both my most wondrous blessing and my greatest curse, it makes me risk everything for them, including myself, no matter the price. I take some comfort in the fact that this new world I am going to make cannot possibly be worse than the one that already exists, can it? I suppose it is too foolish to hope that it will be easy to change our fates, but it would be selfish not to try. I must make sure that it is worth it, in the end, and that I am strong enough to not make the same mistakes twice.

I've made my decision. I pick the hourglass up and turn it over in my hands watching the sand rush slowly towards the floor. I eye it uncertainly. Can he be trusted to have told me the truth? No, but what other option do I have? I rap once on the glass, sharply with my knuckles, just as he had told me to do. A low ring reverberates through the material and the sand stops moving. It floats, suspended in mid air, breaking its constant trickle to the base of the glass, as though time itself has stopped. I watch it for a second, waiting.

Out of nowhere the masked man appears once more in front of me and I cry out in surprise. My hand moves in reflex to fight, but my fist makes no contact with his body and I pass through him as though he was made solely of air. "Where is it you wish to go?" He says, just as he had asked me five minutes ago. I have told you! I try and protest, but instead a shadow answers him in my place "Back to where it all began". There's a beat of utter silence, a shift in the air, and the sand in the hourglass begins to move upwards, defying gravity. Slowly the ghostly memories of myself and the masked man shift and change as the timeline of the world that has been flashes before my eyes, like a film in reverse. It picks up speed, growing faster and faster as the present becomes the last hour and the last hour becomes yesterday. I close my eyes in an attempt to block out the nauseating confusion, but it doesn't help. Suddenly, and without warning, it stops and I am surrounded once more by quiet, tranquillity. In the calm and stillness, the tense expectancy of what is to come, I become aware that I am no longer in the warehouse, I am now somewhere else entirely.