VIII

The large, enormous sky slowly poured down its tiny drops of water. Gradually the rain grows bigger and bigger, causing people to move away from the street, enter their houses again, or simply protect themselves under the food stalls around.

In an instant, the street was all empty but filled with puddles of water and unstoppable drops of rain. This month rain came rarely, so this was a small moment to appreciate, yet a small moment to enjoy.

Well, actually not everyone was enjoying. A pair of suede shoes stepped on the puddles, literally causing them to splash a little. A girl was running with her hood covering her slightly wet hair, trying to get off the rain. Her skirt was all wet and dirty because of the filthy water she accidentally got by running.

She groaned a whisper, and then continued running with her pants. Her little brother, Sanghyun, would be glad if he knew that she brought loaves of breads for dinner. A small tired smile crooked on her face, and her grips tightened at her jacket’s tips where she hid her stolen breads.

Sandara turned towards an alley, the only place where she would find her house. Her house was relatively small (or it is exactly really small), but it wasn’t a big problem because there were just her and her brother in her house.

Sandara stopped for a while when her skirt got tangled, and then she wiped her sweat which had been mixed with the raindrops all over her. Her house was just about two or three minutes again if she ran, but she had run out of breathe because she had been sprinting from the town to her place.

Just when she was about to run home again, a hand caught and covered , causing her to whimper in surprise. Her eyes widened crazily and she glanced back, realizing that there was a man standing behind her and trying to… what? She had no idea.

Sandara struggled to set herself free, but the man was too strong that she was helplessly so weak. She tried to hit the man with her elbow, but the man took her hand instead and pinned her down the ground with her back at the air, he didn’t also forget to caught Sandara’s another hand.

“Let me go!!” Sandara groaned when the man finally took his hand off. Tears started to fall down and roll on her cheeks, and finally they dropped down the ground. No matter how hard she struggled, the man was too strong and it’s no use. Her stolen breads she brought for Sanghyun had been crushed under her body and dirtied by the wet ground as well.

The man knelt down behind Sandara, he seemed to have been deaf for such desperate pleading screams or pathetic whimpers coming from the girl. He took off something, a piece of long white stuff looked like an injection out of his tuxedo’s rare pocket.

He didn’t need a long time to finally approach Sandara’s neck, “This won’t be hurt,” he added a whisper as well. Sandara started to cry louder, and the man slowly mumbled a faint, wind-sounding lullaby as he leaned over with his hand holding the injection.

Go to sleep, go to sleep…

“NO!!” Sandara howled as the injection’s cold and sharp needle slowly poked her neck’s surface. Her whole body froze as the small tip of an injection went through her milky skin towards her veins, giving her no sense on her fingertips. The man released some chemical liquids from the injection, and he immediately took the injection off as he stood up, silently watching the furious reaction from Sandara’s body.

She lost her senses, and the process went too fast as she got into a serious convulsions. The man stood up and stepped a step backward, heedlessly examining the usual process he had seen for thousands times. Sandara’s whole body will tremble crazily, her body will slowly turn into white and soon enough, there could be no more movements seen, no more breaths released, and no more heart beats heard.

And yes, the steps happened to her as well. Kim Jaejoong, the man who was still standing behind Sandara, whistled a little and knocked the injection’s glass body with his finger. The serum worked constantly awesome, he thought, mentally adoring his company’s ability in making combinations.

He waited for a moment after making sure that Sandara wouldn’t wake up anymore. Jaejoong bowed down a little, his slender fingers slowly took a grip at Sandara’s right wrist, and he pulled Sandara’s hand upwards, gradually exposing her long and have-turned-white arm.

Heh, so he had stalked the right person. Jaejoong still could saw the barcode on Sandara’s upper arm before it slowly vanished, disappeared by the wind like it never existed before as Sandara had finally left the world. Jaejoong gently put her hand down, stood up normally again, and he wiped his hands on his shirt.

