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“Well, come on in. If you’re here to ask about the future, though, it’s probably best for you to leave now.”
Hyunjin shakes his head at those words and follows the seer – Seungmin, as he was told earlier – into his small apartment.
He still doesn’t truly believe that Seungmin can tell him anything useful and that this isn’t just a prank from his best friend, because this Seungmin guy doesn’t look like he could possess any magical abilities (Hyunjin isn’t the type to judge the book by its cover, but, if anything, Seungmin really looks like the only unusual ability he could have would be getting straight A’s at university) and his apartment has nothing to do with what Hyunjin would imagine a place like that to be.
Seungmin leads the way into a room with a big window and a bunch of flower pots scattered around and takes a seat in the wooden chair that is facing another chair made of a different kind of wood. He doesn’t say anything, but Hyunjin figures that he should do the same and sits down as well, looking around with a mix of nervousness and almost overwhelming curiosity.
This room is almost empty, only filled with flowers and plants, and Hyunjin guesses that it must have some meaning if Seungmin accepts his visitors here – maybe that’s how his magic finds its way into their world, who knows?
He doesn’t recognize the flowers despite being into flower language and having a florist as his friend, but that doesn’t make him admire the beauty of those any less – they seem like a dusty letter from the past, an old song that no longer has any words but still carries its glassy melody, with pretty petals that look so fragile that Hyunjin unconsciously holds his breath, careful not to shatter their pastel barriers.
It’s not that Hyunjin really expects to get any answers here, but it’s quite a common belief that if you start getting recurring nightmares about something that you don’t recognize, then it must be somehow related to the wrongs of your past lives that you need to fix in the present time for your soul to find peace again.
Seungmin, though in a very small circle of people, is known for his ability to see exactly that – all the bad things that your past selves did, all the sins and all the wrongs that they committed, and when Hyunjin shared what his nightmares were about with Jisung, coming to ask for Seungmin’s help was the first advice that his friend gave him.
Finding this apartment was a struggle, because the address that Jisung gave him led Hyunjin to an old building that was no longer functioning as a place for someone to live in, but he somehow got lucky and still managed to get here; to be frank, Hyunjin doesn’t remember who helped him find Seungmin’s new address.
Was it worth it? Does it make any sense? What is he even here for?
Hyunjin isn’t sure about it, he doesn’t even believe in magic in the first place, but the recurring nightmares of a guy calling out his name, crying and wailing in pain, have become a little too much for him to handle, and following Jisung’s advice didn’t seem like such a stupid idea anymore – especially since he learned that Seungmin doesn’t take any money for this.
Jisung told him that Seungmin doesn’t give any guarantee that what he sees will help you, but at least he’s doing it for free, so even if he isn’t a real seer, whatever bullshit this Seungmin says will only be a waste of time, unless he hears something truly life-changing.
“My friend told me that you help people see what their past life was like,” Hyunjin starts unsurely when the silence between them turns slightly awkward. “I recently started having these nightmares…”
“I know,” Seungmin interrupts him, a little cold and almost indifferent. “A guy. Screaming for help. Help that you were never able to give him before.”
“How—how is that even possible?”
Hyunjin finds himself stunned and totally forgets for a moment that this could still be a prank from Jisung – while Jisung genuinely believes in all the supernatural shit and insists that learning about his past self helped him a lot with rediscovering who he is right now, that wouldn’t stop him from playing some stupid tricks on his friend.
And yet, there is something about the way Seungmin acts, something about Seungmin’s presence as a whole that almost screams magic – could it, perhaps, be how detached he seems to be from the things that surround him? Or maybe it’s his aura, something that makes Hyunjin feel as though Seungmin doesn’t belong to this world?
He doesn’t know what it is, and yet all the doubts that were previously laughing at this idea to trust his worries to a seer suddenly dissipate, giving place for a different feeling – and that is strange excitement. Hyunjin thinks for a moment that Seungmin seems oddly familiar, it’s just that he can’t quite figure out where they could meet before, but that thought is gone as soon as Seungmin notices that his body relaxes and reaches out both hands.
“If you trust me, take my hands,” Seungmin lowers his voice. “If you don’t, place your hands on your knees so that I can see them.”
Hyunjin wonders what difference it will make, but he then realizes that he does trust Seungmin, though it surely eases his concerns even more that Seungmin gives him a choice – he’s never witnessed any rituals, doesn’t even know if those can be trusted, but he believed that the rules would be stricter for something like this.
Feeling entranced, he takes Seungmin’s hands in his, flinching slightly because of how cold they feel compared to his.
“I am you,” Seungmin whispers, squeezing his hands tighter. “Let me find you in yourself.”
