Beautiful Dead II: portend an early dawn .hayi
@hayixph
the glimmer of fire portends an early dawn
A sense of doom creeps into HaHa’s stomach as he flips pancake dough. It is a cold, harsh feeling, coiling up, around the empty spaces of his ribcage, desperately clawing at his heart.
He knews what that meant.
It was an instant decision and it saved his life. He projected the image of Eunhye carefully keeping an eye on her pancake, ducking away to hide behind his car that held more ingredients. He had barely stepped back or he could see the fire from the corner of his eyes, the giant, black clouds of smoke. Seemed like they were taking the fire ceremony very literally this year.
Something was wrong. Something was horribly, horribly wrong. He could feel it, certain as sunset, in his bones. Something was about to happen.
And then it did. The men stormed through the streets sudden like a gust of wind. His projection of Eunhye didn’t even scream as one of the men stormed by her, kicking the stall to break it. He makes her run off, luckily fast enough for him to catch her and cowers.
Biting his wrist hard to muffle his scared whimpers, he watched, helplessly, as his cute stall become nothing more than splinters, wood crunching and breaking underneath back combat boots. He ripped the little penguin decorations to pieces, dropping something that exploded in a dark fluid. Soon, flames where licking towards the sky, more smoke curling to block the stars, and the little penguin burned and burned.
HaHa kept quiet, cowering behind the car, keeping all his focus on blending in perfectly with his surroundings, making him invisible, unable to be spotted by anyone.
And then he just breathed. Waited. Swallowed back the fear and bile. There was nothing else to do. He couldn’t start running until he was sure they were gone.
Oh god. Hyung! He was here, somewhere, he must be! Even if he was the strongest person he knew, what if they caught him off guard? What if they thought he was on the wrong side?
And Hayi -- no, fuck, sweet Hayi -- what if they found her, what if they hurt her? He trembled, face pulling away in a hurt grimace, feeling helpless and scared. But what he could he do? He was no hero. He was nothing. He couldn’t barge into the fray, hoping to maybe find his hyung, or find Hayi, he had no idea where they were. She must be safe, she had her bodyguards as a champion.
Unless they were in on it.
Oh, fuck.