a ticket to the sun ∙ myg ✓

26 ↝ world's end

• The morning of Yoongi's death day. They wake early, and yet it still goes by too fast. At 10AM, there is a knock on the door, and they know it is time for Yoongi to leave.

"I love you, ___. I won't ever, ever stop loving you." Yoongi, unbelievably, speaks low and firm with a determination, an urge. The words do not shake. They do not quiver inside of his mouth like a trapped moth, they taste honest and real. This is not goodbye, they will see each other again on the other side of the sun. They will. "Do everything; be everything. I believe in you, and you know I always have. Don't let this hold you back, you have so much more to live for, I promise. It's not the end—shh, it's not. It's not the end, ___, please don't cry—"

He has always been such a godawful liar. Her nails cut into his skin, as if that will let him stay, as if it is more honourable for him to bleed out and die at her feet rather than anywhere else. He needs to be brave, he has to be strong for her but the tears are hot as they stream down to his chin in obvious betrayal.

• Yoongi being taken to the truck, his family and her, sobbing, absolutely distraught

Yoongi can see her out the window running towards the truck as though her life depends on it, willing to push forward until her feet bleed, the flesh roughed down to the bone. Seeing her like this, arms pumping, the rawness of her voice faintly screaming out his name, makes him want to fight, to murder. He wants to stand up in the van and thrust open the doors, to throw his body out onto the bitumen and shatter his skeleton for her. It would be much less painful than this sight right now—how she shrinks until she is nearly invisible, anguish riding on her heels and loss streaked across her face.

It is not until the speck of her shadow becomes nothing at all, an incomprehensible blur on the horizon, that Yooing realises that was the last time he will ever see her again.

He feels as though he is already dead. He left his heart in her hands...

• Yoongi's internal monologue about the speed of the trip to the place he is to be killed, how the bus is silent except for soft sobbing and a person muttering about how it wasn't their time to go, how the system was unfair.

• Arriving at the location. The guards casually talking to each other, desensitised to what was occurring before their eyes, discussing how the ballot took a fellow guard last month. "This never gets easier. But what must be done, must be done."

• As Yoongi is lined up to be killed (how brutal is being shot with a rifle, why did I make it like that again...?), he is overcome with a panicked flurry of memories in a life-flashing-before-my-eyes-esque scene that begin with his family and then narrow to focus on nothing but her.

All Yoongi can see is her, she consumes the field of his vision, the eyes of his mind. There is nothing else but this, but her. The left corner of her mouth that lifts slightly higher when she smiles. How the centre of her brow creases into a fine line as a scowl takes form. The way her gaze flits away and her lips purse when she is caught staring at him for too long. There is nothing else but this, but her. The ridges of her spine, so soft in the afternoon sunlight that filters through the blinds. A blissful in-between of a moan and sigh, followed by the raise of an arched brow when he touches her just right. When her gentle lips part and move to shape the two syllables of his name like its something precious. There is nothing else but this, but her. Her voice wrapping around a squeal when his fingertips brush against her ribs. The feathering of her eyelashes like fine paintbrush bristles that come together in a tangle with every languid blink. Sunlight threading through the strands of her hair—

He suddenly remembers. Yoongi knows now: the moment.

A late summer afternoon where the sunset was only just beginning. Was he fifteen? No, she was, and he was already sixteen. The sand dunes were softened beneath their bare feet, grains rolling in ripples with the fluidity of the waves licking up the shore that was barely metres away. She was traversing ahead, arms stretched slightly for balance, and he was watching her, always observing, preparing to reach out and catch her if the ground gave way, even if he knew she could steady herself. For a sparse moment, he glanced backward and noticed the sun was seated right on the horizon, so he called for her, relished in her name as it glided from his tongue as a signal for them to stop, to view what they had come there for. She turned, a simple movement that fanned her hair in an elegant circumference and it was right there that he knew. His breath had caught in his throat, choked within his lungs.

All because of her.

You missed it, she had said. But he did not, no, for he was watching the sun herself, standing right there before him in all of her ethereal light. That was where, when, he realised that he was in love with her. He always had been so, beyond in love with that girl. There was nobody in this world that ever mattered more than her.

Yoongi holds onto this moment with greater force than he has ever been capable of, clutching it tightly to his self with an urgent desperation that festers fiercely within his heart. He replays it, over and over, and there is no detail missed, no skimming by, everything in that scene is refined to the faint tickle of the breeze against the nape of his neck, to the way she blinked thrice after her name had been called, those gorgeous eyes of her's swimming in growing confusion, yet vague amusement lay under the surface as if she just knew that he was finally comprehending. An inside joke with herself of: Finally, you understand it too. I wasn't a fool all along. We are meant to be.

An automated voice crackles through the speakers.

"We thank you all for your service to the greater good—"

No, I can't let go of her yet—

A terrifying symphony of clicks. A sob sounds down the line.

Please—

"Your sacrifice will save our world, and for that, we are eternally—"

And then...

Nothing.

Nothing comes.

Yoongi has always been unsure about many, many things.

But he is very sure that he is not yet dead.

• The speakers have been cut off. The rifles do not fire. It turns out that there was a transmission failure to the institution to inform them that The Culling had been retired, and this month's ballot was to be abolished. The news came through at the final minute, and so those who were set to be sacrificed, including Yoongi, get to return home.