Chapter Text
Ryujin stared past the empty frames resting on the bridge of her nose. Min had disappeared while they were at the apartment of Sayeon’s friend. Juni said he had gone by himself to tell her older sister. The rest of them had split up. Jungwoo had given them a list of places this Jaeil was most likely to be. She was with Kim. He was lagging behind her and hadn’t spoken in hours.
Ryujin had led them to each location on their list and they hadn’t found him. Hopefully a different pair had. She turned her head enough to see Kim out of the corner of her eye. “We’re heading back to the meet-up point. There’s nowhere else to look.” She stared just long enough to see him nod. Ryujin turned forward and started walking back, keeping her eyes low.
She didn’t have the route back memorized. It shouldn’t be hard to find. She looked up to see where Sayeon was heading to follow. The space ahead of her was empty. The glasses started slipping down her nose and she used one hand to push them back into place. They were heavier than she expected.
Ryujin stood with the group, waiting for Min. The glasses were sliding down her face again. They didn’t fit quite right on her face. They were made for someone else. She let the conversation wash over her, but tuned out the exact words. No one had found Sayeon’s friend.
Ryujin was suspicious. Officer Cha felt a brief flash of discomfort and barely-there guilt every time he was brought up. He had been with the white-haired bitch in prison when she was given the ‘oppurtunity’ to join the Corps. She knew from a one-off conversation with Sayeon, that Officer Ahn had been the one to perform her final aberrancy test. He was probably there too, that day. His disconcertment told an upsetting tale.
Footsteps from behind brought her back to attention. She glanced over to see Min approaching. There was a subtle slump to his shoulders. Ryujin shoved every thought about the possible fate of Sayeon’s friend to the back of her mind. “Did you find her sister?”
Min stopped before her and nodded. There was a faint red tinge to his eyes and they were slightly swollen. Ryujin didn’t comment on it.
She turned back to Juni. Juni was already watching them. She had been unexpectedly subdued the entire day. With how angry she had been at Sayeon the night before, Ryujin had thought she wouldn’t have been affected as much as everyone else. Juni pressed her lips together for a moment before speaking. “Let’s get back to H.Q. You all have a joint mission tomorrow.” She turned and started leading them back. Ryujin let herself walk near the back, her remaining cellmates behind her.
Wearing the hoodie and pants she slept in, Ryujin stared down at her bed. She wasn’t tired and her head pounded. She needed to sleep. She had to figure out how to be a leader in the morning. She wouldn’t be able to do that on no sleep.
She turned her gaze to Sayeon’s empty bed. The sheets were made the way Sayeon always had them. Neat and free of any wrinkles. Ryujin glanced back at her own bed. The rabbit still rested exactly where Sayeon had left it for her. Ryujin set her hat and Sayeon’s frames on the edge of her own bed. She picked up the rabbit and pulled the covers of Sayeon’s bed back. She climbed in and buried her face into the pillow. Sayeon’s scent flooded her nose. Ryujin took a deep breath and closed her eyes.
For once, Ryujin opened her eyes with the alarm. She turned to look over at Say-
Right.
She turned to look at the wall. The rabbit had fallen off the bed in the night. Ryujin felt a twinge of guilt, knowing that not once had Sayeon allowed such a thing to happen to her rabbit. Ryujin scooped it up from the ground and dusted it off. There was a small tag in the seam at the back. Ryujin turned the rabbit around to inspect it.
In black marker ‘Mr. Kiki’ was written. Ryujin stared at the writing for a moment. It was unfamiliar to her. Sloppy and clearly written by a small child. She set him against the pillow and pulled the blanket over his legs.
Ryujin staggered back to headquarters after the mission. It had been three weeks since Sayeon… stepped down. She was doing a shit job of being a leader. She had yet to get anyone killed, but she kept looking for Sayeon, wanting direction from someone else. She wasn’t cut out for this.
A familiar ache settled in her chest. It had nothing to do with her broken ribs. “We’re going to the medical ward.” Another failure under her belt. Sayeon would have known what to do. Ryujin was clueless about what needed to be done to keep them alive.
As pointless as she knew it was, they hadn’t gained a single point since Sayeon’s death. Ryujin didn’t mind the stagnation, but it felt like she was failing to uphold Sayeon’s memory. The glasses on her face felt like a sick joke. They held no declaration of leadership, but they had been Sayeon’s. It took everything she had to not fling them from her face.
Dahee and Tsubaki’s soft breathing filled the silence of the room. Back in Sayeon’s bed, Ryujin buried her face into the pillow. Sayeon’s scent had faded from the bed not long after she stopped sleeping in it.
