Yin and Yang

For vanillaamano

Prompt: Myungsoo is Sungyeol's only connection to life

Pairing: Myungyeol

Word Count: 2,445

The clock ticks.

One,

Two,

Three.

It's 3 o'clock, and the streets are silent, deserted. I'm the only one here, with a shadow at my back, a knife in my pocket, and a scrawl of words imprinted in my mind. Tonight, I know who I am. Under the cloak of night, I am Death, in the form of a human. A human that is more dead than alive, because when the life drains out of another, it does not transfer to me. It rises up, and spreads, and brings life to Earth, but it does not bring life to me. For I am Death, and life cannot tamper its darker opposite. The yin cannot overpower the yang.

Tonight, I am cloaked in the light of the shaded moon, cloaked in the darkness that drapes shadows over Death tonight. On this stretch of the city, the lamplights faithfully lining the streets are either flickering from yellow to black or gone, which makes my job of dealing death all the easier, all the simplier. Light only makes my job harder, for light brightens my Death and brightens life, when my purpose in this life is to, simply, bring death.

I step out in the open from the alley, my pulse as calm as it would be if I were making a sandwich, or about to fall to sleep. Only one makes my more dead than alive heart race, and this is not it. It never is.

I walk briskly to the other side of the deserted road and continue on several blocks, all too aware of the clicking of my boots on the cobbled rocks, and the snap of my open jacket, pushed by the wind and my quickened steps. I would prefer to be silent, completely, but tonight speed is the most important factor. I would like to get in, deal death, and get out, and be back, hidden, before the clock strikes a pair's worth of 12's.

I was told the Life tonight is a man, younger than my years by two, living with another in a small house off the main road that runs like a river through the city. I wasn't told why, or how, but I do not need to know why and my Payer leaves me with the freedom of the "how". I just need to know my job, my duty, and I am Death, and at night, that is all I am. No more, no less.

The winter wind races through my shirt like it is nothing, but I don't shiver, even when the frost in the air bite my nose and ears and my fingertips, exposed in my fingerless gloves. Even when my breaths puff out like clouds in the summer sun. And even when the cold manages to burrow under my skin, ice over my ribs, and continue to my heart. Because I know that my heart is already frozen with Death, and only one can melt the crust, and defrost my blood, and he is not here. So I just keep going, crossing the silent city, just a shadow in half a world of darkness. Just a shadow, bringing death to those who he is ordered to, leaving life to those who I have been told to leave.  

It might bother others, to know who you are is being controlled by another, but I have lived with it, and this is how I will live until my Death invades my lungs and my throat will close and I will be my own victim.

I've never been a victim. I've never been at the mercy of another's crystal sword. I've felt weak, but I have never been weak. Do you understand? There is a difference between what you feel, and what is truly there, in front of your eyes and in front of someone else's. There is a difference between feeling weak in your heart and mind, and being weak, faced with one much greater than you. No, I am not weak.

Death is not weak.

I find Life's house easily enough, grey in the midnight's light, wedged between two shops on a side street to the city's rivered road. No lights are on, from what I can see in the cleared glass, and the street is empty, lives retreated into their own houses for the night, the night of death. For them. For me, Death, every night is a night of no life.

Now I quiet my steps, so I am just a darkened ghost as I peel off the shadow-draped wall and cross the street to the door, feeling exposed by a single lamplight as I do. This is crucial, this first step. No one can see you enter, as well as they can't see you leave. If they didn't see you, you never were.

I try the doorknob, and, to my surprise, it clicks into place without a key or a lockpick. I let out a breath, letting a whisper of a smile linger across my lips before I wipe it off. It's a rare thing when a Life leaves the door open, but it’s all the more easier to me. I give the door a gentle push with my fingers, and it creaks open, slowly, cutting a piece of bare light on the wood floor inside. I breathe out, quietly, annoyed at the creaking. I push it again. It creaks. I freeze. When no one comes to answer the door for Death, I push it open enough so I can slip through, out of the cold and into the house.

Now as silent as death, I slide the door shut, the click slicing through the still air. I scan the room, but I don't see any movements, so I allow myself to relax a fraction. The complication with tonight is the roommate, and I don't want it to get messy and end up to two dead instead of the one I was assigned to. The first room is furnished with a single couch and chair, a weighed down coat rack, shoes in their pairs clustered near the door. I step over them, wrinkling my nose as the smell of heavy cologne waffed over to me on a heater's wave, and continued on into the kitchen. The house was small, cluttered, not exactly neat. Papers, books, miscellaneous items, were strewn across the floors and everywhere there was a flat surface. Bags of chips and wrappers decorated the kitchen counter top, but the mess wasn't because of unuse; the house was comfortable, lived in, homy. For some reason, it planted a seed of worry in my stomach as I rounded a chair piled high with textbooks, an empty water bottle perched on top. I try to brush off the feeling, knowing that nerves mean mistakes, and a mistake here can mean a life behind bars. And that's something I won't do.

My breaths are the only noise as I pass through the kitchen, trying to find the Life's room. I'm never told which door it is; I've been told to guess, and I always do. Sometimes, I get lucky. Sometimes I don't. Hopefully, tonight will be a lucky one.

The first door I try is a closet. Sending up a silent thank you to whoevers really up there, I move on, closing the door behind me. The darkness is lightened enough in the house that I can see the outlines of furniture, and slight details: Frames on the walls, a stark shadows of a lamp, a blanket uncurled on a chair as I passed, Death ghosting by.

