crossfire
@adwoojin
it’s half past four a.m. when she parts from the building, a willowy profile against subdued lamp light and the smudged cascade of moon. it’s only in the low light she’s ever truly alone, walking her ghosts like prized possessions, walking the street as if an outsider. this time, death follows her – blood, stitches, and death – the former having been a healer’s attempt, the latter a purposeful abandonment ( superficially wounded soldiers filter out. a woman and her team, alike only in profession, relieve three men of their pains. death feasts tonight ). after, she’d been meticulous about the stain, about sheets bloated with human substance and dark wine-like fluid drooling from raw cadavers. after, she’d honoured their memory by scratching their name, robbing their identity, burning bodies so only their spirits remained because such people will not be discovered, such people are not wealthy enough for lavish funerals. such people cannot afford to be enemies of the tigers. but the wicked && scrupulous – they’re all the same, at the end of the day. there’s no rest for either.
the darkness comes in pieces, soojin pocketing a handful, fingers combing through supple wind when a fleet of lights guarding the entrance rouse awake, flinging unkind and harsh shadows across the pavement. the masked raccoon secreted in the shrubs glowers at her intrusion, though soojin shares the same discontent. here, she trusts in muscle memory to navigate toward the mailboxes, hidden deep around the corner, and the blurry visioned and tired woman eyes the parcels she’s been neglecting for over a week.
slowly, lazily, letters claimed by her grasp stack upon a box, then clapped loosely between her hands, && it’s almost mechanical the way arms move, feet shuffle, motion which would betray awareness if her gaze isn’t already so careened toward pitted slumber, weariness gloving her fingertips. then, a drip of sound; her keys dive onto the floor but there’s something else, someone she hadn’t seemed to observe. her attention snatches on him, a queenfish to hook and line. a man, piloting her interest: seo woojin, who still haunts her.
her bottom lip tugs back between teeth, movement insignificant and fractional, before she’s bending down with balanced effort to retrieve the collapse of metal without so much a sound. she cannot think to make any.
