Chapter Text
"You lost, Daniel Park."
No.
No, he couldn't have.
"It's a s-me, that you-... like this." The voice scattered in Daniel's ringing ears. Hardly making out the taunting remark of the man of his nightmares.
He wanted to scream, but all that came out of his mouth was a hoarse wheeze.
There was something being said, but Daniel could no longer gather his consciousness to pay it any attention. Every ounce of it was trying to keep the body awake.
'No I can't pass out.. please, I can't pass out. I still have to... I have to...'
The only warning Daniel got was warm, slimy saliva gathering in his mouth before his body recoiled. The chains that kept his body down didn't even give him a chance to turn over as he puked all over himself. He whined pathetically, tears at the corner of his eyes made his already blurry vision obstruct the clear vision of the room and the movement of the man around him. But he could still make out the crimson color covering his chest.
'Blood...'
The realization scared Daniel's broken mind. Something was wrong...something was definetly wrong with his body.
He was dying, he could feel it. He could feel slowly lose the feeling in his fingertips. He could no longer move any muscle in his legs.
It was getting cold.
A loud tongue-click managed to snap his consciousness back, it was followed by muffled angry noises.
"Looks... -your limit, ..-I lose -..ch ... expe-rim...t."
His limit.
Ah... this was his limit.
Daniel sobbed, he couldn't die, he still needed to do so much. The crews, the workers, the secrets that needed to be found out. He needed to take care of them!
He needed... he needed to... his friends.. How were they? Zack... Vasco.. the others... they needed his help. His mom, oh how long it has been since he has seen her. Was she alright? Where was she? Did she miss him?
He couldn't die like this. He couldn't leave them behind. If only... if only he could start over. If only he had gone back to the beginning... he would have done so many things differently. Oh, how naive he was all throughout this whole nightmare. Going in blind without realizing what a dangerous area he was stepping in. If someone gave him heads-up, anyone, he could have at least braced for the impact.
Daniel sobbed as all the strength left his body so slowly, almost tauntingly. A tear ran down his face, and he couldn't even muster up the strength to move his head to the side, not to give the man of his horrors the satisfaction of seeing his defeating state.
Black dots started to dance in his vision and after so long, Daniel finally was allowed to close his eyelids and relax. The chilling cold ate away at his body as he lost any kind of control over it, his muscles going slack and his nerves shutting down.
For the last ten seconds, only one thought was going through his consciousness.
"Only if I went back."
A startled gasp fills the quiet corners of an empty, dark room. The sound echoes between the cracks of the concrete walls. Deep dark eyes snap open as Daniel jumps up, cold sweat running down his fair skin as he sits on the cold ground of the suffocating room.
His eyes wide, he frantically looks around, startled and paranoid. Shivering, he brings his hands up. He stares as they shake with each passing second, his fibers jumpy and aching from how long he hasn't moved them properly.
But the thing his eyes focus most on is the chains on his hands... or the lack of them. There are no cuffs wrapped around his thinning wrist like a serpent, keeping him down, restrained, and locked up. There isn't even any kind of sign of metallic cuffs suffocating his skin in the first place; no scraped skin and not even ugly, dark purple bruises forming under his skin, revealing the abuse it has gone through. The only thing that assured him of their existence in the first place is the phantom feelings of them wrapped around him like a collar.
He blinks once, twice. Finally taking his eyes off his hands to look down at his body. It was intact; no scars, no injuries, and no blood decorating his perfectly sculpted body. There were no ribs showing from when he was starved for so long before his body could no longer take it and started eating away at the remaining fat and muscles. His skin didn't look gray like a corpse either, it had gained its color back and the sweat shimmering on his smooth fair skin made him look so... alive.
For quite a while he just sat there; curled up to himself, slowly sliding his knees up to his chest to hug them in comfort. He tangles his shaky fingers in his raven locks and grips them tightly.
He was alive.
The thought rang in his brain one more time as if it was trying to convince itself.
A tear runs down his cheek, his vulnerability hidden from the world by the darkness of the room. Were the tears out of relief? Confusion? Did he finally crack and went crazy?
With heavy breaths Daniel tries to calm himself down, his heart still beating frantically, caged by his ribcage to hold it in place from bursting out from its shambles. he runs his hand through his hair, the blunt nails scraping at his scalp.
The tears soon turn into sobs that turn into wailing. Daniel starts crying.
For some reason he was alright... he was alive. Or was he dead and this was some kind of sick joke a person goes through in the afterlife?
Once again Daniel skims his teary eyes on his body, double-checking its condition. It looks alive and healthy. He pinches his skin to watch the area turn red slowly, the pain physically registering in his system,
Daniel sighs, was this really real? Then what he went through.. was it just a nightmare?
No...
No, it couldn't have been; the crews, the war... none of them could have been fake.
Breaking his eyes from examining his body Daniel finally decides to check his surrounding fully. He is back in his house. The one his mother rented for him when he first moved to Seoul to start a new life. But why was he here? it has been so long since he entered this small, rundown house.
Did he go back after the war ended without remembering? But... Didn't he lose... wasn't he...
Daniel swallows, remembering what happened to him after the war. Something strange was going on.
Standing up, he looks at the clock hanging on the wall. It was currently showing 11:11, Daniel furrowed his eyes at the weird numbers, judging by how the moon was high up in the sky, shining through the window he'd think it was the middle of the night, but then, when he looks closer he realized that the clock isn't working at all, it must have run out of batteries as the time was shown frozen in place.
Running a hand on his face he rubs his eyes, whipping the stray tears that started to dry up on his flushed cheeks. Standing up he walks towards the bathroom to wash his face and collect his thoughts, but he stops when his leg bumps against something soft and warm.
