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Despite the chaos of everything that had happened in the last few hours, and the fact that she was currently lightheaded from being shot, Hyuna needed to keep going. She presses a tight fist to her abdomen, grits her jaw.
A little while longer—a little while longer and they were home free. Then and only then could she breathe a sigh of relief and tend to her wounds.
She listens to the report of a subordinate and tries to turn her focus onto everything else except the pain. The stale scent of the empty stage, the sting of the cold air that even the jacket they had given her couldn't quite keep out. Her hair sits uncomfortably in her cap.
Data extraction, they reported, was a success. Small mercies, she thought.
(Mizi, she distantly notes, was crying. Loud, gasping cries that shook her shoulders as she cradled Till in her arms tightly, as if she was trying to stifle the blood from his wounds for some chance that he might live.
Small mercies, she thinks again, bitterly.)
And about the hostage, continued the report. The hostage was cooperating for now, but where should he be secured…
The hostage—it doesn't compute in her mind at first, that they were talking about him .
Luka.
She had thought of him plenty, once. Playmate. Friend.
(Murderer.)
She can almost feel the artificial sunlight with synthesized grass under her feet, those simpler days when time was endless and her world was nothing but the three of them in that garden: her, Hyunwoo, and Luka. Back when things were easy, and all she worried about was telling off Hyunwoo for playing too rough with Luka again.
And then Hyunwoo was gone.
Three became two, and soon enough, two became one.
After, there was the 49th season: her on that big stage, scores of aliens surrounding her. She didn't care, though. It was just her and the music, the singing, the dancing. She performed for herself.
Hyuna started strong—she always did. She had a good, strong alto. The best vocals, qualitatively speaking.
The thing was: she would've won that round, quite easily, even.
But she couldn't kill someone, not even indirectly.
She’d lost her nerve at that last minute, and she had lost her leg (and almost her life) because of it. Struggling in that dark alleyway, she didn't regret throwing the competition, and dragged herself forward slowly, painfully.
She'd decided, if she made it out of there, that that life was behind her. She would never think of it again. She'd never think of him again.
(Disregarding the fact that she did try to go back to ANAKT, and that she was back here again, where it all started. And wasn't she thinking of him right now?)
And after , there was Isaac and Jacob and Dewey, a whole human rebellion brewing against the segyein, and so the only thing she wanted to (and could) worry about was the right here and right now. About how to stage a rebellion that had some semblance of success, making it so that taking back their planet wasn't just some distant pipe dream.
Hyuna had partitioned her life into a neat before and after. But now, for the sake of the future, she had to deal with her past.
She looks at him.
His eyes had always fascinated her, how they were the exact same color as his hair, a light buttercup-yellow. It was almost like he was made that way on purpose, she had thought as a child once.
Those same eyes looked at her now. Shock, and then—
Despite the gun to his head, the smile on his face made him look warm, the flush on his cheeks barely visible in the dim lighting. Years of not seeing his face and yet the way he smiled at her hadn't changed.
Despite herself, she feels like a child again, watching him turn to her fully, and take a step towards her.
The child-like joy on his face. The look in his eye, cheek spattered with her brother’s blood. The two images overlaid in her head, made her feel ill on nights where despite how all her mind’s eye could see was Hyunwoo, bleeding— dying, her chest still ached with a yearning for Luka.
He walks, and then runs towards her with no regard for the gun—the danger to his life—like just being close to her was worth it. Even if it meant his brain matter splattered all over the cold floor.
Hyuna thinks of a man, starved, when she looks at Luka.
She has the presence of mind to make a sharp gesture with her arm, though it jars the injury on her side: stand down.
The gun lowers.
(Maybe, in some other world, Hyunwoo's shadow looms too large, and she thinks of the perfect way to hurt him one last time. She sees the raised gun, and she thinks of one last embrace.
In her dying moments, she faces him—and she stops denying herself the truth.
But here, things go a little differently.)
They both lift their arms: him, for a hug, her, to subdue. She takes his wrists, still bird-thin, and binds them together.
“Hyuna,” he breathes, the soft tenor of his voice slightly raspy from his performance on stage. He leans his head towards her shoulder, like a dog or maybe a sunflower straining towards the sun, in lieu of an embrace. “Hyuna.”
She doesn't speak—unsure of what to say, words suddenly cotton in her mouth.
‘Don't move?’
‘I missed you?’
They scramble and mix together. Should she rebuke him or return the affection he offers? She grabs him by the upper arms, squeezing. Being so close as he is, she can smell him even through her mask. He smelled as he always did, clean, with a hint of the chemical sharpness of a hospital, the warm scent of skin and sweat.
“Come on,” she says. The words rasp shyly against her throat, like they were protesting leaving the confines of her voice box. “Follow me.”
And he does.