Six months later

V

It's past noon.

Thick sunlight spills through the curtains, no matter how tightly I seal them. The air is dry, and I thirst for water. I lick my lips, my tongue running over chapped skin.

Today was one of the rare days I didn't have anything to do.

But these were the days that proved most painful.

My mind is full of her, with nothing to distract my thoughts. I stay in bed, buried deep in the blankets. I can't feel my own hands, from last night. Bruises litter my knuckles.

Every night.

After that day I'd fought Jungkook in the Ring, he had never stopped me again. He was only there after, when I was too weak and exhausted to take myself back to the Skygrounds.

Pain seizes my chest. It feels fresh now than as it was seven months ago.

Why.

Aeri, why.

The pain slowly deepens. And soon I find myself rasping for breath, hand pressed to my upper chest. I shiver— feeling cold when I shouldn't be.

How could you do this to me.

Nightmares, every single moment I was asleep. Of the things that could be happening to her when I wasn't there, of the last expression I'd seen of her. Her face is burned into my mind.

But her voice.

I'm slowly forgetting the sound of her voice. She doesn't talk in my nightmares any longer.

My memory is fragmenting.

Every day I feel as if I'm slowly going insane. I'd considered suicide multiple times.

The only reason I'd stopped myself was because I knew how much it would anger my father. He'd kill Aeri and leave her in pieces. He was the only one who knew where she was, after all.

I had to kill him.

Kill him to find her. I'd rip his throat apart, but I had to be patient. There would only be a single chance. I had to wait.

And hope that the time would come before I lost my own sanity to myself.

________________________________

AERI

I wonder if he's looking at the same moon I look at now.

The room is cramped. A small window lets the pale moonlight in, washing the single room in silver. My back aches from the cold, hardwood floor.

This place had been the only one I could find. The one as far away from my home as possible, somewhere that not even Rin could find me.

I feel him watching me.

The man watches my every move, day and night. I'd never seen him sleep, over the seven months he'd kept watch over me. If he had, I wouldn't have hesitated to slit his throat and go running to find V.

Because sometimes, I feel like abandoning the Underground to see him just one more time.

I hadn't left the makeshift bed on the floor for days now. This was the third moon I was seeing. Soon it would fade away.

My fingertips have been turning cold. Half of me just wants to accept the death that was coming. I want this pain to stop.

I just want it all to stop.

But this fucker doesn't let me.

I'm about to close my eyes again when I hear the window slide open. I hear someone drop softly down to the floor, footsteps coming closer.

For the first time, I hear what the shadow that had been forced on me actually sounds like.

"Get up."

One of my eyes slit open, completely disinterested. A weak, amused smirk lifts my dried lips.

"Why?"

He sighs. And I would've gotten up and punched him right in the nose when I hear what he says next.

"Will you really waste away in a place like this?"

For the first time in a while, my eyes spark with emotion. Deep anger floods me inside out, and I gaze straight into the shadowed face of the silhouette standing in front of me.

The moonlight angles on his amused smile.

"There it is."

"I'm going to fucking kill y—"

He bends down, resting his arm against his knee. And for the first time, I see him as well as hear him.

Dark hair falls over his forehead, brushing over a pair of lashed, narrowed eyes. He has an unusual twinkle in his gaze, something I would've never expected from one of Kim Haein's bastards.

"I've been with you in the Underground for the past seven months."

I hiss. And I'm about to turn my face away when he whispers again. His voice is full of the pity that I hate, but it all fades away like lightning with what he says next.

"I saw him."

I don't know how I know exactly who him is.

"V?" I whisper, my voice suddenly a weak waver. His stare remains steady, and I'm full of desperation as I reach out to grasp his sleeve. My eyes search his, hungry for information.

"How is he? Where— how? He can't be down here in the first place, though, I thought..."

Had he snuck down? I knew that his father was deathly against him having to do anything with the Underground.

But that doesn't matter.

"Where?" I repeat, not even bothering to hide the weakness in my voice anymore as I tighten my grasp. "How does he look? Does he look fine?"

He sighs heavily.

"He only comes down during the night."

So he is sneaking down. But for what?

"He fights in that street Ring," The shadow murmurs. "He doesn't look too well."

My heart seems to shatter in my chest. My hand loosens from his sleeve, dropping limply to the floor. The pain makes my hand squeeze into pale fists.

"Will you take me there?" I whisper.

At his uncertain look, the words pour out of me like water.

"There's a place, that overlooks the Ring." I say. "It's at least 200 feet away. No one will be able to see me. Especially in the night, and the distance is far enough that the tracker— no one's going to think anything's wrong."

"Please."

He hesitates. And I feel like my heart's going to jump out of my throat as I watch him. My hands curl into an even tighter fist.

Please.

"You've starved yourself too long. You're not able to travel that far."

And I know he's right. I hadn't eaten anything for the last three days. I'd just glued myself to the floor, wrapped like a corpse within these blankets.

The Ring is far. I'd made sure to distance myself as much as possible from that area.

My breath falters.

The shadow sighs again, after a long silence.

"Are you comfortable enough getting on my back?"

________________________________

It's almost four in the morning when we finally arrive, in front of an abandoned building. I hear the familiar cheers and the roar of the bloodthirsty crowd all the way from here.

And I know that he is there.

I feel like I might just pass out from the anticipation.

My hands are lined with cold sweat as I clamp the shadow's shoulders tighter, my breathing growing faster with every flight of the stairs he climbs. He'd brought me all the way here without a word.

V.

His name burns in my mind.

He finally reaches the top of the stairs. The air is colder up here, six flights above the ground. He brings me closer to the edge of the unfenced balcony, close enough but not too close.

Then he lets me down.

"Be careful."

"Thank you," I say. "Thank you so much."

I rush towards the edge, my eyes finding the center of the brightly lit Ring almost immediately. In the middle there stands two men, on top of a bloodstained floor.

My gaze quickly skips over the first man, to see the silhouette standing in the opposite corner.

It's him.

V.