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When Seungcheol steps out of the shadows, Chan doesn’t startle. He never does anymore.
“Are you here to kill me?”
“What do you think?” Seungcheol shoots back. The gun is heavy in his hands, but he’s not going to lift it. Not tonight, at least.
Chan shifts in his bed, the silk rumpling beneath his stomach. “It’s late,” he assesses. “You’re the only one here with me. If you take the shot now, no one would notice until morning. Maybe they’d catch you later, but that’s unlikely. You’re fast. You’ve got people backing you up. It’ll be easy.”
Against his best efforts, Seungcheol laughs.
“Aren’t you a quick learner?”
Finally, Chan lifts his head. His lips curl up when he looks up, like the idea of impressing Seungcheol is all it takes to wake him up.
“I am,” Chan agrees. “Anything you want to teach me, I’ll learn immediately.” A sharp smile. “Promise.”
There’s a deficit of air in the room. A tendril of want tugging at him. Jeonghan’s voice in his head: Don’t do anything stupid.
The warning comes too late. It came two months before Seungcheol had met Chan proper and it was still too late. Is it possible, really? Sometimes it seems that preparing for Chan is an impossibility, all their contingency plans falling through time and time again.
“You should be careful of what you say.”
“Why?” Chan asks. This time, his question is devoid of the taunt it held before. No artificially-widened eyes or a pitched-up voice. He’s asking, really asking, and Seungcheol resents himself for it. “It’s just you.”
Of course. It’s just the man sent to kill him, the assassin disguised as a personal guard who held a knife to his throat last winter. (Think: the drop of blood against steel and the pink lips soundlessly forming his name and.) It’s just Seungcheol.
Seungcheol doesn’t look like he’d make a good assassin. He’s obvious, the blunt force trauma instead of poison slipped into a glass of wine. He’s strong and it shows; he takes up the space he deserves. Hands in the shape of claws. Eyes the colour of the devil’s. One look at him and you’d guess at his intentions.
Hiding in plain sight, is what Mingyu says.
And it works.
It’s almost insulting how easy it was. Layers of security fooled—oh, they try. They do. Menacing glares sent his way, a gun to his head, but when it mattered? When it was Chan’s life on the line? They handed him his credentials and said, Good luck.
Then Seungcheol was standing in front of Chan, saying, “Do you trust me?”
Then they were running down the hallway, paintings of Chan’s ancestors staring dead-eyed, and shots were ringing out behind them. And they hid inside a panic room; Chan, flushed and breathless, said, “It’s not trust if I don’t have a choice,” but he pressed himself against Seungcheol like handing himself over.
First day of the job and he thought to himself, Oh, this will be easy.
Seungcheol is very rarely wrong. That’s what makes him good at this, at the ripping people into pieces so there’s food for his family at the dinner table. He is adept at the trade—just because he was made and not born into it doesn’t mean he’s less than.
But,
“Isn’t this kind of funny?”
It’s Thursday, which means they’re on training grounds and Chan is watching Seungcheol more than he is watching himself. So there’s a heat crawling up his spine, Seungcheol ignores it.
“Me beating you?” Seungcheol answers instead of saying, Look somewhere else.
Chan throws his head back and laughs. It’s the kind that echoes too loud, knocks into those who wait around. “You’re teaching me how to fight but you’re the one I’m going to have to fight.” He narrows his eyes playfully. “Is that why you’re going easy on me? So I won’t be real competition?”
There’s a lump in Seungcheol’s throat. “I’m not going easy on you.”
“Come on,” Chan says, leaning forward until their noses are nearly touching, “there’s no way you’re going all out.”
“I’m working with what you have.” Seungcheol isn’t going to back down, won’t lean back. Their breaths tangle in the space between. “If you can’t even beat me now, how do you expect to do it if I’m using my full strength?”
“If you never use your full strength, how will I ever be prepared?”
“That’s not how—”
“I don’t break so easily,” Chan interrupts. “You can do it harder.”
Fucking menace.
“Harder,” he says flatly.
“Like this,” Chan says. He reaches out to pull Seungcheol’s hand toward himself. Wraps Seungcheol’s fingers around his wrist.
Then, with their fingers intertwined and the rhythm of Chan’s pulse underneath, Chan squeezes to bruise.
“Like this,” he repeats, softer this time. “See? I won’t break.”