With a questioning hum, Daniel looks down only to have his bearly collected thoughts crash and tumble down like rocks on the cliff threatening to collapse.
There, laying on the ground in front of his feet was him.
His first body.
Bruised face, small and with weight still in 3 digits.
But..- what? If that was his first body then which body was he currently in? This can't be right, he clearly lost weight and gained muscles and height in his first body. So why was it that he looked like how he did before the hard training he was put through?
With a panicked breath, Daniel runs into the bathroom and basically crashes into the mirror to look at himself.
He was naked he just noticed. But this body, even if he hasn't been in it for so long, he could still remember it. It was his second body. Daniel's eyes widen. He looks outside at the moon shining through his window. This all felt so familiar... he remembers this day clearly.
Daniel takes a step back from the mirror reflecting his shocked face, his lip twitches upwards and a small laugh slips out between his's lips.
His throat suddenly feels dry.
No, it couldn't be right..?
Right..?
With shaky legs, Daniel walks back out into the living room where his first body lay sound asleep like there was no worry in this world.
The more Daniel looks at himself the more his body starts to shake. Then his eyes suddenly land on the familiar white phone he remembers he lost before, but this time it lacked the memorable picture of his friends on the back of its case.
Slowly crouching down, he picks up his phone with shaky hands and stares at it.
Seconds pass by of him looking at the black screen of his phone and his reflection, which seemed to be mocking him. unknowingly bracing himself, he finally turns the phone on.
Daniel takes in a sharp breath.
The date on his phone... it read the same date as when he first moved into this house.
When he got the second body.
The blessing of his nightmares and the curse of his dreams.
His already jumping heart starts to beat almost concerningly fast now, If a person looked closer they'd probably see it beating against his ribcage.
This couldn't be possible, right?
Daniel double-checks the date on his phone and eyes the time as it turns 3:34. It was the middle of the night, like how he remembers when he first woke up in a body that appeared out of thin air to turn his life around and in a different path.
Opening his contacts on his phone, the only thing that stared back at Daniel was the four numbers; two of them being food deliveries and the other two his mom and Logan.
Huh, he forgot that he actually had Logan's number.
His fingers hover over his mother's name, tempted to call her and hear her voice, to finally believe that what is happening is real and not a shitty joke in the afterlife.
Daniel sighs and moves his finger away from his mother's digits. It was late anyway, he wouldn't want to wake her up if all of this was actually really real.
As he shuts the contacts app he unlocks his phone, only to be jumped with the video on Pacebook.
He frowns at the screen. The video showcased Zack beating his first body up in the middle of the street for the world to see.
Right... He forgot that Zack was kind of an asshole back then... or well now. He smiles at the fact that Zack became one of his closest friends, and he was going to do everything to make it happen again.
He reads the comments and scoffs at the people treating this video merely as a comedy show. Daniel remembers, back then how this 3-minute long video crashed and tumbled down his seventeen years of life. It made him miserable and broke any kind of confidence he could muster up when he first moved to Seoul to start a new life.
He sighs, shuts his phone off, and looks up at the ceiling.
Did he really go back... in past? but how was that even possible?
He blinks, looks at his first body, and then blinks again.
To be honest, impossible events were always happening to him from the start. His two bodies were proof of that. Was this just another pheromone of what his body was capable of? He was clearly in his first body when he ...died, but for some reason, his consciousness went back to his second body, to the time when he first got it.
Daniel scratches his head. This just added more questions to the pile of unknown information he wanted to find answers to.
Right the answers! he could start over again! he could find DG, complete his task revolving around four major crews, and find the answer to his two bodies once and for all!
But...
Did he really have to..?
He was given the chance to go back to the start, this was his chance to live the life he always desired. To change himself and live a normal life that would make his mother proud.
He doesn't need to get involved with the gangs anymore. in the past... well or in the future, he was too involved with the four major crews to back down, but now he didn't even have to interact with them. He could live a normal life and turn over a new leaf of himself!
Daniel smiles as the benefits he can get from this situation finally registers in his brain. He couldn't help the laughter that bubbled up from his chest.
He could live a normal life.
He confirms the date on his phone again. His first day in J high is starting in a few days and it made his heart warm up. He couldn't wait to see his friends again, to hang out with them without fearing a mob jumping them out of nowhere.
He couldn't wait to start his life all over.
He looks at his first body again.
But this time, he'll start it by actually changing himself. The reason why he moved to Seoul in the first place. The first task he should have started and completed from the beginning.
"Woah, it's already the second semester."
"Still hot and it's September."
"Time flies."
The complaints of three individuals mixed among the variety of subjects of other students' conversations as they made classmates of theirs fan them. The classroom was filled with chatters of others sharing their fair share of the morning and talking about their interest.
"The teacher is here!"
The announcement of a student got the attention of everyone in the class, putting a pause to their chitter-chatter to look at the teacher walking into the classroom. he made his arrival noticeable by tapping the ruler against the board as he walks to his desk.
"Quiet! We have a new transfer student."
The news lifted the quietness of the classroom as it filled with murmurs of curious teens.
"A transfer?"
"A guy? a girl?"
"Seriously, at our school?"
The teacher once again taps his ruler to grab his students' attention back on himself.
"Come on in." He speaks towards the door. Everyone's excited gaze pins at the front entrance, but the excitement dies down and turns into disappointed groans and moans when their new classmate walks into the class.
His stubby short legs carry him up to the teacher's desk, bearly able to look over it with his small height.
"I'm Daniel Park." He introduces himself with a smile. "Nice to meet you."
At the same time as this, a cicada was currently forming a cocoon.