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The way of the soul was no mystery.
At its core, freed of ribs and flesh, it longed to return to depths below. To pass where there was neither shadow nor light, no eyes to peer, no ears to hear the echoes of bodiless whispers; and never a mouth to taste such stale air.
Yet to pass there, yet to pass, one was compelled to shed oneself of all things earthly.
Anguish. Love. The very bones holding the essence of one’s humanity in place.
Jeongin, however, had fulfilled none of these requirements. Kept his aches, affections, and aspirations so very close instead, stitched into a small pocket tucked beneath the skin where his heart sat. Precious and hidden.
It would cost him.
Day had passed since his eldest brother, born with even more frailty to him than Jeongin himself, first felt hot to the touch — sweat casting a glistening sheen across flushed cheeks, the lightest of swells beneath sunken eyes.
It had been a sight seared into the back of his eyelids long before Yongbok had ever fallen ill, and its return onto the doorstep of their home made Jeongin’s insides coil like a disturbed pit of vipers, pushing against his navel in agitation.
It had to be something else, he assured one of their youngest sisters. Not again, he prayed in silence. Not any more of them.
That week, it poured and poured from above and soaked the world to the bone without mercy, yet Jeongin had no other choice but to care for his brother on his own and send their younger siblings away, send them outside to spend their nights in the stables with the remaining cattle. Too great was the risk, too steep the price. Too deep the graves he would have to dig otherwise.
After the last time, a part of Jeongin felt that the specks of soil which had trapped themselves beneath the blunt edges of his fingernails would remain there for as long as he breathed. No water on earth could possibly wash his hands clean of death, he once thought; no river he passed would clear him of the sin of living when they did not.
The day Yongbok fell sick was a day where scales were tipped, where a drop of water made the heavens spill. And they spilled and spilled and spilled.
Many a villager whispered stories of the mountains, only ever told beneath lowered eyes and behind hands cupping mouths, and they had made their way past Jeongin’s ears again and again as he had grown older. They told tales of a darkness far beyond any settlement, further than any stream he had ever crossed, behind all leaf and stone, where he would lay in wait within the jagged jaws of the valley; hidden, lurking, hunting.
In a world where eternal rest belonged to the dead, no more than ephemeral respite was ever granted to Death, it seemed. Never would he be caught unaware.
The gloom of the cave the cautious mutterings had steered him towards, entombed like a heart rotting within the embrace of a fossilized ribcage, wafted and twisted before Jeongin’s heavy-lidded eyes and extended even beyond the gaping cracks in the rocks. Each time he attempted to blink away his weariness and allowed the world before him to blur into dark streaks, inky tendrils inched forth to beckon from within.
It was a place of such unequaled darkness that only a devil could reside there, Jeongin thought. He stepped forward nonetheless, towards the hope birthed in peril.
That day he had no other place to be. That day, he had no other path to walk. No matter the end the fading sunlight would shine upon, he intended these steps to be the last he would ever have to take alone again.
Once Jeongin entered — feet barely parting from the ground beneath with a gait as careful as his — not even a torch eased the difficulty of seeing beyond his extended arm, fingers splayed to sense, to ward in the darkness. Upon drawing his hand closer to his body, a lingering glance offered a sight not unlike the times their home’s hearth had required sweeping, pads of his fingers coated in the blackest of soot. A shadow’s touch, imprinted.
Pressing them against the fleshy part of his palm, Jeongin hid them within clenched fists, buried them beneath knuckles turned white, bones pushing up against thinning skin. Darkness should not be capable of tainting men as easily as ink, he judged grimly. It was unnatural and foreign — as the matter of disturbing the fates could only be.
The pit behind his navel grew and grew with each step he took as he stuck close to the flames sparsely illuminating his surroundings, and Jeongin silently vowed to himself that he would not let it swallow him from within. Brother, he thought and reminded himself. Yongbok was needed. Jeongin needed him.
He knew not how long he walked further into the dark, only that he did, and only that he never stopped. Never did he turn to glance over his shoulder but for once — for he knew after that very first attempt that his way back to the world awaiting him outside would be much colder, much darker, much lonelier, than even the path ahead of him. That his hands had trembled too much to pick up the shards of their home before he had taken his leave, and that they would be the only thing expecting him there, would be the only thing unless he reached the end of this tunnel.
And he would; for Yongbok, he would remain on his feet as long as the devils dared and the gods demanded.
As time passed, the air seemed to lose all semblance of warmth, his own, too, seeping out of his limbs like the blood drained of fresh game. The cold tongued at Jeongin’s ankles and traveled up his spine, up and up to place freezing claws onto shoulders long hunched from exhaustion.
