Chapter Text
Dying didn't feel like Han-seo had expected.
Don’t get him wrong, the bullet piercing his insides was a pain unlike anything he had ever experienced before, and he was no stranger to pain.
It was a shock at first. A moment of shock that pushed everything else to the background, and with it, a brief moment of clarity where all Han-seo was thinking was Huh, a thought that somehow encompassed everything in his life that culminated in this very moment.
His mother telling him about the golden future that would lie ahead of him in the Jang household.
Mr Han's tantalizing whispers in his ear, about Abel and Cain, and the sickly reassuring weight of the gun in his hands.
Vincenzo, catching him in his arms before he could fall face-first onto the ice.
And above all else, the staggering realization that Han-seok had actually pulled the trigger.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise to Han-seo, he knew. After all this is what he had expected ever since Han-seok had shown him the face beneath the smart and handsome chaebol son, what kept him awake at night, shaken to his core with the anticipation of when and how and with what means Han-seok will finally do him in like he did with their father.
But still.
They were brothers.
After the initial shock, it really hit him. His insides were burning a hole through his stomach until all of Han-seo's body felt like a black hole, swallowing up everything that he was and what made him a human being, what made him Han-seo.
All of that wasn’t surprising to Han-seo, though. Maybe the details were different than what his imagination had provided him with, during all these lonely nights when nothing but a bottle of pills could soothe his stray thoughts. But in whole, that was not what made dying feel so different from all the ways Han-seo could’ve died, had died a million times before.
No, the strange thing was, dying came with no regrets.
It was not something Han-seo ever would've so much as dreamed to hope for. Not after all the things he had watched his brother do and done nothing, what he aided his brother in doing or what he did all on his own.
But taking the last bullet in the chamber so it could not touch Vincenzo nor Miss Hong, Han-seo finally felt like he accomplished something. He'd saved two lives today, hadn't he? And it hadn’t been hard at all, he could think that much in his head without feeling like a liar. This was his own head after all, and you can’t lie to yourself without feeling the hypocrisy, so he could be sure that what he was doing at that very moment when that decision took shape and turned into an action, was completely and utterly selfless.
He found, in these past weeks of his growing friendship with Vincenzo, that he actually wanted to be good. He felt it like a physical thing. In contrast to the bile rising from his stomach every time Han-seok gave him an order, working with Vincenzo made him feel lighter around his chest, like small weights being lifted little by little with every scheme he helped realizing.
He felt like maybe now, by making his body a human shield for not only the two most important players in the fight against his brother but also two of the most important people in his life, it would finally be enough for even the heaviest of weights to be lifted.
He would die a happy man.
And wasn’t that the most curious of all things?
***
With all the fears and thoughts about dying whirring in his head ever since he could remember, Han-seo had pondered about a life after death.
After the second time Han-seok had promised to reunite him with his dead mom, Han-seo had thought about it more seriously. He'd wondered if there would indeed be a place where he could see his mom again and the thought had calmed down his nerves quite a bit. But the more he witnessed of the dismay left behind whenever Han-seok killed one of his classmates, he realized that nothing remained of Han-seok's victims but the watches he took from them and the grief in the hearts of their loved ones.
Of Han-seo, there would be nothing left behind at all. Not even the watch, he made sure of that when he decided to never wear it beyond the day Han-seok had gifted it to him.
This, added to the shattered state of the concept of the afterlife in Han-seo’s mind, is what made it so shocking when he heard Vincenzo's voice.
"Han-seo," the voice said. "Han-seo. Don’t go just yet."
The words didn't make sense because Han-seo wasn’t moving at all. In fact, he couldn’t even open his eyes. All he could do was feel the touch to his arm when it came, just below the shoulder, a gentle squeeze.
"There are people waiting for you here but." A sigh. "You're really taking your time."
It all felt so unreal to Han-seo, the way Vincenzo's voice wavered and his speech broke a few times. He'd never heard him so… unsure.
"There's a place for you. I had it… I prepared it for you. It has all the things you… I hope it is to your taste. Dongsaeng."
The last word followed after a brief pause, almost like an afterthought but it rang in Han-seo's ears like a bell.
Surely this must be the afterlife, Han-seo thought. Maybe it had really been enough, his sacrifice, and the universe deemed it okay to give him this one thing he craved, deep in his heart.
Or maybe this was a particularly nasty torture, and he was being presented with that very thing only to have it ripped away again when it'd hurt the most.
Han-seo had made it into an artform to always see the bright side of things, but he was no stranger to realism and in the end, he found, you always fared better with the latter.
And Vincenzo calling him his brother was something he could never let himself dream of, not even after Vincenzo allowed him to address him as such.
So even though Han-seo wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, he could still add that up to how fatal bullet wounds could be, and come to the conclusion that this might in fact not be real.
With the bullet wound just a distant pull at the general area of his stomach, this definitely didn't feel all too real.
Han-seo wondered that if there did exist a Heaven or a Hell, whether everything he did qualified him for one or the other. Considering the fact that he hadn’t just. Disappeared.
The hand on his arm suddenly retreated and Han-seo felt the loss like an ache in his soul. But then he felt the same hand at the side of his face, cradling his cheek not unlike the way his eomma always used to.
