Chapter Text
Six months into her life as a certified Sentinel, Park Jihyo took her first break.
For a long time after, though, she’d sometimes wish that whatever happened during that winter might as well be a dream, because maybe then she would wake up with all her predicament solved, and all her doubts and anxiety cleared.
But then, if she were asked to go through it all over again, she would.
She had Sana over for two nights before the girl hopped on an afternoon flight and flew back to her own country. They’d long been conditioned to wake up at 7 a.m. ever since their life as recruits, so they should have plenty of time to help Sana pack everything in the morning and then hang out some more... unless Jihyo’s parents decided to pop the cork off a bottle of wine and insist that the girls should have a glass, which they did.
Well, for Jihyo, maybe it wouldn’t be “a glass” but a few sips. As a sentinel, alcohol, or more specifically the effects of alcohol, overwhelmed her. Because of her heightened senses, she experienced the discomfort an ordinary person experiences when they are under the influence tenfold, and she didn’t like that.
It hadn’t always been like this, feeling extremely nauseous on two drops of alcohol and all that. It was a gradual process. In her childhood, where her powers hadn’t awakened, she had stolen small sips from the adults’ cup, and figured the beautifully coloured liquid had a weirdly bitter and tangy taste to it. Not to mention the tart smell. Then, entering the rebellious phase as a teenager, where peer pressure also becomes a big part in drinking, she’d noticed how the alcohol would always hit her the fastest and hardest, that she could feel the effects almost in a flash when others weren’t even remotely tipsy. She’d begun to steer clear of alcohol since, and eventually stopped drinking altogether after she awakened as a sentinel.
In fact, even before she’d gotten enlisted as a recruit, there were secret messengers paying visits to remind her to avoid getting under influence, and her family followed those “orders” to the teeth. With her parents being strict about it, she’d never gotten the chance to experience what it was like to get drunk as a sentinel. That was until she turned eighteen.
She drank half a glass at the birthday party celebrating her legal adulthood, and the next few days felt like literal hell. As for what had happened when she’d been drunk... well, Jihyo was pretty sure she blacked out and had absolutely no memory of it, though according to her friends, she “appeared to be a completely different person” who was “very much in her feelings” and “she began crying mid-conversation for no reason”. The things she’d said – as her friends repeated to her – made her entire face scrunch up upon hearing them. She felt so cringe and embarrassed that she might as well shrink back all the way until she was dissolved into the wall.
She’d never imagined she could do something like that, and she hoped that she wouldn’t ever get into a similar situation again. Not the terrible hangover – the dizziness, the nausea, the stomach cramps... – and certainly not the part of unleashing her “shadow side”.
Lucky for her, she now had orders to follow, and that was a perfectly unarguable reason. So, ironically, for a long while, the first time she drank after she’d come of age was also her last.
To her, it was never worth it.
Not all sentinels share the same sentiment towards alcohol, of course. When Jihyo took the stairs to her dorm, she’d passed by veterans sitting slouched on the steps once or twice. These veterans Jihyo hadn’t met many in person, all sentinels without exception, taking swigs and even down bottles on the down-low, but everybody – not just her – at least vaguely knew that they existed sparsely in their district, and undoubtedly in all other districts.
In her late puberty, Jihyo had found this phenomenon befuddling, and at times snorted in disdain from a distance (she wouldn’t dare do it if they were in proximity; they were higher on the hierarchy after all). According to Sana, who had snooped around and learned about these sentinels, they had in missions lost their guides with whom they had psychically bonded. But still, Jihyo couldn’t wrap her mind around how that had anything to do with disobeying The Orders. After all, she had strictly adhered to the rules for most of her life, and anything above discipline was unfathomable.
While one could attribute her incomprehension to her immaturity, Sana, who was only a few months older than Jihyo, really felt for those “transgressors”. She explained with patience how it wasn’t enough for these sentinels to receive intervention, arranged by The Orders, from other guides – they might be saved from descending into “madness”, but their grief for the loss of deeply bonded partners couldn’t be helped. At times, it was easier to just drown that pain with the overwhelming sensory discomfort of intoxication. A reprieve they needed, however fleeting.
“I think in the moment they’re throwing up, they can forget, even just for an instant, that they’ve lost their loved one forever.” Sana’s voice was quieter than usual, without the giddy, playful energy she usually sported.
And Jihyo was still struggling to understand. Sana could see confusion written all over her face.
“Well, how else should I put it...” she pondered for a moment, but couldn't come up with a better analogy, so she went with it anyway. “If I ever lost you on a mission, I’d be really, really sad, Jihyo. It would be terrible and it would break my heart. I bet you’d feel the same if it’s the other way round.”