Jeongin wondered if a mere mortal like him would even be granted the small mercy of knowing whether or not he had passed, as far as he had traversed into oblivion; whether — in his attempt to visit the border of life and death and retrieve what had been taken from him — he would even be allowed the chance of recognizing and accepting his failure, to mourn the sun and the sky and the beating of his heart, or if it would all go by as uncommented as a slight change of the wind, trivial and insignificant.
When his legs caught onto something and made him stumble, made him lose the grip on his torch and let it clatter to his feet; when it made him catch the weight of his limp body with hands which stung and burned; when Jeongin fell, he knew that death would never be a quiet affair.
“Mortal,” so it finally sounded — above, within, beyond — and he trembled. “Have I not shown kindness in indulging you in your blind stumbling for so long?”
The mutterings had said much before he left, but what surrounded Jeongin told him more, erased any trace of doubt he might have harbored: Indeed, only a devil could inhabit the dwellings of the deep.
It was exactly what he had come for.
The voice had cut through the air and bit much more, much deeper than Jeongin’s skinned palms ever could, tearing through him like the violent kiss of a blade. With tremors in his hands and knees as they withstood his weight, so unmoored and blind, he doubted it could even be called that; a voice. Not when it had no mouth to free it and seemed more echo than words — not when it was so close and so far at once, a deafening whisper, the harshest of caresses. No more tactile than fog ever was.
“Run along now, sweet little maggot. This is no place for you.”
Or was it a god rather than a devil?
(What was the difference between those who took and those who gave?)
Devils, gods, deities — they all were the same.
Suddenly feeling feverishly hot despite the cold as Jeongin remained prostrate, a gust of wind stroking boldly against what was left exposed of his skin by his collar brought the sensation of a wild animal breathing down his neck, willing to crush, willing to grind. His bottom lip threatened to burst like a ripe berry under the pressure of his teeth digging in, digging deep to swallow down the aggravated pounding of his heart crawling up his throat.
“Such a long way from home, so far away… Might you be unaware of your nearing end should you not leave? Or is that just what you have come for, mortal?”
Jeongin dared not move, he dared not breathe. His fingers clawed at the ground below and he twisted shut his eyes, erected a barrier between himself and the dark. When it approached, it spoke with a heated mouth, all teeth and ajar, pressed close to the shell of his ear.
“I may aid you myself, if you so desire… May aid you even if you do not. I have little patience for your kind.”
They were the lips of a lover burning hot to the touch, the mutterings of a garrotter, and the promise clung tightly around Jeongin’s neck.
Jeongin lacked air to draw into his aching lungs, but words slid out of his mouth nonetheless, volatile and demanding to be heard, a snake shedding the skin of his throat and bursting out of him with a gag.
“My lord.” Jeongin’s forehead forcefully met the back of his hands which remained flattened against the ground, fingernails nearly splitting with the rigidity of his grip. “My lord, I beg of you to hear me. Will you please grant me this honor?” He blinked into the dark, swallowed down the dust and the dread. “Will you please show me this mercy?”
Between one beat of Jeongin’s stuttering heart and the next, time extended into the immeasurable, perpetuity.
“And so I shall, little mortal.”
A weight unlike any he had ever felt before pushed down between his shoulder blades and robbed him of his breath, made him bear what could only be the foot of a god with his back. It brought Jeongin’s face even closer to the ground than it had already been, made his cracked lips touch the dust and stone, taste the age of eternity. Still his eyes caught sparsely any light, the once lit torch forced into a sudden and fitful slumber as it flickered weakly against the ground.
“I shall hear them,” Death promised above him, and his voice was honeyed and smooth. “I shall hear the final whispers of your throat as I crush it with bare hands. And when they come to feast on your body, I shall even hear the hums and hisses of all things which crawl as pitifully as you do before me now.
“I shall hear it all as your corpse grows cold… Is this what you have come for? To die alone before my feet? An unnecessarily arduous endeavor, I would say, when it is so awfully easy for humans to lose their life.”
And it was so easy, was it not? Jeongin knew that.
For a moment, he dared not move any part of his body but his lips, silently and swiftly recounting memories against rock as he willed his thundering heart to still; desperately thinking of plain bowls filled to the brim with grains, each of them so full against the one of his older brother, the bottom of his dish only ever barely concealed.
Jeongin remembered the words of care he could never spare for their siblings in the same manner as Yongbok could, the softness of the elder’s thumb that never grated on tear-streaked skin as Jeongin’s did.
He had not come without reason.
