Chapter Text
“Jinu, why are you leaving us behind?”
“Don’t leave, Jinu!”
“Ji-”
“-nu! Snap out of it!”
The resulting slap felt like breaking the surface of water after losing time in the darkness of deep waters; where you had even forgotten which way was up towards golden light and not unfathomable depths where your crushing demise lay, waiting.
But even breaking out of the sea of regrets his own mind had trapped him in, there were no golden rays of light spilling like benediction on his face. Jinu was met with the unrelenting, stale grayness - wrongness - of the demonic underworld.
“Jinu!” Abby’s voice, so seldom heard and even then never this urgent, snapped. “Gwi-Ma has called for an assembly. Agi said this might be our chance.”
All at once, the world snapped back around like a rubber band, leaving Jinu’s mind crisp and clear for the first time in a while.
Jinu’s eyes swept over to glance at his Bipa, his one true companion; the one that he started this whole mess with and with whose help he would end it with.
In one moment he was sprawled over a floor mat, underfed legs thrown askew and beads of perspiration sliding over his neck and back, in the next he was upright; stance languid in its insouciance, yet with half-lidded eyes flashing dangerously amber. The change was so abrupt and yet fluid, it made the viewer prefer questioning their own eyes than dare challenge the arresting picture the young man now delicately picking up his Bipa made.
A finely-boned hand ran over the Bipa, like it was the top treasure in the imperial treasury rather than its outdated, run-down reality. A rounded twang sounded in the air, callused fingertips flying over the instrument as easily as a bird in flight.
As if summoned, a tiger materialized from the ground.
Jinu ran a soothing hand over the sacred beast’s cerulean head, not knowing who it was he was really soothing.
“Jinu, who are these people?”
“Jinu-”
Blinking away the echoes of the past to the back of his mind - still ever-present but not as distracting, a respite he seldom offered himself, knowing he didn’t deserve it. But this time, he needed all the presence of mind he could muster up.
Turning towards Abby, who was now hunched over a wall, tired eyes with a thousand yard stare staring at the only window, fully boarded-up, in the room.
“I’m leaving first. Tell the rest to be ready to go at my cue.” Jinu intoned.
At a confirming flicker from Abby’s eyes, Jinu grasped the front door handle, a twist of the wrist letting in the underworld’s grim sulphuric air, quickly filling up the small room.
Soon.
Soon, Jinu wouldn’t remember there was any other type of air possible.