Chapter 4: Episode 1 - Open Eyes (4)

Anxious, bitter thoughts rushed through Ji-Ho's mind as she rushed through the fallen cityscape, ducking and weaving between the fallen debris as the shadows chased blindly underneath her.

She could hear the groans and screams, remnant fragments of a horrified memory once devoured whole by the calamity. Perhaps within the mess of that noise, there were people that she once knew as well.

At some point, Meihua had ran out in pursuit not far behind her, but she had more than lost her at this point. She did not need the girl to follow her any longer. No one needed to follow her any longer, not if they had a wish to continue living.

Memories flooded within her mind, a disheartening reminder of her ineptitude.

"It's all your fault." The ghost of memory would speak repeatedly towards her, an anxious thought now baked deep within her mind.

It did not matter who it was that stood beside her, for she was a curse nonetheless. She was a black mark upon the hand of those that she grew to care for.

Perhaps facing Meihua had reminded her of the bitter emotions she had stuffed deep within her own heart, a bottle opened by accident now leaking. It was a pleasant experience, to talk with someone once more. However, it still remained that she was tarnished by curse.

She stopped for a moment, simply to stare down at that which followed her so persistently.

"Why are you that which sticks by my side the longest?" Ji-Ho muttered.

She clutched at the legs of her pants so bitterly, her arms shaking as she refused her own sadness.

"It was not you that I wanted..." Ji-Ho said with a quivering, hushed tone. "I just wanted to see them... one more time..."

Ji-Ho knew that she was speaking to an object that could not hear her, a force that simply did not care. Nonetheless, she aired out the feelings of her heart if only to save herself. A bottle overflowing, she couldn't help but let her emotions spill out.

Knelt down at the edge of the broken cityscape, she cried into her own arms gently, her tears something she had long forgotten.

Underneath a warmed sunlight, she felt a hand wrap around her side, pulling her in close to a familiar, peaceful warmth.

"Who were they?" Meihua asked of her, sitting beside the crying woman.

Ji-Ho sat within her own unadulterated silence. Hugging her knees to her chest, she tried desperately to silence her anxieties. She could at least admit, that the warm hand of an angel on her back at least calmed her erratic breaths.

"There was once many who chose to follow my lead..." Ji-Ho spoke in a hushed tone, tears dried against her cheeks. "And through the failure of my judgement, I betrayed their expectations."

"I'm sure they can't blame you for something so simple as that..." Meihua tried to console her.

"You're right." Ji-Ho muttered in response. "Dead people can't blame anyone."

Meihua held a stunned silence for but a moment.

"So the reason why you have lived in a lonely silence for a year, is because they were..."

"All killed by my inability..."

"Then you imagine that if I was with you, I too would die?" Meihua asked of her.

"Undoubtedly so."

"Well now you just doubt my skill, don't you?"

"I would rather live a life of loneliness than be subjected to grief once again..." Ji-Ho murmured from the lips buried between her arms.

"Please allow me this selfishness." Meihua begged of her through a silenced expression. "I do not care of the dangers that come along with you. I fear the loneliness of this world even more..."

An angel sat beside her, glimmering underneath a glaring sun as she held a stone-faced gaze upon her face. Ji-Ho could not bear to look at her.

She did not know if she was being dramatic. She did not know if this would hurt Meihua more. She did not understand her own feelings.

Meihua watched as Ji-Ho stood up, facing away from her as she exhaled a deep, sharpened breath. Meihua knew that her own selfish desires couldn't convince a stranger, not for her own sake.

She knew she couldn't ask that of her. She couldn't ask Ji-Ho to bear such a weight to soothe her lonely heart.

Gripping at her chest, Meihua parted her lips to speak simple words.

"If you are to leave, then at least do me a favour..." Meihua shouted, calling out to the woman that now stood at the far edge of the building. "Do not say that it is for my sake!"

"I do not want to leave you in more danger, not when you have shown me so much kindness."

Ji-Ho replied, turning to face Meihua.

"It would be kinder in return if you would not leave me all alone." Meihua spoke through trembling lips. "Not now..."

Ji-Ho grabbed at the leg of her pants, her knuckles white as she wrestled with her own emotions.

"Truly has this world turned me senseless..." Ji-Ho whispered with a grimace upon her face.

Walking towards Meihua, she grabbed her by the shoulders, looking deep within her ocean-blue eyes as she spoke.

"If I never leave your side, you will always face hardship. Never will you touch the ground again, for it will always stay dangerous." Ji-Ho said with a serious sharpness in her gaze. "You will face constant threat day-by-day, and one day you will probably die simply because you know of me."

"I don't care about all that..."

