where you at.
avfatale:
“hanbyul!”
she pulls him into a hug, a wave of relief washing over him. he is the only one that matters to her and he’s the only one ever on the receiving end of her affection.
“where were you? did you get hurt?”
when it all starts, he isn’t doing anything particularly important. laying in the grass near the fountain on campus, hanbyul is gazing at the stars, his fingers tugging lightly on the blade of grass between his fingers. it’s soothing and helps the pulsing headache he has from a long day of training. the day had been too hard and too stressful for him to try to fall asleep without his sleeping potion but it was too late in the night for him to take it now. if he took it anyway, he wouldn’t wake up until his classes the next day were probably close to being over.
in hindsight though, it’s a blessing in disguise that he didn’t take it. once he sees the stars turning from small stagnant lights into only seeing bright fast flashes of orange and red, he knows something big is happening. hanbyul jolts up at the sound of the first explosion, his hands immediately covering his ears from the loud and sudden noise it causes. the second explosion has him scrambling to his feet, picking up whatever small items he had with him and shoving them into his pockets. areum. he needs to find her. even though hanbyul has no idea what’s happening, he knows that finding her is the most important.
as fast as his feet let him, he makes his way to the academy, running past debris and fallen buildings; then the headache begins. as if all at once, the feelings of despair, longing, confusion, anger all come crashing into him at once. he wasn’t paying attention to keeping people out, he was only paying attention to finding his sister. with a shout, his hands rush to cover his ears again, knowing that it won’t do anything to keep out the onslaught of negativity he’s feeling. he closes his eyes and shakes his head, all futile attempts to keep the flood of feelings out of his already pounding head. the closer he gets to the dorms however, the worse it gets. he slows from the pace he was running at and begins to walk, the throbbing in his head almost too much for him to handle. the need to find his sister has to over weigh it. he has to find her. even if she was the main protector of the two of them, he just needed to know that she was okay, that she wasn’t trapped under a fallen building. that she was even alive.
his power doesn’t work on her. it never has and he thinks it’s another reason why he trusts her so much. not only did they grow up in hell together, but she allowed him to have his own feelings. without the sway of what her emotions were, he knew exactly how he was feeling about things, he could trust his own mind.
hanbyul forces himself in through the back of the dorms, a door that most of the students don’t seem to know about if the rush of students out the front door is anything to go off of. inside the building is a different story to outside. the feelings change to desperation, panic, hurt. these are the feelings of people knowing they’re stuck, knowing they’re going to die, knowing that there’s no hope. it’s overwhelming as he tries to pull himself up the stairs, on top of wondering if anything bad is going to happen to him as he does. he has to keep his tunnel vision though. he has to find his sister.
making his way into a room outside of the stairwell that looks relatively safe, he pulls open the door and crushes his hands against his ears taking a few deep breaths trying to drown out the wave of emotions coming over him. he doesn’t even notice when the door slams open and he barely hears his name being called out over the muffled sound from his hands, looking up, he sees his sister rushing towards him, pulling him up off the ground and into a crushing hug. hanbyul for the first time wishes he could feel his sister so he could feel the relief that she’s probably feeling.
“I’m okay,” he croaks out, his throat dry from running, dry from screaming out her name. “areum, i’m really okay.” his sister checks him over in the way that an overprotective sister would and it’s relieving to him in his own way. “i was at the park trying to get some peace and quiet. where were you? what’s even happening?”