Chan looks up at him, a picture of innocence distorted in the afternoon light. His heartbeat sprinting on a knife’s edge. The both of them, pretending Seungcheol isn’t running in circles around this one fixation: What if I want you to? What if I want to be the one to break you?
“You’re compromised.” Joshua’s voice is tinny over the phone. The sound of people talking rises over them and there is a hollow space between Seungcheol’s ribs. He swallows thickly, ignoring the way he can pick out Seungkwan and Seokmin’s voices in the background.
“I’m,” Seungcheol hesitates, watches the shadows collapse against the wall, “I’m not.”
“It’s a classic reaction,” Joshua says. “He knows you can overpower him, so he’s trying to regain control over the situation. He’s trying to throw you off your game.”
Seungcheol shakes his head, though no one’s there to see him. “He’s not like that.”
This isn’t a power struggle. Seungcheol’s seen enough of that this lifetime: a slow descent, a lust for blood unmasked. Things Chan cannot possess.
A long sigh.
“What you know about him is what he wants you to see.” Seungcheol makes a noise of disagreement, but Joshua doesn’t let up. “He knows, right? He knows why you’re there. Of course he’s acting.”
“You can’t act twenty-four hours every day.”
“You can if you’ve been doing it your whole life,” is the immediate reply. How predictable. Don’t they know that half the work is peeling back the layers? They aren’t here to see Seungcheol hold onto Chan’s overcoat, drape it over his arm. They aren’t here, they don’t look at him, how he tries—
“Cheol.”
Seungcheol closes his eyes for a brief moment. Even then, the dark visions dance before him. “Yeah.”
“Can you do this?”
Something heavy hangs in the air, and Seungcheol takes a deep breath.
“Yes,” he whispers. The world he dreams of at night, where the twelve of them run through the snow and the sky is fever-bright, has changed somewhere along the way—but this is a secret to be tucked away. “Don’t worry about it. Just give me some time. I can do it. I’ll do it.”
Chan is staring up at the ceiling when Seungcheol enters.
“You miss them,” Chan says, apropos of nothing.
Seungcheol blinks once, twice. It occurs to him that Chan must have been eavesdropping and it doesn’t annoy him as much as it probably should. Compromised .
Before he can reply, Chan continues. “If you did your job right, you’d be able to go back to your family. What are you waiting for?”
“Haven’t we talked about being careful of the things you say?”
This is where Chan says, You talked about it but I didn’t , or, Don’t get caught up in the past.
But he turns his head sideways so he’s looking straight at Seungcheol and he says, “I’m serious. What are you waiting for?”
Seungcheol makes his way to the bed, footsteps heavy. “The right time.” He stops so he’s right beside Chan. “It’s not the right time yet, okay?”
“You’re so cruel,” Chan says quietly, sounds like he could almost mean it, then shifts over and pats the space beside him. “Lie down with me.”
Here is a different world: the sky is dark and the moon, a half-eaten thing, hangs high. When Seungcheol climbs into bed next to Chan, it’s summer blazing through. They’re inches apart, and Joshua’s question is ringing in his head, and the road home has never seemed so long.
In the silence, Seungcheol finds himself speaking. “I’m just…I’m going to take all the time I can get.”
“Was it like that for all your assignments? You drag it on as long as you can?”
“How do you know you’re not my first?”
Chan laughs. It’s the kind that comes with edges. “Probably because you’re not mine.”
Maybe that shouldn’t leave a bitter taste in Seungcheol’s mouth. It’s not as if Seungcheol was under the illusion that no one’s tried to hurt Chan before. In fact, it was one of the first things they told him, that he had a long line of failures to catch up with.
“My nanny, when I was six, she tried to strangle me in my sleep,” Chan says. Seungcheol tenses up beside him. “My tutor—history tutor, of all subjects! I had to spend two weeks without one after that—thought he could corner me on a trip and get it over and done with. They happen to me again and again.”
“I’m just another round of bullets, huh?”
“Does that bruise your ego?”
Yes. It is an undying burn. “Don’t ask questions you already have the answers to.”
“Well,” Chan says. Now with softness, this is the relief that comes after pain. “Do you feel better knowing you’ll be my last?”
Seungcheol raises an eyebrow. “You don’t doubt me.”
“I don’t. I can’t.”
Before he can dissect that conviction, Chan shuffles closer to Seungcheol and folds himself sideways. Presses his lips to Seungcheol’s bare shoulder and says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but the right time might be sooner than you think, okay? Remember that for me.”
