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The agreements with the blueprints he left scattered in Elijah's house are pretty much these:
Ten and a half steps away from the door, find all the exits (there’s only one for one survivor only, the classic), and live. It isn't a grand sacrifice; nevermind it is a sacrifice at all, so Yohan takes it from the top like he always does—the regulated bullshit that just makes sense he’d told himself from time to time—an antithesis of sleep deprivation could ever pull out; focused things collapse easily.
The explosives were planted accordingly and in parallel to the law of the triangle of life. The first three are aligning from the right side of the judges' thrones to the ground; a symbolic farewell to the scales of justice being weighed down, slanted askew by the most unfair fair-fight its goddess could ever put up and against. Only by that Kang Yohan can crawl out of the debris of his once-in-a-lifetime.
And yet. The spoken-out-loud reminder of what-ifs; a miscalculated spot to stand on, and leaving Elijah behind, forever—
The way Kim Gaon looks at him like he is the most precious thing—
Like Kang Yohan is everything that Elijah deserves and never him; never with that face and all its familiarity—
When did Hell freeze over and turn into a garden of illusion without the devil knowing?
He had plans, damn it. And it's not that unresting for three days straight since his check-out from prison was the worst decision he’s ever taken. But to forget and belittle just how vast Kim Gaon’s morality could extend more is. To even think subconsciously of moving the order of every possibility on the list that might be his most grandeur plan below Kim Gaon’s existence is. To let go of Kim Gaon just to throw him out of the burial ground that once served justice, right after he heard I’ll go with you too, closing the double door that is his only exit just to keep him away might also be one of them, too.
For a fleeting second, torn moment, at seeing the ceiling cracking up and split apart, portal to Hell spasms before him. Yohan bumps the younger version of himself by the shoulder; deprecating laughter, I can't believe we actually matter beyond our vengeance. Nearly he doubled-over to empty his stomach if he didn't catch himself to get his bearings fast because that was the one thing that Yohan has traded all his cards on the table for, only for God to reject it, so he picked up the pieces to make a deal with other much-more cooperative deity somewhere, far more flexible than the Almighty.
The most ironic, funniest thing is, he once joked about this, too, before—but never expected it to become a wish and snare him when the time finally comes:
Kim Gaon really is going to be the death of him.
"You're hurt," Gaon says, voice echoing from the far away.
And you're very cute to say that, considering the circumstances you'll be facing from now on. "It's nothing serious," Yohan tries to reply with the identical answer from back then, just for the fun of it. Unfortunately, the explosions have probably deafened his ears, so he has to wait for a minute or maybe an hour for the violent ringing to subside, disoriented and mouth full of dust.
To rehearse death is to submit hubris, and Kang Yohan has his own signature to make it on-brand every time; duplicated over and over and over again, so he never runs out of it. A man like him can only be reborn from under the rubble, skinned from his old shackled form, cuts and bruises and strained muscles nothing compared to the thought of why, of all things, am I remembering this right now? Yohan has hoped for greater things flashing before his very eyes to entertain him in dying, but then again, the first shockwave always leaves the most memorable impression and there's no blaming in this.
The second time not-Gaon speaks again, over the thin veil of unconsciousness dragging his feet, it's like the sound of fingers snapping, which then becomes the plunge of a big stone into calm water;
"Do you have the guts, now? To face your wounds once you’ve rectified the thing you regret the most."
Yohan sees microscopic particles flying like meteor showers when he finds the source of outside light after staggering too many times in the dark. Attorney Ko is waiting for him dressed like a culvert inspector, holding a brown envelope; blanching at first until he sees the sight of someone who just cheated lurid fate, natural colors returning to his face in a way K would have done too if he sees Yohan in cuts and bruises atop the canvas of blank future instead of locked in rigor mortis.
“Welcome back, Mr. Kang.”
Perhaps it's just the spin of his head for a blink, manipulating his hearing, but there’s a hint of gratefulness in Attorney Ko’s voice that just sounds so strange to Yohan’s ears, or maybe it is just because Kang Yohan is more used to the concept that what comes after red is usually yellow or blue, but never both; never a mix of the two.
Perhaps it is also because he never knew this - alliance between him and Attorney Ko is this firm; enough to risk a mini rescue mission like this.
"As you requested." There’s a sound of faint crumpled papers preventing Yohan croaking out a question out of his scratchy throat. "No copies and original." Attorney Ko hands over the will of inheritance he wrote in less than 24 hours before the chaos, nodding all understanding and less dutiful, sincerity crystal.
It is the finish-line ribbon of half of his life’s marathon. Kang Yohan rips the papers apart with a dazed smirk and throbs around his skull from overwhelming emotions.
