The Encounter Of A Lifetime (TanCha/Arthdal Chronicles fanfic)

i. first sight

"You're bleeding."

"You can hear me?"

"He's not like you."

"I need you to guard her from now on."

"High Priestess!"

Yangcha woke up with a start and a throbbing pain in the head. The sunlight that was coming from the small curtain crack forced his eyes open though there were tears in them threatening to fall anytime. His white shirt was dampened in cold sweats and his breathing was deep and slow. It took him a few minutes before he was able to calm himself down and then finally came around to realize what has happened.

"Oh. It was that dream again," he thought. The same dream he's often had for months now.

He look over to the side table where the clock was and it was only 6:12 in the morning. He woke up forty-eight minutes earlier than usual. Yangcha rolled over on his side as he gulped down the dry lump on his throat and sniffed in a stifled sob. He thought it silly to cry over dreams that are even too vague to remember. It was always the same dream but the moment he wakes up from it, he forgets everything. He does not know nor remember who was in it. He does not remember what happened and how it ended. He does not know why it was always that same fuzzy dream, nor does he know why he always wake up cold, quivering, and oddly sad everytime. But he does remember this one thing and this one thing only. The old lady he met from hours before he started having the dream was also in it.

Outside his room, Yangcha could hear the muffled voice of the weatherman delivering today's forecast on the tv in the living room and the sound of his mother already starting her day in the kitchen. When his breathing was back to normal and the cold sweats all over his body has dried out, he forced himself up and off of his bed to get ready for his first day on senior high.

Two months ago, at the end of junior years, Yangcha was on his way home from martial arts practice when he bumped into an old lady by the cross road two streets away from school. Yangcha perceived the granny as a very queer individual; she looked very frail in shape, had a long, white hair, was garbed in long white robe and had tan skin. The old lady said something to herself about a fateful encounter and in this lifetime when he asked if she was okay, and then suddenly walked out on him as if she hadn't almost fall on her back. Right after that event, Yangcha has had the dream for at least twice a week. Sometimes he gets it straight for five nights. He haven't told anyone about it and had no plans in doing so. What ever it was, he has no idea at all. It creeps the hell out of him, of course, but he also can't help but wonder who the old lady was and what she did to him. Yangcha decided to call it a curse.

***

The commute to school was brief as usual. When he got off the bus, he immediately spotted a familiar face. It was Ppong from the same year, a teammate from the martial arts and a childhood friend. Ppong waved his hand on him aggresively, displaying a huge, friendly smile on his face like always.

"Hey," Yangcha greeted as soon as he got to him. Ppong wasn't a short person but he wasn't tall as well, but compared to Yangcha who's height is towering, he would look very tiny. Yangcha wasn't much of a talker and Ppong was the total contradictory of him. He was very friendly, the kind whose friendliness won't get mistaken by the girls for flirting. That is why among everyone else, Yangcha was closest to him.

"Have you checked which class you're in yet?" Yangcha asked as they started walking to where there were pool of students gathering around the bulletin board.

"Nah, no need. I bet I'm still in 4-C," Ppong answered coolly. "You?"

"Dunno. Let me check," Yangcha squeezed himself in to the front to search for his and Ppong's names. As expected, Ppong really was on 4-C, and Yangcha was on 4-A. It didn't matter to Yangcha which class he'd be in, but making it to the elite class on his last year in high school was something he wasn't expecting. Maybe being an academically inclined student-athlete paid him off somehow.