In a dimly lit room that once belonged to a corrupt Haeju official, Heechul sits quietly studying the books and records kept in the official's office. Next to him, a candle stands as proudly as a torch in the hands of a warden. Occasionally, a midnight breeze slowly blows into the room, sweeping the candle off its feet for a second. But the candle would always light back up no matter how fragile it seemed.

"Those bastards!"

A few curse words suddenly slip from Heechul upon his discovery of the Haeju officials' most recent wrongdoings. 

"They have been skimming the people's food supply and taxes for years!" His hands start to form such tight fists he cannot imagine what he would do if any of them were to show their faces in the small room but full of rage. 

"Hyung," Outside the door, Dongchun's voice is gentle but firm. "Are you still awake?"

"Yes," Heechul hurries himself to tidy up the books on his desk, "come in, Dongchun ah."

"What are you doing?" Dongchun looks from the piles of books on his desk to the dark circles around his brother's eyes and the mess that he used to call hair.

"These are the tax records and food records that the officials kept. I have been reading them to understand how deep the corruption here goes. And it is as deep as the roots of a hundred-year-old tree, Dongchun."

His brother nods in agreement.

"But, hyung," Dongchun speaks again just as Heechul is about to look at the books again, "you also need to rest."

Heechul looks up at his brother. A hint of worry can clearly be seen in the other's eyes.

"I'm fine, Dongchun ah." Heechul gives him a reassuring look.

But Dongchun only looks at him more closely.

"When was the last time you slept, hyung?"

Heechul only shrugs as if sleep is not even one of his daily functions.

"You need to sleep, hyung," Dongchun says again.

Heechul finally nods at him in defeat.

"Hyung," he suddenly hears Dongchun call him again, this time, much more softly and nostalgically, "when I entered the room just now, under the candlelight, you looked exactly like our father."

Heechul looks at his brother in surprise.

"You still remember our father?"

Dongchun slowly nods at him.

"After you left our home, sometimes, at night, he would sit quietly just like this. But he was not reading books or studying or anything. He just sat there, staring into the empty space in front of him. It was like... he was just looking into the darkness that was there."

There is silence in the room again after Dongchun finishes speaking. For a long while, Heechul imagines the darkness and emptiness that his father sat looking at every night after he had left, and for some reason, his heart starts to feel as if it was squeezed by an invisible hand.

"Hyung, did you... hate him?" Dongchun looks at him, his face more serious than Heechul has ever seen him.

"No," he answers without hesitation, "I despised what he had become in the end, but ... I never hated him."

Not for the name he was born with. Not for the family in which he was born. And not for how life kept shooting him down and taking away his hopes and dreams.

"But I am proud of you, hyung. I always have, and always will. And I will follow him to the end of the horizon if you let me."

Heechul suddenly feels his heart ache. Once again, his brother looks at him with the highest of admiration, just like he used to when they were younger. Dongchun smiles at him brightly and starts to stand up.

"Hyung, that teacher, Hankyung, he was someone important to you, wasn't he?"

Heechul feels his heart skip a beat at the mention of the other's name. Dongchun only takes his expression as a confirmation: "You don't have to say anything, hyung. I understand."

But just as Dongchun opens the door to get out of the room, Heechul suddenly feels a smell to which he has only been exposed a few painful times in his life.

"Dongchun! Stop!" Heechul calls out to his brother.

As Dongchun walks out the door, he starts to realise the reason Heechul is looking at him with terrified eyes.

The smell they can both smell is of blood.

"Stay behind me," Heechul says as he walks out of the room in front of Dongchun.

As they start checking the rest of the residence, a horrifying scene unravels before their eyes.

In a room not too far from Heechul's room, a few of their followers are knocked out cold on the floor. As Heechul and Dongchun enter the room, the strong smell of blood attacks their noses. Dongchun immediately runs to the men's side to check their pulse.

"Hyung! They are still breathing!" He yells out when he can finally find a weak pulse on both the men in the room. Despite being unconscious on the floor with slashes throughout their bodies, the men seem to be breathing normally.

Heechul starts to look through the room. There do not seem to be any traces left by the attacker. However, on top of the room, a tiny ray of moonlight can be seen where a piece of brick should be placed to complete the structure of the roof. As he looks more closely, a small gathering of smoke can still be seen coming through the hole in the roof. From the smoke, a light herbal scent masked by the sweet scent of a flower can only be detected upon careful investigation.

"Cover your nose," Heechul shouts out as he recognises the herbal scent spreading throughout the room, "someone is trying to poison us!"