He runs his fingers down Chan’s back, resists the urge to shake his head at Chan’s quiet desperation. To hold him close and destroy the countdown only Chan seems to be able to see.
“I’ll remember,” he says. The moon bears witness to Seungcheol and Chan curled up together, and to a promise that shouldn’t have to be made at all.
Summer melts into autumn and the palace has been in a perpetual state of disarray for weeks.
The more whispers flung around, the less Seungcheol sees Chan—ridiculous, really. How can he protect someone he doesn’t get to see?
(Did you hear? The Old Man is coming home, he wants to settle, I bet he’s going to try and fight for his place. You don’t remember him? He hasn’t been back in—what is it?—five years, something like that. Guess you weren’t here then.)
Six Thursdays in a row, Chan sends a little note down to Seungcheol’s office: Sorry I can’t make it to practice today!
(What do you suppose will happen? He’s ruthless, don’t you know? Rumor has it he was the one to kill his son, sent for assassins to do his dirty work while he was in Osaka. That was his end of the bargain, I’m guessing. Not that it did him much good—well, he’s got everything but the throne. Oh, that poor child! That poor child.)
In the spaces in between, Seungcheol catches glimpses of Chan: pale and jittery, steps never faltering. Poised even under the weight of the crown. Untouchable.
Wonwoo’s call comes at two in the morning. Seungcheol sits in his room, staring out the window at the trees. It’ll be winter again soon.
“Hey,” Wonwoo says.
Seungcheol frowns at the rough quality of his voice. “Are you sick?”
“No,” Wonwoo replies. A pause. “Okay, a little. It’s been getting colder.”
Means: they’re running out of time. Seungcheol is running out of excuses. His gut twists at Wonwoo’s words—it must be bad, if they’re getting sick when the seasons haven't even changed. Seungcheol shouldn’t be making excuses in the first place. He’s the one who shields them from strong winds and tells them it’s all going to be alright.
But here Wonwoo is, lying to make him feel better about his incompetence.
“I’m sorry,” Seungcheol says, because it’s all he’s capable of.
“I didn’t call for you to apologize,” Wonwoo says. This is said with humiliating kindness. “I get it. I—” He sighs. “I wasn’t sure when we took on the job, you know? He’s the prince, sure, but he’s also a kid. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. He’s a year younger than Vernon. And Vernon’s so young. ”
“Yeah.”
“Every time I look at him, it hits me how unfair it is. It’s not fair that we were asked to trade lives or that we made the choice. I can’t stop thinking about it. I figured it must be the same for you. So I get it.”
Seungcheol wants to hang up. All these reminders of the script leave him aching. The beginning: Seungcheol collects eleven other boys and signs his soul away for a place to stay. The ending: Chan’s blood on Seungcheol’s hands. And there’s their happy-ever-after, and Chan’s left out in the cold.
“Wonwoo,” he says. “Why did you call?”
From across the line, Wonwoo stifles a cough. “Jeonghan says you need to hurry up. It’s been almost a year.”
“I’m trying.”
“We know,” Wonwoo tells him. “But they’re not so patient.”
The middle: it is an agonizing thing, listening to Wonwoo speak. It’s been over a month since he lay in Chan’s bed and he frames the memory of it in his mind. On nights where he can’t sleep, he revisits it, trying to recreate the warmth of being so close to Chan.
The middle:
“They won’t have to wait for long,” he says, because what choice does he have? The tragedy of a script is that the ending is predetermined. “It’ll be done before the year is up.”
This is how Chan finds him, with his head in his hands and the burner phone on the floor.
“Is everything okay?”
He looks up. Chan’s thinner, his cheekbones prominent and shirt falling around him. Still beautiful, though, always beautiful.
Seungcheol shrugs, then says, “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Tomorrow’s the big day,” Chan explains. “So I’ve finally got the chance to rest. And to come find you.”
“What if someone had tried to hurt you? Kidnap you? You would’ve needed me then.”
“I’ve got a team of guards that can handle that.” Chan glances at the fallen phone and back up at Seungcheol, worrying his bottom lip. “But they’re your people too, aren’t they? If you really wanted to, you could have gotten them to bring me to you.”
He straightens up. He hasn’t been in contact with any of them—not Soonyoung, Junhui, or Minghao. The only updates he gets come from his weekly calls, and still, he doesn’t mention them by name.
