Warning: There maybe a few graphic scenes and cursing.

━━━━━°⌜ 死者 ⌟°━━━━━

"You erased me so easily."

- BLUES (이하이)

━━━━━°⌜ 死者 ⌟°━━━━━

I erased them. As deftly as erasing the scratch marks on a blackboard. Yes, that was sarcasm; sorry. That mere period when I'd dwelled on their daily lives to let my mind be occupied by them had been... Flabbergasting, if truth be told.

It was a trifling lack of judgement on my part when I'd walked away from there. But the moment I had nix to keep myself busy, my convictions wandered back to them. Back to the smiles they wore. Back to the bony figures that they'd possessed. Back to evaluating that they stood at the brink; after which they'd probably come to me.

Before I could think things through, I'd risen. To my full height. And let the obsidian swirls guide me to them. To where I'd left them.

❛ In the dark of night
The stars light up the sky
I see them flying free
That's just like you and me ❜

Hope was in the way they smiled, in the way they were quiet when they reached out with their eyes. It was when they paused, gathering strength to make a better choice, to breathe and let love have a moment to guide them. Hope was in that soft shrug of theirs, the playfulness that let me know they actually believed in themselves after all. It was in the way they walked, more confident than before, holding their head a little higher.

The color of hope shone on the path that I took. Had I had lips like you humans, I'd have smiled. I'd have let my plush lips pull flush against teeth. I drifted as alacritous as I could, the air beneath me whooshing as I brushed past.

A cat of silken shadow's breath, conjured of a nightingale's song, came on silent paws. The fabric of the black heavens came to me then in a feline form. She stood there, obstructing my path as she glanced up in my direction. Not a moment's bother was spared, before she let her tail up high and walked past the road. She had cut my path.

An altercation of whether the black cat is a sign of good luck or bad luck is sempiternal. People haven't believed in such nugatory myths since aeons, but I can't help it. It's been ingrained since... Well, ever since I'd been here.

❛ Everyone is lonely, sometimes
But I would walk a thousand miles to see your eyes
You are not alone, we're family
Hold me, let's escape all this reality ❜

Disconcerting, it had been, when I had ultimately reached my terminus. Destination, I mean.

The shoreline had become just a figment, as if it had evaporated into the heat. I wondered if now the world would turn to one big ocean, the waves moving freely, gathering pace. With nothing else. Perhaps that was what happened when I went adrift, I feared that the perfect circle of blue is all that exists.

The water of disconsolation, so salty, lapped against the shore and I saw them in a state I should've never seen them in.

A pole; a rusted one. Their hands behind their back. Their knees bucked down in defeat. Their eyes... Red. Bloodshot with the promise of tears of the charred tonic that coursed through their veins.

Face rigid with an expression I could not comprehend, they were bearing more than I had expected. The whisps that I had been composed of rushed to the scene, wanting to drape the blanket of protection over them. But I couldn't. All I could do was just watch.

The circle of men around them was an echo of a black sea. And when I say black, I really mean the color, black. The sea of men around them was petrifying, a whip in the Chief's hand and all of the others cheering around him.

"Leave him be. I was the one behind it all," Fores uttered, using that as a last resort to free Taehong, who's tears meandered down like a river.

"But we caught you both. So shut the f*ck up," the Chief roared, the whip finally unfurling.

The whoosh of air that followed the descend of the whip didn't go disregarded. It landed with a crackle, the tight skin on his back being pulled taught as it dragged along him. A series of other forceful hits, and his back had been glistening with the color of life.

Were he to have come to them as a brother they would've give him everything - their heart, their labour, their soul. Instead they wrapped him in iron and beat with leather. In doing so they'd crippled themselves, edged closer to being a human snake with narrowed eyes and a forked tongue.

His agony had been evident in the ear-piercing screams that left the barricade of his lips. The sheen in his eyes getting disenthralled as the salty tears that hadn't been foreign to him. Watching him suffer was petrifying to Fores, when she had promised to keep him alive and well.

I had been an audience to all that had been kept open for me to watch. The aura around Taehong had morphed. The canary yellow had shifted, to a blue. A fluorescent sort of blue that would only appear in the northern lights.

The whip had been on its way to descend once more, but it never had the chance to brutally slap his skin. For the ultramarine haze had wrapped itself around the Stygian leather, flinging it out of the Chief's grasp.

Hasty gasps arose around them all, and Fores had been too stunned to even speak. Taehong , himself, had been clueless as to why he hadn't felt the impact the next time. His mother had liberated him from the pain.

"T-That... Ho-How did...?" The Chief had is mouth open agape, like a cretin that would probably never learn what humanity means. After all, he wasn't human...

❛ You are, my symphony
By your side we are unity
You are, my energy
My guiding light ❜

"Release them!"

The voice surprised even me. The waves of platinum locks guided my vision to most monotonous face I'd ever seen. The slant of her eyes were familiar, but the warmth in her eyes were akin to the parky breeze during the winters. Gelid and unresponsive.

"Grandma," Taehong muttered in muted tones; eliciting a wide-eyed expression from Fores.

"President Wan?" the Chief inquired, before he bent down on one knee and hung his head low.

The rest of the sergeants followed pursuit; each one of them bowing down so low, their noses dragged along the grimy sand.

