5 ☾ Love
Shadow of Destiny☾ Myung.Soo ☽
What is the worst thing in life?
Poverty? It's your fault if you don't do anything to get out of your poor condition.
Loneliness? Why do you even feel lonely in the first place? You owe nothing to people around you so you don't need them either. So there is nothing called loneliness in my dictionary.
Broken heart? If she doesn't return your feeling, then she doesn't deserve you. Don't bother with it. She'll regret it in the future.
Death? No. It's not Death which is the worst thing I ever faced.
Quoting from Robert Burton, an English scholar at Oxford University, it was said that the fear of death is worse than death[8].
I can't agree more. It's not the pain of struggling over it. It's not the days and nights I passed with holding on to myself, thinking that I would never die young.
It's what came after that.
You're just a mere shadow under the sunlight. As the moon shone on the night sky, you're alive but humans couldn't see you. You had your own thoughts but none could hear you.
You remember everything, from the good to the bad memories. From the day you're born till the day when Death came to you.
I remember all of those memories.
I don't mind with them lurking around me. I don't really care about my past but there is one day I swore to myself that I would never forget it. No matter what, I should always remember it.
How does it feel to be your beloved one's Shadow after you're dead? Of all people in the world, you actually became her Shadow as the punishment of your pride of life, refusing to believe that you're supposed to be dead.
It's good. It's supposed to be.
However to be there with her from day to night but she couldn't see you, to know every piece of her life but no one cared about it.
The worst is to know that she had moved on from mourning your death and found someone else who made her remember about love, to feel her heart beating for the person under her consciousness.
I know how it feels. It's awful. It's terribly horrible.
As if the torture was not enough, on the night of total lunar eclipse, my first Encounter happened.
It was an accident. I knew nothing about the possibility of a Shadow could be seen by the Individu at the moment.
Even though I expressed how happy I was to be able to communicate with her like before, she's actually afraid. She's afraid of me. Her eyes showed the fear of looking at someone who's supposed to be dead.
She's not happy to see me again. It's frightful for her, to see me after my funeral. She didn't want to see me as if I was still alive.
Disappointment hit me. No. It's not disappointment.
Betrayal was what I felt, by the girl I was in love with, a girl who I once believed as my world, who would treasure me till her death.
That night I took over her light, throwing her to the Shadow, locking her away from the world she had. I couldn't have a world without her so why should she have one without me?
The next day, the man she had her eyes on disappeared from the world.
It's just a while after that I found out that he didn't leave the world completely. Just like me, he went to the dark, living as a Shadow because of the same sin, of denying the Death who came after him.
Then my target changed.
I don't like to call it as a revenge. I prefer to define it as a moral lesson. I would love to teach him a little bit more of what pain is.
Watching him from afar, I saw him protecting his Individus from time to time. Once, I was too tempted to show him who's the king around and, when he's near to disappear because I took his Individu, I let go of him.
I was not as strong as I am now. I still needed Individu to hang around and it would be more interesting if I had him around so he could feel more pain and torture.
And that chance appeared last week.
It's the total lunar eclipse. I wasn't expecting anything until the tingling alert suddenly arouse in the Shadow Realm.
An Encounter just happened.
It didn't take long for me to find out who it was. I was somewhere around him, watching his activities silently to think about the best way and timing to destroy him completely after the last chance I had that night.
I found it now.
"L."
I look up and turn around to the source of voice. It's a Shadow named Doojoon, one of the strongest Shadows who has been around for a while. I like how he could have a pair of black wings on his back.
"How's the girl?" he asks, tucking his hands inside of pockets. "I heard she has quite delicious conscience to devour."
"She's mine," I smirk, remembering her terrified expression when I paid a surprise visit. "No Shade can ever get close to her anyway. Not with Yoseob around her."
Doojoon raises his eyebrow, "So you still think that Yoseob is strong enough, eh?"
"Better than some Shades who boast about their strength when they're even weaker than newborn Shadows," I scoff. "Even if he's not strong, he'll protect her till his last."
He would. He always did that to every Individu he 'served'. No matter if the Individu is a male or a female, Yoseob always went with the good Shadow role, never letting himself to be called as Shade.
This one is definitely one of two most special cases ever since I watched him for the past hundreds years.
"You know what's the best moment of taking the light from Individus?" I ask the rhetorical question, not really expecting an answer from Doojoon. "It's when they look at us with extreme fear, begging us to not throwing them to the Erebus."
"But...," I glance at Doojoon and smirk, "...nothing is better than to see the Shadow itself showing that kind of expression when we want to take its Individu away."
That's the moment I want to feel again. The moment when Yoseob looks at me with pleaded eyes because of the special emotion he has locked for the Individu.
I understood it and it what drove me to even more.
Of course he doesn't admit it. He never will. I know him even better than he thinks.
"Oh," I sense the alert of Erebus is created again. It's easy to sense the Erebus when it's still daylight. "He created it again."
For the past week, I could sense Yoseob kept creating Erebus in daylights. Looks like Hyunra is still not getting used with the fact that her Shadow is actually very much alive like herself.
Some Shades have tried to attack Hyunra but to no avail. Yoseob is way stronger than they are and I let them be, knowing that Yoseob will not disappoint me.
After all, it will be me who destroys him.
Not even bothering to say anything else to Doojoon, I just move in a blink of eye, revealing myself so close to his Erebus. Close enough for him to recognize me.
Yoseob just defeated another Shade and he is going to erase the Erebus, noticing how weak Hyunra is with the heavy atmosphere around, until his eyes find me.
"Good day, Hyunra, Yoseob," I greet them casually as if we're meeting up for a meeting. "Been a while since my last visit. Do you miss me, Hyunra?"
I look at her, smiling with words in mind, sending them to her personally.
"You look terrific today, Hyunra. Isn't it hard to breathe in Erebus? Why don't you give a try to let go of your light?"
Hyunra pulls Yoseob's sleeve slightly and, despite he can't read my mind since both of us are Shadows, Yoseob knows right away that I'm sending unspoken words to Hyunra.
"Stop trying to brainwash her, L," Yoseob extends his arms, preventing me from approaching his Individu. "You're not going to get her. Not now, not ever."
I laugh at his words, "So nostalgic! I remember you said those words to me too that night. What's her name again? Soomi? No. Sun? Ah, I remember."
"Sora."
Without any warning, Yoseob summons his weapon from the empty air, holding the silver rapier with the blade pointing so close to my neck.
"Don't you dare to mention her name with your filthy mouth," he hisses coldly. "I'm warning you, Myungsoo."
I can't help but to grin upon his reaction. I let out a satisfied laughter, taking steps backwards, "You still remember her very well, don't you?"
Giving a quick glance at Hyunra, I whisper to her in mind with a smirk on face.
"We'll see each other again pretty soon, Hyunra. Sooner than you think."
Just after that, I take my leave, feeling pleased with Yoseob's reaction, knowing that my conjecture is right.
It's love that makes him always weaker than me.
☽ ☾ ☽ ☾ ☽ ☾
Author's Note:
[8] Quoted from The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).
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