CHAPTER 5 - Never go back

SHIN WOO PRESSES AGAINST MY NOSE with some paper towels even though the blood has crusted by now.

"How long was I out for?" I ask. My voice comes out croaky like a frog and I wince, reflexively glancing at Hanna Kim. Thankfully, she doesn't seem to be put off by my failure of a honey tinged voice.

"I don't know–" Shin Woo presses my nose, still looking like a worried hen. "–probably a couple minutes? We had to move you off the court."

Hearing his words, a horrified chill runs my blood cold and I swallow the lump in my throat. A few minutes. But my time at the mysterious place felt like an eternity. An eternity where I was this close to burning to my death.

I glance at the people still standing around me. Some of the basketball guys have moved away to either give me air or continue with practice. The evening sun is still bright and the sakura blossoms catch the light the same way they did around Hanna. Maybe it was a dream after all. Maybe I was hallucinating because of the shock. I've read about these stuff on the internet. Anaesthetic hallucinations slash dreams and whatnot. Maybe my mind finally ascended to the pinnacle of its imagination.

I take the paper towel from Shin Woo and he helps me to my feet. Meathead hyung thumps me on the back, nearly pushing me off balance before he grabs me with a hearty laugh that booms like an out-of-place sound system. "This is why basketball isn't for you, champ."

Well thanks, I wasn't planning to join anyways.

Ignoring him, I turn to Shin Woo only to see Hanna taking a step closer towards me. "Are you okay? Rudra, right?"

On a normal day with my brain in its Hanna-fied state, I will mark this exact moment down in history as the glorious first words exchanged between the soon-to-be couple while trying to stay afloat in her beautiful brown eyes. But imagination or not, I just got thrown away from the brink of death and even Hanna isn't enough to calm my heart or giddy it up like a sugar rushed kid in a candy store.

"Yeah." It comes out hollow and curt.

"I was worried for a second."

"Is that so?" That's all I can manage. I feel Shin Woo look at me. After putting up with a million nights of me sighing about her dreamily and seeing me go out of my way to get noticed by her, he has every right to judge me like he is judging right in this very instant.

Guess that's why he proposes the unnecessary proposal.

"We were just about to get some coffee." I use my best-friend-telepathy to helplessly shout at him that we were just in a basketball match where I actually got knocked down, and saying we were planning to go drink my daily dose of addiction instead of the infirmary is an extremely flimsy cover. A cover someone like Hanna would definitely see through. "Do you want to join us?" He continues and I mentally facepalm. Best friend telepathy: failed successfully.

Surprisingly, Hanna nods. She actually nods. And then, smiles.

But before my heart can belt out a crescendo of emotions, someone shouts from behind us. "Hyung!" Every sense of mine buckles up and I whip around. A freshman is jogging to one of the basketball guys waving his hands. His voice is nothing like Foras'. Just, the familiar word that I normally use now slaps me with a sense of doom. Suddenly my mind is full of Foras being an annoying piece of trash while floating around me and incessantly calling me hyung.

"What's wrong?" Shin Woo looks back along with me but he finds nothing wrong, and turns to me questioningly.

"Just . . ." For a fleeting second, I actually contemplate telling Shin Woo everything. But I pause. It's not like I can go and say: so Shin Woo-ya, while I fainted, I imagined a game world so real that my skin still feels the heat from the forest fire I started, which might probably be cooking my meatball of a guide right now as we speak. Oh, and by the way, I think, the dream might actually be real.

"Nothing." This time, both Shin Woo and Hanna shoot me questioning gazes. I deadpan back at them. For once, our best-friend-telepathy actually works and I just know that Shin Woo is waiting to pounce at me with questions when we are back at the dorm.

Funnily enough, instead of coffee for which Shin Woo invited Hanna, we ended up going to the tteokbokki place Shin Woo had scheduled to take me to. My brain is a mess by the time we are seated by the window. Shin Woo tries his darn best to help us talk though he's the introvert among us. In fact, Hanna does her best too. She genuinely looks interested in us and she laughs at every single thing that is worth laughing about. I learn bits and pieces about her too. Bits and pieces I would probably remember for the rest of my life if this was normal times.

But this isn't normal times. With the smell of tteokbokki in my mind, everything I could think of was the smell of fresh wildness burning to dust. The heat, the smoke, me running . . . Foras.

Under the table, I pinch myself like I did back in the game world. Harder. Harsher. It hurts like it did back then. I think of Brumdn Cove and Gaal's Groove and the System's infuriating voice. Perhaps I have heard of such names and seen such sceneries somewhere. That was the only sane explanation to how vivid my experience was.

I get knocked from my reverie when Shin Woo and his Cupid leg kicks me. He shoots me the eyes. You know, 'the eyes' from the best friend code. I shoot him back the eye to say I might not be in the mood to enjoy my first and probably last hang out with my crush that he so painstakingly built. But Shin Woo doesn't get me and I sit through the whole evening with the flaming spirit of a party pooper.

Shin Woo doesn't talk to me as we bid bye to Hanna outside the girls' dorm. He doesn't talk to me as we get ready for bed either. It is only when the lights are turned off and the room gets dark does he talk.

"What happened?"

The urge is there. On my tongue. Shin Woo and I have only known each other since freshman year but we just clicked like puzzle pieces. Knowing him, he wouldn't judge. In fact, he might listen to it with his sincere eyes like he always does. And then, he'll tell me everything's okay. That I woke up and I'm safe. That it was all a dream because he was by my side the entire time I was passed out.

Clutching my comforter, I sigh. "Say, Shin Woo-ya . . ."

"Mhmm?"

A soft, relieved smile lifts me up and I brace myself to say the words.

Suddenly, a surge of cold shoots through me, engulfing me like an ocean wave. Something unexplainable– an energy of sorts pushes against me like falling boulders and I gasp.

"Rudra?" Shin Woo calls from the lower bunk bed.

The energy courses through me, ironically unbridled as it suffocates my senses, like freezing magma through my brain. I open my mouth in an attempt to shout. To scream. Shin Woo, save me! But a horrific shudder is all I've got when realisation floods me.

I can't speak.