Hearts Aflame

036: A Glimpse of the Past

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHANYEOL! (It's still 27 here)

and obsession killed me

rip.

—

Mina's not very sure what is the difference between the materialistic, physical world and the dream world, considering she failed in sensing both, but she was at least a little bit sure that in the real world, animals don't talk.

She was waking up, she was sure of that; her talking animal friends were beginning to fade away from her vision, and she was gaining her previous hold on her arms, legs, and fingers. The sudden tension growing in her body parts and shoulders, jolting her out of her sweet, sweet mental world made her sigh, and she wasn't that sure if she was halfway dreaming that sigh or she did it for real.

Ever so slowly, like a rose blossoming in the harsh weather of fall, she started to open her eyes. Blink after blink, her vision heavily distorted and hazed, a hazard of shapes and pictures pounding through her eyes, sculpting her mind and causing her a severe headache. The pain growing in the middle of her head grew significantly by the harsh and blinding light crossing her eyes. She blinked again, hoping to soften the sudden severity of all this light, and forcing her chapped, groggy lips apart to release the smallest of sounds. There was a small throbbing in the side of her neck, where she had been brutally scratched by nails as big as the sharp and deadly teeth of a shark, and the dwindled throbbing increased harshly the more consciousness she gained.

She heard a small sound of someone moving beside whatever squeaky bed she was lying on, and a soft weight fell over her side, next to her hip. Then, a face popped into her vision. She blinked dazedly.

For a minute, she tried to soak up all the details of the man's face, trying to understand whether he was someone she knew before or a mere stranger — pervert — who liked to peek down on sick girls. She wasn't exactly in the best situation to have a correct vision, but she tried to read his features anyway. Squinted eyes, large nose, thin rosy lips and a jawline that was so sharp it could probably cut stones.

"You up?" The man's warm and thick voice greeted her anticipating ears, a small smile of amusement at her delirious state gracing his actually kinda pretty face. Mina's mind flickered in recognition, and she flashed him the same dopy and unfocused grin she had been flashing him when she had been hurt before. The kind of grin that totally explained the real aspects of Mina's character and that same one she usually liked to suppress because it wasn't cool enough.

"Sehun..." She murmured, and her voice came out so unstable and low pitched that it resembled a drunk man's voice. She winced, not liking it, but ignored that fact anyway. It was so not the time for her to comment about her damn voice. She was sick anyway. Sick people had horrible everything.

"You look thoroughly fucked, Mina," Sehun, who was still hovering over was found grinning, and she could clearly trace the upturned curlings of his lips. "I don't think this is a good look on you."

"Sehun," She whined, voice a whole lot more breathy and sharp than the previous bellow she echoed. She wasn't whining about his stupid words and his stupid grin or his stupid shiny hair; she felt like she was paralyzed, nothing in her she could move. She tried to twist her head sideways to avoid looking into his opaque eyes, but a sharp pain pounded in her neck, making her suck in a breath and go absolutely still. Then, she whined again, "I can't move my neck."

Sehun all but snickered amusingly, finding her torturous pain humorous. "Of course, you moron. You got scratched really badly there, by vampire nails nonetheless."

"Ew, I can't move my neck!" She exclaimed, her pupils going around her in circles with fright and panic in them. But Sehun knew that under those emotions of hers, she was exaggerating. She wouldn't be damn Mina if she didn't exaggerate things. "How will I be able to rotate my head to watch my beautiful boys?" She continued, now sounding sheepish and totally not as pathetic as she felt, her eyes wide and her lips entirely too chapped. She wet them by swiping her tongue on them, but even that gesture felt immensely hard to achieve. She ended up whining again.