Gowon (LOONA)

                                    

                                          
 ➵Genre: major fluff, angst, apocalyptic!au
                          
➵ Requested: yeS loona members have been on the rise
                          
➵ Warnings: none! this is pp long and kinda sad bUT cute?? anyways 2.4k words
                          
➵ Title: She's the tear in my heart
                          

                            

                                
                            
                              
                                  
                              
                              
                                
                                  
                                  
                                
                              
                             
                            
                            
                          
                          
                          
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You shiver standing outside the departmental store. The front entrance is jammed shut, the mannequins have toppled over a while ago and the windows are scratched and dusty on the outside. There’s no one around. Of course, no one has been around for the past 8 months. The daylight is not warm; it’s more of a dimming source of light than anything, and the powdery snow feels ashy, your breathing getting difficult every time you go out.
                          
  You move around to the nearest window and knock on it twice. Moments later, you’re greeted with Chaewon in a cream hoodie and a black mask. She slides the window open, her eyes shifting with an unnamed emotion while she takes her mask off and sighs in relief before hugging you.
                          
“I’m so glad you’re safe,” she says.
                          
“You know I’m immune, right?”
                          
“Still. It’s dangerous outside.”
                          
  You shake your head and smile at her concern. You don’t really have to worry about yourself—you’re immune, and you had discovered it almost too late, when the government had to quarantine your whole neighbourhood. You would have had to spend days in the poorly managed quarantine section, surrounded by death and disease, if it weren’t for Gowon. That’s how you met her. The daughter of one of the scientists researching on the viral outbreak, she had managed to sneak you out when your test results came out; when they tried hiding the fact that you’re immune to the public so that only they could dissect and probe at you, figure out the solution to the problem. The human race has a funny way of trying to play God, trying to delude themselves into thinking that they know when they clearly don’t know what they’re playing with. And now, half the world is dead. Drained resources made way for disease—you could call it the next extinction event. The thought itself has enough power to drain the life out of you.
                          
  Still, you feel guilt for abandoning your friends and family. The guilt is serpentine; somehow always managing to slither into your heart. It’s not your fault, Gowon always reminds you, but it’s the darkness shrouding your days that controls your thoughts at night. If the sickness doesn’t kill you, your mind surely will.
                          
  “Look who I found!” Gowon interrupts your train of thought. She grabs your hand to take you into the soft toys aisle and pulls out a butterfly plush. It’s cleaner than the rest, possibly stuck deep within the pile of soft toys, and you can’t help but smile at the sparkle in Gowon's eyes. In fact, she has made you so happy these days, you wish you had met her under different circumstances; you wish you had actually talked to her in school, even a simple ‘hello’ in art class would have sufficed. Maybe things would have turned out differently, maybe they wouldn’t.