Kibum

“You can continue this conversation inside.”

“Don’t be so paranoid, Kibum-ah,” Minho says airily. He’s not paying any attention to Kibum at all, his attention fixed instead on Jinx. Jinx nods along sagely, despite knowing -all about the political situation of Greater Baekje and the troubling lack of security in this open air dais that the Prince and the rock star are dining on. Well, not so much dining – they’d gorged themselves during tea – as opposed to drinking. With the way the wine has been flowing tonight, Kibum suspects that Minho had given the kitchen staff the order to empty his father’s beloved wine cellar.

“Can’t see the stars from inside,” Jinx says, gesturing towards the sky. Minho nods eagerly, his eyes fixed on a completely different kind of star.

I hope you choke, Kibum thinks.

Kibum straightens his back and goes back to his duty of standing guard over Minho. Their friendship is legendary among the royal court; there have been many incidents of backs-stabbing and one-upping of late, but not a single person has dared to badmouth Kibum to Minho.

Kibum knows what they call him behind his back; dog, shadow, slave. They’re all wrong. He’s a wolf and Minho is a mewling babe in the woods. He’s so kind, so naïve and good-natured that he cannot see evil in others, and Kibum is the embodiment of trickery and treachery.

Minho needs Kibum to be his eyes and his sword; to see what he cannot and to stain his hands with blood so that Minho’s can remain spotless.

A tug at the sleeve of his uncomfortable dress uniform draws his attention away from his surveillance duties.  

“Go mingle and have fun,” Minho insists.

“And leave you unguarded?” Don’t send me away from your side, Kibum begs in his heart. What is a wolf without its pack?

“You have soldiers for that!” Minho beckons a couple of lower-ranking sergeants over. “You’re my second in command, you’re supposed to be out there partying the night away! I insist.”

Jinx, that godforsaken troublemaker, pipes up in support of Minho. “You seem tense, buddy. Find a girl, get laid. Works wonders for stress, believe me.” And he has the gall to wink after that.

“Oh ho,” Minho chuckles. “Women have no power over Kibum, no sir.”

Look at who’s talking, a ing who can barely keep his raging hard-on for some washed up rock star in his pants, Kibum sneers mentally.

“Shoo,” Minho adds, flapping his hand.

Kibum leaves then, deciding that he will take a walk around the perimeter of the castle and keep an eye on things. A couple of people had walked past the dais several times earlier, and he wants to make sure that nobody has any intention of stirring up. There had been a brown-haired man with glasses who especially caught Kibum’s eye; most people only looked at Minho – what with him being the Prince – but this man’s eyes had been trained on him.

A surveillance sortie around the perimeter reveals exactly what Kibum feared; the older guards – what few of them are left – are taking their jobs seriously, but the younger guards are in a festive mood and their heads are all turned towards the stage. Most of them have been drinking too; Kibum can see beer bottles and wine glasses by their posts. He reprimands the first and second set of guards, but after a while he just gives up.

Instead, he mingles with the crowd, hoping to catch a glimpse of the dark-haired man with the angular jaw, but there’s just too many people milling about.

One man takes two knives from the cutlery tray at the end of the buffet table. Kibum follows him, one hand on his gun, until he gives the knife to a woman who must be his wife. Under their table is a marmalade-stained knife. She uses the knife to continue eating her marmalade crepes.

Kibum walks away, feeling silly.

Perhaps he is being paranoid.

A glance at the dais shows him a happy Minho, laughing together with Jinx’s entourage as the rock star waves his around around – no doubt regaling them with his escapades – and the two guards standing watch over him look vigilant enough.

Perhaps he can have five minutes to himself.

Kibum walks away from the crowded foregrounds and towards the gardens; there are fewer guests here, mostly nobles and emissaries.

Just as he’s about to relax, Kibum catches a glimpse of a shadow moving behind a cherry blossom tree, and his senses kick into overdrive. Nobody skulks around with good intentions.

He sneaks up on the person, noticing immediately that they are scribbling away in a large-ish notebook. This is exactly why he warned Minho against allowing the public inside; anyone with half a brain can map the castle out for future attacks.

Luckily, the person is so engrossed in their work that they don’t notice Kibum drawing his knife - guns are better over a distance, but knives make for silent killing – and stalking them until the knife is pressed against their throat.

“Don’t move,” Kibum purrs.

Up close, he realises that the person is a boy; his flat chest and adam’s apple make it clear. Nonetheless, he is slight of frame and rather feminine in appearance.

The notebook falls to the ground.

“I’m going to pick that up,” Kibum says. “If you try to run, I’ll stab you in the back. In the extremely unlikely event that you manage to evade that, I have a gun. I’m a very good shot. Are we clear?”

The boy nods.

The notebook is full of drawings, but not of the sort Kibum expected. Instead of maps, there are sketches of the castle’s spires against the sky. There is one of a gaggle of girls, their swishy multi-coloured skirts painstakingly rendered onto paper. There is another of the banyan tree, the tallest tree on the grounds that, according to legend, has existed longer than the kingdom.

Kibum holds back a gasp when he lands on a drawing of himself. Minho and Jinx are shaded in as silhouettes but his features are drawn in bold lines.

When he looks up, the boy’s plump cheeks are red.

Again, Kibum feels silly for getting so jumpy over non-issue, but he decides to give the pretty boy a hard time anyway.

