Chapter 21: 19:39 – A Countdown to First Death [04:21am]

Mir POV

With a soft snick the silver cuffs slid off my hands. I was out of the seat before they even retracted fully and scratched my palm against the blunt edge. But pain was secondary as I watched Joon pelt off the fancy stage. I barely registered that I was the only one free. Thunder was still cuffed to his chair and G.O and Seungho behind their own respective bars. 

All I could see was that tear-stricken face, wrenched into two by memories and action. My feet pounded hard against the polished wood and I streaked past Seungho and G.O. They yelled something, but I couldn't hear anything. And then I plunged into the dark corridor, expecting a chase, not to barrel into a lean figure. 

I stumbled backwards, hands flailing and grabbing the first things that it touched – swaths of red fabric –  to slow my fall.

“Mir?!” came a voice, sounding clumsy and wrenched. I blinked twice before my brain registered whose voice that was.

“Joon?” I coughed and felt a hand pull me up. His hands felt sweaty. “Tell me, what's wrong!" At my words, he pulled away from me, backing off into the shadows.

“Joon?” 

“I…” he spoke, but uncertainly so. It was like he had the words in his head, but some barrier prevented them from getting out. From this distance, I couldn’t see his expression but something told me it was a battlefield of emotions.

“Tell me what happened,” I said softly, luring out the stray dog from its lair with sweet words and a kind hand. “I promise not to judge you.”

I could feel his stare trained on me. Silence. I stood there, wondering if I should just drag him out. Then, a word, “Promise?”

It was barely a whisper. I was almost taken aback at how brittle it sounded. Like the last leaf of autumn, so brown and twisted and close to crumbling at the slightest touch.

“I promise.” I vowed. “Come out Joon. Please.”

He took one step forwards. Then a second. Each one was haggard. He sounded more like a broken soldier returning from the wars, unable to keep that straight posture that he had left with. Fire and blitz had destroyed him.

“Tell me what happened.”

Joon turned his face up to me and I saw the maelstrom of emotions scrawled there. A twist of bitterness to his lips, the sharp stab in his eyes. “I’m scared,” he finally whispered.

I pulled him in close and he sobbed into the thin material of my shirt.

“I’m confused…” he confessed. “Reasons that aren't my own. Memories I can't even trust. I...Mir...I nearly killed Byunghee!" 

“Wait. What memories? What reason? And who?!”

“G.O,” he explained, pulling back slightly. My eyes widened. G.O?

“Why?” it came out a hushed whisper. I had promised not to judge him, but I was starting to worry. Kill? That wasn't a word so lightly spoken in a jail as dark as ours. He saw it and panicked. “Shhh,” I soothed him, backtracking suddenly. “I promise to listen to everything. Just tell me. I’ll listen.” Don't judge. Don't judge. 

At the word listen, he seemed to calm down. His eyelids lowered and he took a deep breath before continuing. I stared at his flawless skin with the slightest shadowing under his eyes, like a black cloud that had hung behind days of sunshine. My hands twitched, tempted to run their tips over the soft lids and long lashes. His words, however, broke me out of my reverie. “I remembered my past,” he said and I found my eyes growing even wider. Such surprises Joon was divulging!

“You see,” he pulled away and stared at me beseechingly, eyes glittering with unshed tears and captured sorrow. “I thought he betrayed me! And he thought I betrayed him! It was all a stupid spiderweb of deceit and misunderstandings and-“

“Shh,” I pressed a finger to his lips, effectively shutting him up. “From the beginning.”

He took a deep breath. “Byunghee and I were best friends. We grew up together. In a world where you can't trust others, our bond was not something that should have easily been broken. We thought we knew what hardships were…but we were just brats who thought they were invincible. And we weren’t. Reality showed us that all too well.”

Another breath. “When we reached age eighteen, Byunghee joined a vicious gang known as the BlackBeards. It’s common knowledge every initiate has to go through a process – a job of sorts – to prove their loyalty and their skills. But I was worried for him. It was unlike him. He was so gentle. So caring…for him to be a part of such violence just didn’t sound right. And it was even stranger that the BlackBeards accepted him….”

“So what did you do?” I probed him, gently tugging his story from him like a child does to a spool of thread.

“I spied on the BlackBeards,” a sigh, the inevitabilities of tragedy upon us. “They were going to turn Byunghee into a scapegoat.”

“How?”

“His initiation job was simple: transport several boxes of a virus via boat to the other side of the harbor. It just required a steady hand – the virus could not be allowed to escape. However, it was right after the Avalanche incident and so the government was on high-wire alert for any signs of the virus.” Joon opened his eyes and stared right at me, but they weren’t focused on me; his eyes were looking right through me to a past where one black haired kid was crouched behind a warehouse, listening to a bunch of vicious adults discuss how they would ruin the life of his best friend.

“They were going to inform the police about Byunghee and let him get captured, correct?”

Joon gave the barest of nods. “Correct.”

But one thing didn’t make sense. “Why?”

Joon’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know,” he shook his head, bangs flying with frustration. His eyes were screwed up, the pain evident. “I don’t know why! There was no plausible reason for it! By selling Byunghee out, they were just asking for the enforcers to find a lead and hunt them down! No matter how good they were at hiding trails, if the enforcers questioned Byunghee, he would tell them about the BlackBeards. Or eventually, they would discover it themselves! So why!”