Jaejoong grinned, silently feeling proud for himself. Cursed people were supposed not to exist in a world where properly normal people lived, right? This world has to be clean, untouched by filthy cursed hands which were dangerous, untold, and mysterious. His mindset was the reason why he worked darkly like this, murdering people beyond the world’s knowledge and under a company. Lee Hyukjae was the one who pulled him into this world, and nevertheless Jaejoong enjoyed it.

Kim Jaejoong’s lips crooked at the thought that he succeeded, and he continued walking, leaving Sandara alone as the rain started to grow bigger. If Jaejoong’s mind still worked nicely, he would find Sandara and her brother’s house on the third alley of this place.

Oops, no more Sandara’s.

…

XI

“I’m done!” Siwon yelled happily as he slammed his laptop’s cover down, finally he had finished his never-ending tasks from his office. He immediately pulled the wheeled chair he was sitting on aback, stretched his back by raising the two of his hands, and he groaned in satisfy.

“Now let’s join us watching,” Hyukjae muttered and patted an empty spot beside him. He and Donghae had been sitting in the sofa, watching Music Bank since almost an hour ago, and they hadn’t even moved a tiny inch.

Without any hesitation, Siwon stood up and walked towards the two other guys to join them. FT Island, a Korean band consists of some boys, was currently singing an extremely emotional song at the show, and Hyukjae calmly swayed his body left to right in the beat, causing his shoulders to casually bump Donghae or Siwon.

“I didn’t know you liked ballad or these types of music,” Siwon murmured and snatched the pillow from Hyukjae’s back. Hyukjae just looked at Siwon and said, “People who wait will get their treats. Girls’ Day will sing next,” he mentioned his favorite y girlband with a super large grin.

Siwon immediately laughed at Hyukjae’s reason. Hyukjae chuckled proudly as well, and then he yelled, “Ain’t I right?!”

“Who’s Girls’ Day?” Donghae innocently asked. Hyukjae and Siwon immediately looked at him, and passionately Hyukjae explained about their dance moves, their members, his favorite member, their debut career and such unimportant other things (and some ert things, yes, damn it Lee Hyukjae) about the group.

When the music played with four girls with long dresses on the TV, Hyukjae immediately cheered and sang along to their song, unreasonably made Donghae smiled a little. Hyukjae even stood up, moving his body to follow the dance moves in the show.

Donghae cracked up in laughter when Hyukjae followed the other ier dance step which he sat down the floor and soon enough d the floor like a dog, nearly twerking if the choreography hasn’t changed. Siwon himself couldn’t breathe anymore; all he did was just laughing and laughing.

After an approximately long four minutes, Hyukjae went back sitting with a grin on his face and some panting moments because it was tiring to laugh uncontrollably and dance at the same time. He looked at Donghae, chuckled for a moment and said, “Great, wasn’t I? It’s my first time to see you laugh that big.”

Donghae raised his eyebrows in surprise, yet in slight happiness because he knew that Hyukjae noticed him. He just replied Hyukjae with another small grin, and then Hyukjae turned around to Siwon, bragged about his ability to cover a girl group.

“Why is no one normal?” Siwon spoke between his chuckles, and then he looked back to the TV. The music show had finished, and now it changed into a news announcement for a long 30 minutes. Hyukjae immediately groaned and tried to reach the remote beside Siwon.

“Don’t change the channel, this is important!” Siwon spoke as he hid the remote behind his body. Hyukjae clicked his tongue, though he watched the news after. The summary told some unimportant crime and government’s stories he didn’t even want to see, but the next, the main news, has successfully stolen his attention.

A teenage girl was found dead in the Myeongdong St. approximately an hour ago. Again, the hospital team found a little dose of Chlorine Trioxide in the victim’s blood. Could it possibly be a new developing virus that is spreading by the air, or is it just a coincidence with other death cases?

Siwon raised his eyebrows and said, “Why does the Chlorine Trioxide case happen so often?”

