#`p.

                                          `╰ backdated: 2016 holiday party ╯

at face value, kana is just out of high school-- now a hardworking university student, studying to be a botanist. kana knows the truth. in reality, her brain has been out of high school for...what, five years now? once upon a time, the kana (no, kang seulgi back then) of another life used to enjoy parties, even if it wasn’t in the typical way. she would go for the people-watching, and bring a good book with her, because drunk and foolish people inevitable grew boring.

kana now? out of practice. she’s too old for high school parties now, in both body and spirit, but this isn’t a high school party. it isn’t even a league party, actually. she’s pretty sure it’s some kind of illegal, contraband party hosted by sunggyu, but she hasn’t been one for league rules in years, either. 

does she really want to be here? no, but she knows stoking any divisions within the league will only hurt her and the future she wants to build. missing a party may not seem important, but she knows these things tend to have a ripple effect, and she doesn’t want to risk hers being a negative one.

so, she attends, constantly carrying a cup of fruit punch (spiked, undoubtedly-- whether it’s known or not, kana doesn’t care) that she doesn’t ever let empty below the halfway point before she refills it. everyone is so loud. they’re mostly obnoxious, too-- the party a cacophony of energy overall. 

even about two hours in, she can’t really relate. she definitely made valiant attempts, too, and met her social quota for the night, so she’s content. she’s even more content to bail, but she catches sight of leon, of all people, standing by himself. leon standing by himself is expected, of course; the surprising part is that he’s even here. that probably makes two of them.

she makes her way over to him easily, taking a sip of her drink. “this sucks,” she deadpans. “do you want to get out of here?”

they decide to split up. unfortunately, it’s not kana and minhyun that decide to split up, like she wishes, but the members of their rotation. she doesn’t really want to have anything to do with minhyun, but when they suggest splitting up into pairs to cover more ground and hunt more monsters, and people start splitting off, nobody really offers to pair up with either of them.

“i’ll take him,” she volunteers, aggression seeping into her tone so it sounds more like a threat than anything, but she flashes a smile as reassurance to everyone before she sets out in a direction a good distance from any of the other heroes. honestly, whether minhyun follows or not isn’t that much of a concern to her. they’re both capable of defending themselves against a lot more than a couple monsters, though the rest of the league doesn’t really know that.

there’s a lot kana knows about minhyun that nobody else does, and vice versa. it’s a strange and invasive kind of familiarity. maybe in another life outside of the two they’ve already lived, they could be friends. now, however, it’s unlikely, or impossible. they’re too similar in all the wrong ways and too different in all the wrong ways.

for example, kana knows minhyun didn’t object to the resistance killing taeyong. she thinks he actually agreed with it. she thinks he’d kill him himself if he thought he had to, but she also doesn’t think he’d do it without a general consensus, and that last part scares her more than anything.

so maybe that’s why she hopes he does follow her. they have a lot to talk about, and kana doesn’t want to risk minhyun talking too much to anyone else.

“so, rumor has it rookies are getting promoted to new teams soon, and that’s why the governing body is doing all of this. bet it would be nice for you to finally be something other than nightshade, huh?” she flashes minhyun a vaguely condescending smile, but doesn’t keep eye contact for long, searching for the closest monster instead. 

sure enough, one appears, and she readies her whip. she resists making some comment about how minhyun can fight a d level monster since she’s here to supervise, because she doesn’t actually want to put too much salt in the wounds of the first timeline. god knows she has her own. 

“do your best,” she says instead, and she means it even if it sounds more like a challenge.

[ tw: death, depression ? ]

all she hears is screaming. maybe it’s in her head or maybe it’s in her throat or maybe it’s in her heart; maybe she doesn’t know what’s real anymore. everything feels like suffocating. it’s a haze and all she sees is red and betrayal and grief and her parents dying behind her eyelids again. too late. always too late. life is always slipping through her fingers again. she is always holding the knife even when she isn’t. even when jongin is holding the knife, it’s still hers to carry. it’s still her blood and her burden and how dare he. how could he do this to her? how could he leave her here with this?

and it’s still her that has to end it. it’s kana’s whip that finally rips out the remainder of taeyong’s heart after what feels like hours. she wants so badly to surrender and let his familiar consume her; she’s wanted to from the moment she saw jongin’s spear through his chest but she can’t let anyone else do this. they are all traitors and she can’t stand it-- can’t allow taeyong’s last moments to be spent looking into the face of someone that claimed to love him while being willing to sacrifice his life for nothing.

in the end kana is the last one standing by taeyong’s side as always; even ken’s loyalty isn’t enough to save him. maybe it’s his downfall. maybe kana is only here because she has a soul the universe refuses to take down with everyone she’s ever loved. (why is she still here? why, why, why?)

maybe this is what she deserves for always wanting this: someone, anyone to notice she’s been here all along. she didn’t want it like this. she doesn’t.

the sobs won’t stop. she can’t breathe; her chest feels like splitting open, but when she sees taeyong’s body emerge from his monster’s defeat, her vision only blurs more. she can’t see anything. two minutes isn’t enough. her heart is so heavy with i’ll never see him again. it’s over.