At this point, Jihyo hadn’t learned what it felt like to have a loved one, let alone to lose one. But considering what Sana suggested, even if it was merely hypothetical, made her heart ache and her stomach churn. She didn’t quite understand the meaning of it, though out of the reflexivity of a sentinel she snapped out of the thought so that the unpleasant physical sensations that came with it could stop building. It was only when she pulled herself together that she noticed she’d furrowed her brows and the back of her shirt was drenched in cold sweat.
They moved on to a different topic, with Sana never making the clarification of “oh, by the way, I didn’t mean to say you’re my loved one” or “just so you know, I love you as a friend but not in that way...” and Jihyo not having a second thought about it purely because her body decided for her that she was not going to feel that pain again, so, no more thinking about it.
In the end, they’d only known each other for a year when this conversation had taken place; they had been nothing past training partners who happened to get along, which means they might eventually pair up with other people if they found someone more compatible.
Jihyo had stayed oblivious to whatever feelings she harboured for her dear friend, until this night. The night where, supposedly, they would stay up late in Jihyo’s room talking about nothing and everything and stifling their laughs, hand over mouth, as to not disturb those asleep; and the night where Jihyo drank for the second time after she’d turned eighteen.
It wasn’t part of the plan. By that I mean Jihyo drinking. In fact Jihyo rarely felt the urge to get intoxicated, and whenever that urge was present, her insecurities never allowed it. She was too self-conscious to “make a fool of herself” again, so to speak, and she’d used The Orders as an excuse for too long that disobedience didn’t make sense. It was a safety net and she needed it.
And she’d never found it enjoyable, really. She’d gotten drunk with her friends at fifteen behind their parents’ back for various reasons. The young, simple curiosity towards the unknowns; to feel a sense of autonomy, liberation; to feed the craving for vanity by standing out; and to fit in. None of it had anything to do with appreciating the experience of drinking itself.
All that was to say... Jihyo, above everyone else, found it incomprehensible that she’d somehow made the decision to drink that night. Even if it ended up being just a few sips. It was so not Jihyo to even consider drinking. All she remembered was spacing out as she listened to the conversation between Sana and her parents, a big smile on Sana’s face as Jihyo’s parents mentioned treating her to some good drink; and Jihyo was having an internal debate before she knew it.
To get herself hammered on a ridiculously small amount of alcohol – what would that be for? She couldn’t make sense of it. Sana’s smile was contagious, so maybe she wanted to experience something Sana found pleasure in, to experience it with Sana, or... it’s that she felt safe enough to be a bit more vulnerable around Sana, and she wanted Sana to be in touch with this less-than-perfect version of her.
That’s just what every friendship looks like, Jihyo thought. You reveal more of yourself the longer you’ve known each other for.
But even so, it felt a little too rushed. Drinking, for Jihyo, was a big decision to make, and that meant it wasn’t “being a bit more vulnerable”. In fact, it’d be quite the opposite.
As she spun these thoughts in her head, however, the taste of alcohol was already burning in Jihyo’s mouth. She and Sana were given the lighter drink, and still, Jihyo didn’t like it.
Sana, on the other hand, seemed fine. The buzz of alcohol had her chatting away, her expression and gestures more animated than usual.
It was no surprise to Jihyo though, Sana’s tolerance. She was a rare breed even amongst guides, in the sense that, in terms of drinking, her experience looked a lot like the average person’s – that is, the ordinary people, not those with supernatural abilities.
And Jihyo had always found it intriguing to stay by Sana’s side in her moments of “post-drinking clarity” as she came down, the effects of alcohol wearing off. It’s like she was getting pacified, but in a different way than how the alcohol had pacified her – taking her power and control away.
“I think the drunk me is more like the real me.” Sana had once told her. And Jihyo just couldn’t bring herself to think that sober Sana, with all her energy and enthusiasm, had even more of that in her; and it had always turned out that she did.
As for becoming more like yourself... Jihyo had grimaced again at the memory of her blacking out at her birthday party, and all the stories her friends had told her. She still couldn’t come to terms with it, especially if what Sana suggested was true, that that was who she was authentically, and she only allowed it to come through when drunk.
And now her head was already thrumming even with how little she had drunk. She could pick up snatches of conversation from around her, which she couldn’t piece together what it was all about. Only that human laughter and voices sounded more than ever piercing, and the warmth from the heater made her skin tingle. All in all, not an ideal environment for a sentinel to be in…
All of a sudden, Jihyo felt out of place. She and Sana were having the same kind of drink, but they didn’t share the same experience, which left her feeling dejected. She just wanted to get out of here before the alcohol got to her and she made a fool of herself in front of Sana.
