TARGET

서른 셋

song for this chapter^

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"NANA! HURRY UP SLOWPOKE!"

The gale traveled up Jaemin's loose fitting cotton shirt, tickling his midriff. Heated pavement kissed the pads of his feet as he chased his friends down the decaying street. He relished the long days of aimless recreation, the mellow midsummer nights laying atop the amplitude of grass fields, littered in alluring weeds disguised as flowers among the meadow.

"Wait!" Jaemin huffed, mane interweaving with the wind that danced around his figure, "Slow down!"

Strangely, despite his rather expeditious pursuit, the gap between his friends and himself only broadened. Nonetheless, this did nothing to cease, faze even, his chase.

"Because you never, ever, stop running,"

Jaemin tripped over a rock, aimlessly swimming in the sea of pavement. His knees burned from impact.

He whipped his head to and fro to locate the source of the voice, but his attempts were futile as he was deserted in the middle intersection, knees flaming, stained in the pigment of roses. Before him, he could no longer see his group of friends, as their boisterous laughter faded onward.

Slight panic began to boil in the pit of his stomach,

"Who was that?"

A mighty gust bombarded Jaemin's frame, he shielded his vision with his forearm.

"No one. Absolutely....no one,"

The wind died down, prompting Jaemin to lower his arm, unhinge the lids he unknowingly had screwed shut, release the breath he didn't know he was holding.

"What do you see, Nana?"

...Nothing.

Literally, he saw...nothing.

No, not pitch black. It was just...nothing.

To try to fathom it:

Try to see through your elbow. Or try to remember what it looked like before you were born. Or even when you have a dreamless sleep and try to remember what it was like while you were sleeping.

Yeah. That nothing.

Yet Jaemin's thoughts were still in tact, and he could feel the blood trail down his shin in a painstakingly slow manner, making him itchy. He felt the sweltering late July sun beat down on the temple of his forehead, the gravel eat at his palm.

But he could see nothing.

He hated, no, genuinely loathed that fact.

"You see nothing? Right? Hear nothing but me? Feel nothing but the pavement below you?"

Jaemin was suffocating, he felt blood rush through his head, nothing but absolute terror encompassing him.

"What's wrong, Nana?"

"W-what are y-you?"