“Where’s your invite?” he asks, holding his hand out.

“Uh…” the boy pats his pockets. “I… it was just here, maybe…”

He couldn’t have gotten onto the grounds without the invite – Kibum’s instructions to his men on that front had been strict – so it doesn’t matter that he’s lost it now, but it just leaves him at Kibum’s mercy. He’s thinking of asking for the drawing of himself as compensation.

“You can’t be in there without an invite.”

“I…um…I…” pretty boy stumbles over his words. “I had it, I promise. I didn’t sneak in or anything.”

“I guess I could let you go with a fine.”

“I don’t have any money.”

Kibum knows; he can see it in the patched and faded clothes the boy wears.  “Well, aren’t we in a right pickle? What can you offer me in compensation, then?”

“Umm…” the boy thinks for a while before speaking. “A kiss?”

For a moment, Kibum is dumbfounded. Then he laughs, bending over double and guffawing like he hasn’t since Minho announced this stupid party.

The boy looks affronted. “Lots of people want to kiss me, you know,” he sniffs. “And I don’t let them.”

“Lucky me,” Kibum teases. The boy blushes and Kibum decides that a kiss from this pretty little thing might just be more valuable than a half-finished drawing. “Alright then, Romeo. Convince me that I should overlook your trespass.”

The boy steps closer, almost shyly, eyes closed, and presses his pillowy lips against Kibum’s. It’s the briefest of kisses.

“Mmm,” Kibum says, running a thumb over his lips. “You call that kissing? Little boy, let me show you how it’s done.”

“I’m not a little boy,” the boy protests, but he leans forward anyway, not at all bothering to conceal the eagerness in his movement. Perhaps tonight might not be a total loss after all, Kibum thinks, although Minho will be completely insufferable if he does get laid.

“My name is Taemin,” the boy says in between kisses. Kibum leans him against the cherry blossom tree before diving in to taste his lips once more. Taemin runs his hands over Kibum’s shoulders, into the kiss without the slightest sense of shame.

Over in the background, Kibum can hear excited screaming. That pompous arsehole Jinx must have taken to the stage.

If he weren’t so distracted by the sweet taste of Taemin’s kisses, Kibum would have realised that the screams he was hearing weren’t the screams of an excited crowd, but a scared one. It is only when he hears the heavy thump of falling things – like tables – and the sound of a hundred feet running at once that Kibum suddenly realises that something is wrong.

Minho.

Without a single backward glance, Kibum runs away from the gardens and towards the dais.

All around him, chaos reigns. There are guards running around; men, women and children running around, all of them directionless and incapable of rational thought. A couple of torches have fallen and started burning, but no one has yet had the sense to put them out.

He should never have left Minho.

Finally, he comes to the dais.

That dark-haired man is on it, holding a gun to his beloved Minho’s head. He has a loudspeaker and is screaming into it, but whatever he’s saying is lost in the din created by the panicked crowd.

Kibum approaches the dais carefully.

Jinx, to his credit, has stayed behind even though the rest of his entourage has run off.

The moment the dark-haired man sees him, he presses the gun closer to Minho’s head. Kibum puts his hands up in as a sign of submission, but he’s sure that the man can read murder in his eyes.

Up close, he can make out what the man is saying.

“We’re not here to hurt anyone,” he says, contrary to the weapon he’s got aimed at Minho. “We’re just asking, nicely, that the royalty that ed up this country do the gracious thing and abdicate, and let the people rule themselves.”

At the word abdicate, Minho stiffens. Kibum cannot believe his stupidity. I am here, he wants to yell to his brain-dead prince, just give in to whatever he wants and I’ll kill him for you later on.  

“What say you,” Jonghyun asks Minho. “We will rule this country one way or another, your only choice here is whether you get to live to see Greater Baekje blossom anew.”

“Say yes!” Kibum screams then. “Abdicate, you ing idiot!”

Betrayal clouds Minho’s fair face, but he sits up straighter. “No.”

“NO!” Kibum screams again, running, but it is too late. He sees it all; the man’s finger squeeze the trigger, the recoil of the gun as it fires, and finally, the red that spatters over Minho’s white cape.

Minho slumps over, dead, just as Kibum reaches him. The man looks up at Kibum with wide, shocked eyes, as if he cannot believe that he just killed a person. Kibum’s gun is out – he drew it much earlier – but he lets it fall from his fingers. The man drops his gun too.

They stand there and stare at each other, each in disbelief.

Minho, my Minho, Kibum thinks.

It is when the man breaks his gaze and looks away that Kibum’s blood starts flowing again. Grabbing the knife that he had intended to use on Taemin, Kibum charges at the man and pins him against the floor of the dais.

They struggle there – the man must have a knife of his own too, because he keeps reaching for his boot – but finally Kibum pins him down and stabs the knife through his right wrist. As the man screams in agony, Kibum stabs through his left wrist too. With his arms incapacitated, the man can only watch as Kibum drags the knife across his throat, spilling his blood the way he spilled Minho’s.

Kibum watches the life drain out of the man’s eyes.

When he’s sure that the man is dead, he stands up. Jinx is still in his seat, frozen.

Kibum doesn’t care.

Minho is dead. His Minho, his silly, naïve Minho who needs Kibum to protect him always because he knows nothing about the darkness of man’s heart, is dead.

Kibum has nothing left.