달에 부르는 노래. sp.
it starts as a frustrated huff, a tiny noise orchestrated in the pit of his chest, designed to push away the concerns he has, but the idea persist, eating gaps into his marrow, pillaging his rib cage and leaving nothing but empty space for the tempest of butterflies he feels like he’s swallowed to fly.
it’s at night when they come for him, not the soft memories he clings to as gasoline, igniting his will to stay patient, but something angry, poisonous, doubtful. the sting of suni’s palm against his cheek, the claustrophobic feeling of the chain that’d been locked around his neck, the view of the garden from behind bars.
the wolf boy curls legs to his chest. he wishes for the notes of her guitar strings to muffle it all, but there is only wind in the trees of the forest, the rustling noise of crickets and their chirps.
she will never find you. the words, though they never leave cheolsu’s mouth, taste angrily of jitae’s blood, suffocating and polluted at the back of his throat. he bit at them with a snarl, eyes slide shut and fingertips slip from their embrace of his knees to lock firmly in uncut hair.
he had not slept since he came to this new world, the night song sung by the city too deafening for his sharp hearing, and that too weighs upon slender shoulders. it was the constant noise that chases him out, far into the woods, until it started to lessen, stopped ricocheting from his head, down his spine, an echo that seeps in too deep.
even here, the city smoke stretched up and devoured the borderless, white freckled night sky, blackening it into a dull, inky and unforgiving ocean. he couldn’t see it, but if he focused, tore his thoughts away from the static of his misery, the moon still made cheolsu’s tongue curl with restrained noise.
another huff, less occupied than the last, before his head tilted back, lips parted. it built, like the sudden emotion, in his stomach, a long, shuddering inhale, before the tension broke, like a fever, and the wolf boy keened.
first, the noise was frenetic, an unkempt yowl that scratched his throat, scrabbling at dirt to raise his body into a crouch, supported by palms, pressed into the earth. the sound ebbed, felt like it would give in his chest and fracture, but instead it simply deepened, more of a howl than a scream.
no hands yanked at him, no voices silenced him, and so he continued, eyes squeezing shut. he refused to quiet until his thoughts did first.
and his determination, being far stronger than his sadness, won.
