The glass of red wine glistened, upon my trembling hand and the dancing candles perching at almost every corners of the room.

My nails chittered against its warm surface. The discomforting noise bounced against my ears, much louder than the gramophone singing some somber tune from the study.

Calm.

Something that I am. Something that I need to be. My feet tapped as it followed the almost silent melody coming from the scratchy old record. But as it skipped, my heart did the same.

The lump in my throat pulsated and it felt like the rising pressure would permanently block my breathing pathway as it was not even tamed by my prolonged sigh. The butterflies began to take flight inside the cavity of my stomach and it send a wave of multicolored sparkle across my field of vision.

I feel nauseous.

But my feet still followed the beat of the slow tune in immense precision.

I hoped a long swig of this liquid confidence would help decrease my swollen anxiety, but it only caused me to feel even more helpless. Put it down, I whispered. And I did, missing only an inch from the edge of the table and possibly causing a mess much too early for me to care to clean up. Or even worse, it could wake you up.

Yes, a sleeping you. Peacefully laying on the unmade bed and acting as a reminder that the only thing separating death from the living is that soft rising and falling movement of someone’s chest. And the warmth emanating from your body. And the blissful ignorance of how thin and arbitrary is the construct of safety.

My body sank down as I took a seat beside you on the corner of the bed, hoping that a slight rustle of that blanket draped across your lower half won’t disturb your slumber. It won’t, right? You’re a heavy sleeper. This thin needle piercing through your skin won’t even bother you the slightest. It shouldn’t, not when the loudest of thunderstorms never managed to cause you to even stir.

Stick it in. Come on, stick it in. The bright silvery gleam of the needle was only a hair length away from your neck but my fingers won’t stop trembling. I couldn’t afford mistakes, as one wrong prick would mean you waking up.

And thus I only sat there, silence occasionally cut by the skipping record, watching each and every intakes of your breath as if it would be your last. Not would be, they have to. It’s just that when the back of my fingers ran across your cheek, I couldn’t make myself.

After all we’ve been through. I couldn’t make myself.

Don’t wake up. Please. Don’t wake up. Stay there and keep on sleeping, trapped in the dream world where you’ll always be. Ignore the chirping bird calling the sunrise or the whistling wind trying to break this precious stillness. Stay in the darkness and don’t… wake…

“Jieun?”

I always say that I hate it when you called my name. Because it’s real. It’s really my name. I found it weird that they assigned me to do a job whilst using my official name, but as I was trained to do, I accepted it without even asking why. And I hate it, absolutely despise the occasions when you dare to call me by it. Especially like this, heavy and dripping to the brim with sleep. Innocent and uncalled for. Disgusting.

I smiled, hoping that you didn’t catch me swiftly hiding the syringe under the belt of my bathrobe before I leaned close to give your cheek a kiss.

“Go back to sleep dear.” A rosy blush emanated as you yawned and my fingers unconsciously coiled around your shoulders. Too warm, too alive. Disgusting.

“If so, will I ever wake up again?”

The gramophone went to a halt and so did my heart. Silence erupted as I waited for your laugh although nothing came to be even after it stretched far past the acceptable length of waiting for a joke to pass.

It was too late when I pushed myself away from you. A situation where not even an unassuming pardon would reset anything back to where it was supposed to be. A situation in the past that was far more simpler, when I could pretend that you didn’t know what I am and I could pretend to not love you.

The record stumbled back in as you pulled the knot of my sash loose, and it just happened to be an old melody you always told me was your favourite. How fitting was it to play in this moment that was filled with contradiction. Such a contrast was my cold skin against your warmness, how it was clammy under your soft touches, and how my confused expression was eclipsed by the knowledge displayed on yours.

“Is it time?” The question was far too casual for my likings. Not when you took the syringe from its previous position, fallen into the nook between the mattress and the wooden bed frame. How I wish it would just stay right there. Hidden for eternity.

But everything must come to an end and I know that it was the end when you handed the syringe to me and in my dazed state I accepted it without question, that weapon of your doom.

So calm were you when you pulled me close and kissed me. Fingers tangling around my now loose hair and body pressed tightly to each others.

