Unbound Enclosure

"Little Xia, that bastard has cheated on you."

Xia heard the familiar words echo in her mind, shattering her fragile sense of hope. Her thoughts spiraled into chaos, the mantra of denial reverberating in her shattered psyche: "No, no, no, no, no…"

Her mind became a blank slate, stripped of rationale and filled only with the raw feelings of betrayal. "Why? Why is this happening?"

The crushing weight of a heart once hopeful now lay in ruins, especially for someone as young as she was, barely in her late twenties.

Perhaps Kyorin's arrival had been both a herald of hope and a poisoned encouragement.

She had believed that with him, everything would change. But now, reality felt bleak and heavy, and the specters of her past began to haunt her once more.

"That's right, nothing will change."

"Nothing has change."

As the haunting words consumed her, she forgot that something had indeed changed. With the final echo of despair, her eyes became hollow, her mind blank.

Like a ghost of her former self, she moved robotically inside, completely ignoring Kyorin's presence. Her face was devoid of emotion, reminiscent of that fateful day when she had bled to death.

Her body moved automatically, seduced by the grip of death, as if it were offering solace from her suffering. She reached for the necklace of purgatory, a voice pierced through the haze, bringing clarity to her foggy mind: "MAMA!"

"—!!?"

As if the dawn of daybreak had cleared her vision, Xia blinked in confusion. "Eh?"

Suddenly aware of what she was about to do, she swatted the necklace away, horrified at her own thoughts. 'What was I doing?' 

The realization struck her like lightning: she was a mother now. Unlike the fate that had consumed her before, she had someone with her.

'I have Kyorin.' The thought churned in her mind, and she pressed her hands to her mouth, disgusted by her previous demeanor as she heard faint coughing of a child.

'Kyorin!?' Concerned for his well being, she headed outside, opening the door to her chamber where she saw Grandma Tang gently patting Kyorin on the back as he looked exhausted.

Xia approached them, but before she could say anything, Grandma Tang slapped her across the face, her voice a mix of anger and concern.

"What were you thinking? How can you give up just because of that bastard? Have you not thought about this fragile one?" She gestured toward Kyorin, who was now in Xia's arms.

Tears welled up in Xia's eyes as she burst into sobs. "Waaah! Waaah! I am sorry! I am so sorry, Kyorin!" she cried, realizing the gravity of what she had almost done.

She owed him one; without his coincidental intervention, she would have left this world and abandoned her son. And, if he had not acted today, much like in his previous life, Kyorin would have been an orphan again.

In the quiet aftermath of the chaos, Grandma Tang departed once Xia had calmed down. Her parting words, sharp and foreboding, lingered like an echo in the room.

"Don't be reckless again," she warned, her tone a chilling blend of authority and care. "Or you'll have more to fear than death."

The warning sent a nervous shiver through Xia, who nodded with a sheepish smile, the sweat on her brow betraying her unease.

She returned to Kyorin, who lay peacefully asleep, his expression devoid of the turmoil they had endured. Gently, she placed him on the bed, brushing a stray lock of hair from his forehead before pressing a soft kiss there.

"Thank you," she whispered, her voice trembling with sincerity. "I promise, I won't leave you."

With that vow lingering in the air, Xia stepped out, intent on tending to the aftermath of her grandmother's stern admonitions.

But Kyorin, who seemed lost in slumber, was not as far gone as he appeared. As the door clicked shut, his eyelids fluttered open, revealing eyes clouded with thought.

Xia's words echoed in his mind—words he wasn't sure he had ever heard directed at him before.

"I won't leave you."

It was an alien promise, one that clashed with his carefully constructed worldview. In his experience, everyone left eventually.

People were like sand; they slipped away, carried off by the inevitable tides of time. And yet... those words stirred something foreign, something fragile. Could it be happiness?

Kyorin, the man who had believed himself on mastering detachment, found himself rattled. He acted without feeling—or so he told himself. But now, the veneer cracked, and beneath it lay something raw.

Perhaps, buried deep within his malice and indifference, there was a yearning—a desire for connection, for warmth. It was a shadow he refused to confront, a fragment of himself he had locked away.

"How quaint," he muttered bitterly, his lips curling into a sneer. "To think I possess the capacity for something as pitiful as sentimentality."

He scoffed at the absurdity of his own emotions. Family love? Attachment? These were indulgences, distractions for the weak.

"Emotions are tools, not truths," he whispered to the silence, as if trying to convince himself. "What I did—it wasn't noble. It was instinctual. That's all it could be. And it disgusts me as instinct could only result in recklessness."

As he wrestled with his thoughts, a spider crept unnoticed to his bedside. Its tiny legs tapped against the surface, a faint whisper in the stillness. The sudden shriek that followed shattered his introspection.

"Ahhh!"

Xia stormed into the room, her fear a tempest that swept the spider aside with a single swat. Without hesitation, she pulled Kyorin into her arms, her touch warm and protective.

