Moth drawn to a Flame.
"What I'd thought were the arms of a lover, have transcended into the knots of a Noose..W-Why Soojin?"
Soojin's eyes are peered open, she feels as though her heart has been ripped off of her chest and hurled off of the top of Mount Hallasan.
What hurts most is how Yun Ki is stood before her, staring at her with eyes that held emotions of remorse, disappointment and regret.
How can she console a man, who has had his heart shattered by a menace of a woman?
How can he possibly survive this?
Yun Ki on the other hand, feels as though the world has been ripped from under his two feet.
Was he a fool?
He was being tricked and manipulated and used like a puppet.
Not only was his wife a fraud but his own Chief Guard, the head of Security, the man who was supposed to take the fall for him in times of threat, was an accomplice.
The man he'd entrusted with his life, on a platter and the Woman before whom he'd placed his throbbing heart.
The touch of her grasp lingers over his chest.
The way she'd affectionately kissed his lips and smothered her head in his chest thinking it was his brother's.
His lips burnt upon touching, the saliva laying over his mouth felt like an inescapable poison.
What he had deemed to be the elixir of life, the statue of overflowing innocence, was nothing more than a fountain of venom?
What was she hoping to attain, stabbing him in the spine, this miserably?
Was he giving her love?
Agh, his Twin was incapable of feeling emotions such as love.
He knew the man well.
What was he wrapping her in, that she'd started skipping stones in water and foregoing her pride?
She stares at him, eyes watering but Yun Ki isn't in the mood to accept an apology.
He's not in the mood to melt over her tears, that appear to be crocodile ones.
Fake and full of hoax, much like the stories his twin wove in his own ears as a child.
"They think you're weak, Yun Ki ah."
"They laugh at you, behind you back."
"Father wishes you had died."
"You're useless, as it is."
"You're my shadow, live as one."
He'd started believing he was all that because his brother, his own flesh and blood, sold him that.
The way he'd brush his fingers past his hair, yanking on his ends.
"Why are your hair grey? The Kids won't play with you because you look so scary.." He used to tell him, having him wish that he had black tresses like his brother.
"Both Seokmin Hyung and I have black hair, a-are you perhaps, a monster?"
All he was focused on now was Soojin withering in muck when all he'd done was hold her on the top of his head, as a Queen.
He'd bathed her in Pearls, Rubies and Diamonds and all she wanted was his 'coal-for-a-heart' brother.
He digs out the scroll from his bag, unwinding it and causing it to roll open.
With a shaky voice, he reads it out before her.
"This is yours, isn't it?" He asks, watching her go wide-eyed.
"'B-Bohoja,
Days without you are becoming rather difficult. I lie in my chamber, covered in the finest linen and yet my heart desires the softness of your arm or perhaps your chest, that'd filly senses with comfort, a feeling I'm foreign to… A feeling I've been deprived of ever since I've stepped into this palace. Yun Ki wishes he could relish me and yet I'm doing my very best, spurning all his advances. Bohoja, save me. Fill my heart and body with the warmth I desire. A comfort midst your muscular arms. Ones I could break myself in. This Palace is like a pri-prison." he spits, tossing the scroll beside her, as it lands with a thud.
"After I ensured that you were treated well, after I went to lengths to see you and your family smile, without once demanding gratitude?..Why did you have to walk all over me? D-Didn't I tell you I was trying? Didn't I bare before you my heart?" He asks, voice horse and tears streaming down his face.
His own expressions freeze, watching warm globules run down his chin as he feels the moist stream he's left.
He looks at his hand, that lies wet.
"I-I wasn't like this, Soojin. I wasn't a man who feared anything. Rather, there was a time when people feared me and look, here I am, crying before you, begging you to l-love me back, harder..and here you are, prancing into the arms of a man who you thought was your lover, who has made promises before you of giving you the stars..You held me close to you for a minute and I felt as though I was holding the Universe in my arms.."
He withers, wiping his bloodshot red eyes, nose red and snotty.
