sunshine riptide

Time passes by in a blur — if asked, she wouldn’t be able to recall the path that had been taken back to the Corvus headquarters, only that she remembers being picked up, and remembers that as soon as her feet hit the ground in front of the doors, she was nearly rushing to get inside. She wanted answers, to get to the bottom of this mess — to have some closure. A funny thing, closure was; a bitter taste that had never seemed to leave her tongue. An empty feeling that never seemed to feel, no matter how many lives she saved, it wasn’t enough. 

It’s not over until it’s over. She tells herself as she goes to find the woman she had called earlier, and she can only imagine how bad she looks as soon as a surprised gaze lays eyes on her, Minji snapping back to reality a little more steadily. “I’m...sorry for the mess. I did what I could. Please tell me the crew hasn’t disposed of the body yet.”

“No, of course not.” answers the other woman, her stance relaxing after a few moments. “We want to know what happened just as much as you do. But first — are you okay?”

“I’m fine, don’t worry about it. Where is it? I need to look before too much more time passes, evidence is wasting away.” it’s as if for a moment, she forgets that she’s talking to someone in a higher position than her, the usual timid medic taking a more firm stance on the situation; driven to do what she felt she needed to do. And right now, the least she could do for the man she failed to save was to save his story.

Minji moves to go past the other woman, knowing full well where they usually took cases like this, but the woman pushes herself into Minji’s path before she can get too far. 

“Clean up first. And clean up your act a little, before it gets you in more trouble.” it’s a demand, not a suggestion, and she finds herself stepping back. Put in place, but she moves past the woman this time; she could clean up once she knew where the body was and what state it was in — but she imagined that the clean-up crew knew what they were doing...hopefully.

Evidence was already contaminated with, but that was almost to be expected. She just needed to look at the obvious details that she couldn’t see in the midst of the dark streets and shock.

And so, once she finds a spare change of scrubs, disposes of the clothing she had been wearing, and tries to wash the blood from her skin the best she can, the medic makes her way to join another that had already started investigating the body, gloves being pulled onto her hands as she walked in the door. 

“Do we know who he was yet?” it’s the first question that leaves her, and one that leads to many more within the night — her mind wrapped up in all the processes to go through. At one point, after she’s just barely had the chance to examine stab wounds and bruising on the man’s body, someone else pulls her aside to get the details of the killer from her. She does everything she can to recall every little detail, from features of the woman’s face, her physical form, to anything and everything she could make out of her from the short time they had locked eyes before she escaped the crime scene she created and the tragedy she had left in the hands of the medic.

To the perpetrator, it doesn’t really matter what you were doing that night. Her blade is plunged into the stomach of her victim, a man in his late twenties groaning out in agony. Luck seems to have fallen on him, to have a medic stumble upon his murder.

She’s tall, slim. Jet black hair tangles in waves down her back to the bottom of her utility belt, a few tools that could easily be used as weapons tucked into each pocket. She wears no mask, so you can see the split at the left corner of her lips and the beauty mark just below it. She stares at you like a deer caught in headlights, panic written across her features. In her haste, she shoves the victim back to the ground as he attempts to escape and lands as many stabs as she can to his abdomen before taking off. She’s fast, too fast to chase, but she leaves behind a vital piece of evidence: the victim.

He’s in no state to talk, or really do anything, but he looks at you with pleading eyes. Save me, he says, but there’s nothing you can do. He bleeds out shortly after. Unfortunately, as much as you saw her, she saw you, but you have the upper hand. The question is, what will you do with it?

Death — a concept she was certain she’d never wrap her mind perfectly around. She’s memorized what it looks like to see the light leave someone’s eyes, whether slowly or quickly, can recognize what a dying breath sounds like; she knows when it’s too late, but it doesn’t stop her from trying. Everything is a blur, with how fast it moves, with how fast she moves. Immediately, her mind switches tracks, trying to catch every detail she can, but more importantly, trying to analyze how to save the man’s life as she lunges herself into the scene of the crime. She almost hates herself for letting the woman get away — but attacking someone’s attacker, especially an armed one, wasn’t something she could confidently approach, unlike the way she approached the wounded, without a fear other than losing them. Minji rips her scarf from her neck, pressing it to the man’s wounds in a panic to try and stop the bleeding — but there’s too much, too many puncture wounds, too much already lost. 

“I’m sorry.” she whispers, as she watches the light slip from pained eyes, feeling the blood soak through her scarf and all over her hands. Steady hands begin to tremble, tears welling in her eyes. She doesn’t know what to do. She failed to save him. “I’m so sorry.” she manages to quietly choke out the words to the stranger, the man that can no longer hear her, moving to wipe one now bloody hand off on the leg of her pants, just so she can close his eyes properly. Before the panic hits her full force, Minji moves her hand away from his face, herself away from the man, and scrambles to find the burner phone she kept on her. 