"Are you alright? Your expression—are you about to cry? Are you… afraid?" The word hung in the air, sharp and cutting.

"Afraid."

The question echoed in his mind, unraveling layers of his defenses. Was he afraid? Of becoming soft? Of growing attached to something that could be taken away?

'No,' he told himself, his inner voice defiant. 'I know better than to be fooled by such illusions. Feelings like these are fleeting—ephemeral, like smoke dissipating in the wind.'

But Xia's voice broke through his thoughts once more, soft but firm. "If I had been a second later, my baby would have been bitten. Looks like I saved you in a fleeting moment, too."

"—!!?" The words struck him like a bolt of lightning. His body tensed, jolted by the weight of her casual remark. She spoke as if it were nothing, but to him, it was everything.

In his mind, he replayed the events that had unfolded—the moment he had acted to save her, a fleeting choice that had tipped the scales of fate. Fleeting, yes, but not meaningless.

Even the briefest spark can illuminate the darkest path. And Kyorin, who had once dismissed emotions as weaknesses, found himself contemplating the power within that fleeting moment—a power to alter the course of tragedy.

"Still, this all could just be a coincidence," Kyorin muttered, his voice laced with skepticism as he tried to brush aside the unsettling connections.

But as if the universe had taken personal offense to his dismissal, Xia's voice rang out again, disrupting his thoughts.

"There you are!" she exclaimed, her eyes locking onto the hapless spider that had dared to reappear.

The spider, as if understanding its peril, scrambled away, its frantic movements a tiny rebellion against the absurdity of the situation.

Xia, however, was undeterred. Her expression hardened with a strange maternal resolve as she called after it, "Stop running away! Accept this mother's warmth!"

She gave chase, her gestures both comical and earnest, while Kyorin was left to his introspection. Two simple phrases lingered in his mind, their weight far heavier than Xia's pursuit: Run away and Accept.

"Running away, huh?" he murmured to himself, the words like a key turning in a long-rusted lock. He realized, with a clarity that stung, that he was doing exactly that—fleeing from what he was feeling.

The self-styled master of detachment, the man who prided himself on emotional distance, found himself betrayed by his own actions.

It was ironic, almost painfully so. Kyorin had clung to detachment with the fervor of a zealot, as though it were his identity—a form of attachment.

And yet, in that clinging, he was as attached to the idea of detachment as others were to their bonds of love or friendship. That, he thought bitterly, was the most revolting truth of all.

His thoughts spiraled further, dragging him back to memories of his former life—a time when he had accepted the world's harsh judgments without resistance, and in doing so, had invited its wrath.

But now? Now he was running from his own feelings, denying them the space to exist. Perhaps it wasn't the world's perspective that he needed to confront, but his own—a perspective of his true self, stripped of pretense.

This newfound insight clawed at him, forcing Kyorin to acknowledge a truth he had long avoided: he had never truly known himself.

For all his proclamations of independence, he had been a prisoner of his own design, trapped in a world no larger than the patch of ground beneath his feet.

He lifted his gaze to the ceiling, his eyes distant, as though they sought answers beyond the visible world. "Is this your way of telling me I'm wrong?" he asked aloud, addressing no one and everyone. "Dao?"

The silence that followed was deafening, but it spoke volumes. No answer came, nor was one needed. Kyorin exhaled heavily, a sound laden with resignation and acceptance.

"Fine. It's your win," he admitted, his voice quieter now. "I've been mistaking my own individualism and independence for detachment."

At that moment, Xia's triumphant voice echoed through the room, cutting through his thoughts like sunlight piercing a cloud.

"Aha, got you!" she declared, cradling the spider with a mixture of satisfaction and care.

Kyorin allowed his mind to drift in this newfound clarity, a quiet pleasure settling over him—the kind that only comes to those who have, even momentarily, let go of their burdens.

It was a rare sensation, elusive and fleeting, yet profound in its simplicity. As Xia held her tiny captive with an odd mix of triumph and care, Kyorin felt something within him shift.

The invisible weight he had carried for so long began to ease, as though his captivity was unraveling—not through struggle, but through the absence of resistance.

To be continued...

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A/N: In my previous iteration, I believe I was grappling with my own understanding of detachment. At the time, I struggled to articulate the essence of what I now perceive it to be.

Detachment, I've come to realize, isn't about an absence of emotion or the wholesale forsaking of bonds. It's not a cold, indifferent state where nothing matters.

True detachment lies in the absence of self and self-indulgence—the shedding of worry, resistance, and fear of outcomes.

It's about remaining clear and steadfast, navigating life without being weighed down by expectations or anxieties about what lies ahead.

Detachment is not just being unmoved by the chaos around you but also being unshaken by the pull of anticipation or dread. It's a quiet strength, a clarity that allows one to follow a path without fear of what is to come.