Jiyong was assertive, almost callous in the way he spoke to her. Carelessly, he flung his words around with no regard to the dagger-like edge to his tongue--yet he would look upon her as if she were the most precious of things, a jewel he'd come across glimmering within polluting muck.

"All I can see in this world are people who deserve to die the cruelest of deaths," he would murmur, even as he stared her deep in the eyes. They flickered with a capricious cruelty, alight with an inhuman intensity. "They deserve to burn, to crumble and fade away to dust--yet I would have you stand by my side; the paragon of divine humanity."--and his lips would caress his words and linger on his tongue like the cloyingly sweet of wine.

He used language as if he were a painter: each syllable coming from his tongue would colour the canvas of the world, and he would forever taint it in that way. He enjoyed the irony he could paint with his mouth; he enjoyed the destruction he could inspire within others. He enjoyed the emotions that he could stir within her, unbidden and unwanted.

"Yet you are human still, the most human of us all." Yoona would reply. "Why do you delight in highlighting your sheer humanity? For all that you say that you're a god, I can't see anything holy about you."

Her tongue was clumsy, coated with lead where his was silver. She picked words slowly, and constructed them with all the grace of a child--yet he never seemed to care. He delighted in her words for reasons she didn't understand.

Yes, with every word she spoke, he would shudder, curl into himself, enraptured by some--hidden music that only he could hear, as if her voice were song and her words lyrics accompanying the melody.

She would take hold of his hand, and count every finger that he had. One, two, three, four, five. Just like hers. She would touch the contours of his face, note his two eyes, his high-bridged nose, the cupid's bow of his lips. His ears were rounded, pierced with gold. He was lithe where men were muscular, but she could find no other fault in him, no sign that distinguished him from the rest of humanity.

"You are not a god," she would murmur, even as he cupped her face.

Jiyong would smile at her, heartbreakingly innocent despite the malice in his eyes. "I will never be a god to you." And if he sounded sad, it was what was written on the outermost layer of masks that he wore, trickery and mockery a second nature to his being.

And with his eyes and lips and tongue, he would worship the temple of her body, sweet nothings dripping from his mouth like honey.