No excuses. At this moment in time, I have no idea what I am going to write. So here goes nothing...

Maybe I'll come back and properly write something later.

The moment he felt something after the kill, he knew something was wrong. There was blood, all around, above him, beneath him, on him, streaks of crimson ribbon unfurled across worn brick and soggy wood and dried, dead grass. That was nothing new. Neither was the sensation of impaling a solid mass on the blunt excuse for a makeshift dagger he held in his slick fingers. 

Technically, this time, it had been self-defense. The yellow-haired idiot had come after him of his own volition, and Baekhyun had been in the mood to finish things more quickly than conventional negotiation would allow. Just a little more quickly. Perhaps it was because he was tired; perhaps it was simply because he was fed up with the monotony of his monochrome life. And while he did not necessarily dislike the remarkably straightforward nature of it all, it did piss him off that his everything was so absolutely flat, with no end in sight. No beginning, either, as he could not properly recall his origins anymore. For the Byun Baekhyun who hated forgetfulness, this was an abomination, unforgivable, but there was no fixing certain things. He would rather expend effort searching for his next moment than crying over something long deemed irreparable. Besides, he had been the one to forcefully plunge the distant images into the depths of his unconscious mind, so he could not exactly complain. Hypocrisy was beautiful, but after a certain point it was only pitifully hilarious.

Either way, though, he was not supposed to feel something after a kill. Usually it was simply satisfaction, more a sensation than an actual feeling... or more accurately, perhaps, it was simply a sense of completion. He had done what he was supposed to. Or he done what had to have been done. And then he would move on, on to seek the next... something.

Baekhyun liked to think that his life was a search for that one moment, the photographer's moment, the artist's moment. The moment of the crazed, creative, inspiration-possessed mind of contradictory calm which characterized all the insane geniuses in the world and then some. It had been too long, though, since he had properly interacted with someone who could pick out what remained of his artist's aspirations within him and tell him that indeed he had not yet lost his touch after dabbling for so long in a more diabolical art. He blinked impassively, slowly running his eyes across the mutilated features of the man beneath him and dragging his gaze along the swirling and crisscrossing grooves of scarlet in the flesh, wrinkling his lip in slight distaste at the ungraceful way in which the strings and masses of lumpy pink bubbled from the man's abdomen. Killing was indeed an art, but it was an art which brought death. Art, though, generally defined, was any embodiment of conscious and emotion which was gifted through human touch with life, so perhaps the elegant taking of life was an aberration in all definitions.

Life and death were aberrations to begin with, though.

He grimaced as he noted that none of this explained the twinge of pale horror he felt at his most recent deed, though. It was funny, ridiculous, even, that he was feeling this way. Since when had he ever? Baekhyun had always wondered at those stories which depicted people committing murders and tumbling headlong into a slew of amusingly terrible consequent situations in their shame and guilt and horror as they fled their respective realities. He had never found himself remotely disturbed after such an act, after all. But this... this... He choked back a laugh. He almost felt human.

Whatever that meant.

He rubbed his eyes, yawned— cutely, as some would say, though he would never admit it himself— and kicked the corpse into the sewage nearby. No one would come looking, anyways. 

The sky was purple as he walked away, a brilliant display of bright, age-steeped gold fanning out in a glowing array as an amethyst wave encroached on the dwindling light of the setting sun in smooth planes of unadulterated light.

 

・ひとしずく・

 

"... Oh, precious is the flow... 

"That makes me white as snow..."

There was a faint sound of soft, sweet voices singing a familiar melody. Children, a choir. Baekhyun wondered if he was hearing this as he passed, or if it was simply a memory.

The smell of unfertilized soil.

Monkshood as well. How fitting, for a church.

Was there a church in this town? Or was it simply in his mind?

He decided he didn't care which.

"No other fount I know...

"Nothing but the blood of—"

 

・ふたつめの・

 

The first thing he noticed was the smoke.

Or more accurately, the smell.

"Chanyeol... you're back."

The tall, dark-haired man turned towards him wordlessly as Baekhyun joined him on the balcony of the dingy hotel room he had been occupying for the past few nights. The slim, dirty-white stick dangling from the large fingers of the man’s right hand was much too short already, and there were little heaps of ash on the chipped wood of the railing. 

“How did you know I was here?”

”I have my ways.”

"You're already out of prison?"

A warm, deep chuckle. "You didn't put me in for that long, Baek. You've framed people for far worse. Maybe it was your mercy?"

"No one asked you to meddle in my affairs."

"Oh?" The cool arrogance of the man's tone sent a pleasant shiver down Baekyun's spine. "Well, I suppose I should apologize. Though I won't."

"Simple as always."

"Isn't that what you always liked about me?"

"Still, it's quite impressive that you can lock a man up for... how many years has it been?"

"Six."

"... six years and see this... this little change in character. Sometimes I really wonder if you aren't some sort of human-shaped angel."

"Same goes for you. Fairy."

"I'm not made for change."

"Then you are not human."

"Who said I was?"

