024
The Cursed Twins
“The question now is how much do you know about the curse?”
When Kai first decided to get his head straight and find his older twin, he had known the fact that the curse will kill either one of them, but that’s not what bothered him the most. The fact that the other one will be left alone for eternity scared the hell out of him because somehow, deep in his heart, he knew how terrible it was to be left alone in the dark. He would do anything he could to break the curse, or else, he would rather be the one who will be left behind.
And the fact that all the curse itself was a mystery, except for the fact that it was there because of the rules. He didn't know how it existed in the first place. So when Sehun, the white haired twin, asked him that one simple question, he couldn’t get himself to answer.
“To be honest,” Kyungsoo started, his voice calm and thicker than what Kai could remember. He had always expected his twin to have a different voice, one that would suit his small face, but surprisingly that thick yet soft voice suited Kyungsoo more than anything else. “We don’t know much about the curse, and so does our guardians, who had told us everything they know about it.”
“In short, we only knew the main thing, the consequences of the curse.” Kai had uttered right after his twin, “Other than that, we know nothing.”
Sehun was leaning against the stone post while listening to the fraternal twins. His hands rested almost too comfortably on the flat surface as he pursed his lips, eyes looking straight to the other two in front of him, but the look in his eyes seemed to be farther than that.
“Mhmm, I had seen that coming from you.” Sehun mumbled. He glanced at Luhan, as if giving him the sign to say his thoughts about it.
The grey-haired twin was leaning against the stone post too, but with a hand supporting his face. He tilted his head a bit, palm still pressed gently on his cheek that he almost looked like a child. “You don’t know why the rules were made the way it is, do you?” he questioned, “or why the curse had to be so... cruel?”
The last word sent another blow of silence into that place.
The truth always sounded so harsh, even when it was already known how bad it was in the first place. The curse was made to punish those who break the rules, but the ones who have to suffer weren’t them. Instead, it was another person who had done nothing in the first place.
It was a twist that was made to teach the wrong a lesson, because there was no other punishment as heavy as the suffering of your loved ones. It was the most brutal threat, yet the rules were still broken.
Luhan didn’t receive any answer for his questions, but he knew the answer anyway. They don’t know. Just like how they have to blindly accept their harsh fate and the fact that they don’t get the chance to question why things were meant to be like this.
He straightened his body, and turned his back to them as he walked towards the wall behind him. Sehun mirrored his twin’s action, and turned around after he stole a glance towards the fraternal twins who were still deep in their own thoughts.
“There’s a reason why we are here,” Luhan spoke. He still had his back towards them, while his eyes were looking at the wall, searching for something that none of the fraternal twins could see. “That is to help you with the curse.” Sehun added as he reached his twin. He placed a hand on Luhan’s shoulder, causing the latter to look at him.
Kai and Kyungsoo just watched them from behind, not intending to say a word, but their eyes remained on the pair of twins, observing every move they took.
“Do you know why they were so eager to get here,” Sehun whispered as he placed a hand on the wall. He was referring to the people who had sacrificed their lives, just to reach this place.
Luhan followed his twin’s steps and they both looked up at the wall, “Even though it cost their lives?” With Luhan’s words, a white light appeared under their palms.
The fraternal twins flinched and covered their eyes, by instinct, with their hands as the light got brighter before it spread across the wall of the grotto in a form of white glowing strings. The light swirled wildly, like roots growing furiously from the ground, drawing thousands of signs and words that looked too strange for either Kai or Kyungsoo to understand.
They held their heads up as the inscription covered the ceiling and every space on the grotto’s wall. Their breath was stuck in their throats. Their eyes were mesmerized by the view before them.
The white light only stopped when every inch of the place, including the ground, were covered by white glowing signs and unknown words. It was like looking at the sky full of stars, but there were too many of them that it covered the sky like a bright blanket of overflowing light.
The grotto was no longer dark. Instead it was bright, almost blinding, but bearable for the four of them.
The fraternal twins turned around in circles as their eyes savored the view. They lifted their feet, one at a time, just to check on the signs carved on the ground beneath them.
“What are these?” Kyungsoo asked in a silent whisper, as if his voice might break everything he was seeing at that moment.
“These, my fellow friends,” Sehun started, hands spread out as a grin tucked on the corner of his thin lips, “are the histories of Tamara.”
Kyungsoo looked up and spun around, almost too gracefully despite the surprised look on his face. “Everything?” He asked the taller man as he watched the white hair flailing on the other’s forehead.
“Almost everything,” Luhan answered instead of his twin. It has always been like that. That pair of identical twins seem to be connected with one another even in their head, because it seemed like they feel the need to take turns while speaking, like a ball bouncing back and forth.
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