Chess: The Assassin's Move

Pick Your Filter.

Laira's judgment felt superficial as she was swamped with conflicted thoughts. Park Jimin was a constant presence in her brain that she could not decode. Scratching, knocking, breathing in all areas, giving and taking back reasons that set her confusion ablaze.

A walking contradiction he seemed, but she was aware her observation only floated on the surface. He was a lot more than he let out to be, more than what she wanted to believe.

More than what a monster should be.

Who is this Park Jimin? A criminal? A leader? Was she supposed to hate him or obey him? She almost did both. Almost.

He just had a way of changing her mind before she could fully land her step. A trait of his that kept her floating in the air, arduously differentiating the ocean from the mirage, the fragile from the fortress, and the right from the wrong.

Most of which felt like futile reasonings, given the lack of clarity her vision offered when it concerned the silver-haired assassin.

It could not go on like that forever, not if she valued her rationality. She desperately wanted to reach a conclusion. Hence: Sort it down on paper, something she used to do when she was young. She started listing reasons to hate him and reasons to obey—scratch that—to tolerate him.

Reasons to hate Park Jimin:

#1. He kidnapped me.

That reason was borderline hypocrisy, given that she neither dreaded the separation from her family nor did she mourn the life she couldn't live. Anyhow, he did abduct her, which accounted for some reasonable hate.

#2. He is insufferable and arrogant.

A plain and simple reason that should've topped the list.

#3. He wanted me to harm Taehyung?

Emphasis on the question mark. Laira picked up some kind of smell that closely resembled hidden intentions, which only meant one thing: Park Jimin was keeping her in the dark. She attributed that discovery to the absurd plot holes in the script he had written of his plan to use a mere trainee to harm a deliciously skilled assassin, despite being one of the greatest himself.

She made a mental note to get to the bottom of that case soon.

#4. He stopped me from saving Chloe and chained me like a prisoner.

That was his attempt to protect her, as he claimed so himself that night, but nobody had the right to forcefully change her decision. His intentions may have been for her good. However, his way of executing his intentions was downright wrong, which is tightly knitted to the next reason:

#5. He weaponized my fears to wound me/Hurt me using my relationship with my parents.

He proved to be an adult with remarkable observation and tastefully poisonous words sitting on his tongue—very typical. Laira was wounded by everything he said that night by the river, for which he deserved her hatred. Never mind that she was the one who initiated that verbal battle. Overall, it was insensitive and cruel of him to involve/use her fear of being neglected by her parents in their argument.

Since that's established, next.

Reasons to not hate him:

There was a moment of silence as Laira pondered and pondered, blankly staring down at the paper. Many thoughts stumbled down the stream of her consciousness, resulting in a crowded room of reasons. It was as if her mind supported the idea of defending Park Jimin.