“The surface is in lockdown for seventy-two hours,” Attorney Ko tells him, and burns the papers to ashes once Yohan has made sure the list of all of his assets—Elijah’s assets—the Kang family’s assets, is obscured in slashes. “Let’s get you cleaned up right away somewhere safe.” And Yohan can’t precisely pinpoint the moments where his vision suddenly gives up from lacking a lot of oxygen, but there are exactly three jumbled names at the tip of his tongue when he hears the known-all-too-well:
“I’ll take care of everything from here,” Attorney Ko reassures, and he surges forward for no reason Yohan can comprehend at the moment until he's about to move.
“I’m counting on you K—” caught on the bridge of the choked-back initial with no continuation of the rest, Yohan blacks out.
There is pain all over. Engulfing like a toxin and hot white and chiding incessantly. And Yohan doesn't know where it begins, as the round of earth with its oceans rippling, but somehow - somehow he knows how long it will last when he stills just to crumble in Elijah's arms.
Doctors would probably give a verdict that it's supposed to be weeks, at least, for the healthiest person to heal up mentally and regain strength after a traumatic event. It would become a big, dangerous problem after all, if everything is all hazy when you are preoccupied with pushing through.
But this pain is shorter than before, Yohan knows, and Elijah has made sure of it. So one day, he is coming and going and buying things and packing stuff that don't even belong to him. Then, the next is he is erasing, rebuilding, and resting so long until the view outside the window loses its hue, peacefully so, Kang Yohan almost forgets how to pretend to be okay when he wakes up to the purring vibration that is Kkomi on his chest, and Elijah sleeping soundly by his side to keep him in check.
He still doesn’t dare to call this retirement yet. Not when Elijah hasn't even started the rehabilitation in a different continent, and not when something wet on his forehead startles him out of the blue before he realizes he was having a fever earlier.
A single buzzing sound from his phone on the nightstand gives him a slight jolt that stirs Elijah against his dead arm; pillowing her head for hours. The sudden motion is spreading the worst pins and needles that make Yohan wince in agony and his niece squints half-asleep.
“Nightmare…?” Elijah asks. Or mumbles, improbably adorable. Oblivious.
“No,” Yohan says after a couple of seconds, glancing at the drool on her cheek, connected to the wet spot on his bicep that he chooses to ignore, then, even though he still refuses to admit that her one-eighty degrees change to be empathetic enough to take care of him has turned Yohan into this all-gooey, disgustingly loved uncle. “Go back to sleep," he adds, "You have a flight to catch in three days, and I know you’ve been losing sleep lately.”
Elijah stares at him, an unreadable, sleepy expression neutralized. “Speak for yourself,” she grumbles, tiny melancholic vibration ruining her spike. And as if sensing her uncle's brain's gears getting jammed caused by the tender layers of her moods, she blindly pulls away from the pillow under Yohan's head without warning, making her uncle grunt in annoyance when the back of his head hits and bounces against the headboard. “I hope with all the noisy thinking going on there, you're just trying to change your decision of not bringing Kim Gaon with us to Switzerland," she says bluntly.
Yohan makes a face shone by moonbeam when Elijah claims the pillow, disbelief wrinkling his forehead. "Now, Elijah, we've talked about this—"
"But it's never enough," she insists, the gene of hard-boiled Kang stubbornness showing. She shoves Yohan away, nearing the edge, so that Kkomi wakes up just to smack him in the face; a reminder of what good partners in crimes they are. "Even you know that, don't you?" She glares at Yohan, the features of her face sharpen in determination.
Yohan puts up the smallest defence until Kkomi jumps off of him, brows knitted. "The logical answer is still no." Yohan scowls at her, then it softens. "We live our separate lives for the best. I told you, between the two of us, it is Gaon who is going to be busier from now on. I am - retiring."
Elijah scoffs in disdain, and Yohan subconsciously recoils at how eerie it is to see a reflection of yourself in the body of a sixteen-soon-to-be-seventeen teenage girl. "Busier in what? Catching corrupted wealthy people that the list of names of is just never-ending?" She says. "That is just - " she inhales her frustration, "It's contradicting what you said about it being the safest way to not bring Gaon with us, you old geezer. Sure, he is an adult and he can take care of himself just completely fine. But—"
"There will be a broadcasted delegation, Elijah," Yohan stresses under his breath. That is the general-truth, because he can't just say out loud, Kim Gaon will be busier in grieving, and I can't stand it. I don't think you can, either. "He will be officiated as a symbol of change in front of more than fifty millions of people . And it is going to be too much if I stay by his side. I wouldn't even hope for you to experience it so that you can understand."
