The first time Hyun-Su intruded Yi-Kyung's mind, he was thrown back to the day Yi-Kyung had given her daughter to him.
He saw the raise of the knife, the frozen lake, and the bloodied baby child smiling back at him. For a moment, Hyun-Su was confused, and then, with a devastating punch to his heart, he realised that he was watching through Yi-Kyung's eyes.
It was just a split second of a memory, a forsaken reality that had been transformed into a nightmarish dream, but Hyun-Su could feel Yi-Kyung's feelings.
That hadn't been the first time he had felt someone's memories, someone's feelings, and it hadn't been the last.
The second time he tore through Yi-Kyung's head was right now. Right when they both rolled onto the street.
And this time, he wasn't watching through her eyes, but it didn't make it easier.
At first, he saw quick flashes.
Red light.
Yi-Kyung gasping.
Yi-Kyung on the ground with her stomach moving.
And then pure darkness.
Hyun-Su found himself standing in an abyss of pure darkness, of nothingness.
There was nothing around him, no sound, no ground beneath his feet, yet somehow he was standing on something.
The only thing illuminating the black void was the faint light that clung to him, casting long, thin shadows over the black that swallowed them greedily. It was as if the world had swallowed everything, leaving only him. He felt a weight pressing on his chest, an unsettling sense that this place - this mind - was a cage built from memories too painful to face.
Slowly, he turned, feeling the shadows shift with him. As he looked behind, something cracked through the blackness, a flash of something not his. It surged forward, slamming into him like a wave of ice.
Now he wasn't in the abyss anymore.
But at the frozen lake.
And then the ice cracked.
With a gut-wrenching scream, Yi-Kyung fell, her body plunging through the frozen lake, disappearing into the dark water below.
Hyun-Su felt the cold grip his skin as though he, too, had been pulled under.
