Wonyoung

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Wonyoung ah. Wonyoung-ssi? Ya, Jang Wonyoung!

Wonnie! Nyeong-nyeong~? Wonyoung-unnie!

Wonyoung.
Wonyoung.
Wonyoung.

The girl in question gasped as she opened her eyes. What stared back at her through her surprise was the infinite and endless expanse of the void. Wonyoung was clever—she doubted her surroundings right away. She clasped at herself. She huffed into the seamless abyss. She tried to raise her voice and see if any sound escaped her.

She knew she was doing something, but she also knew she couldn’t feel it.

“This is all just a dream,” she announced, proclaiming victory over the uncertainty around her. Wonyoung knew that naming the unknown helped with anxiety—she of all people would know that. She hasn’t had a lucid dream like this in a while, but the sensation surely felt familiar.

But it all quickly hit her like a truck—the light, the window, the falling.

Cupping her hands over her mouth, she briefly shrunk into a ball as the weight of her realization crushed her in an instant. “Wait … I was … off the windowsill … I was … falling …”

“Is this … the afterlife?”

An odd thought sparked in her head as she chuckled at it, failing to resist her funny bone. “What’s after-life~? But really though … what is this place?”

As soon as she asked the question, the abyss responded to her.

One light. Two lights. Four lights. Eight lights.

What once was darkness now turned into a rapidly growing multitude of bright flashing lights. The dotted horizon sparkled to life as an ocean of stars formed in the horizon.

“Wow … beautiful …”

Flapping her lithe limbs about, Wonyoung tried to swim towards one of the glowing orbs, trying to discover what rested at the center of its halation. Her immediate vicinity felt like nothing, but the movements she had to make in order to budge even just an inch resembled swimming. So as she swam towards the nearest light, she clenched her core tightly just to move three meters forward.

“I need to work on that more,” she noted to herself, lifting her hands up beneath the light. At its core, it appeared as though the figure was less like an orb and more like a jagged chip or tooth—much like a shard.

A shard of light.

“Wait … is this … is this another life …? Is this my next life now that I’ve … now that I’m … dead …?”

Before she could ponder on the existential thought any further, the light from the shard pulsed. It flickered out for a few moments before coming back brighter than before. It repeated this pattern until its pace matched that of a beating heart.

“No no no, wait—wait!” Wonyoung pleaded as the light now turned a dark red. “I-I’m not ready for this! My friends! My family—th-they … they don’t even know yet! I’m not ready to leave all of this behind. I-I still have so much to do! Please! Please …”

But Wonyoung was indeed clever. She hadn’t set herself up for failure. She knew that these were powers beyond even her control.

So as the shard bursted into a beam of red, all she could do was allow the unknown to take over.

Piercing. Imposing. Merciless.

She thinks she’s so pretty and presentable—ugh, I hate girls like her! She’s not put together or perfect at all—she’s flawed to her core!

Who … who said that? Hey, that’s … that’s uncalled for … I already knew that …

I already knew that all my life …

“There’s our beautiful baby girl! Look at you! So cute and pretty dressed up for your birthday~!”

As Wonyoung’s mother picked her up, she began sucking on her pacifier a little slower, feeling relaxed in her mother’s embrace. But this sensation of comfort was immediately replaced with betrayal as her mother brought her into the large function room filled with her relatives and extended family members.

Wonyoung sucked vigorously on her pacifier as she clung her little baby arms around her mother’s neck tightly.

“Look, sweetheart! Everyone came to celebrate your birthday! You remember eomma ’s siblings, right? And their partners? And their little kids—just like you! Say hello now.”

Her mother swung her around so that she was now facing the crowd of family members she couldn’t even recognize yet, expecting her young daughter to react or reply appropriately. But all Wonyoung did was stare at them in confusion with a pair of teary eyes.

“Ya, that’s no way to treat our guests. They came all this way to see you!” her mother cooed, patting her back gently as if trying to convince her to react in any way possible. After a few moments of waiting, her mother sighed and apologized to their relatives before bringing her across the large room. They passed by a couple of tables filled with an assortment of kids of all ages along with their parents and siblings. Everyone came—her classmates, her friends, and their families too.

“ Yeobo, we need to start soon. We only have the place for three hours, and we haven’t even started any of the games,” her father raised, taking Wonyoung into his hands and lifting her up into the air. He smiled at her and pressed his face into her stomach before pecking her nose. “I hope you enjoy yourself today, little Wonyoung. This will be the first of many birthdays for you.”

“ Appa! Can I carry my sister? Please please please?” her older sister begged, jumping up and down by his side in an attempt to reach for her. “I promise I won’t drop her—I really promise! I want to show her around to my friends too.”

Quite hesitantly, their father nodded and gently handed his baby to their oldest daughter, making sure the latter knew how to hold onto Wonyoung properly. “There we go. Don’t run around with her. Don’t put her anywhere high. And watch out what she grabs onto. Ok, Jinyoung?”

“Yes, appa! I love you! Bye~!”

And with that, she immediately broke the rules and completely ignored her father’s reminders as she darted off with the baby in hand, carrying her like a football all the way to the table with her best friends.

She plopped Wonyoung down on the surface like a doll and turned her around to show her friends. “This is my sister! I told you she’s super cute, right? Look at those cheeks~!”

Every child, at some point, has some sort of awakening. They have that moment in time, a specific instance in their lives as they mature into a toddler, when they get ‘opened’ to the world—when they gain awareness.

As Jinyoung demonstrated how squishy Wonyoung’s cheeks were, the little baby was having her moment right now—except it was infinitely worse. As her mind slowly grew conscious, so did the latent power within her.

A power only she had.

Such a cute baby! I want to take her home and dress her up! Would Jinyoung let me?

She’s not that adorable honestly. She looks like an ugly bear. Or maybe a dog.

Jinyoung’s making her sit a little too close to the edge … Wonyoung might fall—oh no!

“Goo?” Wonyoung cooed as she heard all of those voices. She knew what speaking was—she’s seen her family do it. But as she heard those voices all at once, she was conscious enough to notice that none of them were moving their mouths.

None of them were actually speaking.

Give me the baby! I want to squish it so badly please!

I wonder if we could feed her marshmallows. How many can she eat before vomiting?

Let’s maybe talk to Jinyoung and have her hold her sister properly …