Hyukjae just raised his shoulders and he continued watching the TV.

The program showed the record of the crime scene from varied directions. The girl was still young, reportedly sixteen or seventeen. Under her body there were some loaves of bread, she brought nothing else, and nothing seemed suspicious from her.

The corpse was found named Sandara Park. The program recorded the hospital team carrying her to the ambulance for autopsy or whatever in the hospital and morgue before the blood testing was done, and soon enough the scene was replaced by a woman reporter.

Siwon comforted his seat to watch the news clearer. Hyukjae and Donghae didn’t move; they kept on staring at the screen.

‘Good evening, now I am standing in front of the crime scene happened in Myeongdong. Behind me there is an eyewitness, Kim Jaejoong,’ the reporter said and let a man who stood behind her to come forward.

“Hey, isn’t he your friend?!” Siwon spoke in surprise to Hyukjae, and Hyukjae widened his eyes in shock and nodded without looking away from the television.

‘So, Mr. Jaejoong, what happened from your point of view?’  The reporter asked so.

‘I didn’t see much because I was just passing by this alley from my work,’ Kim Jaejoong said. ‘When I saw her, she had been laying down the floor, lifelessly being left here.’

The short talk with Kim Jaejoong ended with a smile from Jaejoong. The cameraman shifted the view towards another person which was claiming herself as Sandara’s neighbor.

‘Sandara is a nice girl! She won’t go out at evening like this, so it’s surprising for me. She has one little brother who she protects really well! Sandara is really discipline as well, at four in the evening like this, usually she has locked her house! How discipline she is even I sometimes mistake her as a girl with skin disease or something! There’s no way she would be outside like this.’

Donghae didn’t even move an inch, but he felt a twitch at the part where the neighbor said ‘at four in the evening like this, usually she has locked her house’.

It was extremely a forbidden, taboo thing, for a cursed person to stay out of the house at evening, or specifically, when the moon shines upwards which starts from around four or five until midnight. Moonlight was a curse for them, where Donghae –and almost all of the cursed, didn’t know why. They avoided every evenings, rejected every sleepless nights, even at four or five, usually they had locked themselves inside their houses.

Was Sandara one of the cursed as well?

Speculations started to appear inside Donghae’s head. Was it because the moonlight? The reporter said something about chlo- chol- some weird substance or thing inside Sandara’s blood, so did that mean moonlight gave cursed people those things? Donghae could feel the chill inside his spine as he thought more about the curse.

“Hey, Donghae, are you alright?” Hyukjae suddenly said as he looked intensely at Donghae’s face. Donghae was a little surprised, and then after a moment he just nodded as an answer.

Hyukjae chuckled in his breath. He smiled and spoke again to Donghae smoothly, so smooth it was hard to hear, “Don’t be blank too often. It was hard not to stare.”

Donghae didn’t know what happened, nor could he control his gradually fastening heartbeat. He just stared in silent at Hyukjae, meeting his eyes with Hyukjae’s, gapping his mouth slightly, and breathing his breath steadily.

Hyukjae stayed the same as how Donghae remained. Slowly he reached the unreachable soul in front of him, starting to learn and appreciate how Donghae was so beautiful, every single inch was as adorable as other inches and parts. Lee Donghae was perfection himself.

For a moment, the television’s voice sounded too faint for the two of them. The world stopped for a while, giving only the two of them a small yet huge space to feel.

“You’re beautiful,” Hyukjae murmured after a couple seconds.

The unusual rush of heat climbed up Donghae’s cheeks, causing some reddish accent on them. Donghae’s hands froze in their places; his brain couldn’t even progress perfectly anymore.

This feeling was awfully exquisite.

…

a/n:
i'm going to take a small hiatus from working on this (well, ideas are shooting from all directions!) for maybe a week?
thank you for those 17 upvoters! thanks for all subscribers, commenters and readers. < 3