The task was harder than he had expected.

It seemed that he had the silliest weakness out of all the 7 Deadly Sins. For Lust and Gluttony, it was any item that was previously blessed by Chastity or Temperance – aka their opposite Virtues. For Wrath, it was any weapon containing or coated in daffodil oil. A hairpin which was rumoured to be Greed’s brother was the said Sin’s weakness while Envy wasn’t particularly fond of pigeons. Seokjin didn’t have any information regarding Sloth’s possible triggers but who knew? Anything could happen when it came to the underworld’s creatures.

Meanwhile, he was there with that sentimental “a touch of an entirely selfless soul” garbage that could have been a line out of a fairy tale. He had outright laughed at Lucifer when he first told him about his weakness. It was after he had been promoted and he was announced to be the next Pride. He was actually a mere lower-class demon for almost 5 years when the previous Pride died of love. He fell in love with a human which was actually not a written rule but anyone knew down there that if a demon – let alone a Sin! − fell in love with a human, they wouldn’t be able to act as viciously as they were supposed to, therefore they wouldn’t do their job properly, therefore they would be fired – in single words killed.

How pathetic. Seokjin was sure that he would never make that mistake. He was just as sure about it as he was of his good looks. He wasn’t a good-looking royal only when he was the king of Goryeo but he was still handsome after his death. Nobody could disagree with it and honestly nobody would. It was a fact, Pride knew that he was the handsomest demon of all times.

Anyway, where was he? Oh yes, before he immersed into his state-of-the-art features, he wanted to fume because he couldn’t find a way to get rid of Humility without killing himself. He visited some ancient demons who were said to be demons even before people started to track time. He asked Jaehwan to look into previous Sins and Virtues’ history to see if there was any similar case. He even searched for Lust who couldn’t care less about his childish plays until he didn’t bring him some girls. He did everything, looked everywhere but to no avail.

“God must exist after all. It’s certainly his way to protect his beloved Virtues,” he lamented to his reflection in the mirror, standing in the living room of his suite in Dubai.

The current problem piqued his curiosity and nestled into his mind. It was absolutely annoying. It wasn’t like a pitiful bug that he could just kill with a wave of his hand. It was the most tremendous obstacle that he had to deal with. He knew that he was the one who created this whole mess but he couldn’t stop. Not now.

The problem was that he couldn’t even sleep because flashbacks and nightmares were hunting him, forcing him to wake up and make sure that he was alive, he was still Pride and Humility with her killer touch was nowhere to be found. As gibberish as it sounds, he couldn’t do anything to avoid the memories coming back, not even with all his supernatural powers. Sleeping wasn’t something that he could control. After he became a demon, he still opted for sleeping although he wasn’t a human being and he didn’t have human needs. He merely liked the feeling after a long sleep and the fact that he was alone in the dark with his thoughts. He was selfish, wasn’t he? He needed time to himself.

That time was now a thing of the past as he even gave up on sleeping to make sure that the memories wouldn’t follow him when he closed his eyes and became one with the dreamworld. If there was anything that he feared these days, it was sleeping. The memories didn’t just attack him but slapped him in the face, vigorously just like a fighter would do. Not once, not twice but multiple times. He felt a lot of things while being Pride but he never felt pain. The sudden spike of pain that was rushing through him once the memory lane grabbed him was anything but enjoyable. It was terrifying. Despite the fact that he didn’t have a beating heart anymore, he felt as his heart was being ripped out of his ribcage every single time. The misery was excruciating.

He didn’t let it affect his job though but it seemed that Lucifer somehow found out that he was acting oddly in the past few weeks. At least, that’s what he assumed when Jaehwan informed him that the highest-ranked demon wanted to see him. Of course, Lucifer could have just teleported right beside Seokjin but Lucifer was a busy man. If one didn’t want to go to him in person, he wouldn’t want to waste his precious time with their business. Period.

 Seokjin had one option and that was visiting the demon above all who had his special office on top of the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world. It was actually invisible to the human eye, the little humans thought that it wasn’t possible to enter the highest floor. How blind they were to all things supernatural.

As soon as Seokjin knocked on the door, he heard an inpatient yes from inside, so he swiftly opened it and entered his office. He had been there multiple times before – usually for a meeting after a century or when Lucifer announced a new Sin – but it was deco