It was embarrassing, how much Han-seo craved for that, a caring touch, a soothing voice telling him it was all going to be okay, but he couldn’t help it, he wanted desperately to lean into the touch.
"Wake up soon, hm, dongsaeng?"
And as if his body was just trying to be contrary, he fell asleep immediately.
***
Afterlife was white.
That's all Han-seo saw once he could actually open his eyes. The sickeningly sterile white of the hospital walls. If that was all the afterlife could come up with, Han-seo was sorely disappointed.
Blinking his eyes open was a strain on its own but as Han-seo was slowly waking up, he began noticing more aches tormenting his body. Like the dryness of his throat or the way his head felt like a woodpecker was hammering his beak against it. Or the more troubling realization that he couldn’t quite feel his legs.
Turning his head worked, though, and even more baffling than anything else – there was Vincenzo. Sitting in a chair, apparently slumbering, tucked neatly into a blanket burrito the way only the people that really cared for you did, and his head falling onto his shoulder in a way that didn’t look comfortable.
Han-seo winced in sympathy. “H-hyung?” he tried to say but he wasn’t sure if the rasp that came out of his mouth was intelligible.
It was enough to startle Vincenzo awake anyway. He blinked owlishly for a few seconds, then pushed himself into a more upright sitting position. “Han-seo? You’re awake!”
Han-seo coughed in response – a mistake, since it rolled through his body like a truck and he started to really feel the burning in the general area of his stomach.
Vincenzo hurried to send for the doctors, then filled a glass with water and put it to Han-seo’s lips. The cool water running down his throat felt so good, it was like he’d never drunk water before in his life.
Maybe part of that was true.
In this strange new life, he hadn’t.
“Took you long enough!” Vincenzo laughed, but it was a strange laugh. It reached his eyes but then took a sad turn and his voice almost broke at the end there. “How are you feeling, dongsaeng?”
Han-seo blinked. He smacked his lips a few times in the hopes to find the words for the nothing and everything he was feeling, but all that came out in the end was, “I’m not dead.”
It should’ve been a statement but it sounded like a question.
“No, you’re not.” Vincenzo smiled, an easier smile this time. “Thank you.”
An overwhelming wave of relief overtook Han-seo. If Vincenzo said it, he thought, then it must be true, because Vincenzo knew everything.
Han-seo had never wanted to die.
He may have considered it several times, after experiencing some of Han-seok’s moodier days, and he may have come close to it once before by way of overdosing – something he still swore up and down had been an accident because even with everything his brother had put him through, Han-seo’s primary goal had always been to stay the fuck alive, but–
But he’d have died a happy man. That night, in Han-seok’s mansion. Because if he could choose, going out after saving lives, doing the right thing even at the cost of himself, for the first time – it was a happier ending than he could have envisioned for himself. But if he could truly choose…
Han-seo would always choose life.
Another big sigh left him and his body echoed it with pain but he didn’t care this time. “Oh, I’m glad,” he said, only to shoot up abruptly as a thought struck him – or he tried to, but the pain in his abdomen punished him immediately.
Vincenzo was there in an instant, holding him down by the chest where it didn’t hurt. “Easy,” he said. “You took a bullet to the stomach, Han-seo, your range of movement is limited right now. It’s a process, but you already took the first step to recovery by not dying, okay? So good job.”
While Han-seo agreed that this was quite the accomplishment, there was a more pressing question ringing all the alarm bells in his head. “H-Han-seok?”
Vincenzo’s lips thinned to a grim line. “Dealt with.” He said it with a dangerous finality that almost scared Han-seo if he wasn’t so relieved. “He can’t hurt you anymore. I made sure of that.”
“You did it yourself?”
“I killed him myself,” Vincenzo confirmed, and there was a sort of grim vindication in his voice Han-seo couldn't deny him.
“Oh,” Han-so made, barely noticing the tear that rolled down his cheek at the complicated feelings that rose in his gut. “Thank you.” He said. “Hyung.”
Vincenzo smiled at him and squeezed his hand – Han-seo hadn’t even noticed him taking it.
“But then!” Han-seo yelled suddenly, or as much as he could with his traiterous lungs that wouldn't work the way he wanted them to. “Why are you still here? If you killed hyu- if you killed Han-seok, shouldn’t you be on the run from the police?”
He tried to settle his panic with clearer thoughts. Surely hyung knew what he was doing. He was from the mafia, the best of the best, smart and strong and capable enough to beat his brother even! Maybe the police understood what he had been doing and decided to look the other way?
A look over to Vincenzo calmed him down further. His hyung didn’t seem worried at all! A bit nervous maybe, come to think, judging by the way he avoided his eyes…
“Han-seo,” Vincenzo said. “There’s something I need to tell you. Something important”
Oh, Han-seo thought. Here drops the other shoe.
Vincenzo made to open his mouth, but before he could speak, the door to his hospital room opened and a woman clad in nurse attire appeared to check up on Han-seo’s status now that he was awake, speaking rapidly in a way Han-seo could barely follow.
In his defense, his Italian was still at a basic level, at best.
Han-seo turned to Vincenzo again, who had watched him like a hawk since the nurse had come in, truly worried now.
“Hyung,” he said, as realization hit him. “Are we in Italy?”