The Devil Judge ? || (ONE-SHOTS)

~LOOK AT THE MAN YOU LOVE (7/20)

I closed my eyes for a few minutes, taking in and throwing the air out of my healing lips. I could still feel the crust on my lower lip, the bruises on my skin. The bites no longer hurting like the night before, but painfully buried in the memory of it's own.

-You went past your curfew last night, Why? -

I opened my eyes again, bringing my attention back to him. To my open void, made human.

-If you have to stand there, I won't answer you - I said firmly, purposely closing my eyes again.

-Ga On! -
He tried to protest again but I stopped him.
-Sit down and I will tell you what you want to know.... - I said in a gentle tone. Patiently.

I opened my eyes to him again, observing how he moved towards me, uncertain, hesitant, before finally sitting down at the end of the bed.

- I drank more than I should have... I was reckless-I confessed with a note of bitterness, staring at an undefined spot in the room as the daylight continued to rise, lapping at our bodies in the heat of summer.

The breeze of early September.

The odours of the lush nature.

-Why? It's not like you to overstep the rules.... Your father, he told me you are a very careful person, and you never let danger get to you- he spoke confusedly, his tone deep, linear.
A hint of curiosity in his dark eyes.

-Contrary to what your father said, you seem clumsy to me, an easy person to deceive, to be dragged down to the bottom of the sea. You are reckless and stubborn.... And not... -

-Well, know that it's your fault!- I spoke over his unfinished words, sitting up slowly, my back against the backrest of the bed.
-If I've now become a mass of clumsiness and danger, it's because of you...-

Kang Yo Han got even more stiff, shaking his head unwillingly. Not in agreement with me or anything I was saying.

-I've done nothing but keep you at a distance, I've never brought you close to my heart! How can I be the cause of your falling? - he asked in frustration, as if my talking cornered him, confused his ideas. Those pillars that often held him up and knew how to keep him sane.

He was crumbling...

I sighed, choking the sheets in my left hand. Martyred to the core.
-It is precisely because you never approached me that I lowered the walls, you see? Usually when people approach me, I raise the walls to escape their attempt to know me or love me, but you.... You made me leave my fortress, the castle where I was locked up for years...-

Kang Yo Han gasped, his eyes narrowing into two slits, his eyebrows furrowed.

The image I had was of a man standing on the top of a very high tower, watching the world from within, guarding its closed doors...
Doors which he knew very well he was not going to open to any traveller either way, even if they begged, knocked and cried out.
Yet, not far from there, lived a man who often strolled around his territory, never daring to knock.
Without the slightest desire to enter or ask the concerned guardian, why he lived so above...
Instead, he stood wisely, watching from below without making a sound; so much so that it intrigued the one who had sworn never to leave his home.

But how could I explain it to him, how could I expose myself without angering him...?
How could I tell Kang Yo Han, that he intrigued me in a way that was so unnatural and vivid?

I must have been distracted for a long time, because when I came back from my thoughts, he was already gone. The door was hastily opened to the corridor. His quick footsteps outside the walls of my room.
I sighed with ache, letting myself go against the white pillows of my bed.
A clear hole in my heart.
A festering discomfort.
A wide one with his name on it.

🔸KANG YO HAN🔸

||FLASHBACK||
~Seoul, South Korea 🇰🇷
➰Years ago

- Father and I will wait for you to love with all your heart, and when you do, we will take them.... We will destroy whoever they are, before your eyes-

Fifteen-year-old Isaac looked at his 13-year-old younger brother, pushing him towards a dark corner of the house, where he was usually left to be punished by his father, by the end of the day.

- The person you'll love will end up like all those people, father kidnapped. So I advice you to kill them yourself and spare them the pain, of being vaporised under our father's menacing touch... - Isaac tried to scare him away, driving little Kang Yo Han to tears.
-You cannot have friends and you cannot love anyone but us, do you understand me? -

🔸️🔸️

I could have sworn that my brother was the devil himself, that he, like my father, ruled hell and fed on the afflicted young souls wandering in space, and yet there were times, when he returned to being the only person I ever loved. The only person I had truly loved.

||FLASHBACK||
~Seoul, South Korea 🇰🇷
➰ Years Ago

-Kang Yo-han! Didn't I tell you not to go out? Why did you go to that family?! -

Mr Kang's thunderous tone could be heard throughout the house as he chased after the young figure of his son with a belt in his hand.

-I just wanted to be friends with Tom! I won't do it again! Please Dad! -

In front of that deplorable scene, the eldest son sat on the sofa. Intent on registering his brother's screams and his father's hateful tone in his mind. Pondering on that gigantic shadow looming over the innocent figure of that desperate little boy, who had never managed to have even one friend throughout his childhood.
And initially he did not move, he said nothing and didn't even try to stop that bewildering vision, but when his father's belt struck Kang Yo Han's back, Isaac was immediately on his feet, marching furiously at his father. Pushing him with all his might. With all he had.

-Do not fucking touch him! Do not dare to lay a finger on him! I sent him to that fucking house! If there is anybody that you should punish, that's me! -

🔸️🔸️

My brother was a rose above the flowers, that mound that unlike others was more splintered, easier to dig out, as majestic as it was.
And this for all the times he had been my lifeline from the clutches of my father's fury, for all the times he had told me he would never hurt me or abandon me.
Yet, he was the same one that changed like the firmament, the sun turning to the moon. The river drying up and becoming one with the earth.
For contrary to what he had promised me, he had then scorched my soul, he desecrated my house, like those body snatchers. Those who, in order to find gold, were willing to unearth a dead person who had found everlasting peace.

My brother... My brother made me believe that hope had the wings of an eagle, only to tear it down before my weak eyes.

And then there was Kim Ga On... Another with the same face, the same person but with a different heart, and he spoke to me about hope, the magic of desiring someone, he spoke a foreign language I did not know. The love I had stopped feeling long time ago...
And to believe Kim Ga On's words, also meant believing my brother's truth.
I had to accept that there was no love without suffering, no heaven without depth.

"You made me leave my fortress, the castle where for years I was locked up.... "

I ran my hands through my hair, furious, in pain, mad in heart and mind, for how was I suppose to act?
How was I to deal with all of this, without shattering?

How could I love and lie, at the same time?
He's heart was genuine, far more genuine than what genuine meant to me.
Kim Ga On, embodied what I wanted to see in my brother, the long-awaited dream. The sweet change that never happened.
They were so aesthetically similar that I sometimes felt hatred for both. Fraudulent Fear.

I sought Kim Ga On to soothe my pain and my brother to avenge those inflicted wounds.
Then sun in the morning and the darkness at night.

But what if one day, in a fit of rage, I ended up mistaking Kim Ga On for Isaac Kang? What if in my unthinking moment, I instead raised my scars on Kim Ga On?

The whole situation was messed up and risky, loving was difficult, arduous, terrifying.
Still... I could not lie to myself and say that my heart had not skipped at the sweet sound of his voice. For even the way he looked at me left me beyond alive.

🌱🌱