"If all of that is fine with you, then I will gladly stay with you." Ji-Ho replied.

"I do not care." Meihua cried. "I just want you here. It could be anyone at all, and you are someone."

Ji-Ho bit at her lip, pulling Meihua close as they embraced. Her warmth was intense against Ji-Ho's chest, but she knew that this time, it held a much greater weight within.

Ji-Ho couldn't understand why she had grown to care so much. She wondered if it was because it had been so long since she had even felt the skin of another human.

Ji-Ho wondered why she would do this much for someone she hadn't even begun to know. The world had become a lonely place.

"Then I will never leave your side, for as long as I may live." Ji-Ho spoke softly, placing a hand on Meihua's head as she held her close.

Walking back to Meihua's home took place within a slow pace, their footsteps as slow as the warmed wind that would flow past their cloaks like honey.

"How is it that you can have a perfect head of darkened hair, yet your forelocks are stained such a serene white colour?" Meihua asked as she stepped along the edge of the building.

"It's a birthmark, probably..." Ji-Ho spoke simply. "Not that I would know. I can't remember the faces nor names of my parents. Not that I want to, anyway."

"Why not?" Meihua asked again.

"Why would I wish to remember the faces of those who left me behind...?" Ji-Ho prosed sorrowfully. "Although... maybe I too am near a hypocrite in that regard-"

Ji-Ho turned to meet Meihua's gaze, but there was no one there. Her heart froze, and her eyes widened in horror.

Straight down below, she could see a white coat dangling the edge of a lower floor. Biting at her lip, she surveyed the area around her, searching for any semblance of the fallen angel.

"Why...?" Ji-Ho cursed, lamenting her own tragedy. "So soon...? You acted so soon!?"

Ji-Ho hung at the edge of the building, dropping several meters down to the floor below her. The impact sent waves of pain through her legs, but was forced to grimace and bear it.

Almost near the street-level, she was able to stand face-to-face with the shadowy calamity. The Decay seemed to shiver in her presence, wisps reminiscent of human arms crawling with desperate depravity towards her.

"No. Don't act like that, not now." Ji-Ho uttered with a sharp, harshened tongue. Her mind felt as if all thought had ceased, replaced by an endless churning static. It was screaming, a painful urge to move forward.

Ji-Ho pulled out the blade that hung at her side as she stared the calamity down, its endless, unending clumps of human arms grasping at her very being.

A singular graze could shave cells from her body completely, removing them from the world's memory in an instant. Yet, she stood at the edge of the monster's own leash, letting the hands grasp desperately at her all they wanted.

"You left me to grieve once again." Ji-Ho spoke with a blank-slate of an expression. "No matter how much I chose to plead, you would always take away from me that which I held important. Would they all have died, had you chose to let them live out normal lives!?"

Ji-Ho stepped forward, grabbing one of the shadowy arms with her own hand. As she touched it, she could feel an intense burning sensation, the shadows near-melting into her hand, her flesh starting to disappear in an instant.

"Even when in a final desperate attempt, I choose to let my heart feel again..." Ji-Ho spoke, her words catching fire as she allowed her gaze to be filled with raging flame. "You still take even that away from me. I thought it would be soon. But I believed you would give me a few days to enjoy her company, at least. You gave me mere minutes!"

With each sentence, she refused despair. There was a time within a warrior's life where survival wasn't a thought. It was the moment where one abandoned all hope of retaining their limbs, their senses, and life. They became a beacon of recklessness, and resigned themselves to death.

With her blade, she cut clean through the fingers of the shadow. The hands lurched backwards with an agonising shriek sounding throughout the cityscape. The pools of shadow that filled the street seemed to shake amidst the noise.

"Ji-Ho!" A voice called out suddenly.

Ji-Ho whipped her gaze around to meet the angelic womans in an instant.

"You're alive...?" Ji-Ho whispered, her gaze confused.

Meihua stood simply behind her, coatless and her hair a mess, yet alive nonetheless. Horror seeped away from her heart, and realising her mistake, Ji-Ho's body relaxed. It was futile to resist any longer. The reason Calamity had been able to overtake the world was not because it was a powerful force. It was because it was a plotting force.

"I see. I was caught within your trap. You finally won." Ji-Ho's smile was deprecative. She had been a fool.

As Ji-Ho turned to face the shadow, a tentacle-like strand of shadow whipped forth at intense speeds, catching Ji-Ho's neck with a burning sharpness that blurred her vision intensely.

The next image that Ji-Ho was able to conjure with her own eyes was her limp body lying headless apart from her, and Meihua sinking to the ground beside her in a bloodied heap as the shadow seeped into the air around them.

Within Earth, Decay was inevitable.