Dongchun immediately obeys his brother's command as they drag the two men out of the room and into the front yard. As soon as Dongchun finishes bandaging the men's injuries, they hurry to other rooms to check on the rest of the followers. In about fifteen minutes, they had finished checking all ten rooms of the residence and pulled all injured men out into the yard.

As Heechul looks at the front yard, now filled with more than fifty injured men in their group, a sense of horror creeps up his spine. Who could have done this? Entered the residence and attacked more than fifty well-trained men without them knowing. Without even a sound.

Suddenly, Heechul can feel something coming at them at a speed that could tear the air in half. He immediately pushes Dongchun out of harm's way. An arrow as sharp as a butcher's knife crushes into the ground.

In a flash of a second, Heechul suddenly sees a shadow of a white figure on the roof of one of the buildings. In the middle of the night, the shadow looks more like a phantom than a human. Without hesitation, he chases after the shadow, followed suit by Dongchun. But the white shadow quickly disappears into thin air as swiftly as when he appeared.

Heechul stands on the roof for a long time, observing every corner of the residence and the street around it. Just as he expects, after a moment of dead silence, another series of arrows seem to be falling from the sky above them. The thing that surprises Heechul is that all the arrows seem to be targeting the spot where Dongchun is standing only.

"Dongchun, look out!" Heechul shouts out as the arrows fall from the sky like a rain of blades.

Dongchun swiftly jumps off the roof to avoid the arrows but gets scratched on his shoulder by one of the arrows in the process. The red of his blood immediately disappears into the black of his clothes, just as the pain of his wound is immediately absorbed by the fear and panic he is feeling. In a corner not too far from Dongchun, Heechul can again spot the white shadow that has been appearing and disappearing from his eyesight in an instant like a phantom. This time, he immediately throws a dart after the shadow. The shadow easily avoids it, but does not make another move against him.

Heechul charges after the white figure with the greatest speed he has ever known. In a few seconds, he seems to be able to take a closer look at the white figure. His clothes are even whiter than a sheet. He has a tall and slim build, most likely a man. A thick veil covers all of his face, hiding away what Heechul desperately wants to find out the most at the moment. As he gets closer to the shadow, he pulls out his sword and carefully aims at the figure. The man again easily avoids his attack, but does not retaliate. All he seems to do is avoid Heechul's moves. Yet, he had succeeded in injuring fifty men in their operation, and continuously targeting Dongchun with his arrows. 

In a bold moment, Heechul decides to charge his sword at his veil. This time, the white shadow strongly pushes his sword away with the use of his own blade. His move is so steady and strong that Heechul almost loses grip of his sword. As he recomposes himself, Heechul aims his sword another time at the man figure's chest, while his other hand reaches inside his pocket for another dart. This is a move that he had learned from Hankyung. It takes tremendous concentration to do two seperate things at one time, which means the attacker would also have a hard time defending against both of his moves. In a second, the white figure pushes away the sword that is aiming at his chest, giving Heechul a chance to aim the dart at his veil. The dart flies at his veil with the speed of a silent storm, and in an instant, the white shadow's veil drops to the ground as if it weighs nothing. In the second that follows, Heechul feels a terror that could send him to a state of paralysis. Behind the veil conceals a face that he has looked up to for more than ten years.

"Lee... Leeteuk seonsaengnim?!"

The white figure suddenly stops in his track as if he had gotten caught and frozen in the worst snowstorm.

"You should not have done that, Heechul ah," the face behind the veil shows a sadness that Heechul had never thought he would see on his respected teacher's face.

"Seonsaengnim, what... what are you doing?"

But Leeteuk does not answer him. Instead, he maintains a silence that could suffocate both of them at any moment. And in those suffocating seconds of dead silence, something has suddenly clicked in Heechul's mind.

"Your real name is not Leeteuk, is it?" He voices out his question, each word like a blade stabbing over and over again into Leeteuk's heart.

Again, a dead silence surrounds the both of them. But for Heechul, this is confirmation enough.

"Who are you?" Heechul interrogates again.

Leeteuk only shakes his head: "Does it really matter now?"

Heechul furrows his eyebrows at the other's question.

"I am sorry, Heechul ah," Leeteuk continues, in his eyes, Heechul could see a tinge of genuine regret, "I truly am, but I have to do what I have to. You understand, right?"

Heechul raises an eyebrow at the last question aiming at him. For a second, he feels as if his heart had dropped to his stomach.

"Why do I have to understand? Because I also lied about my name?"

Leeteuk only looks at him in silence, his eyes filled with a storm of thoughts and feelings.