A look of guilt overcomes Chan. “It’s not his fault. It’s not their fault.”
Seungcheol shakes his head. It would be hypocritical to do otherwise. “I won’t blame them. I don’t ,” he says. “How can I?”
“Good,” Chan says, more to himself than anything. “They—it’s not like they tell me anything, really. Only that they might be helping you out. They never say anything outright, it’s just…Sometimes it’s a bit obvious, that’s all.”
Tilting his head to the side, Seungcheol surveys Chan carefully. Chan’s been on edge for a while, that much is clear even from afar, but it’s odd to see him stumble when it’s just the two of them. He’s nervous, Seungcheol realizes, not because of his imminent end but because he’s worried about those complicit in it.
He clings onto the absurdity of the situation so he doesn’t have the opportunity to dwell on how awful it is, Chan’s resignation to his fate. Says, “You must be close.”
The without me finding out is implied.
“You keep your secrets, I’ll keep mine.”
“Alright,” Seungcheol concedes. “I was just curious.”
Maybe it’s the suggestion of disappointment. A slight downwards turn of the lips, and Chan takes a seat on the edge of Seungcheol’s bed.
“Not on purpose. They tell me stories sometimes,” he admits quietly, “when I can’t sleep. About growing up. About how it was hard sometimes, a lot of times, but they had each other, and they had an older brother who would do anything for them. So that I could dream of that kind of love whenever I did manage to fall asleep, because…”
Chan swallows. “Because I once said that I never knew anyone like that and that I wondered what it would be like. They remembered . No one else does, you know? I’m not supposed to care about things like that, but I do, a little. You guys—you’re the only ones who do too.”
Oh, and if that doesn’t make a monster out of him, what does?
He’s so young. Younger than Seungcheol, than the family he built, than what this guillotine deserves. Seungcheol tries not to think about how small Chan is.
He fails. “Chan,” he says. “I think you’re forgetting something really important.”
“Which is?”
“Which is, ” he says, the confession tumbling out of him, an urgent need for Chan to hear this, “that I’m not a good person. You guessed that I was chosen because I always finish my job, right? So were you. You were chosen because of that. It’s supposed to be a joke—more experienced assassins have tried and failed even when you were a child. How could I succeed?
“Chan, I made a bad decision nine years ago thinking it would save us. It didn’t. They gave me this assignment as a chance to end my contract. I’m here trading you for the freedom I sold before.”
Then Seungcheol waits.
Except Chan sniffles, then reaches out to soothe Seungcheol’s hand. “They stole it from you.”
Seungcheol gapes at him. “What?”
“You said you sold your freedom. You didn’t: they stole it. It’s not a choice when the consequences are so high,” Chan argues. He tugs on Seungcheol’s fingers, urging him to meet Chan’s eyes. They’re watery. “I’m sorry you’re here. I’m sorry it’s hard for you, and that you have to do this. It’s not fair. I wish things were easier for you.”
Seungcheol feels bowled over. He’s rehearsed this admission a thousand times in his head, imagining he’s speaking to Chan, to everyone waiting at home who have pinned all their hopes on him. There is nothing new about it—these are plain facts: Seungcheol made a mistake and everyone else is paying for it—but it seems as if no one dares dwell long enough on it to process what it means.
That Seungcheol is not a good man, but then Chan shakes his head like he’s reading Seungcheol’s mind. “You did everything you could. It isn’t your fault for wanting to give your family the best.”
It’s hard to breathe. Chan’s earnestness is an open wound; Seungcheol revels in the pain. He says, “I couldn’t, though. Give them the best.”
“But you tried ,” Chan insists. “You’re still trying. That’s what matters. And when it’s all over, and you get to go back, I promise they’ll understand. They’ll see it too. The way they talk about you, it’s obvious they love you. I can’t think of anything that would change that.”
A part of Seungcheol rears back, wanting to fight back, find flaws in the statement. But it’s late in the night and Chan is looking at him, all that belief shining through, so he nods silently instead. He moves to the bed and pulls them both down so they’re laying side by side on a too-small mattress. Pretends that Chan’s presence isn’t a fever he seeks out to hold in the palm of his hands.
The Old Man walks through the doors and barely spares Seungcheol a glance; his gaze has been trained on Chan ever since he stepped on palace grounds.
“My dear boy,” he says with a smile. Drags the syllables of dear, until it sounds all torn up and spat out. “How have you been?”
