I. seventeen

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Her body tensed and muscles recoiled in the wake of consciousness. It took her a moment to adjust to the harsh lighting dragged on by the ceiling's fluorescence, but she knew exactly where she was.

The scratch of the hospital gown and the cold shivers sent down her spine against the cardboard-stiff bed was an all too familiar feeling. It made her stomach turn. The dry of her throat and the copper taste of her own blood left in her mouth for what could've been days—

There was nothing Ottavia hated more...

No. She shut her eyes and saw a mix of orange-red behind her lids against the brightly lit room. Forced her tight jaw to unclench and relieve the panic settled in her lungs, working her mind to remember— Ottavia doesn't exist anymore.

Every breath she took into her lungs belonged to Eunbyul now.

Hong Eunbyul.

Hong... Hong Yuchan's second daughter.

She cursed at the wretched memory. Painstaking in the way she suddenly remembered the last of his breath as it brushed against her bloodsoaked cheek.

Her grip wrung the thin blanket over her legs on the hospital bed. Taken back to how she had clung to him in desperation. Until the light in his eyes faded, and the beat of his heart fell silent under the pressure of her palm over his dying chest.

"Fucking dammit..."

Desolation, vast and empty, dripped down the walls of the meager room and rose up from the cold floor to slither over her body. The feeling squeezed her like a snake to its prey, suffocating her before it ate her up whole.

Nothing she could do while it spit her back out with the imminent grief; knowing he was gone. Dead.

A suffered cry threatened to rip the knotted of her vocal chords into shreds. But she swallowed the overwhelming anguish and took in a sharp breath instead, focusing on the turn of the door's handle open from the outside.

A nurse opened the door to her room and waved in a man.

Eunbyul blinked the blur from her tears away and watched as Junwoo stepped foot inside. With a quick bow of his head, he thanked the heart-eyed nurse with a charming smile as she backed out and closed the door again.

His eyes finally turned to look at her, but she didn't give him the time to react. Junwoo stood tall at the foot of the small hospital bed and simply stared back.

Her paleness was tinged with an even more sickly shade under the unflattering hospital lights. But despite the sunken skin that hollowed her cheeks from having survived on nothing but I.V. fluids for days, her grip was strong as she reached for the power outlet down at her bedside and unplugged the monitoring system.

𝕯 𝖊 𝖘 𝖕 𝖊 𝖗 𝖆 𝖉 𝖔 //  vincenzo cassano //Where stories live. Discover now