“I’m g-gonna go... get some fresh air.” Jihyo muttered as she got up and shuffled away. She was slurring a little and she hated how it sounded.
“Bring a jacket if you’re going out.” Her mom reminded, and Jihyo acknowledged it half-heartedly, making her way straight to the balcony. Without a jacket, of course.
Jihyo stepped out into the night, and instantly regretted not heeding her mother’s advice. The biting cold air entered her nostril with every inhale she took and it burned in the least pleasant way.
She rested her weight on the railing, taking a few moments to get used to the sharp dip in temperature, which was jarring in its own way for the sentinel. Her racing thoughts had been slowed down by the effects of alcohol, though her mind still lingered on the glimpse she’d caught of Sana before leaving the table – her cheeks flushed red, eyes shimmering in the warm, golden light; shadows had been cast across her face; the way she’d looked so casual in that beige sweater and with her hair loosely tied into a messy ponytail, and yet Jihyo still found it beautiful – found Sana beautiful to behold.
Jihyo took a deep breath in, trying to shake that vision off her mind. It stung a little when the cold air filled her lungs, and Jihyo found that oddly comforting. Maybe it matched with how a part of her had been feeling. She held her breath.
It hurt to remember, but the memory came back anyway.
Their squad had gone on five missions over the past six months – none of real danger, but nothing short of challenging for a group of rookies either. And on the third, they’d encountered a spirit especially skilful with mind-distortion.
Being psychically sensitive, the guides were knocked over within minutes, regardless of resistance, while for the sentinels only the surroundings changed drastically. The sentinels knew it wasn’t real though, because their senses told them so. All they had to do was close their eyes, eliminating the visual deception…
If only Jihyo had done it right away.
In pure panic, she was struck still, unblinking, and it was already too late when she remembered to close her eyes.
And so she’d seen it, with her own eyes, the scene of Sana drowning in a swamp, crying and struggling, and it shattered Jihyo to witness it, the sound and vision cutting through her like a blunt blade. Never had she felt so powerless, so utterly swallowed by terror, that she forgot to question it, to be alerted by the dissonance between illusion and reality, what she’d seen and what her sentinel senses were screaming.
It had been all conjured in their mind, of course; falling apart as other sentinels on her team vanquished it from the source. No swamp, no Sana drowning in it, no matter how vivid it had seemed.
Jihyo’s rational mind caught on gradually, but mentally she failed to do the same. That image had resided within her, a fear that refused to leave, and a fear that would keep haunting her for as long as Sana remained a guide on active duty. But the power to make Sana resign was never hers to claim.
Maybe that was why, in the months that followed, Sana’s safety became the axis of her decisions. Jihyo told herself it was duty, but guilt gnawed at her – guilt for her selfish reasons, for not being the most efficient she could be in the following missions, for not treating every member with equal care as she should – and she was torn between this guilt and the fear that it was still not enough.
For what she was trying to protect, someone had to make that sacrifice – but it felt as though she were leading the entire squad to the altar with her. And the longer it went on, the more it wore on her. She knew she couldn’t keep it up forever; sooner or later, the imbalance would start to show – in their coordination, their tolerance, and their stalled advancement.
All of a sudden, words from a year ago came back to her – struck her differently now – so did the conversation about those drunk veterans lamenting in the stairwells.
“If I ever lost you on a mission, I’d be really, really sad. It would be terrible and it would break my heart. I bet you’d feel the same if it’s the other way round.”
Had she just glimpsed what they’d been holding onto all this time? It swept her away, left her paralysed, as if frozen by the wind.
She was too light a drinker, and it could only be deemed a virtue now. Jihyo wondered if all of this would’ve passed through her and been gone had she downed more than half the glass she’d been given. All of this – the sight of Sana smiling and waving at her just now, all the emotions that had been stirring in her lately, perhaps even the fear of losing Sana – would be nothing but transient. She might find a few moments of peace, free from everything that tormented her inside. Maybe that’s what the veterans had been chasing all along.
Jihyo drifted in her thoughts for a while, until awareness crept back in, her cheeks wet and burning with cold tears. She had been crying, though since when she wasn’t sure. But unlike how she usually saw it, she felt hardly any shame. It was suddenly okay to feel fragile and utterly at a loss, and it was okay to cry. To want to vanish in the night and run away from all that was baffling.
In fact, it felt... right, somehow, to do all of this. To not have to be the calm, unwavering leader in that moment. No one was judging her, not even Sana.