Do you know how they describe grandmothers? I'll tell you.

❛ Let the years come for they bring the wisdom of the mother, the strength of the grandmother. With each year let my love flow to the young, my learning be their guide when they seek it. Let me be the good arms they fall into, the shoulder they seek solace in and the heart that is always open and warm. For that is the ageing woman, that is the beauty that stays in the soul and shines from the eyes. ❜

How I wish that had been true about that woman...

"Untie them. I want to have a private chat with them," she ordered, her voice as coarse as brick against brick.

"Bu-"

"That's not a request, Quan," she repeated. Her hands had been tied behind her back, her sure steps being placed in their direction. "I wish to speak to them privately. You and the other sergeants can leave."

"As you wish, President Wan," he replied. His tone had been so soft, I wouldn't have thought of him yielding a whip.

The commotion had begun at the snap of a finger. Sergeants shuffled back and forth, their hurried legs kicking up the dust, as they left the space abandoned. Just how the woman had wished.

Taehong had been struggling to pull himself up, his back slaughtering him with each stretch of his muscles. Fores had her hand supporting him; but all was in vain, regardless.

The aura around him ran azure with each step that the woman took forward. The color so saturated, so concentrated, it could've burned someone had it been an acid.

"There, there, boy. Just sit down. You can't stand," the woman chuckled. "And you, girl... Keep your filthy hands to yourself and stay the f*ck away."

He could only manage to look up. She'd been just how he'd remembered her. Her words as crude as ever, not bothering to try out a little tone of magnanimity. His glossy eyes blurred the vision around him, but he could still make out the dark crease that ran all the way from her left eye to the corner of her lip... Rendering her sight-less in one eye.

"She's my s-sister. You ca-can't-" Taehong started only for a detrimental cough to break him to shards. He continued, however, with a hollow voice, holding his breath to control the cough. "You can't talk to her like that."

"Sister? Since when has someone even felt like making you family?" Her deranged, maniacal laugh reverberated through the quietude.

Fores couldn't believe the syllables that had bounced off her eardrums. What was wrong with Taehong? Whatever had been wrong had been with the woman. It made her come to the conclusion that it must've been her, who'd lead her father to his grave.

"Shut up, woman. He's better than you, for all I care. And I'm proud to be his sister," Fores announced, her voice ringing. She sent a small smile in his direction before she faced his grandmother. The woman who'd been the clear incarnation of the evil.

Her ego had been crushed. The power that she'd held among the most brute of people had been trampled upon. And she didn't like losing hold of the ball that had been in her court. Enraged, her sturdy legs paced up to Fores, her thick fingers wrapping around her chin as she rendered her impuissant. "You have a big mouth, don't you?" she spat through gritted teeth.

Fores had tried to remain calm, her eyes grazing the sheer grotesque-looking face. She had been impaired enough to not be able to open her mouth, so that she could counter the woman.

Her blue eyes were the same as that of Taehong's. But it lacked any emotion. Any thing, in fact.

With no other choice but to retaliate, Fores opted for the quieter of the two options she'd set down for herself. The knife that had been stashed under her sleeve slipped down onto her palm.

He caught notice of the light metallic glint in her arm, and tried to stretch himself to his full height. "Fores, no," he exclaimed but it had been too late, by then.

The knife had been in her grip and just as she'd whirled the knife into the right direction, stubby digits took a hold of the blade and yanked it away. Fores' elegant and soft visage, had been released, at the cost of her being forced to succumb to the blade. The old hag had been far too deft for her to have envisioned such a twist.

"You dare to retaliate? Huh, girl?" the woman muttered, pushing the blade in.

The skin gave way, each layer ripping with an intensity greater than the previous one, finally reach the end. The knife was yanked back and yet again shoved into her gut. Fores' mouth opened in an inaudible scream, her eyes holding the woman hostage.

"Fores!" Taehong yelled, the tears in his eyes flowing freely. His voice remained mercurial; he wanted the time to rewind. "What have you done!" he screamed, watching his grandmother pull the knife in and out of her.

He pulled on Fores' leg, making her collapse onto the the ground, the sand coating her hair completely. "No. Please, Fores."

The blood had been relentless. Akin to how a beam of light suddenly entered a caliginous room, her blood flowed out of the three stabs that had been professionally delivered to her abdomen.

Taehong had held his hand to the slashes; but no matter the pressure he applied the blood had still gushed between his fingers and oozed under his hand. It had spread into her t-shirt, the bright red quickly darkening, taking on a brownish hue. Those moments he spent pleading with her to look at him, to stay with him, feeling the very fluid of her life drain away over his cold hands, he felt nothing at all.

Staggering on his feet, Taehong managed to stand upright, even if he'd been more than just minutes late. "What have you done?" He watched the light buzz out of Fores before turning to his grandmother in full rage.

As he kept glaring down at her, I watched the slow ball of green rise to the air. It was just like the green foliage I'd seen the day before, reflecting Fores' eye. It seeped into my clasp, the bright green merging with the obsidian I bore.

But before I could stabilise myself, I heard a clatter, a series of grunts and another soul had been in my grip. It had been white, however, a slight blue coated its edges...

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"For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one."

- Khalil Gibran

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Lyrics credits -

UNITY (Alan Walker)