Chapter Twenty: Demanded Confession

                “I wish to see Angel, please,” the boy said.

                “General, do you know this kid,” the Professor Yang asked.

                “Yes, he’s the boy in the report, Kim Myung-soo,” the general said.

                “Myung-soo…” Professor Yang turned back the page of his notepad, “wasn’t that the name that our specimen muttered?”

                “Yes it was,” the general said. “Keep him and ask him some questions. Why is he here, what is his connection to the specimen –”

                “Stop calling him specimen as if he’s not a living being!” Myung-soo said, which surprised everyone inside the dark room. “Yes, I can hear your voices from there. I’ll answer every question, but please, you have to take me where he is right now. I have to talk to him… if not my–” Myung-soo suddenly cried in pain and fell onto the floor.

                “Oh no! Open the room, quick!” the professor commanded the soldier who was standing near the door. After a few moments, the professor was already next to Myung-soo who was still slumped on the floor. “Son, what’s wrong?”

                “I…my back… I can’t take it anymore…” the professor quickly grabbed the hem of Myung-soo’s shirt, only to reveal a sight that made him gasp in both astonishment and horror. The skin on Myung-soo’s back was stretched, as if it was about to rip apart because of a lump of something like…

                The professor gently traced the lines made by the lump of feathers on Myung-soo’s back. The professor noticed the bones that were not supposed to be there, slightly protruding on the boy’s back. The professor touched them gently, but Myung-soo suddenly flinched before saying, “I’m afraid… Angel... he has to know about this.”

                A sudden slight movement of the bones on Myung-soo’s back made him take a sharp breath. “Son, hold on. I’ll get a scalpel and well cut out a slit on your back enough for your wings to come out. I’ll be back shortly,” the professor said before running out of the room.

                The professor took the very first scalpel that he could find in the laboratory before quickly returning to the room, but when he was about to get in, soldiers suddenly stopped him. “What is going on! A boy is suffering inside!”

                “Sorry, professor, but the general told us not to let you in until the wings come out on its own,” one of the soldiers said. “He’s going to kill us if we let you in.”

                “This is outrageous!” the professor quickly went to the dark room where the general was, but the wails coming from the other room just couldn’t escape his ears. “Won Bin! Let me in!”

                “No,” the general said, “this is the actual demonstration of how their kind develop their wings. I can’t let you ruin a good show.” Suddenly a scream was heard from the room that made the professor avert his eyes. Myung-soo was already lying on the floor, white wings patched with blood were spread out over a pool of blood.

                “Enough! You’ve gone crazy!” the professor went out and got to the room where Myung-soo was, with a wheeled emergency bed and a few nurses behind him. “I’m sorry my son,” he said as the nurses pushed the bed to the hallway towards the emergency room. They placed Myung-soo carefully so that he wouldn’t have to lie over his wings. Myung-soo was facing on the right side, his eyes were open, but he wasn’t responding as if he was completely unconscious. “Hurry up! He lost a huge amount of blood!”

                As they were heading to the laboratory, their group passed the glass room where Angel was located. “Everyone,” the professor said as he opened the glass door, “bring him here! And bring everything that we’ll need to operate in this room.”

                They positioned a bed next to Angel’s bed and transferred Myung-soo there. The professor checked Myung-soo’s back and said “someone give this child anesthetics!” He started wiping off the blood around the torn skin, but then he noticed how the boy’s right hand stretched out towards Angel who was lying opposite him.

                “Hyung,” Myung-soo said, which the professor didn’t fail to hear. The professor himself went to Angel and put his wings beside him, turned some knobs until the part of the bed where the left wing used to be was detached and moved Myung-soo’s bed near Angel’s until they were a foot  away.

                As soon as Myung-soo was placed near his hyung, he held out his bloodied hand and placed a rosary on Angel’s hands before muttering, “repent, and you will be forgiven.” On the other hand, the nurses cleaned the excess blood and the professor started doing the necessary operations.

                The last part would be stitching the skin so that the amount of exposed flesh would be minimized. It was a painless task for the professor, but what pained him was the memory of what happened earlier. I never signed up for this.

