Chapter Text
Tick. Tick. Tick.
The ticking was incessant. He struggled against the sounds ringing throughout every fibre in his being. The static felt like torture as it banged against his skull, but he couldn’t get it to stop. His nerves felt as if they would fray and his veins would burst. Stop, stop, stop, please stop. Please.
There was a voice.
“Open your eyes,” it whispered into the darkest crevices of his mind, sending a relieving yet terrifying sense of calm into his bones. The static became louder, but the calm overtook him.
He was closer. He was getting closer.
Despite the walls of his skull trying to keep him trapped, he decided that he would no longer be held prisoner. He struggled against himself, noiselessly but endlessly attempting to bring himself back from the edge.
The static quietened, and the sound waves shifted into the sea, waves bobbing in and out of his existence. He could feel it; he was close. He could almost see her.
Her?
“Open your eyes.”
With a sharp exhale, Seonghwa obeyed the command.
He was flat on his back. Above him, the sky was pitch black save for a few stars. Or was he imagining them? There was no moon. He gripped the ground in an attempt to push himself up, but he was unable to do so. The ground dissipated underneath his fingertips, and it felt like steam under his hands.
Why did he look down?
The sight was beautiful, the possibilities horrifying. Beneath him, there was nothing. A thin mist obscured the seemingly endless distance between him and the pitch-black waters, but he could still hear the waves crashing into one another into the expanse that was the ocean underneath him. Nothing else was in sight, save for the red and purple ripples that signalled the new day.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Seonghwa tried to shoot to his feet, but he slipped. Nearly slipping through, he couldn’t even scream. Just another sharp breath as his hand glided through the mist. An arm shot out and grabbed him before his body followed, and Seonghwa was graciously lifted to his feet.
In front of him was a boy that he had never seen before, but he felt curiously familiar. He was not much younger than Seonghwa himself, but he could not discern much other than that. The effect of the sun behind him meant that his face was shadowed, but Seonghwa, just for a short moment, thought that he glimpsed a shadow of a grin. Larger than what seemed humanly possible. In his hands was a watch with a golden chain, swinging idly while the boy’s hands lightly swayed to the rhythm of the water below them.
“Are you alright?” His voice ran like honey through Seonghwa’s spine, and he instantly sensed a serenity not different from before. “I’m glad I caught you in time.”
“Were you the voice?” Seonghwa’s throat was dry, swallowing so he could speak better. “The one that – ”
The boy chuckled – melodic like windchimes. “I was afraid that you were to stay asleep forever. I even tried to hypnotise you to wake up.”
It began to make sense in Seonghwa’s addled mind. “Okay. At least I’m alive. I think. Where – ”
Open your eyes.
“Where is she?” he muttered, the pain beginning to surface yet again. Seonghwa lifted his hands to his head to massage his temples, but one of them held a silver chain, starting to rust with age. “What’s this?”
The boy shook his head. “It was in your hand when you got here. I tried to see what it was, but your hand was like steel. I couldn’t take it out.”
Seonghwa opened his left hand, and the pain shot through his fingers; he tightened his grip on it, and it strangely brought comfort to do so. “Strange.”
He then realised what the boy said and brought his hands closer to him. “Did you say… ‘when you got here’? Then where – ”
Not skipping a single beat, the boy replied, “Did I? Well, it’s also confusing for me, too. I was here, and you weren’t. Next moment, you were here, as if you appeared out of thin air.”
“I did?”
The boy nodded, the shadow of his grin as wide as ever. “Do you remember anything before this?”
Seonghwa thought hard, but his memory felt like grasping at reeds in a rapid. Every single glimpse of his past swirled past him in his mind, collapsing in his hands when he tried to reach for them. “No, I can’t. Only static. Sounds. The ticking of the clock you have there. A voice.”
In a quick motion, he looked up and stepped a bit closer to the boy. “There was a voice.” As the distance between him and the boy closed, he began to notice smaller details. His hair gleamed as red as the sun behind him, and his eyes shifted through colours. A kaleidoscope of green and blue, making it easy for Seonghwa to forget his thoughts. No. He exhaled, “There was a voice.”
“Wasn’t that just me?” The boy laughed, and Seonghwa again had to focus to remember.
He shook his head frantically. “No. It wasn’t, but maybe it was? … No, it can’t have been. It sounded like a girl. Like, um…”
“Like her?”
Seonghwa lifted his gaze with urgency, his heart beating out of his chest. “Her? So there is a ‘her’? Who is she? Can you take me to her?”
The boy’s expression darkened. “I have no idea where she is, unfortunately. I only know of her existence.” Seonghwa dropped his shoulders, all anticipation diminishing. He barely heard when the boy said, “But I can help you find her.”
“You can?” Seonghwa became so excited, although his mind remained oblivious to the reason. “How? Where? Where do we go? How do we get there?”
The boy nodded, then turning around to face the sunrise. “All you have to do is follow me.”
Seonghwa nodded in reply, hardening his expression. A question abruptly rose to mind. “Shouldn’t I know your name? It feels like you know a lot about me, but I don’t know anything about you.”
“I suppose,” his voice was alight with playful interest. The boy shifted his head to look at Seonghwa. The side of his face exposed to Seonghwa was painted red with the sunrise, and the other was shaded blue and green, the colours moving slowly across his skin.
Seonghwa glanced upwards, shocked to see an array of various shades of blue and green hazing above him. He glimpsed back at the boy, who still kept the same position in relaxation. His smile widened, becoming ever more unsettling as it spanned his face. “My name?”
Seonghwa swallowed again, afraid for what he might hear.
“You can call me Rising Sun.”
Before Seonghwa could reply, the cloud that they had been standing on began to fade under his feet. He fell backwards in disbelief as Rising Sun watched him from above.
“And you just have to follow me into the mist.”
As if his words were a trigger, Seonghwa fell through the mist with heightening speed. Tumbling through the air, he searched the air for the mist, but all he could see was the sun to the east, and the aurora above.
Gripping the chain in his hands like a lifeline, Seonghwa braced himself for the darkness of the waves.