“taeyong,” she cries. “it’s me.” did you see me? did you know i was here? but she doesn’t have a right to wonder because she was too late to save him. (she’s always too late.)

seeing it is an accident-- an it, not a him or them, because cards are not human, and are not deserving of any acknowledgement of being so. she is still trying to carefully coax her team to safety while fighting through the chaos. she scans the area, and when that familiar form comes into her vision, she feels like she’s seeing a ghost.

why now? she’s spent a year and a half looking for the card that killed her parents; she seared the image of her parents’ assailant behind her eyelids so she would never forget. she drew pictures of the form like an amateur sketch artist aiding in the search for a suspect, all for herself and no one else. daredevil was always just a side mission; this-- finding this card and defeating it has been her purpose ever since the blood of her parents changed the colors of her transformation from pink and green to red and black, and so there is no other option.

at first, she thinks it’s the familiar presenting her with one last challenge-- that this image too, is just an illusion, until she sees two of them. no, the card is here. how did she not consider that before? there are two of it, and it’s fighting itself. she actually snorts at the sight, because of course this is the challenge a card faces. itself. it’s pathetic.

she doesn’t think. it’s a moment of instinct and realization. it is this is my chance, and she recalls her own battle, and how much stronger she felt than the replicas. their power seemed mostly psychological, and so naturally, the card that is winning is the real one, and the one she must defeat. she launches into action, charging at the winning version’s back, clutching both ends of her whip in her hands. when she reaches the card, she loops it around his neck and pulls tight-- a sneak attack, like a knife to a throat without any lead up threats or last words allowed.

she glares at the nearly defeated version of the card anyway, wordless, fire all in her eyes. the real version will die, and the replica will understand just as well. she’ll kill both of them; no incarnation of this monster should be allowed to walk the earth.

she wants to ask, do you remember me? of course not. i’m an entirely different person than i was when you took them from me. i’m unrecognizable. i’m like this because of you. you did this to me.

the chobotics expo is more interesting than she expected; then again, most of her disinterest was feigned, because in truth, she’s always curious. when presented with both a strong magical aura and countless technology to explore, she was actually happy to investigate. externally, however, she couldn’t allow anyone to witness that much positive emotion from her.

it’s an exciting day for her. despite aku commanding all magical heroes to be on the scene due to the magical energy, and her entire team being around somewhere (she hopes) they all held a meeting in the days prior, agreeing to split up and go about their separate activities during the day and gather together at a specific point if everything went to hell. 

this leaves kana with plenty of time to herself, alternatively titled a blessing.

she actually avoids what interests her most at this event: the virtual reality theme park. sometimes, she wonders if she should’ve gone to university after all, and pursued a career in science after all; the possibility of experiencing it for a moment is fascinating, but distracting, too. her path now is that of a magical girl, and when she first transformed, she knew it became her purpose in life. she doesn’t allow herself the time for anything else, especially with the danger of an unexplained threat looming over them at this very event. she is already a hero; this is dream enough.

she wanders to the automail booth, eyes wide and observant of everything, and it’s then that she catches sight of a familiar side profile and ambles over. “joohyun?” she calls hesitantly, then squeezes up beside her, offering the slightest wave to her teammate once she confirms her suspicions. “find anything new?” and she’ll take anything, whether it’s on the technology of the event or any disturbance to the peace, because the normalcy of everything in itself is starting to unsettle her.

it doesn’t take much. she is so tightly woven and carefully pieced together; she is a hurricane herself only because even a breeze may send all of her hard-earned composure to fragments.

this time, it is a memory, or maybe not. it’s something so real, she can’t recall if it actually happened or just could’ve, but they are all familiar faces: her, and jongin, and their brothers, and their parents. they are children again, and then they’re not-- floating somewhere in a space without time, where details don’t matter. it’s all fuzzy around the edges, but warm, and their laughter is distant and so unbearably close all at once.

when she wakes up, she jolts up in her bed and tears blur her vision before she can even fully grasp that it’s gone.

dreams are cruel in the way they take away reality. for a terribly wonderful, convincing moment, you forget everything-- forget that the days of gatherings between close families are over-- forget that they’re dead.

and yet upon waking, she remembers everything more clearly. she remembers neighborhood barbecues, and sungmin and jinwook passing a ball back in forth inside the house until seulgi’s mother told them to take it outside, and their parents gathered around in the kitchen with their drinks, discussing important adult things while the kids were free to cause as much of a ruckus as they pleased. she can’t recall much of her life that isn’t touched by them; there’s never a distinct memory where she meets them, they were just always there as soon as she was old enough to remember anything.

and she remembers all of it disappearing over the period of about six months, memories turned to nothing but death and unnecessary sacrifice.

her body moves of its own volition, and she’s outside before she knows it, knuckles turned white from clutching onto her phone so tightly. she pauses in the middle of the sidewalk to wipe her wet eyes, and stares up at the sky for a moment, trying to shake herself from her haze. some logical part of her remains-- reminds her that wandering so foolishly is the cause of the loss that weighs so heavily in her chest.

she sits down on the first bench she finds, and sniffs, and there’s a brief moment of hesitation before she finds a familiar contact in her phone.

< message ☇* smelly sock > hey, are you busy? < message ☇* smelly sock > how are we the only ones left < unsent >