“I’ve been well,” Chan says. His hands are clasped in front of him as he looks up at his uncle. They’re strangely alike when standing face to face like this. For a brief moment, Seungcheol can see what Chan could become, jaded by years of wielding immense power and still wanting more.
“And your father?”
Chan tenses. “He’s alright.”
By now, word has traveled far and wide that the king is sick and stumbling through his last years. This is a fact all three of them are aware of.
In any case, the answer pleases the Old Man. Seungcheol wonders if it’s his brother dying or Chan lying that makes good news. Whichever way, either way, Seungcheol decides that the itch underneath his skin is resentment building.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he says. His smile widens and looks around the room, at the empty throne and the line of servants waiting on him. “I’m really glad to hear that.”
The next few days, meals are an elaborate affair.
Dozens of plates are brought out each time, the nobles crowd the dining hall, and Chan fits at the centre of it with nowhere to go. It used to be Chan sitting alone in his room—perhaps, Seungcheol guesses, so he has the peace to test his food out for poison. Or easier than that: a natural consequence of having no one left allowed to sit with him.
The Old Man doesn’t stray from Chan’s side for a single second.
What a picture it makes: the once-empty corridors filled with people again, the palace busier than ever. Unrecognizable. Minghao once said that everything transformed at four in the morning. What was it? The immortal stretch between night and day. And if it decided to die one night, you wouldn’t realize until it was too late.
Seungcheol thought it would be magical, somehow. A gradual coming of age, where the universe came to life in pieces.
He was wrong.
Transformation comes from the way Chan stills around the Old Man, corpse-like, the midday sun scorching the floor tiles. All it takes is a day and Chan is far away again, and Seungcheol can hardly remember what it’s like to have the weight of Chan’s eyes on him.
(Do you think—I think it’d be best not to, if you’re smart. Move on, get your work done, leave at the end of the day. What happens next is inevitable.)
“He’s going to do it, you know.”
Moonlight falls onto Chan, petals onto snow. The blueish tint of it illuminates the planes of his face and his eyes deepen into oceans, and Seungcheol gives in, presses the palm of his hand to his cheek. Warm. Underneath his skin must be molten gold disguised as blood.
“Do what?”
Chan‘s tongue darts out to wet his lips. “My uncle. He’s trying to kill me.”
The sound of blood rushing through his ears drowns everything out. A better assassin would have figured this out long ago and Seungcheol has, probably, some part of him has connected the dots even if he hadn’t dared acknowledge it. Perhaps the more precise statement would be that a better assassin would have done something about it long ago.
Half-numb, his mind scrambles for answers and he says, “I won’t let him,” before he even thinks, There goes our plans. “Are you sure?”
The laugh that Chan lets out is harsh. “Trust me, there is nothing I’m more sure of. It’s been a long time coming.” He lifts his hand to touch Seungcheol’s. “I’ve known for a very, very long time”
“How long?”
“My whole life,” he says, squeezing Seungcheol’s hand.
He chokes out, “That’s—Why didn’t you do something? Run away?”
“Why haven’t you ? Why can’t we both take our freedom back?” Chan shrugs. “As long as I’m alive, he’ll be there, waiting. He’ll find me. I’ve got no way out.”
Weakly, Seungcheol says, “Your whole life.”
Chan says, “I was born into this. I’m used to it.”
Think: Chan at five years old, at his cousin’s funeral. Too young to fully comprehend the permanence of death but old enough to realize what’s coming. Think: trained from a young age to navigate the intricacies of being prince—this is how you wear the crown and this is how you walk down the plank and this is a good enough life.
“It was always going to be like this,” Chan says, twenty-one and with a confidence that he’ll never see twenty-two. “And for a while, it scared me, knowing that. Then I was so angry. Really, ask anyone: I was horrible as a teenager.”
“Seems justified,” Seungcheol says, voice nearly stuck in his throat. It’s clear what’s coming, now that it’s all unravelling.
Chan smiles faintly at the interjection. “My whole life, my death, none of it was mine. It wasn’t fair. It still isn’t, of course, but back then it was so much. And the worst part was that everyone knew. My mother” —the mention of the queen sends a shiver down Seungcheol’s spine— “was the only one who didn’t try to hide it from me. She’d tell me that if I didn’t attend my classes my uncle would come after me. Like he was the monster under my bed. Have I told you about her?”
Unable to speak, Seungcheol shakes his head.