You were crying, I noticed when we parted. As under the candlelight I could clearly see the track of dampness running down haphazardly on your cheeks. Or was it mine? It doesn’t matter anymore when you ran your fingers along my face and down my body, holding me close in an embrace.

“Do it.”

How could I? How could I ever do so? I tried to pry myself away from you but you were relentless.

The command was repeated but it wasn’t even registered as I let out a frustrated scream. Not even that as there was less than an ounce of will left in it, more so a wail of a dying animal. A dying beast.

“If you don’t, they will,” you whispered while my body was still heaving on top of yours, trying to squeeze out the last of my ambivalence with whatever it is you called it. Attention? Love? “And they will take yours too.”

How could you even care so much for another living being that is not yourself when faced with the certain presence of death. Was it because you hoped I won’t do it? That sliver of faith that I will brave myself to finally break free from their clutches and choose to go into hiding with you? Hah, you wish. I wish.

“Jieun.”

I was unresponsive. Ignoring the syllables that ooze out from your mouth as if they were nothing but nonsense. It wasn’t me. I’m not Jieun. It was a name given to me when they saw that I was worthy to be labeled as a killing machine. After I slayed my own comrades of years worth. The entirety of them.

I’m nobody. I’m a ghost. And you never deserve to call me by a name. By any name, for that matter. Because my heart would still swell even if you call me while I’m in a completely different identity.

“Jieun, please.”

Never would I imagine that name could sound so soothing.

Your hand grasped around mine, the one that was holding the syringe containing a lethal dose of cyanide and led it to the approximate location of your heart. I would like it to be more towards the left, just for the sake of physiological accuracy, but the poison would kill you no matter where the injection took place.

I wished you would’ve said my name one last time before you guided my hand down, long silver needle pierced through your skin and a careful push of my thumb dispersing the liquid into your blood stream. Not because I would forget it, no. Not even the cruelest memory-wiping program would do that to me. I just wished you would’ve said my name one last time to calm me down.

Calm.

Yes I’m calm.

I’m calm when I picked myself up from the bed, ignoring how my bathrobe was wrapped around my waist and it trailed carelessly behind me as I made my way to the bathroom, escaping the rising smell of ammonia as your bladder released the last shred of dignity from your still warm corpse.

Calm when I softly nudged the gramophone and watched it hang undecidedly at the edge of the table before it crashed onto the floor. No more were your favourite songs. No more you.

Calm when I opened the shower door and the dial to let the hottest jet of water to wash over me, sticking my left fingers up as there was the last speck of your blood still left on it. Keeping them under the boiling stream until there were no more.

Calm as I remembered how you still managed to whisper those words to me when you were already choking on your breath. As I looked deeply into your eyes until the last inch of glint disappeared to be replaced by a glossy stare of emptiness. And how I said it back. How I said it back to you a little too late.

I could tell myself that everything was a lie. A job bestowed upon me to safe the empire by disposing the sole heir of the enemy’s throne. Citizens would turn against each other. Civil war would rise. And my king would watch from afar with laughters on his hands.

It was easy, wasn’t it? He fell in love with you and you manipulated him until the right time came. And that was tonight, the last day given to me before they would do a reckless ambush and frame his death on the rebels. Three months were overdue. Three months far more than enough for it to be less than easy. Weren’t it? He fell in love with you and you with him.

“I love him.” I never wanted to say it, not to myself, not alone. Because then it was real. Then I admitted to myself that I do. I do. I do love him.

A confession drawn out in a less than exemplary way, with not even a scream. Only a sigh and the pattering shower scalding my back. Hiding my tears. Everything was so hot that I didn’t know which one is which anymore.

And that’s a good thing.

They won’t know what you’re thinking, what you’re planning, what you’re feeling when you yourself don’t even know the half of everything that’s happening behind that unreadable façade.

I cut my shower short, not even bothering to dry up my hair before I geared up into my riding clothes. Light enough to be able to blend with the short stretch of town that I have to traverse, but durable enough to withstand the long track back to the headquarters.

I looked at you one last time, face pale under the skinny light of dawn seeping through the heavy velvet curtain. Reaped from the things separating the living and the dead.

At least then you were just as cold as me.

Calm.

I am calm.

I am not.