“Please pick up.” she whispers to herself, dialing a number that’s all too familiar to her.

“Hello?” a woman’s voice on the other side answers calmly.

“Fate reporting in.” It’s the silly way she always responds, but right now, it’s her way of keeping herself together, struggling to hold onto the mindset of the brave medic, over the mind of someone with too soft of a heart for humanity. “I-I have a body. I don’t know what to do. I just watched a man die. Please, tell me what to do.” she tries, but fails to keep it together. trying to swallow the panic all she wants, but there’s no use as her voice wavers in the quiet air of the night.

“Hold on. Where are you? I’ll send a driver and some clean-up help to you. We’ll take care of this ourselves. You didn’t call authorities, did you?”  the voice remains as calm as possible, which helps her, at least a little. Part of her wants to protest, the same part of her that believes a little too much in people, but she knows better. She isn’t a regular nurse anymore. And she knows that this seemed too violent and too quick to not be planned in some way. Fate complies, explaining her location, the panic subsiding into an unexplained numbness as she stares at her bloody hand, eyes refusing to look towards the body. “No, no...I didn’t. I just called you.” She pauses for a moment, before a few details begin to spill. “It was a woman. Not one that I could recognize, but I think I may have gotten enough details to identify. It’s...hard to forget a face like that, with something like this and I-.”

“Fate, that’s enough. We’ll get you back to headquarters, and we can go from there. I know you did your best. A couple of the girls are headed your way, be on the look-out.” 

There’s a click to signal the call ending, even though she keeps the phone to her ear for a few moments longer, before she lowers her hand to her side. The smell of blood and the night-air the only things she can concentrate on, even when she tries to keep an ear out for familiar voices or a familiar vehicle.

Fate doesn’t notice that she’s crying in her numb state until a tear hits the back of her hand, the woman slumped down on her knees on the cold, paved side-walk. Logically, she knows that she was too late when the woman ran off, too late by the time she had gotten to the man’s side. But it didn’t keep her from wishing that she had been there sooner, that she had been able to do something more. That she could have saved his life, and been able to catch his murderer. 

But...perhaps, it’s not too late to figure out the story.

Her gaze flickers over to the man, and all...the blood, a quiet shudder of breath leaving her just as soon as she finds the physical strength to stand again, headlights that pull around nearly causing her to crumble again — until she hears a voice calling by a name that only her affiliations know, turning towards them with a blood stained hand shielding her eyes from the lights until they’ve flicked off, one woman coming to her side to pull her away from the scene, even with as much as her feet protest to uproot from their spot at first.

8. is your muse careless?

I feel as though the only times Minji would be careless if she’s scared/in a panic, which may bring about some mistakes in a situation. However, she’s usually fairly calm or tries to be, and she knows that in her work (both for the medic side and the florist side) she has to put a lot of care and thought into what she does since it has an effect on others — especially when it comes to her medic work, she knows that in a dire situation, it could cost someone’s life if she weren’t careful enough. So in summary, it’s probably hard for Minji to be careless with how careful, generally worried, and detail oriented that she is. Although, that’s not to say that she doesn’t make mistakes at times, too. Sleep deprivation may cause unintentional carelessness, which could happen if she pushes herself too hard. And she can also be hard on herself at times, so she would be the first one to call herself careless if she found out she made a mistake with just about anything.

36. is your muse enthusiastic?

Minji tries to be as enthusiastic as possible, especially when it comes to other people and interacting with them. She wants people to see her as friendly, someone that they can open up to, and someone that cares for them; even if the level of care may not be super personal, such as customer and employee, or client and nurse. But if someone comes to her with something they find exciting, then she’ll be excited for them. She’s not necessarily over the top with her enthusiasm, but she’s usually on the more optimistic side of things, as often as she can be. 

56. is your muse irresponsible?

Similarly the the careless question, Minji in certain situations may accuse herself of being irresponsible if she feels as though she could have done better at whatever it may have been that she messed up on. (i.e. wilting flowers in an arrangement, a late arrangement, missing an important phone call for Oopsie-Daisy or her own personal office, making a mistake on a stitch, etc.) Minji knows that it’s impossible for her to be perfect, but she does want to try her best — so if she feels that she could have done more somewhere, she may consider herself irresponsible. But in another sense, Minji is a pretty responsible person. She tries to be as organized as possible in every aspect of her work life, and personal life. She does what she can to make sure things are running smoothly and as they should — so, in short, sometimes she may say she is, but in reality, she’s as responsible as humanly possible.

88. is your muse strong of body?