Another squeeze of his hand. “I can’t remember her, sometimes. It’s been so long and my father hates when anyone mentions her. The things she said, the scent of her perfume, they’re forever with me. She smelt like lavender and it would lull me to sleep. But the shape of her face and the way she laughed…they’re hazy. I don’t know if she ever laughed, actually, after she had me.
“I think,” Chan says, taking a shuddering breath, “she loved me. I think to her, love was honesty. Maybe that’s why I didn’t understand it then.”
Seungcheol brings their hands, intertwined, to his lips and presses a chaste kiss to Chan’s knuckles. “To you, love is trying. I’m sorry she didn’t try.”
For a brief moment, Chan’s lips part in surprise, like he hadn’t expected Seungcheol to put his turmoil into words. “She didn’t try,” he echoes. He blinks, recovers his senses. “But she didn’t know how to, I suppose. After all, no one did for her.”
“Your father.”
“Yeah,” Chan agrees. “His end of the bargain. I used to wonder what kind of man my grandfather was to ask his children for death as proof of strength. Then I got older, and I realized my father was always going to be king. It wasn’t a competition. It was a test of loyalty.”
In his realm, men like that are a familiar sight. Perfectly aware of the destruction they could cause and mapping it out for everyone to see. Look at me, they say. Look at what I can do for you, to you. Now what?
Oftentimes, he forgets that Chan’s been playing this game longer than Seungcheol has.
“Up till the end, my father couldn’t understand that. Unrelenting devotion, see. But everyone else did. My uncle did, after the deed was done. He came back from Japan and saw his father with me, teaching me how to read. That was when he knew.”
“Just like that?”
“Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? It’s just that the number of hours grandfather spent with my cousin could be counted on one hand. He passed his judgement, it was his way of deeming me worthy.” Chan purses his lips. His mouth trembles. “But all it did was condemn me.”
“And then none of it was yours,” Seungcheol concludes.
But that isn’t the conclusion, is it? Seungcheol’s here, which is what matters, which means Chan is wrestling back what has been stolen from him all those years ago.
“It was inevitable,” Chan says. “But then I found you. You listened to me when I asked for time, and stayed, and wanted for more. So sometimes I think that makes all the difference, that I choose you.”
It wasn’t Seungcheol’s mercy that saved Chan in December.
Seungcheol had his knife to Chan’s throat, beads of red staining his collar. Chan gasped for air, pressed against the blue wall, and he wore a look of painful confusion. It should have been easy—no one would be coming up till the sun rose. He had hours to waste. All he had to do was dig in.
Staring into wide eyes, he felt the strangest urge to apologize.
“Sorry,” he said, and told himself it was for Wonwoo, who grimaced when he had first heard the news despite attempts to conceal his displeasure. Or Soonyoung, because two hours ago, he looked as if he wanted to plead for time after realizing that Seungcheol was going to act.
But not for himself. He didn’t—couldn’t—have the capacity for remorse like that.
Chan jerked to the side and choked as the steel pressed in. He closed his eyes, an errant tear falling past his cheek, and mouthed, Seungcheol.
Later, he would admit to the foolishness of his actions, for letting his guard down—but when Chan said his name, Seungcheol took a step back and dropped his arm.
“What?”
“Seungcheol,” Chan coughed. He struggled to inhale. “That’s your name right?”
His brain short-circuited. “My name’s Jiyong.”
Though he had, up till two seconds ago, been at the brink of death, Chan managed to send a scathing look toward him. “You tried to murder me and you think that cover will last?”
Fair enough. That didn’t explain anything, however. He tightened his grip around the handle of the knife, a movement Chan followed, and asked, “How long have you known?”
Chan wiped his face with the back of his hand. “Oh, about a month or so after we met.”
“And you did nothing.”
“You’re stronger than me, you know.”
“I meant, ” Seungcheol said through gritted teeth, “you didn’t warn anyone else. Take me out before I could do the same to you.”
“Right, that. I didn’t,” Chan said. He massaged his throat, blood running down his hand. “I had time to think it over. I thought I would be ready for this.”
“Confrontation?” Seungcheol asked.
Chan shook his head. “Dying.” He paused. “Listen, I’ll let you do it, I just—give me until the end of January.”
The conversation seemed to be conducted on two different levels. On one, Seungcheol was stumbling through the new information being thrown at him. On another, Chan was—well, Seungcheol was trying to figure that out.
“What the fuck are you on about?”