                “Not only Angel and I, but every human in this world is an angel spirit,” Myung-soo suddenly spoke while the professor performed the final stitches. He surprised the professor, but he looked at him and listened intently. “You know sir, there are two ways on how angels are sent on earth. First, is by assigning, just like how Angel was sent here. He was sent here to perform a specific task, and that is to protect someone who has been taken interest into by the Dark. He was sent with an automatic figure of an adult. He doesn’t remember a name by which he is to be called, because the only thing he remembers is his mission. He is powerful, and he can fight in battles.”

                 “Then the second one is by natural process, like the process you and I, and everybody else in this world have undergone.” Myung-soo said. “We are born, we grow up, dream, and work toward those dreams. The divine mission is something that is embedded into our souls. Seeking God is something that we will eventually feel. But since we don’t remember it, we tend to be subjected more to temptations. Once we gave in, and failed to repent, we will become part of the Dark.”

                “Is that enough? Does that answer all of your questions?” Myung-soo said. “I promised to answer every single question if you bring me to him.”

                “Ah..well… You already told us everything,” the professor said. “but son, there is one last thing that I want to ask you.”

                “What is it sir?”

                “Does your mother know about this?”

                Myung-soo gave him a weak smile. “No, she doesn’t, not even my father. They didn’t even know that I am here, so whether I die here or not, they won’t know.” Myung-soo said. “Professor, are you terrified with what you are witnessing?”

                “Not anymore,” the professor said, “but you almost gave me a heart attack back there.”

                “I’m sorry sir,” Myung-soo said. “But it is also good that you didn’t come when my wings were about to come out. Normally, people live until they die without suffering what happened to me earlier, but I choose this to happen because I committed a huge mistake that made Angel, a dark angel.”

                “So black winged angels are…. Dark angels?”

                “Yes,” Myung-soo said. “And the darkness of the hue also depend on the darkness of the heart.” Myung-soo held out his hand again and touched the other’s wings.

                “Why did he become a dark angel?” the professor asked.

                “It was my fault,” Myung-soo said, “I kept him bound on earth, when he was supposed to be back to heaven.” Myung-soo stretched the dark wings, which revealed a mass of golden feathers near the root. “I guess he’s already returning though.”

                “How about you professor? Do you want to see the color of your wings? I learned the spell to make humans develop wings. I can cast it to you if you want to,” Myung-soo said.

                “I see you’re already having a heart to heart chit-chat,” someone suddenly said behind them.

                “General,” the professor said. The general came closer to the two. He smiled, more like smirked to the two when all of a sudden he took Myung-soo by the shoulder and pulled him up. “Stop! He has to rest!” but the general didn’t listen to the professor and instead took Myung-soo to a wide spacious room.

                “Turn on the cameras and start recording your observations!” the general then threw Myung-soo to the floor and threw a knife beside him. “Come on, stand up and fight!” the general said.

                “I… don’t know how to fight.” Myung-soo said, but the general attacked and the next second he knew, a knife was pointing towards his chest.

                “I already killed you once,” the general said before backing away.

                “I don’t fight! I’m the one who is always bullied at school!” but the general lunged forward and the next thing Myung-soo knew, the knife was already pointing at his neck.

                “You don’t want to fight? I already killed you twice. I’m telling you, I won’t hold back next time,” the general said. The general backed away, and Myung-soo could do nothing but to fall on the floor to catch air. He didn’t even notice that he stopped breathing when the knife was next to him.

                “General Won Bin!” the professor ran beside Myung-soo and helped him stand. “Enough of this nonsense! He’s still weak. Let the boy recover and go.”

                The general chuckled before keeping his knife. “You don’t want to fight, but maybe you’ll fight if  you knew that I will kill your hyung,” the general said which compelled Myung-soo to look up. “You have a very beautiful pair of eyes, fiery,” the general said, “Don’t worry, I won’t do that. Rest for a little while. If you still can’t fight in our third meeting, I’m already telling you this: you will definitely die.” The general left laughing after that, and the professor helped Myung-soo to walk.

                “He wouldn’t let us go away easily, would he?” Myung-soo muttered.

                “Of course he wouldn’t,” the professor said, “but you can fight your way out. I know you can.”