His hands clutched my shirt tighter. He buried his face in my shoulder again.

Why indeed? From the sounds of it, placing G.O as a scapegoat had no benefits. Then again, I was missing a lot of the story. From what I understood, G.O joined the group, had an initiation job to transport some viruses, but was sold out by the gang.

“What did you do after you found out?” Piece by piece, page by page, I would unfold this twisted fairy tale.

His words grew tight, like a gymnast on a thin rope that was so close to teetering. “I tried to tell Byunghee. But he didn’t listen to me! So…” a wracked sob. “So I went to the transportation site ahead of him. I jammed the boat. I hid the virus. And then I confronted him. I thought if I took greater measures, he would at least listen. But he didn’t!” his voice was so contorted with sorrow that I winced.

“He thought I betrayed him! But I didn’t! And then, and then so much happened! An explosion, the enforcers and Byunghee thought I – I of all people! – had sold him out! When it was really the BlackBeards. And he blamed me! So when the bombs went off and I was drowning, I thought he abandoned me!”

“But he didn’t, did he?” I said quietly. It didn’t seem like G.O. He may be quiet and self-preserving, but when it came to punches and kicks and protecting each other, he would be at the forefront, helping if he could.

“He didn’t, Joon sobbed, real tears pouring down now. “And he didn’t help when I got thrown into jail, sentenced to lifetime labor. He didn’t come when my sister was killed and I was all alone in the dark. He didn’t come!”

“And you wanted him to come didn’t you. You believed that even though you two had fought and blamed each other, that he would save you.”

Joon stared at me, mouth half-opened. “Y..es…” he whispered. It was like a realization and I blinked. He looked down at his hands. “I wanted him to come…so when he didn’t…it broke me even more. But I should have known something was holding him up! Only...the only thing I could remember after Level 1 was this insane anger, this madness that whispered 'Kill them all'." 

His hands flew to his hair, twisting them tightly and his face screwed up in pain. He shook his head violently, crying out, “So I tried to kill him! I nearly killed him with my own bare hands!”

“Stop it!” I grabbed his shoulders and tried to stop him from moving. “But you didn’t kill him, right?! Right?!” A horrifying thought entered my mind. He couldn’t have…right? “Joon?!”

“I…didn’t…” he croaked. “But I so very nearly did.”

My shoulders dropped with relief. “Thank Heavens,” I sighed. “It’s fine. You can still make up to him-“

“I can’t!” he yelled, looking at me with such pain-stricken eyes that I felt my hands leave his shoulder, dropped with shock. “That anger was so consuming. I felt so alive killing him them! So happy! I thought I could take on the world by myself. But that so…so…wrong.” He shook his head. “I don’t want to be a murderer, but what if I am. I may have only remembered what the Ringmaster told me...but what if that's a sign? What if beneath everythign else, that's what I want?”

“What are you talking about Joon?!” I shook him hard. “You are not a murderer!”

“But that feeling was not normal!” he sobbed out. “What if I feel that way again? What if I feel the urge to kill Byunghee again?! Something’s wrong with me Mir! I’ve become some mad creature, thirsting only for blood and not for reason. I promised my mother so long ago to never kill someone without good reason, and…and I nearly broke that promise!”

His eyes suddenly widened as if a horrifying thought came to him. “Mir,” he whispered. “W-what...if I’ve killed someone already. I mean, it didn’t feel wrong at all. What if I’ve killed already and this is just another part of my life?!” he stared at me with despair, like he wanted me to suddenly know his past and contradict him. Neither of which I could do.

I opened my mouth, readying myself to say something – anything to quell his terror.

But he was rambling, “What if I’ve killed people. Then it’s only a matter of time before I kill G.O. What if I’m already mad? What if I kill not just G.O, but Seungho and Thunder and…you…!” he stared at me and then at his hands, claw-like they were, as if they were already stained with our blood and scarred with sin.

“What if…I’m the wolf?” he slowly drew his gaze upwards to look at me and in that second of connection I knew exactly what he was going to do. Run. Hide. 

His heels twisted, screeching against the wooden flooring and he was moving. But so was I. I launched myself forwards, one hand grabbing his shoulder and twisting him back round so that he was facing me and then with the other palm I slapped him hard on the face.

Joon reeled back, shock and surprise warring with each other as his cheek redden. One hand automatically flew to the tender skin. He stared at me, completely unable to compute my actions. His mouth worked, like he was trying to get words out but there were too many and he didn’t know what to say.

Then, all of a sudden a trickle of blood leaked out the corner of his mouth. Joon lifted a hand to his mouth and touched it. It came away smeared. Red and violently so, both of us stared at it. Then Joon looked at me again and I was leaning forwards, the scent of blood in the air and the cogs in my brain working furiously. I had never been more sure of what I wanted to do right now.

I grabbed his shirt, pulled him forwards just as I too leaned in. His hands dropped; he was completely taken aback at my sudden movement, and for that shard of a second he let me do as I please. Time slowed and every feature of Joon and I magnified into focus. I saw the blood, apple-red and sinfully so, the red shape of where I had slapped him and most of all – those luscious crimson lips.

We were so close and I saw his eyes widen as he realized what I was doing. Pushing my head forwards, tilting it slightly and then my lips. A breath hissed out of Joon’s mouth and I could feel his heart thumping wildly through thin cotton. 

No need for second thoughts. I closed my eyes, leaned in and kissed all that red.