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This, Han Sooyoung thinks, is so, so fucking stupid.
Why does she even have to do this? She’d stopped giving a shit about the apostle business months ago and she’d assumed everyone else had too, if only because holding onto it for this long would just be ridiculous, after everything else that’s happened and everything else that’s happening. But there are still people cropping up spouting bullshit about how they know what will happen next in this world, how the future scenarios will turn out, useless nonsense Han Sooyoung’s sure Kim Dokja would refute via five-paragraph essay if he were here.
Yeah, Han Sooyoung bitterly thinks. If he were here.
So here she is, standing in this building—which isn’t much of a building, actually, since the upper floors had been reduced to rubble forever ago by what must have been a giant monster, leaving only the lobby and the first few floors still standing. This group of readers had been using it as a base of operations, and after a few days of scouting them out and checking how strong they were (not at all), Han Sooyoung finally stormed in and took care of them. It’s bad enough having people who know the future, but the fact that… well, that they were apparently searching for her, still known as the First Apostle to them, is even worse. And what is she supposed to do? Not take care of them and tie up some loose ends?
Apparently not, because Jung Heewon says, eloquently, “For fuck’s sake, what the hell did you do now? Do you always just go around killing people for no reason, Han Sooyoung?”
“It wasn’t for no reason,” she spits. “You have to know who these idiots are! They were going around calling themselves fortune-tellers! We’ve dealt with people exactly like them before, haven’t we?” I did this for you idiots, Han Sooyoung desperately wants to scream. I did this because…!
Because, a small, miserable part of her brain whispers, you want the others to like you more for this.
It’s stupid. It isn’t something she should care about—what kind of beautiful genius girl author cares about what other people think of her, after all? She can try to fool herself by changing the word ‘like’ into ‘trust’ instead, because trust, at least, means she has some leverage over the other party, but Han Sooyoung hates being fooled, least of all by herself. Fine. She wants the others to like her. So what? Purely so there’s a smaller chance of her being left behind in a particularly difficult scenario that requires a sacrifice, that’s all.
Or she can be a bit more honest, and admit it’s because she just wants them to like her, plain and simple.
Jung Heewon grits her teeth. “Yeah, by talking to them. Not straight up knifing them!”
Han Sooyoung shakes her head. She can already tell this is pointless, much like how her every other interaction with Jung Heewon always plays out. And here she’d almost thought she’d been getting somewhere with the other woman when they worked together to take down the boss in the last scenario… “Whatever. God, who cares? Look, it’s over. They’re not gonna come back to life for you to sit down and have a nice talk with even if you get all worked up like this, so just cool it. Why are you even here?”
Jung Heewon looks like she’s struggling to pick a part from there to respond to first. “Sangah-ssi sent me,” she eventually says, which makes sense. Han Sooyoung is pretty sure Jung Heewon would never willingly go fifty feet within Han Sooyoung if she can help it. “Said she was worried about you going off on your own out of nowhere all of a sudden.”
“How sweet. She shouldn’t have.”
“Are you always like this whenever someone tries to do something nice for you?”
Han Sooyoung huffs. “Can you just go now? Nothing happened, everything’s fine—”
“Except for the dead bodies on the floor,” Jung Heewon irritably interrupts. “And that’s not the only reason I’m here. Han Sooyoung, I heard… someone told me…”
Ah, shit, Han Sooyoung thinks, numbly, already knowing where this is going. Part of her tries to move, or at least prepare to run, because she knows she can outpace Jung Heewon if she just gets even just a split-second headstart, but in a one-on-one match after she’d already exhausted herself taking on several incarnations at once, she’s nowhere near as confident about her chances.
Yet her body remains rigid, frozen, as if Jung Heewon’s words already have her trapped in place. She takes a deep breath, fixes her gaze on the bloodied corpse beneath her rather than up at Jung Heewon’s face. “What is it?”
A long pause. Jung Heewon sighs, and when Han Sooyoung risks a glance she’s running a hand through her long, disheveled hair with one hand, her other resting lightly on the hilt of her sword. “These guys. They were looking for the First Apostle, weren’t they?”
