Chapter 17

4.4K 291 69
                                    

AMPOULES REMAINING: 51

Jisoo glances to Jennie, "You're sure writing it down is the best way to go?"

"When you write something, you focus your full attention on it. It's almost impossible to write one thing while thinking about another. The act of putting it on paper keeps your thoughts and intentions aligned." Jennie explained.

"How much should I write?" Rosé asks.

"Maybe keep it simple to start? One short paragraph?"

Rosé finishes the sentence she's been working on, closes the notebook, and rises to her feet.

"You've got it all in the forefront of your mind?" Jennie asks.

"I think so."

Jennie shoulders the backpack. Rosé crosses to the door, turns the handle, pulls it open. Morning sunlight enters the corridor, so blinding that for a moment they can't see a thing outside.

As their eyes adjust to the brilliance, the surroundings fade into focus.

They're standing in the doorway of the box, at the top of a hill overlooking a park.

To the east, emerald grass slopes for several hundred yards, down to the Han River. And in the distance rises a skyline like none of them ever seen—the buildings slim, constructions of glass and steel so reflective they border on invisible, creating an effect almost like a mirage.

The sky is filled with moving objects, most crisscrossing the airspace above what Jennie assumes is Seoul, a few accelerating vertically, straight up into the deep blue with no sign of stopping.

Rosé looks over at Jisoo and Jennie, and smirks, tapping the notebook.

Jennie open it to the first page.

Rosé wrote...

I want to go to a good place, to a good time to be alive. A world

I'd want to live in. It isn't the future, but it feels like it....

Jisoo says, "Not bad."

"Is this place actually real?" she adds.

"Yes. And Rosé brought us here."

Rosé shrugs. "Let's explore. We should give ourselves a break from the drug anyway."

She starts down the grassy slope away from the box. They pass a playground and then hit a walking path that runs through the park.

The morning is cold and flawless. Jennie's breath steams.

The grass is blanched with frost where the sun has yet to touch it, and the hardwoods that border the park are turning.

The lake stands as still as glass.

A quarter mile ahead, a series of elegant Y-shaped structures cut across the park at intervals of fifty meters.

Only as they draw near do Jennie realize what they are.

They ride a lift up to the northbound platform and wait under the heated overhang, now forty feet above the greenway. A digital, interactive map emblazoned with Seoul Transit Authority identifies this route as the Red Line Express, linking Seoul to Anyang.

An urgent female voice blares through a speaker overhead.

Stand clear. A train is arriving. Stand clear. A train is arriving in five...four...three...

Jennie glance up and down the line, but she doesn't see anything approaching.

Two...

A blur of incoming movement rockets out of the tree line.

Infinity: A Jenlisa AUWhere stories live. Discover now