“I’ll let you finish your job,” Chan said. He took in the incredulous expression on Seungcheol’s face and added, “I really thought I was ready for it, okay? But then it hurt so much and all I could think about was that I didn’t even get to celebrate my twenty-first birthday or watch the flowers bloom in spring and I need a little more time, please.”
Twenty-first birthday. Don’t do anything stupid, Jeonghan’s voice rang in his head, but Seungcheol was used to the power struggle; completing assignments had felt like adequate recompense for the shit hand his family had been dealt. What he couldn’t do to his agency he could redirect to men just like them.
But twenty-one. Not even twenty-one, and Seungcheol was torn between focusing on that and the fact that Chan said, “I’ll let you.”
Against his better judgement, because Jeonghan wasn’t here, he said, “Why should I wait?”
Chan finally relaxed, back in his element. “Choi Seungcheol. Born somewhere between 1994 and 1996. You’ve got a hundred percent track record, I guess that’s why you were sent here. The rest of it is redacted. So, you know, I don’t have much to blackmail you with.”
Seungcheol’s heart jumped. Little information as it was, it was terrifying about how close Chan got. How much closer he could have gotten.
“And I haven’t told anyone else, remember? So…”
They stared at each other.
This was, apparently, where Seungcheol should speak. He cleared his throat. “You’re asking me to trust that you won’t rat me out,” he said. “And after that, you’ll let me—”
“It’s up to you,” Chan said. “You’ve still got four hours before anyone comes up to check on me. That should be enough time for you to make up your mind.”
And then he walked around and past Seungcheol to sit in his chair, content to wait.
Seungcheol felt dizzy. The proof was right there: Chan had known about him, had said his name, yet never said a word. Anyone competent who’d been tipped off before would surely have come to Chan’s defense by now.
The whys remained a blank. Why Chan kept this to himself, why he was giving Seungcheol permission instead of chasing him away.
The smart thing to do was to go on as if Chan hadn’t spoken in the first place, but the knife in his hand was heavy. He walked over to Chan, who faintly shivered in response to the closeness, and a part of Seungcheol eased. Fear was good, both for him and Chan. A sign of Seungcheol’s power and of Chan’s humanity.
Seungcheol stood over Chan, took him in like this was the first time they met: a defiant tilt of the chin matched with hands clasped on his lap, a show of deference. The intensity in which he watched Seungcheol. There was a scar forming on his neck where he had been cut. Something in Seungcheol sparked, burned.
In the end, it’s simple.
The explosives are planted in Chan’s room on Friday.
Twenty minutes after his class ends, after he makes his way back to take a nap, they detonate. They destroy the entire East Wing—a good thing it was empty, save for the prince. What’s left is a hole in the building and ash.
(Turns out it was his guard, it must have been. Who else, right? Who else could have had the access—and they were close, weren’t they? Oh, that poor boy.)
Fifteen miles away, Seungcheol watches the smoke billow and disappear with the wind.
Got the money, Jihoon’s text reads. A photo of the bank statement comes attached with it. Two days. You know where to go.
Seungcheol barely has the time to send a thumbs up back before his personal phone pings with a new message. Jihoon again. This time, it says, You could have found a way to ask me for help.
No, he types back, it was risky enough with just me.
News of the prince’s passing has been circulating for days. They don’t call it “murder”, carefully sidestepping any suggestion of that being the case, though it’s clear what really transpired. In the privacy of the safehouse, Seungcheol follows the news with unrestrained interest.
It’s different now: there’s nothing, no one to hide from any longer.
Every time the Old Man appears on television, face contorted to form a frown, Seungcheol turns away. Doesn’t stop listening, of course, just in case. A day ago, Junhui sent: Am I allowed to shoot him? The temptation was strong.
Seungcheol said no.
What’s the point, now that it’s all over and done with?
He slips his phone back into his pocket and glances out the window. The first snow fell at dawn: glittering under the streetlamp, triangles of light painted on the pavements. There was wonder to it, the magic of being transported back to his childhood, free of shackles and the weight of responsibility, and he wished that he was home and they were all watching it together.
But there are more winters to come. Winters where they would be warm, where they could wear padded jackets and have food to eat.
Two days. Seungcheol looks forward to the hounding and the nagging and the You did something so stupid I don’t even know what to say.
He makes his way to the kitchen as the sun dips.
When he steps out into the fading sunlight, Chan lights up, smiles.