"No one, really. But I think that's what's generally assumed. And if this objective reality truly exists, definition by majority agreement holds true. Actually, even if it doesn't, even if it's just a fantasy of yours, it all holds true." The tall man lifted the cigarette before his face and stared at it for a moment before letting it slip out from his fingers and plummet, frail and paper-like, to the mud-streaked pavement below. "In fact, if this all is indeed a fantasy of yours, perhaps there is all the more reason for any broadly accepted definition of humanity to hold true, for you and you alone will have been the one to dream it up. And isn't that sweet."

"Considerate of you to phrase it that way. Lecturing me about my lazy worldview the first time you see me after six years? Way to go. You meddling idiot." He leaned over the railing, propping himself up on his elbows as his shoulders slumped forward. "It's as if you never learn. Even before this..." I nearly killed you that time as well. And before that I took your family from you. And your life. So why... Why... "Why do you even bother coming back?"

There was a rustling, a quiet scratching of hard rubber on cement, and then there were large fingers creeping up his neck, warm palms settling over and caressing his cold cheeks. The tall man nuzzled his silver-lavender locks tenderly and kissed his forehead lightly, then leaned back and smiled mirthlessly. "I come back... to do this."

"... fool."

"I know."

The two of them turned back to the dull street below, watching the passersby meld with the grays and diluted browns of the stone and brick and concrete.

"I... know."

The skies were gray as well, now, a gray which suited the chilly morning frighteningly well, well enough that Baekhyun could allow himself to forget for a moment of the strange, unsettling feeling which had accompanied his activities the night before. Something was wrong, something was wrong...

Hadn't something always been wrong from the start?

He had been wrong from the start.

 

・またみつの・

 

"Alouette, gentille Alouette,

"Alouette, je te plumerai..."

It was unsettling. Murder was unsettling. And that was strange.

Maybe he was falling apart. He had long ceased to see the meaning in anything much. 

He probably had a family once. Maybe they sang nursery rhymes like these. Maybe they had been happy.

Maybe he had attended school. He did not rightly recall. University he had more or less done, but he barely remembered a thing. It had been nearly a decade since he graduated, after all, and with a degree in...

Not that it mattered.

"Je te plumerai la tete,

"Je te plumerai la tete!"

He felt like a fallen sparrow, wings clipped and beak maimed, simply living.

Or a hawk, maybe. He had lived long enough as a predator that the sharp-eyed creature seemed to suit him quite well. And his talons were still sharp, it seemed, even after years of abrasive usage. Impressive, whatever he had been born with. Impressive, whatever he had been born as.

"Et la tete!

"Et la tete!

"Alouette!

"Alouette!"

If he asked Chanyeol, the tall man probably would have said he was a swan. Then he would have scoffed.

Then Chanyeol would pull him into the dank little hotel room where there was just a bed and a nightstand.

 

・よんどめは・

 

He had been doing this for quite some time. It had started with the occasional odd job— a courier, he had liked to be called— and eventually it had become something more akin to hired killing. Granted, he kept the bloodshed to a minimum, but there were plenty of things worse than simple manslaughter which he had accomplished over the years, and so the end result was not much different.

Life to him had always been about checkpoints along an endless, fog-obscured path which stretched for an eternity and beyond into a distance he did not want to know. There would be an objective, and he would fulfill it, and then he would move on to the next. He had joined plenty of organizations for various conveniences, but had never stayed closely affiliated with any for more than half a year. His longest acquaintance was probably Park Chanyeol, the odd man who had happened upon a rather unorthodox business dealing nearly a decade ago and only escaped with his life due to Baekhyun's frankly bored interventions. It hadn't taken long for Baekhyun to become infatuated, but he had always been the type to take pleasures as they came, and so he took Park Chanyeol and made him a part of his reckless gray-black life. The man hadn't seemed to care; he had never been blinded, per se, by Baekhyun, but had always been sweetly attracted to the shorter man. And while he never actively participated in his companion's heists and "jobs," the tall former architect had never hesitated to help out with what Baekhyun called the "behind-the-scenes" work. Of course, their relationship had always been ambiguous in such a way, but neither truly minded. As far as Baekhyun was ever concerned, Chanyeol was nice to have around, and as for Chanyeol...

In truth, Baekhyun never knew what the giant thought of him. That Chanyeol enjoyed his company was no secret; it was also quite obvious that the taller man was quite enchanted by Baekhyun's general appearance. Other than that, though, he had never known, and never really cared. Perhaps he had once been the type to wonder at those things which were left unsaid and untouched, but now he simply did not want to gaze too closely at anything in the world. 

How did Chanyeol feed himself?

He didn't care.

Actually, how had he managed to feed himself?

Despite somehow managing every day, when he sat down to think about it, he no longer had any idea what he was doing, and how.

Ah, the absurdity. 

Maybe it was time to end it all. But if he did so, he would be presuming that he had the power to draw a jagged line on the hazy, endless path he was traveling. And while Byun Baekhyun was proud, he refused to manifest that sort of arrogance in his character. It was unsightly and unsavory, and utterly tasteless. The fact that he put little stock in Destiny did not mean he would actively move to change his Fate.

Tick, tick, tick.

Late afternoon. Early winter... late autumn. The cool air dancing in through the fluttery curtains which covered the opening leading to the balcony kissed the pale skin of his bare chest lightly, running soft touches down the sides