Jungkook couldn’t sleep. Horror and tragedy from the last fews day filled the darkness in which he should have found rest and peace. He had killed 53 people in the last three days--he had memorized each one as they died. The first was a short, stocky, blond man, the second, was a tall,  brown haired woman, the fifth a elderly man with a giant scar running from the top left of his face to the right, the nineteenth another man, this one with extremely short hair and a hawk-like nose, the thirty sixth was a woman with long black hair and a leather tunic on, nothing significant, until he saw a name etched into the armor, and he saw it was written by a child. He remembered every last one of them, and he knew they remembered him, especially the thrity sixth. She was angry, so furious at being taken from her child that she would not leave this world. She followed him, the others in his company could tell. They avoided him, they saw her spirit lingering around him and didn’t wish to invoke her wrath upon themselves.

He walked over to the mountain of bodies. The sight should have sickened him, but he was past that point, and as long as he didn’t look at it for too long, he could bear it. He examined her body for the umpteenth time since he had realized she had stayed behind, on Earth. He knelt down to observe the name in the armor; Minhyuk, it was hard to read but it brought such a vivid picture to his mind, he could clearly imagine a little boy laying in the grass, on his stomach, with a small knife, carving his name into the spot where he thought his mom’s heart would be. Looking up at her, smiling, saying, “Look mom! Now I can be with you when you leave so you won’t forget about me.” Her smiling back down at her son telling him, “I could never forget about you, sweetheart.” He could see that she was scared, scared that her son would be left alone without anyone since his father had died years before and he had no other relatives. There was a jump in time and he saw the little boy running after his mom’s horse, then stopping, and finally crying when it set in that she was actually leaving. He cried with the child, he felt the boy’s sadness at an impossible level. He felt as though he was the boy and it was his mother leaving. It was then he realized that the woman wasn’t just angry, she was desperate that her son have someone to look after him and depressed, so utterly and completely forlorn that that person couldn’t be her. He shook himself out of the trance he had been in, realizing that the woman had shown him a glimpse of her past, that he hadn’t been imagining the boy, he had been there.

That was all it took, Jungkook’s mind was made up, he had to find Minhyuk. He gathered his belongings, not caring that it was the middle of the night, that it would be considered desertion, or that desertion meant death if he was captured. He needed to find the boy as soon as he could. It was the only way he could make up for at least some of the damage he had caused. He crept over to the bodies, searching until he found one that was around his size. He took its armor and put it on. It was slightly too large, but would suit his purpose.

The next morning, he reached the border of the kingdoms. They were separated by a extensive temperate forest. The fighting had mostly happened on the northern edge, which he was just about to cross. There were wild tales about the forest. The trees were sentient, and there were wolves as big as men, but Jungkook believed none of them. He had grown up in a forest and had never talked to a tree, nor had he seen any men-sized wolves. So, as he entered, he felt at ease around the giant trees.

On the first day of his trip through the forest, as he expected, nothing significant happened. He walked at a steady pace and made good time, Jungkook figured he could be out of the woods within three days. That night he made camp, but he felt uncomfortable, like someone's eyes were on him. He glanced at the road. The woman was standing there, staring at him. He quickly moved his eyes away, worried about having made eye contact with a spirit, and praying that she would not assume he had meant disrespect. Thankfully, she did not and disappeared into the trees. He watched the place she left for several minutes before settling down to go to sleep.

He awoke in the middle of the night to crying. Reaching slowly for his sword, he looked around, but there was nothing to be seen. “Hello?” He asked the trees, hesitant and scared suddenly that a large wolf would come from the forest. He then scolded himself, there were no wolves, and if there were, they definitely would not cry. Straining his ears he tried to listen for the sound, but heard nothing. It must have stopped sometime while he was distracted. After a short while he decided that whatever he had heard had either been a trick of his imagination or it had already left, so he fell back into a tense, light sleep.

The next morning, wishing to be away from that location as soon as possible, he packed his camp up early and set off. Again the day was uneventful, but he was nervous, constantly expecting something to happen, so the day passed by much slower than the first had. That evening it started raining. So, he ran along the road, looking for somewhere to stay dry. He saw a cabin and ran towards it. Thankfully, it was abandoned, when he looked inside there was no furniture or lights. Opening the door, he walked inside. It would have been cozy, had it not been so threadbare. He chose a room to stay the night in and settled down, worried about a repeat of the previous night.

He was right to worry, that night he was again woken to crying, but this time he could see the source of the sounds. The woman’s ghost was sitting in the corner of the room. Jungkook walked silently over to her. He sat down next to her. “If it means anything, and I feel like it doesn’t mean much, but I am truly sorry about what happened.” He whispered. It was meant to help, but didn’t, the woman's sobs became twice as loud. They shook her whole body, violently, as though she was experiencing an internal earthquake. Jungkook tried to comfort her by placing his arm across her shoulders. Instead the second he came in contact with her, he felt a brief, sharp pain and everything went black.

He dreamt about a man and a woman, they had just realized that the woman was pregnant. They beamed at each other. They had been trying for a child for years, and it had finally happened. Then the scene jumped, it was mere moments after the child’s birth. The mother was holding the little baby boy. Its small hand was tightly wrapped around her finger. Another time skip, the man leaving for war and the woman with their child, now a toddler, waving goodbye. The last scene before he woke up was the woman talking to a courier outside their home. He was telling her that her husband wasn’t coming home. The little boy, around five this time, running to the door at the mention of his father’s name. Crying when he got there and saw the courier with his dad’s sword.

Jungkook woke up with tears stinging his eyes. With a new resolve he gathered his belongings and left the cabin. He traveled faster than he ever had, jogging most of the way out of the forest. He made better time than expected and exited the forest at the end of the day. It took him two more days to get to the town. As soon as he arrived he went to the nearest inn, and asked the owner if he knew a boy named Minhyuk. Fortunately, he did and pointed Jungkook in the right direction.

The house was at the end of a short path leading out of town. It was small and simple, but looked more welcoming than any home he had ever seen. When he reached the door, Jungkook froze. How was he supposed to tell this young boy, who had already lived the loss of one parent, that he had lost the other as well? With a deep breath, he knocked on the door. There was a small pause before the door was opened. Minhyuk looked up at Jungkook, blinked, and tears started to fill the small boys eyes. He was young, but he knew what a warrior coming to the door meant. His mother was dead. Jungkook got down on his knees and hugged the boy waiting for him to be done crying. Nothing was said, nothing needed to be said.

In the distance, the woman was smiling, tears streaming down her face as well. She knew that her son was in good hands, when Jungkook had seen her past, she had seen his. She had seen that he did not want to kill and, like her, had only gone to battle because he had no choice. She could tell that if he had a choice, he wouldn’t have killed her, and he would never harm her son. So she smiled, now able to rest, knowing that her son was safe and would be cared for for the rest of his life.