I turn into a small hallway. Three doors. Three chances. I turn the knob on the first one. A bathroom, the light from a lamp outside creeping in through the slits in an unfolded blind. I move to close it again, but decide against it and instead leave the door so just a sliver of space was between the door and the frame.

From the second door's outline, I guessed that it was completely dark inside, and I opened the door. I was careless. Too careless. Because, there, sitting upright on the bed in the room, a lit computer sitting on his lap, was the Life.

I hissed through my teeth, my stomach dropping to my shoes, the seed of worry blossoming until my throat was thick with the clotting smell of a spring flower. Frozen in doorway, Death was, and the Life's large eyes lifted from the computer screen to settle on me. His eyes widened even more, and he opened his mouth, the unnatural light from the screen setting strange angles to his pretty face, and closed it again. Opened it, closed it. It reminded me of a fish I had seen once in a pond, like it was eating the non-existent food in front of its lips. Without taking his eyes off me, he slid his computer to the side so he could swing his legs over the edge to meet the ground.

Fear overflowed my senses, until all I heard was the roaring of blood in my ears. They had never seen me. Never. They had been asleep, or reading, or had their back turned to me. They've never focused their eyes on me. The Life has never seen the Death. The Yang has never seen the Yin.

"Who are you?" The voice was high, trembling, and it was coming from the Life. I was like a deer in headlights: I couldn't move, held in place by the eyes, full of fear and uncertainty and defiance, of the Life. I can't move, but he can, and he's moving closer, a sharpened pencil held out like a sword.

"What do you want? Why are you here?" I can't speak. Panic floods me, and I have failed. I need to run. I need to hide. I need to do something, but instead I do nothing.

"Who are you?" His voice is rising, until it reaches the peak and cracks, the fear getting the best of him, to find a stranger in his home, the night still stretching long. And I can't move. I don't know what to do. Death doesn't know what to do, faced with knowing Life, and I'm choking on my own breaths. I need to go. If I get caught here, I'll leave him all alone. I'll be Death, and I will die without him.

This thought finally shakes me like a lightening strike and I turn on my heel, to run, to go, to abandon my post as Death and just try to live. To not be anything, but to be alive. But standing in the shadows of the hallway, chin cocked and raised, was someone. The roommate. My sprout of hope died, right there, right then. I was done. I had tried to run, I had tried to escape this, but I didn't. I can't. I can't be Death. I failed.

"Who are you?" This was from the roommate, his voice lower, more threat than fear built behind the words, and he stepped forward, so his eyes were connected with mine, even if I could barely see the shine of them in the darkness of the night, of the night when I failed. I failed Death. I'm no one. "What are you doing here?" He asks me, and it's the same question as the first one's, but I'm frozen and I feel my breaths rasping through my throat.

And then, I feel the cold steel of my knife on my fingertips. My knife, who has released many of the lives in this word. My knife, who will end this all too soon. I can see both of them, tension tightening their muscles, their voices, fear clouding their eyes, so bright and full of Life. And what am I, with Death darkening my eyes and clinging like burrs to my clothes, my skin, everywhere? What am I? What am I doing here?

But I can't do it. I can't. So I leave my knife, and I feel my knuckles meeting flesh and blood and a cheekbone, and I see a figure crumpling to the ground and I hear a scream, but like I was submerged underwater. And I run, down the hallway, ignoring the slams and the crashes and the frantic voices and I just concentrate on my steps, so I can run, and my breaths, so I can live. I burst out of the home and into the cold night, the biting frost attacking my bare skin but I'm gone, running, disappearing into the night form the sights of the two but not from myself, who I'm really running from.

I couldn't do it. I'm not who I thought I was. I'm not anyone. And now, suddenly, in a thought that drowns every other, I think I need him. I need to hear his voice and see him, his sparkling eyes and clear skin and aliveness, his life, because maybe that would help the churning thoughts inside my mind and the spinning dread and hate and fear.

The city flashed by my eyes, and now I don't care if people see me, notice me, take note of me. I need to be someone. I need him.

My breaths are coming too fast, too hurried now but I don't care and I'm chilled to the bone but I don't care, I'm running and I'm running.

And then I'm there, and I open the door too fast so it slams against the wall but he's there, he's there and I don't know who I am anymore, and he's standing up and coming towards me and I need him so much. And he's folding me in, because he knows something's wrong without having to ask, and he's so warm and I'm so cold. He's so alive, and I'm so dead.

"Yeollie," he says, his words muffled by my shoulder, and I realize I'm crying but I don't care.

"I'm no one," I tell him, and he only hugs me tighter and I only cry harder and we stay there, locked.

"Yeollie..." He says, and then trails off. When he finally speaks, the words come as a shock to me. Whoever I am. "You're mine."

And then we cry, because I can feel Myungsoo's shoulders shaking as mine do too, a Yin and a Yang, Death and Life, opposites, yet connected. Meant to be. We are meant to be. And if we are meant to be, I am meant to be. I am meant to be someone. I am meant to be his.

Just then, I felt a twinge, and I felt, deep in my heart, a fire starting to flicker.

The clock ticks.

One,

Two,

Three,

Four.

A/N: Hopefully this is what you wanted… or at least kind of. Hope you enjoyed reading and happy holidays!

StarlightSpirit: I cried. I actually sat here at 3.30am crying because of this. Thank you for writing this gorgeous fic, author <3

Comment from prompter:

 thank you for whoever author that completed my prompt in chapter 11.. it was beyond my expectation T.T I love you author-nim, let me give you kisses and hug~~!!!!! X