Seungmin’s eyes start to glow golden the very moment Hyunjin dares to look up and make eye-contact, and, once it happens, he finds himself unable to look away, unable to blink or move. Hyunjin feels glued to his chair that also seems nonexistent right now, only having Seungmin’s strong hands that support him from falling into the bottomless void of nothing, and it creeps him out, but at the same time leaves him wanting to feel more of this, to float like this for a little longer.
He can only see Seungmin’s glowing eyes focused on his, but it still doesn’t go unnoticed for him how the entire room changes as well; holding hands with Seungmin seems to transfer them both into a whole different dimension, because Hyunjin can swear that there were no candles lit all around the room when he came here, that there were no dancing shadows on the white walls and that the ceiling didn’t seem so close yet so far at the same time.
The flowers change too: the petals that were pastel-colored are now red, and, before Hyunjin’s mind suddenly drifts into that new dimension as well, he catches himself thinking that he wouldn’t be surprised if it was blood that colored them.
However, he feels no fear, because he trusts Seungmin, and at this moment letting a complete stranger do such things with himself, letting that stranger in his mind and giving him full control of it doesn’t feel weird at all.
“Focus, Hyunjin, focus on what you feel the strongest now,” Seungmin tells him, and Hyunjin has no other choice but to follow this – doesn’t want to do anything else.
He doesn’t even realize that he never told Seungmin his name.
The first few seconds are hard, but then he sees a flicker in Seungmin’s eyes, a reflection of the candle light, and lets go of his attempts to figure out what is this strongest thing right now, instead finding it unconsciously rather than through searching.
What catches him in its embrace is overwhelming: Hyunjin sees flashes of distant memories, sees himself with longer hair in the middle of nowhere, with sparks and flames dancing on his fingertips, sees a blurry golden crown and then someone’s hands replacing it with a flower crown, hears someone’s melodic giggles that sound strangely familiar and later turn into screams, he sees blood and fire, sees himself under pouring rain and almost feels salty, hot tears streaming down his cheeks, feels anger mixed with deepest despair, and then, finally, a blurry silhouette that soon becomes one with the shadows surrounding it.
A faint, pleading cry somewhere far, far away. A bright flash, a sword, ruins of a castle. Another crown, purple aster, a wide meadow.
It’s all familiar – because it’s his past life – and it’s all gone just as quickly as it flashed before his eyes; something akin to a gust of wind blows out the red candles and they’re suddenly back in Seungmin’s little room filled with pretty flowers, where everything is so peaceful as though they didn’t just travel through years of Hyunjin’s soul memories.
Seungmin’s eyes no longer glow, but when Hyunjin blinks a few times to recover from what he’s just seen and dares to look at him, Seungmin pulls his hands away in such a hurried movement as if he felt burned by Hyunjin’s skin. His fingers are trembling and he’s shivering from head to toe, even his eyelashes are fluttering as Seungmin tries to steady his breathing and calm down – which is something that Hyunjin finds odd, because as demanding as this ritual could be, it was still him discovering the secrets of his past, not Seungmin.
Even with all this information, however, Hyunjin doesn’t feel any closer to solving the mystery of his nightmares and wonders what exactly happened to Jisung that helped him unlock that secret.
The fact that Seungmin does his best to avoid making eye-contact now that the ritual is over isn’t helping his inner turmoil in the slightest; he desperately wants to ask for more answers, but knows that he’s not going to get any – it’s up to him to make sense out of the mess that he did all these years ago in another lifetime.
He quietly thanks Seungmin for the help, somewhat sure that he won’t be able to get any words out of the guy anymore, and is just about to touch the doorknob and leave the apartment, already picturing himself going on Twitter to spam Jisung’s DMs with his thoughts about this whole thing, when Seungmin suddenly speaks up.
What he says makes Hyunjin freeze in place, hand still midway to the doorknob, because it simply can’t be true, and yet at the same time now that he knows it, this seems to be the only possible explanation for all the things that happened just now.
The only answer to all his questions that doesn’t answer any of them and only further complicates things.
“The guy that you saw putting a flower crown on you is the same person who called for your help later, the same person who comes to you in your nightmares because you were unable to save his life back then,” Seungmin whispers, eyes focused on the floor rather than Hyunjin.
“I understand—” Hyunjin tries, but Seungmin doesn’t seem to hear him at all – it seems that he’s not even here.
“You paid for it with a lot of blood – and fire, too, but you never forgave yourself for what happened, and that is your sign to find peace within yourself and do something about this feeling that will otherwise chase you into every other life.”
“Thank you, Seungmin,” Hyunjin tries again, still to no avail.
Seungmin takes a deep breath and then slowly lifts up his gaze, face pale and lips barely moving when he whispers one more revelation; his eyes light up with a ghost of the golden glow again.
“This guy… that was me. I knew that you’d come to find me one day.”