I knew it, Han Sooyoung thinks. I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. So why can’t she move? Why can’t she run away? “Yeah.”
“We—ignored them because we figured they weren’t doing anything weird and were clearing scenarios on their own. But Sangah-ssi said something… and when I went here the other day to talk to them, they mentioned…”
“Jung Heewon.” Han Sooyoung tilts her chin up, meets Jung Heewon’s shifting gaze. “Will you get to the point?”
Jung Heewon’s eyes flash, that spark of fiery anger Han Sooyoung has grown used to seeing from her. “I want to hear it from you.”
“What the hell is there for me to say? You already know, don’t you?”
“That’s not what matters. Tell me yourself.” Lower, almost gentler, Jung Heewon adds, “Just tell me it isn’t you, and I’ll believe you.”
And just what the hell is Han Sooyoung supposed to say to that? The words are so raw, so disgustingly devoted, that part of her almost can’t believe this is coming from the same woman who terrorizes her every time Han Sooyoung so much as dares get a second serving of rice for dinner or something. But the worst part is that she can believe it, because this is exactly the kind of stupid, selfish thing Jung Heewon would do, for Han Sooyoung, and… and.
“Yeah. Sure. Fine. You got me. First Apostle, in the flesh.” Han Sooyoung tries not to cringe. After all this time the moniker is embarrassing, even if she’s not the one who thought it up. “Why do you still remember that shit? Did you fall in love with my avatar back then?”
It happens so quickly Han Sooyoung barely even moves—one second they’re standing before each other and the next Jung Heewon has buried her sword in the wall a hair’s breadth away from Han Sooyoung’s face. The entire not-building groans and shudders dangerously. “You,” Jung Heewon says, lowly. This up close her eyes remind Han Sooyoung of a brewing storm, creeping in over the horizon, angry gray clouds blotting out the blue of the sky. “It was you who hurt them. Gilyoung, Jihye, Sangah-ssi—”
“And? Are they dead?” Han Sooyoung sneers. She shoves Jung Heewon away from her and moves to the side, desperate to put some distance between herself and the planes of a face she’s spent far too many a night memorizing the contours of. “Aren’t we past that? Why are you still caught up in something that happened years ago?”
“You can’t just hurt people and wave it off by saying it was a long time ago!” Jung Heewon snaps. She takes a step forward, wrenching her sword out of the drywall to hold it at her side. She doesn’t point it at Han Sooyoung, doesn’t lift it in her direction, and Han Sooyoung wishes she’d just aimed truer earlier and sliced her head off. “Why do you have to be—”
“So difficult?” Han Sooyoung suggests.
Jung Heewon scowls. “Such a bitch?”
“Name-calling now? I taught you well.”
“Shut up. Just—You—” Jung Heewon lets out a strangled snarl of frustration, arms bulging, knuckles going white from her grip on her sword. “I don’t understand you. Fuck, I’ll never understand you, I—”
“Then don’t!” Han Sooyoung shouts, and the way her voice threatens to tremble at the end is beyond humiliating. “No one’s forcing you to understand me, I don’t give two fucking shits what you think of me, and if you want me to leave then just say so, goddamnit! Using your words too damn hard for you? I’ll go! I’ll go, you’re fucking welcome!”
She thinks Jung Heewon might say something, might even give her the dignity of letting Han Sooyoung hear her name in that voice, but Han Sooyoung turns on her heel and stalks out of the building, crumbling floor be damned. She lets the fire roar in her ears, drown out all other sound, any other words Jung Heewon might try and use against her, until she’s no longer stalking but running, fleeing, escaping for somewhere dark and isolated and somewhere no one will find her, because she doesn’t trust herself enough to keep the fire in her chest from spilling out through her throat, down her mouth.
Each breath runs ragged. Han Sooyoung runs and runs and runs, and she can’t stop fucking thinking about how the only reason she’d killed those idiot prophets in the first place was because they’d been planning an attack on the industrial complex.