𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐬 (𝐩𝐢𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞!𝐚𝐮) 𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐄𝐙

CH. 43 ~ Stargazing

A humming sound followed by a bright light shines through my closed eyelids. I lift a hand to block the brightness as I open my eyes to see myself in someplace unknown. All around me, large foliage and vegetation grows wildly but oddly enough it creates a beautiful scenery. The humming gradually gets louder until I hear it only a couple of spaces ahead of me.

I get up off of the foliage, dusting myself off and I look around hearing that familiar tune being hummed by an inscrutable source. For some moments, I hear it to my left and then to my right. It moves around making me turn my head in every direction. I find myself spinning crazily in circles when suddenly the humming stops and it all goes silent.

Everything has gone completely still and it's putting me on edge. I almost jump out of my skin when I hear a rustling in the greenery from behind me. I swivel around instantly in a defensive position seeing a woman a few feet ahead of me in a wine colored cloak. She has her hood on and I can't see who it is so I warily begin to scoot over to her, getting close enough to just reach out to touch her.

When I'm in range, I extend a hand ever so slowly to tap her shoulder, holding my breath as I do, but before my finger can even skim her cloak, she vanishes into thin air right before me, only to appear behind me, causing me to scream in surprise.

What scared me wasn't the fact that she was able to move so quickly but the fact that what I was looking at right now was an exact replica of me. From the curves in my cheek bones to the tiniest strand of hair on her scalp, the woman I saw in front of me is my exact clone. The only thing that set her apart from looking like me were her eyes. This copy of me had cold, dead eyes that looked more like they belonged on a corpse than on a living human being. Seeing myself like this with these lifeless eyes unsettles me and it doesn't help that all she's doing it staring at me.

After a small moment of staring, my clone finally comes to life. Lifting one of her delicate hands up to my face to caress my cheek. Her skin feels deathly cold on mine, almost to the point where it burns my skin.

"Sun-Mi, Sun-Mi, Sun-Mi," The expressionless copy of me speaks up in my exact tone only without any emotion. It expresses itself in a monotone voice as it drags its finger across my cheek to my lips, feeling my face. "You were always a sad one, weren't you?" It asks, continuing its odd trail across my lips. "They're going to leave you. They always do." The replica doesn't even have to explain for me to understand who exactly it's talking about. At the same moment she says this, I feel my heart being squeezed harshly but I can't bring myself to move in my dream state.

"No," I whisper breathlessly, barely managing to shake my head.

"Yes, they will leave you." It repeats itself. "It's what you deserve. You abandon someone, someone abandons you." Remorse starts to set in as my heart continues to feel like it's being crushed in my chest.

"No. No! I didn't abandon Taehyung! He died. He took the bullet, it's his fault!" I argue desperately trying to rip away this overwhelming amount of guilt that's beginning to surmount me. I blink once but in that split second the face changes to Taehyung's cold dead face, which frightens me even more than before. I gasp, stepping away from his disturbing figure.

"You were the one who was supposed to die. Instead I died. You know that bullet was meant for you. Now you've forgotten me and switched me out for your new little friend." Taehyung's replica speaks up in that deep-velvety tone. As he speaks his skin begins to crack and split like a shattering piece of glass until there are a million tiny cracks all over his pale white face. Suddenly, the replica smiles which is what scares me the most because it looks so out of place next to those beady eyes. "But don't worry, they'll soon forget you like you've forgotten me." He widens his smile horrifically which is all that's needed to make his face shatter into a million pieces.