Ryujin had pulled each article of clothing out of the bag Sayeon had brought with her. None of them held any semblance of her. The only thing that remained in a meaningful way was Mr. Kiki and her glasses. The rabbit was worn in a loving way, as though Sayeon had cared for him for many years. Ryujin simply couldn’t picture Sayeon without her frames. Ryujin stayed in this bed out of a stubborn need to be there, instead of her own.
She wasn’t ready to let go.
Ryujin couldn’t sleep. She’d been trying for hours. Is this what leadership did? How Sayeon felt every night she slipped out of bed and didn’t return until just before dawn? Ryujin pushed the sheets off herself. She slowly sat up and stood, so as not to wake Dahee and Tsubaki.
She slipped on her shoes and grabbed a pack of cigarettes that Juni had given her. She made her way to the door and stepped into the hallway. She turned towards the stairs. She started climbing up to the roof.
The door to the roof opened with a creak. Ryujin scanned her surroundings and spotted Instructor Sang leaning on the railing. She wasn’t alone. Officer Ahn stood beside her. Ryujin couldn’t sense either aura. She made to slink back down the stairs.
“Miyeon?” That was the gentlest Ryujin had ever heard the bitch’s voice. “Why did you call me up here?”
“Trainee Kang wasn’t the last person to see Lee alive that night.”
Ryujin made a split-second poor decision to eavesdrop. Sayeon would have done it, surely? She seemed to value information. She was careful to not let even a hint of her aura to leak out.
Officer Ahn shifted closer to the instructor. “Who did, then?”
Ryujin waited with bated breath for Sang’s answer. “I did.”
Ahn didn’t speak, giving the instructor room to voice her confession. “I was doing a sweep to make sure no trainees were missing and I found her in the bathroom. She was already bleeding. She told me she was stepping down. That it was the only good thing she could do for her cell.” A deep, shaky inhale.
“I could tell she wasn’t in the right state of mind. I sat with her and let her voice any last thoughts until she passed out. I thought about bringing her to the medical ward. I didn’t.” Instructor Sang cleared her throat. “I wish I had. I should have.”
“She was the daughter of Sara Lee, Miyeon.” Ryujin choked on the lump in her throat. Sayeon was from a criminal family. A well-known one, at that. It was no wonder she had been so strange.
“She wasn’t like her family. After capture the flag, when I called her to my office, I asked her about her mother.” There was something akin to respect in the instructor’s tone. “I told her about what I had seen her mother do and asked what she thought Sara Lee deserved as punishment. She told me that her own mother deserved to die, and that her children should be killed first, so she could know the pain. Hayoon, she meant it.”
Officer Ahn had no response for that.
Ryujin crept back down the stairs.
Four days after listening in on Sang and Ahn’s conversation, Ryujin didn’t know what to make of what had happened. What Sayeon had said to the instructor in her office told Ryujin that Sayeon might have been having those thoughts for a while. Ryujin had no idea how long it must have been.
Could anything she did that night have changed something? Or was Sayeon's decision inevitable?
After the night they went drinking at the old lady’s house, Ryujin had often felt Sayeon’s aura rotting. It was a sign she missed. Pieces of other things had fallen together in her head, as well. That night at the old lady’s house, Min said Sayeon went to visit a friend. Probably, the Jaeil boy.
Who Cha held some amount of guilt over. Jaeil was definitely dead.
Everything after that night must have been pushing her to a breaking point. Every argument Ryujin had started. Every mistake in a mission. There were so many things to consider. Sayeon had confided in no one, leaving herself helpless. Had no one proved themselves worthy to help her?
Ryujin wished Sayeon was here. She would have been able to untangle this entire fucking mess. Instead, Ryujin was left floundering, trying to figure out why Sayeon had left them alone.
There had to be something else, something everyone was missing in the story.
Ryujin sat in the living room of her, Ilwoo and Jiwon's apartment in 5C. There was something watching her.
"I do not usually contact those I am not interested in. You have nothing you can give to me." Ryujin turned at the endless voice, echoing voice. A giant, spiraling eye peered at her through the window. " I have the answers you seek. The final piece to understanding the decision of Sara's youngest."
Ryujin froze. The weight of that gaze was impossible to bear. It had the answers to everything she wanted to know about Sayeon. She swallowed down the terror slwing ather throat, telling her to run. "Are you gonna tell me?"
The eye crinkled in a lip-less smile. "No." Ryujin trembled. "I am going to show you."