title; Village of Semblance ; chapter 2
length; chaptered
genre; romance, fantasy
warning; slight use of foul language
pairings; kyuhyun/sooyoung, friendship! kyuhyun/donghae
summary; There are so many things that have to be left unexplained. But what makes them unexplainable?
She got up at 5 in the morning, unable to sleep. Her head was spinning, and she felt a little woozy. But in a shockingly good way. She wasn't quite sure where she was, how she got here, or how she seemed to already fit in like she's been living in this place her whole life. She would have expected herself to flip out, being the pessimistic control freak that she was. In contrast, she was surprisingly calm, pushing the many questions running circles in her head as far back in her mind as possible. It almost felt like there was someone else living in her, taking over her thoughts, her feelings, her emotions. And she was more than willing to let that someone in.
She walked onto the silent streets, once again surprised at how safe she felt despite the sky spotting a missing sun and instead playing house to layers of mist chasing up above. She pulled her sweater tighter to her body as gentle winds passed her by in crisp motions, leaving goosebumps on her skin. She kept on walking wherever her feet was taking her, and she found herself stopping at the foot of that cracked mountain, that for no apparent reason had her pulled in by its sight ever since she came here. She didn't quite understand why nobody had ever bothered to come up to the mountain, why children had never come up with the initiative to just play around the base. The mist had cleared up around the mountain, and the sun was slowly peeking out of the horizon. She let her fingers run across the jagged surface. The rocks were black and coarse, yet they had this shine to them, like a large cloud had hovered above the mountain and rained glitter on it. For a minute she just stayed there, letting her gaze fall upon the rocks, her fingers still grazing over the surface.
Until she heard footsteps.
She didn't want anybody to know she was here, so she darted her eyes around the premise, looking for a place that she could squeeze into for a quick hide. Her eyes fell on a large cave-like slit at the side of the mountain. The rocks around it were covered with moist green moss, the ground beneath it sprouting heavy bushes of ferns and dry grass. She could feel her the soles of her sneakers dampen as she carefully slid herself between the rocks and pushed herself as far back against the wall as possible. Her heart was racing, and her breath was hitching up a notch. She closed her eyes and thumped her hand gently against her chest, trying to calm herself down. She heard the footsteps draw closer. A ruffle of leaves let her know that the visitor was already by the foot, painfully close to her hiding spot. As scared as she was at that spur moment, she couldn't help but feel herself overwhelmed with curiosity.
Who was it?
Ever so slowly, she made her way to the entrance of the cave-like slit. Just a little peek. She held her breath as she heard the footsteps stop. She inched out towards the entrance just a little bit more, just far out enough to see a little crack of what was happening outside.
What she saw was certainly a pleasant surprise. Her fingers were trembling slightly as she held onto the rocks to balance herself as she inched forward yet again to get a better view. Her chest tightened and she could almost feel her stomach tying knots, goosebumps rising on her skin.
Against the breathtaking backdrop of the sun, now halfway seen along the lines of the horizon, casting orange rays upon the land, was a young man. He was facing the horizon, his back turned towards her, not giving her a chance to see his face just yet. He was tall and lean from the looks of it, not much of a muscular build, but she could see from his posture that he was fit enough. She felt her pulse rise as he slowly started to turn around, the sun's loose rays falling gently on his features. For a split second, she found the hidden questions resurfacing once again. Here she was, feeling so at home in a place that she couldn't make sense of. Here she was, hiding in a crack of a glistening black mountain.
And then her thoughts trailed off, pulling the resurfaced questions along with them, dragging them away from her, tucking them neatly into the jagged corners of her mind in yet another attempt to hide them in the dark - just as her gaze fell upon his face.
She let herself take the sight in, simply because she couldn't seem to do anything else. The wind had tousled his hair, loose wavy brown strands falling across his forehead. He had sharp features, pale skin. She couldn't seem to find the right word to describe him. Attractive simply sounded hollow and generic. She just...watched him. Watched as he gently caressed the sharp edges of the rocks at the mountain's base with his palm, as he lifted his head, squinting his eyes as he tried to take a glimpse of the mountain top despite the now glaring sun, as he seemed to stop whatever he was doing, wearing a blank expression on his face that fit him so comfortably, his eyebrows furrowing, almost as if he was re-evaluating whatever it was he was doing. Like what she did a few moments before. And then he sat down, leaning his back against the side of the mountain. He was twirling what looked like a dried rose, with little holes on it's petals and an angry tribe of withered thorns on it's stem.
She felt like she was drowning, however cheesy it sounded. Drowning in everything that was him. She was sinking deeper and deeper that she simply decided to let the currents have their way with her. She was too tired to fight back, neither did she want to. It felt so real that she could almost feel something trickle down her arm. "I let imagination get to me way to much." she mumbled, brushing her arm to get the feeling off.
Well, the spider on her arm was definitely not a feeling. And her high pitched shrieks as she jumped out of the slit were definitely too high a frequency for imagination to even conjure.
"HOLY FU--." Her head was spinning as she looked at a fat, red tipped, arachnid crawling slowly back towards the slit. "I think I'm gonna puke. I think I'm gonna puke."
"You should try sitting down."
Her mind seemed to stop functioning at the sound of the warm voice behind her and the light chuckle that followed, and she found herself sitting almost immediately. She kept her gaze forward, the sharp stinging in her arm making her too scared to look anywhere else. Soon enough, the tousled brown locks were in her view, but she couldn't seem to focus on that at the moment. She let out a soft gasp and bit down on her bottom lip as she felt warm fingertips kneading her arm making the stinging even more unbearable. "This might hurt just a bit." "Really now?" she snapped, biting her lip even harder. He has hazel coloured eyes, That was her distraction as he lifted his head and looked at her for the first time, a small smile playing at the corner of his lips. He added a little more pressure on her arm. "You can relax, bites from those babies won't do much harm." he added, a sly grin audible in his voice. "They're known as Brachypelma Smithi, or the Mexican Red Knee Tarantula. As big and threatening as they look, their bites are merely as venomous as a wasp sting." He looked at her, his lips pressed into a thin line. "Does it still hurt?" he asked her softly as he took his fingers away from her arm and started drumming them on the grass beneath them instead. She shook her head, keeping her eyes locked to the hem of her dress, avoiding any eye contact whatsoever to the young man infront of her.
"I'm Kyuhyun by the way."
"Sooyoung." She answered, her voice almost a whisper as she finally lifted her head up to look at him, the two proceeding with a brief exchange of shy smiles.
"Sooyoung" he repeated, rolling each syllable slowly off the tip of his tongue, grinning in a triumph that she couldn't seem to understand.
a/n: this is wayyyyy overdue :c happy lunar new year everyone! oh do any of you kyuyoung knights out there know any kyuyoung comms or such apart from lj? it'll be great if you guys could let me know :) anyways, hope you guys enjoyed reading this!