His throat burns, and he feels heat rising to his cheeks; he stares at Heechul, and the assassin stares back at him wordlessly.

Stop remaining so quiet. Just tell me to leave, that you don’t want me, tell me I’m being dumb and tell me to go and never see you again.

Either that, or take my hand and hold me close and tell me you love me too.

Your silence scares me.

“What?” Heechul queries bluntly, his voice tinted with faint disbelief. “Why the hell - out of all the people-” He shakes his head. “Perhaps I heard wrongly.”

He doesn’t know where he gets the strength from, but he repeats himself, and his voice comes out stronger this time. “I said, I think I’ve accidentally fallen in love with you.”

“Why?”

I wish I knew, too. “Does love really need a reason?” He walks closer, reaches out to Heechul, but the assassin flinches away from his touch. He lets his hand drop to his side stiffly. “If you don’t want to ever see me again, then just tell me. Or just tell me that you don’t feel the same way and kick me out.”

His heart aches with every syllable that escapes his mouth. Because you’re so ing toxic but so damn addictive at the same time, the only way for me to escape from you would be because you forced me to.

But Heechul doesn’t force him out, doesn’t turn his back scornfully like how he’d imagined. “No.”

“What do you mean by no?”

Heechul avoids his gaze. “I’m not going to let you leave.” It’s at that moment when there’s a loud knock on the door that resounds throughout the room, and Heechul turns his back swiftly, mercifully cutting short the awkward tension that hangs thick between them.

He watches as Heechul steps out of the house, shutting the door behind him, to speak with whoever called him out. He in a deep breath, feeling as if all the wind had been out of him at his accidental confession.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Park Jungsoo who could never understand the concept of love. He lived a sheltered life, and all he needed to know were equations drilled into his mind during school as well as how to properly run his family’s businesses. He was given lectures by his parents on how to live successfully, that one day he would be married to a nice lady with nice kids in a nice home.

Once upon a time, everything that he ever knew faded into a hazy blur of red, with the memories of cut-off screams and bodies going limp too piercingly clear. He found himself away from home, away from the ones who have protected him for all his life, a big hole in his heart which had faded away with the no-longer living bodies of his family - he found himself having daggers aimed at his heart, found himself being attacked and protected many times over, and now he finds himself in the living room of the same one who killed his entire family.

And here, in the living room of the person who killed his entire family, he foolishly turns both eyes blind to every opportunity of escape that presents itself to him.

Once upon a time, he grew too used to a sudden life forced upon him, and now he doesn’t have the urge arising within him to run away any longer.

Once upon a time, there was a man named Park Jungsoo who didn’t realise that he fell in love until it was too late; and he fell too far in love, too wrapped within the insistent cocoons of this hard-to-describe emotion, a free-fall and a surrender all at once, a free-fall without knowing if anyone will be there to catch him, and a surrender to the last shreds of his logic. Now he’s too far in to ever leave, to pull himself out of the mess that he’s gotten his own heart into - and it must be love, because what else would make you relent to the man who killed everyone you’ve ever loved?

And he’s never gotten the chance to meet the nice lady that everyone once told him he was going to meet, and now he’ll never get the chance to marry that nice lady and have nice kids and live in a nice home with his family, because now he finds himself in love with the most loveless man he’s ever known.

Now, in the blank pages of the chapters that display his existence, the blurred emotions become a little clearer and the words take form, scribbling down paragraphs of black ink that describe love like a felicitous disaster, and in every prose that makes itself clear, the name Kim Heechul appears.

This man who has come into his life in the dead of a night, and became a constant thought in every passing day - this man who he started off hating with all his soul, this man who he somehow ended up crying over, this man who he used to think was a demon.

And now he’s seen the side of him that isn’t so much of a demon, found that one percent to love against the ninety-nine percent of him that’s impossible to love, and now - in this tragic fantasy that he’s written for himself, Park Jungsoo has fallen in love with somebody.

In the chapters of his life, it is penned down in ineradicable ebony, his pages marked by this man who has made him cry a million times over, this man who has been his shield against flying knives, this