"What is he giving you in return to earn this kind of affection from you? I-I'll do the same, I'll fall on my knees, I'll beg if I need to..Just give me your love..Give me what you gave him.."
Yun Ki gets on his knees, clasping his hands together.
His knees are covered in mud and his shoulders shake, violently.
Soojin crawls towards him, legs feeling paralysed.
She places a shaky hand over his tense shoulder.
"A-Am I really so hard to love? Am I a devil? Have I harmed you or your family? Have I wished death upon you? I-I've only ever kept you as a rose in a glass box..I've never let dainty greedy hands land on you and here you are, walking into a wreath of barbs, your own self."
He asks of her, looking at her face.
"I-I never asked what those red blotchy marks were over your neck and traced down to your breasts, thinking perhaps you was allergic to the rose water we used in the Palace.. I had them replace it with Sandalwood, only to find that you were in the arms of fire, rubbing against thorns and needles.." He breaths out, specks of mucus falling out of his nose.
He lets out a strangulated giggle watching specks of mucus falling out of his mouth, as though a part of him was getting unclogged, in the process.
"I-I've never cried. I've never broken down before someone ever since I was 16 and here I am, on my knees, dressed up as the man she looks at with stars in her eyes..W-What am I doing to myself, Soojin? F-For you? For the girl who jumps into the arms of the man who is the reason behind me being the way I am, today..The Man who's inflicted upon me years and years of torture, the man who made me believe I was better dead than I was, alive…"
He cries, head falling into Soojin's chest.
He grabs her shoulders with all the life he has in himself.
"Y-Yun Ki.." She mumbles, lips quivering.
Soojin runs a hand on his head, pads of fingers massaging his scalp as he wept into her thundering chest.
"He-He pat my head this way and pulled hair out of my head..He said I was an a-accident. He made my friends run away from me, he burnt my hand and h-he's the reason I have this scar on my face…B-But why am I telling you all this? Y-You've kissed him, you've given your love to him all while my own heart beat for you…"
He retreats from her chest, slapping himself in the face, hard.
"Y-You'll always be a shadow..Y-You were meant to be trampled upon.." He chants, hitting himself in the face, scar on his face going red from the stimulation.
He runs his nails over his face, peeling the reparative epidermis from his scar, dribbles of blood leaking out of it.
"Y-Yun Ki, you're hurting yourself…" Soojin wails, grabbing his wrists.
He stops his actions, looking over at Soojin with blood smeared over his face.
"You wanted to see me this way, anyway..W-Why are you stopping me now? I'm drawing blood from my own flesh, that's what he wanted to see.. Why aren't you smiling, now? Why aren't you pleased, Soojin? I-I'm doing everything you wanted. I've become a crippling mess! You wanted just that so why don't you smile??!" He yells, pushing her on the grass, trapping her wrists under his grip as he straddles her hip.
He takes her arm, smacking his face, as she squirms under him, splatters of blood coating the scene.
The pads of her fingers graze over the pebbled raw flesh peering out from his wound and she winces, pulling her hands away.
"H-Hit me, take your anger out on me…Y-You wanted this, then why aren't you pleased?" he cries, grasping her waist beneath him as she turns away, crying, chest arching from the pain.
"I started seeing you, differently! I saw how you looked at me! I saw how your eyes would change when you held my hand and all along, I thought you wanted to get me into bed..I know you've laid out the world for my family but the truth of the matter is, I-I was being trained to hate you, Y-Yun Ki. I was being coaxed by words dripping in affection. And I was blinded because all I've ever wanted is love, unconditional uninhibited love and in the dark of the night, he'd slip into me saccharine words and he held me, made me feel like I was born to be loved and cherished and not kept as a rose in a glass box…He lied to me, he made promises of fighting good over evil and here you are, hurting yourself because I gave him your share of love..I didn't know who you were on the inside, I grew to hate the man he painted you to be..Tell me, where I'm wrong? Tell me how a 19-year old girl, who's known nothing but the harshness of life, feels when she's cradled and made to feel that she's wanted, wanted for what lies in her heart and not outside it!"