"I am nothing like you," Heechul looks straight into his eyes, "I was a helpless child that had no other way of defending myself against people who wished me harm. You are a cold-blooded killer, and I suspect you were one long before you decided to change your name."

Leeteuk's silence again gives Heechul enough confirmation. In his eyes, a darkness starts to form.

Heechul scoffs. "Then I will also do what I have to do to protect the people close to me", he says as his sword is again prepared to aim at the enemy.

But Leeteuk only looks at him, his eyes still calm and emotionless. 

"You cannot beat me, Heechul ah. I know all of your moves. I taught you all of your moves." 

Heechul maintains his determination: "Then I might as well die trying!" as he charges his sword at Leeteuk another time.

Leeteuk easily avoids his attacks one by one, and as Heechul starts to feel slightly worn out, he hears another's footsteps rushing to his side. The next thing he knows, Dongchun's sword is next to his, aggressively attacking the common enemy.

Leeteuk's moves completely change as he sees Dongchun appear beside Heechul. In a swift move, he pulls out his sword which has been in its cover all this time. The assassin's sword is as sharp and cold as an executer's blade. His moves are swift and unpredictable, and within minutes, Dongchun is caught in its cold-blooded hand.

For a second, Leeteuk turns to look at Heechul hesitantly as if wanting to say something. But he knows his crimes could never be forgiven, and any apology would be abundant and pointless at this time, so he maintains his silence as usual. As he raises his hand toward the sky, hundreds of arrows from nowhere come charging at Dongchun. In an instant, the smell of blood becomes stronger than ever, and Dongchun falls to the ground like a bird caught in a hunt.

"Dongchun!!!!" Heechul screams at the top of his lungs as he witnesses the scene out of his worst nightmare. Blood starts to spill out of Dongchun's wounds like a hot stream in the summer, and Heechul feels as if he could drown in his brother's blood.

"Get up, Dongchun!" Fear starts to paralyse Heechul. For the first time in a long time, Heechul feels streams of tears start to spill out of his eyes uncontrollably. "Please", Heechul whispers into his brother's ears. Not now. Not yet. Not like this.

But Dongchun seems already lost in a different world from them, unaware of any worldly commotion. No matter how hard Heechul screams his brother's name or shakes his shoulders, Dongchun will never open his eyes again. He will never look at him with those wide eyes, give him the most innocent smile, and call him "hyung" ever again.

"You will pay for this!" Heechul looks up at Leeteuk, anger burning in his eyes.

Leeteuk returns his look for a while, then lets out a deep sigh.

"Someone once told me, every man is an island, Heechul ah. Love, family, friends. It's all a construct people fool themselves into believing so that they can live with their little peasant lives at the end of the day. But if given a choice, anyone would choose power, status, and money over anything and anyone else."

Heechul only looks at him in disgust. Just when Leeteuk is about to say something else, he pulls out from his a small bottle and throws it to the ground. A thin fog immediately appears between them. As a reflex, Leeteuk quickly takes a step back. Taking advantage of the other's distraction, Heechul reaches into his pocket a second time and pulls out an object as small as his palm. In an instant, the pitch-black sky is lit with more than twenty bright red fireworks.

"Damnit," Leeteuk exclaims in panic, "Lee Youngwoon's emergency flare!"

On the ground, Heechul looks at him in satisfaction.

"That's still not gonna save you, Heechul ah." Leeteuk affirms.

But Heechul only smirks at him contently.

"Maybe not myself," he looks up again at the radiant sky on what seems to be his last night ever on earth, and says with determination, "but it will save Lee seonsaengnim and everyone else from your lies and deception."

"I feel sorry for you, Leeteuk," he continues as his eyes revert to his brother lying next to him, lifeless but peaceful. "You go through life thinking you are on an island, when you could have been on the mainland. You are truly a sad and lost soul."

A hint of confusion appears on Leeteuk's face. Then, as the conversation hits a dead end, Leeteuk raises his hand for a second time and slowly closes his eyes. In an instant, hundreds of arrows fly through the bright red sky and charge at the person in front of him. He could only hear a slight thud on the ground, and the smell of blood becomes overwhelmingly unbearable.

Leeteuk quickly turns away from the scene in front of him. For the first time in his life, he does not have the courage to stay and confirm his victims' deaths. As he turns into a corner not far from there, the soldier steps out of the dark and looks at him inquiringly.

"It's over", it takes him a minute to find his voice, "let's go."

The soldier nods his head respectfully and gestures for his troop to retrieve. Leeteuk looks at them operate smoothly like a normal routine, then turns into another path.

The sky has suddenly become much darker despite the bright red fireworks above their heads.