And yet, that was what unsettled her most. The realisation that she wanted Sana’s approval – more of it.
But wasn’t Sana already her assigned partner – her guide? She already had Sana’s approval; they would’ve parted ways a long time ago if not. What kind of approval, then, was she longing for?
Jihyo blinked hard and propped herself up against the railing, wiping the tears away with the back of her hand. It might’ve been the alcohol, or the cold air biting at her skin – exactly the kind of weather her mother had warned her about – her cheeks were starting to feel warm again to the touch.
She shouldn’t think about Sana, lest the emotions rush back in. But think she did. A hazy memory resurfaced: a faint remembrance of the girl in the dining room, a drink in and chattier than usual, her cheeks tinted with a gentle blush. Jihyo wondered if those cheeks were as warm as her own.
A strange whim came over her – to touch Sana’s face, in her imagination or in reality. Jihyo did not act on it. She remained still, and let that notion gently slip out of her mind. It was the kind of curiosity she didn’t want to entertain, or hold onto. After all, the haze was better than clarity; she’d gotten a taste of it, and now she wouldn’t easily let go. She felt bolder this way, or perhaps less threatened.
She bathed in the feeling of ease a while longer before finally pushing herself off the railing and heading back inside, her steps weary but quiet.
Dinner was already over and it had gone hushed inside. From afar Jihyo saw her father slumped in his chair, body drooping to one side, his face and neck blotchy from the booze. His breathing was heavy, bordering on a snore. Her mother, meanwhile, was resting her head heavily on one hand, obviously nursing a headache from the way she rubbed her temple with the other, drowsy despite it all.
And Sana... how is Sana doing? Jihyo drew closer to check on her, and was relieved that she seemed fine – although Jihyo knew nothing would have gone wrong, most likely.
Sana sat there, a little out of it. Jihyo stood beside her for a while, and she finally looked up. And there was something in the tenderness of her gaze that made Jihyo want to cry. It felt... precious, in an unexpected way, even though Sana’s eyes had landed on her the same way countless times before.
Everything she’d been trying to push down came back at once.
She shouldn’t be feeling and acting this way, especially not in front of Sana. This disoriented not for a valid cause – like the way her senses often got overstimulated in missions – and this vulnerable. Jihyo was immediately alarmed, and noticing how her body reacted to the mix of emotions she was going through only made her suffer more.
Sensory overload was never pleasant, and all a sentinel could do was get used to it, because it would happen throughout their life; only a matter of duration and intensity. But this – whatever she was feeling right now – was something different entirely. Her stomach was churning, her throat tightened, her hands unable to stop shaking violently, and it was as if her heart were about to burst out of her chest at any moment.
And yet, despite wanting to black out, to completely shut down from the overload, Jihyo just stood there, shell-shocked. She felt sick all over and she was on the verge of throwing up, and if no one had been around, she would have.
“Jihyo?”
There was surprise in Sana’s voice – because Jihyo rarely lost her composure like that, even with her.
Even in the hardest times as recruits, Jihyo had endured it more stoically than everyone else; she’d complained, sure, but never cried; her eyes might’ve gotten watery, that much she’d allow to show, and even then she would excuse herself and slip out of sight, her untimely exit only making her all the more noticeable. At times Sana thought she was refusing to let herself be human, too stubborn for her own good.
Sana fought to rise at once but lost her balance, and in her clumsy attempt to steady herself, she knocked over Jihyo’s glass. The drink spilled before Sana could catch it; in her drunken haze, keeping the glass from falling off the edge was all she managed.
It wasn’t of any importance though, really – Sana wouldn’t have cared if it lay shattered on the floor – in comparison to Jihyo. She let the glass go once she secured it, stepping closer to Jihyo and taking her hand.
“What’s wrong?” Her tone was filled with concern.
Jihyo just stared at her, unmoving, unresponsive. Sana could only guess.
Her initial thought was that alcohol had had too strong an influence on the sentinel. For that very reason, Sana had urged Jihyo not to drink, but the girl wouldn’t listen. Although Sana hadn’t quite understood her determination, she’d relented at last, letting the sentinel make her own “mistake”, as Sana saw it. Seeing Jihyo stop after a few sips had put her mind at ease for a while; she had been proved wrong.
It wasn’t the time to ruminate, nor to regret not having stepped in earlier to prevent the ‘spike’ in stimulation levels though.
Sana considered approaching Jihyo gently and, if possible, soothing her with touches. Physical contact with a guide could help ground the sentinel, and it would work so much better when the pair were close to each other – close enough for the sentinel to take in the guide’s scent, heartbeat, and soft whispering.