Yohan sees Elijah clenching her jaw in the dark. A glimpse of a painting flickering between the two minds. Silence hovering over like a massive chandelier on the brink of crashing down, inviting earthquake.
"Then I suppose it is true." After a minute, Elijah huffs, tone downgrading but not yet relenting. She closes her eyes again. "In your case, it is beyond repair. The older you get, the dumber you become.”
“Excuse me?” Yohan sputters.
Elijah looks like she’s struck by several things, none of them gracious. "You look like you're in pain, Yohan.” And that doesn't throw Yohan off-guard at first, in one inhale of breath, until— “Ever since you had a fight with him, you - didn't even bother to hide it, even as you showed up after you survived an exploded building… You still do, even after all this time, and I just - " she halts when their eyes meet. "There. That face!"
Elijah sits up and points an accusing finger at him, and Yohan is all rigid under the nail of expressed worry mixed with victory in her eyes, blinking twice.
"What?" Yohan echoes after a moment, like it is just a matter of mishearing, and not at all like her words have him alarmed by a loaded gun to the head, on a tip of a cliff. "What face are you talking about? I don't - " he turns on the light by the nightstand as he speaks, "I don't have other faces. What makes you think I’d like to get another? I already have this handsome one as it's always been since I was born—"
“Kang Yohan!” Elijah yells, and pinches at Yohan's arm, hard, then challenges him head-on when he yelps; ready to protest about how inhumanly cruel she is. "Am I not a person yet, to you?” Elijah continues, and it is a jab of a scorching knife. “You need to stop treating me like a baby who doesn't know the function of human's conscience, Yohan! As if I don’t know how this life works! You raised me, you stupid goldfish! And you’re not getting younger! You can’t keep BEING LIKE THIS—”
“I KNOW!” Yohan yells back. His voice is shockingly as jagged as a mountain of polar ice, and Elijah’s admission has demolished him like a misdirected torpedo from a warship. “I know…” he says, quieter this time because hurting Elijah even just the slightest brings Kim Gaon back to him; everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
Kang Yohan is sick, and Elijah is right about him being unfixed, beyond repair. Kang Yohan has not been feeling well. Something dented in reverie, an indescribable lump that congeals, it is breaking him; or what’s left of him. What follows is something wistful, unbidden and so disconsolate it is burning bullet holes inside out.
A long time ago, far older than the mourning for the fire that set a church alight, Yohan stopped wishing for whatever force out there that rotates the earth and expands the universe to just let him be. A shame, he has lived long enough in this first grave that he called home, bidding it goodbye in the first language that he’s stored away for the sake of everyone else’s. Yohan doesn’t want to become like the force who abandoned him toward someone like Kim Gaon.
Yohan reaches for Elijah and pulls her into an apology.
“You… you have no right to make this harder for me than it already is, Elijah,” Yohan says, heavy-hearted. “I wanted . . . I want him to come with us, too. But I’ve hurt him way too many times.” Yohan finalizes. Because, although he isn’t the type who’d hold onto promises like a manual; who stands behind the belief that action proves harsher, his dignity still holds his own words like a profound oath.
Except that all profound things most definitely have their own taboos and restrictions, and the damned three-in-the-morning banter flicks a switch that lights up a forbidden room where Yohan once put his greatest vulnerability, boxed in velvet and glazed glass display.
The most expensive and wisest atonement he can give him is time.
Did not matter if he was going to expose himself in the international airport as an undead. Did not matter if a snippet of his features gets captured by unbelieving eyes that shall lead into a groundbreaking press conference and an open-investigation, ruining his start-anew. These did not matter, for all that he truly aimed for was to relay arcane thank yous to those who have helped him from behind the curtains.
Above all, he must pass the torch, too. After that, while pocketing a very nitpicking pandora box laced in dimmed gold he’s going to carry for the rest of his life, Yohan will keep this sacred secret until next time. A loophole he’s weaving with another almost.
Framed by the revolution snoozing on its lifetime's standing guard is Kim Gaon. A man surrounded by whispers of oracles and admiring sparkles that makes him a top-priority. A man who is a glaucous blue against his astute-ebony. A man who wears a face Kang Yohan knows he has loved, far before he was even born, but never the same then.
To the one who haunted him in a way Isaac couldn’t, there is a potted flower waiting for you to nurture it to bloom. Inside one of its spacious buds is Kang Yohan’s limitless sentiment and worst alienating discomfort toward you. Your patio is the loveliest safe haven, and he’s resolved to not taint it with another peril. In lieu of I am sorry for implying 'I cannot set you free just yet': Stay at bay, for all kinds of worlds that I’d ever considered to give you, it is not the one where you would think that my leaving means an abandonment.