Chapter Text
Sayeon sat up slowly, frowning and blinking at Ryujin. Her essence was dangerously low.
Ryujin’s mind was going overtime. What the hell was happening?! She glanced feverishly between the mirror and Sayeon, who was pushing herself up to a standing position, leaning on a sink.
“Ryujin? What are you-”
“What the fuck is happening?? Are you fucking seeing shit again?? Why the hell did I just sense a godling’s essence here?!” Ryujin’s eyes flitted across Sayeon’s face, stopping abruptly on her left eye.
It wasn’t Sayeon’s eye. It was a godling’s eye.
Sayeon frowned, then jumped and whipped around to face the mirror.
Ryujin yelped, cursing as she took a quick instinctive step back.
What the fuck was happening? Ryujin had heard of stories of godlings coming down to earth to claim champions, but she never really truly believed it. Now, she was second-guessing herself.
Sayeon turned back to Ryujin, looking… blank.
“Holy shit, Sayeon… your eye. What the hell happened in here?”
Sayeon took a breath, opening her mouth like she was going to say something. Probably lie her ass off and hope to get away with it.
Then she frowned again, closing it.
Her gaze hardened.
Was she… talking to someone? Or something? In her head?
“Ryujin, I’m-” Sayeon winced, her hands flying up to her left eye, as if someone had poked it with a needle.
Fuck. What was going on? Was she trying to fight the godling?
“Sayeon…?” Ryujin stepped forward, reaching out to Sayeon.
Or was she tricking her? Was it tricking her?
She hesitated.
“I-” Sayeon’s eyes darted around, and Ryujin swore she could see her thinking overtime, worry and anxiety shimmering all around her.
Then… she went blank again.
Sayeon, won’t you ever let anyone in?
Sayeon straightened up, looking Ryujin dead in the eye, and said smoothly, “Okay. Ask me anything.”
Why do you do this, Sayeon Lee?
Ryujin frowned slightly, sighed, crossed her arms, and said, “Okay then. What happened in here?”
“I made a deal with a god.”
“You- what?” Ryujin froze.
So I was right. Why, Sayeon, what were you thinking? What are you ever thinking?
“Yes. I made a deal with a god. You interrupted.”
Ryujin just stared.
Her aura… She wasn’t lying.
Why wasn’t she lying?
Couldn’t she lie just this once?
“You… You’re not lying.”
“No. I’m not.”
A beat. Then, Ryujin raked her hands through her hair, laughing nervously, “What the fuck, Sayeon? I don’t even-” She cut herself off, releasing her hair, “How? Why?”
“I made a deal to extend my gift in exchange for a piece of my humanity.”
Ryujin stared.
Why would anyone willingly do that to themselves?
Well, Sayeon wasn’t just anyone, was she?
“Your gift. For your humanity. Are you fucking insane?”
Sayeon cocked her head to the side, “Perhaps. But I’ll do what it takes to get us to red ties. To get all of us to red ties.”
“All of us… You- Of course. You are fucking insane. Your gift. Rewinding time, isn’t it?”
Sayeon’s eyebrows twitched, and something in her eyes and aura shifted.
Ryujin smirked, saying “You think I wouldn’t figure it out? We all knew you were bullshitting abo-”
“How?” Sayeon interrupted.
Ryujin glared at her for a second, then sighed again, continuing, “You never activate your gift. I never see your eyes glow, just sense a dip in your essence. You said yourself that your mother never did either, so I’m willing to bet she probably had the same gift. So I kept thinking, ‘what was something that would never entail activating essence?’ But of course, you would have to at some point, and the only way you could was to take away that moment.” Ryujin had figured this out a while ago, rattling it off like a rehearsed line from a play. She wasn’t sure how many times she had guessed before. Sayeon had probably been sure to wipe those times from existence. All those times her essence had dipped right as she was about to ask… There were too many times to count.
“Hm. Yes. Of course, you are right. I can rewind time. Only for about sixty seconds. As for my mother, I truly don’t know what her gift was. It might have even been going forward, or stopping time entirely.”
Ryujin’s anger bubbled over. A bottle that she had tried to keep capped, not fully being sure that it was for the right reason, had finally gotten its reason. She had used all of them. Taken advantage of them when they couldn’t do anything to stop her. And they would and could never know what she truly did or said during those moments. “You fucking- How are you so calm about this? That means all those times I felt a dip in your essence you were just using us, manipulating us, like some fucked up game of chess! And now you just… Made a deal with a god to extend that?!”
Sayeon was silent for a moment, before she answered, she seemed strangely calm? And something else Ryujin couldn’t quite place. “I saved your life more times than I can count. The rest of them as well.”
She just didn’t understand, did she? How could she? Her humanity was gone. It had been gone for a while now, even without the godling to take it away. “You think I don’t know that? I don’t want you to tell me you saved my life right now, I want you to admit that you played us like puppets, I want you to see how wrong that is! But you can’t see that, can you? You can’t see how fucked your morals are. Ever since you got here, ever since that day in the warehouse, ever since I died the first time, you’ve been decaying. I sense it, in your essence. You’re rotting, Sayeon.” She spit out those last words, a bitter taste on her tongue.
“...Okay. Ryujin, I’m-”
“No! You don’t get to just carefully pick out what you’re going to say just to get the best reaction! You don’t see how this is pushing all of us away from you! You want our trust, but you’ve already ruined it. You ruined it the day you decided to lie to us.”
A beat.
Ryujin took a deep breath.
“Okay.”
“That’s it?” What was Sayeon’s problem?!
“I don’t know what you want me to say, Ryu-”
Sayeon’s words were cut off by a slap.
Ryujin brought her hand back up to hit her again, hesitating. What the hell? Her essence…
Slowly, Sayeon turned her head back to Ryujin, and started laughing.
Ryujin just stared at her. What the fuck? Why was she laughing? And her aura? She was… She fucking enjoyed that.
“Sorry… Just, you surprised me.” Sayeon said, touching the part of her cheek that was still smarting.
“You fucking freak, what the hell was that?!”
Sayeon tilted her head. “What?”
“...Nevermind. I can’t even begin to describe… whatever. I can’t deal with your bullshit right now.” Nevertheless, she leaned against the wall, eyeing Sayeon tentatively. She couldn’t let her be alone again. Not with that thing. It didn’t matter how much she pissed Ryujin off. They would never understand each other. Especially now. But that didn’t change the fact that Sayeon was human. How ever much removed now, it didn’t matter, because Ryujin had seen her when she was. She still cared, however much she hated to admit it.
“Aren’t you going back out for a smoke?” Sayeon asked. She still didn’t understand.
“And leave you alone with that fucked up god thing so you can finish whatever was going on in here when I came in? No way.”
Sayeon frowned, then sighed, bringing her fingers together into a snapping position.
Ryujin stared.
She was going to erase this.
And here Ryujin had thought…
Nevermind.
How could she have not seen this coming? Sayeon’s essence had grown back over the course of their talk, and by a lot. A lot more than she had had before.
She was going to go back to save them. Of course she was. She wanted the four survivors, that twenty percent survival rate, for herself. How could she not? Everyone wanted it. And she had the power to take it.
She was always going to erase this, Ryujin realized. She had told her the truth, all the way through, just because Ryujin would never remember it.
She sighed, closing her eyes.
Maybe, in some other timeline, some other universe, they would have worked everything out. Maybe in some other timeline… they could’ve been normal, even. Ryujin would’ve played piano for audiences around the world while Sayeon ruled the court of law and order with a steady hand. Maybe in some other timeline they were happy.
But not in this one.
Never in this one.
A beat.
And then the unmistakable sound of a snap.