But there was Jihyo, tense and on high guard, which read “unapproachable”.
Not risking being utterly overpowered in a fight with the sentinel, Sana had no choice but to rally, trying to reach into Jihyo’s mental landscape through their psychic link.
But Jihyo wasn’t just closed off with her body, but her mind too. Sana had barely brushed the edge of Jihyo’s mental barrier, immediately sensing the turmoil, before getting flung back by a powerful, irresistible force. So powerful it was, it left Sana staring back in awe.
It wasn’t uncommon for a guide to face resistance when working with their sentinel, and it usually just meant the sentinel was in high activation and needed more patience and gentleness. It had happened between them before, too. But Sana’s gut told her there was more to it this time – maybe Jihyo had chosen to cut her out…
The truth didn’t matter for now. Either way, Sana wanted to believe it was all for self-protection, and that Jihyo hadn’t done any of this consciously, rationally – not in the state she was in.
Rattled as she was, Sana took a moment to steady herself, to let curiosity and care take over as she reached for Jihyo.
What Sana hadn’t expected was that the shock on her face would cut Jihyo so deeply, though she hadn’t meant it. Even Jihyo found it absurd, that her mind could even entertain such notions, that anger and resentment had erupted within her the instant she registered that look.
Resentment towards Sana – towards her guide – just because she had made Jihyo feel over the top with a glance? A juvenile emotion Jihyo despised feeling, one she knew was unwarranted, immature, shallow – exactly why she refused to let herself feel it, or so she judged it by her own unforgiving standards.
Whatever she was feeling for Sana, she had felt for others, but never with such intensity and conflict. It wasn’t Sana’s fault that harbouring these feelings had become insufferable to Jihyo. It hadn’t been Sana’s choice to come to hold a special place in Jihyo’s heart, the way it hadn’t been Jihyo’s choice for these feelings to grow.
Yet she was bitter all the same, as if all of this she couldn’t untangle, couldn’t bear, twisted into resentment. It was simply easier that way. At least then, she could pretend she was in control.
A long silence fell between them; the conversation came to a standstill.
Jihyo was aware of the psychic shield Sana had expanded, enveloping and containing them, and she suddenly remembered the presence of her parents, who were merely ordinary people, for whom even a small psychic surge would be harrowing.
Upon that recognition, her body clenched, hard, then shuddered all over with the force. She was so good at strangling herself – her feelings – that even her lungs seized, as if by staying dead still, she could stifle the eruption of her emotions. For now. Her body needed not air, which would only feed chaos, but immaculate restraint.
And then Jihyo tasted something metallic on her tongue, a strange sweetness. The trembling had subsided, though her stomach still wrenched, her throat constricted and chest tight. In a daze she realised it was blood, that taste.
Had she bitten the inside of her mouth? If she had, she had no recollection of it. Or was it her body giving way to the sheer strain of holding herself together, the rupture bleeding through despite her desire to control?
And yet every muscle in her mouth was taut and uncooperative. She couldn’t make herself swallow – not under such paralysis – even though she wanted to.
Sana must have sensed the shift in her, too – perhaps even startled by the sudden, deathly calm that had taken hold of her. Even if she were to explain now that she meant no harm, would Sana believe her? If not for her parents, Jihyo thought, Sana would’ve called forth her spirit form already.
Across from her Sana stood, still and alert, and it was excruciating and unbearably lonely to be on the receiving end of that look: wary and analytical, almost solemn. Cold. The way she always was on mission or in the face of danger.
And to Jihyo it was pathetic, truly, that her instability had to be guarded against – that she had become the danger, when all she’d ever done as a sentinel was strive to protect. The thought that, at this point, nothing she did would be right, left her feeling powerless.
“Let’s go to my room.”
Jihyo spoke up at last, and even she was surprised by how hoarse she sounded. A small amount of blood had gathered at the back of her throat, slipping from the corner of her mouth the moment she barely moved her lips.
“...Jihyo.” Sana said, her voice soft, as if she wanted to say more, but the words never came.
Was it concern in those eyes? Jihyo couldn’t decipher her expression, her tone, when Sana had uttered her name. If it was warmth, it meant nothing to her, and it stirred no more than a faint sense of denial and disgust towards herself.
It seemed that she’d lost the ability to read another person in that moment, disconnected from all of it. Numbness took over, and her resentment, as well as her longing, dissolved in it.
She turned and left in silence. After a brief pause, footsteps followed her down the corridor, but she didn’t look back.