“My lord, I hold no power capable of stopping you should this be your will,” he found it in himself to say, “but I beg of you to return him. Please, let me sing your praise.”
The world paused for a second.
“Whom do you speak of?”
Jeongin hurried to answer, the smallest glimmer of hope sparking within him. “My brother, my lord, I beg of you to return him to us. He did not deserve… It wasn’t… He-“
-should not have died. Did not deserve this fate. Deserved anything but this fate. Jeongin knew this to be the truth like he knew the sting of a fresh scrape, like he knew the pang of an empty stomach. He knew this to be what was right, down to the very vessels holding together his godforsaken body, its debt paid off with his tears and the blood of his loved ones.
While his heart fluttered in his chest, a bird with wings asunder, there was another beat of silence. A bead of sweat ran down his face and his tongue caught it on his upper lip, saltier and heavier in his mouth than it ought to have been.
When Death laughed, faceless as ever, it sounded more like a scoff ringing through the cave, no humor to it. “Now, if this is not unexpected.” The pressure on his back increased, more and more until Jeongin feared his body would give. “If I claimed that no mortal had ever declared to know more than I — more of who was deserving of mortality and who was not — would you believe me?”
He might die before he could believe, Jeongin thought. With great effort, he managed to twist his head to the side to catch a few mouthfuls of stale air, pain contorting his face into a small grimace.
“If I said that no mortal has dared to stake such bold claims before, would you doubt me? Would you trust my word if I swore that no mortal has ever abandoned their earthly existence beneath my feet just like this and left it to rot here? Right before us?”
The weight finally let up ever so slightly and Jeongin’s eyelids fluttered open in relief, lungs expanding as far as they could to make up for previous deprivation, his body shaking with the effort. Not far away, in his direct line of sight-
-a shiny black beetle half the length of his thumb, shell glistening like a dark eye plugged from the unmistakably human skull it crawled on, white and exposed as it lay on the ground.
Death loomed not just above him, he now knew; it surrounded Jeongin.
Unwillingly startled at the realization despite him having suspected so before, dust stirred at his sharp inhale and invaded his mouth when he coughed, squeezing his eyes shut once more. When his sight returned with a stuttering flutter of his lashes across his cheeks, the beetle flicked its glossy wings as if returning his blink.
Exhaling as long and steady as his body allowed, Jeongin moved not an inch as he stared blindly ahead, letting the world before him blur. “I would not dare mistrust a god, my lord,” he finally spoke quietly, more than aware of the divine presence.
“And yet you insist on laying claim on your brother’s soul? You would not mistrust a god, yet insist on not heeding one’s judgment?”
“But I must,” Jeongin breathed his reply.
The pressure he had been forced to bear vanished entirely then, only to be replaced with something perhaps even more burdening — more frightening. Akin to snowflakes, cold to the touch and ever so delicate, fingertips made contact with the skin of Jeongin’s neck and caused him to bristle at their deceptive gentleness. The fingers slid down, down, coming to grip him firmly around his nape as nails came to dig into the soft meat of his throat.
A movement in the air brushed across him and Jeongin realized it was a breath. What followed was a tender murmur in his ear, paths of white which had never been traveled upon, treacherous like jaggedly sharp rocks beneath snow:
“On what grounds, mortal?” On what grounds did Jeongin dare claim the soul of his brother, dare defy the god holding Jeongin’s heart in an iron fist?
To tell what was clear, to tell what was right, Jeongin shook off the coat of fear he had been wearing like a winter pelt.
“It was not his time, my lord,” he said thickly, more convinced than he had ever been. It could not have been. “Not when it was I who was intended to make the trip which brought my brother’s sickness. Not when it was I who cost him his life.” Jeongin shook his head ever so slightly, the fingernails on his jugular cutting deeper in response and indenting the skin without breaking. “It could not have been just to take his soul so soon — Not when he got ill through no fault on his own. His only sin- His only sin was being the best brother he could.” Jeongin’s voice broke at his last words.
“But that is not how the fates cleave their threads. That is not how death takes.” A gentle pressure against the place where his heart throbbed loudly in his neck, a thumb dug into the flesh of softened fruit. “Your fault it may be — Your decision it is not.”
“Please,” Jeongin began to plead once more in his life, despite knowing that the gods never seemed to hear him. “He’s all I’ve ever known.”
A sigh echoed through the cave as he felt his chin tipped upwards, a firm yet careful grip around his jaw steering Jeongin’s head to finally face the devil, the god, the deity crouched before his kneeling figure.
Death was a hauntingly beautiful man.
“Mortal,” he spoke from his petal-colored mouth — upper lip even fuller than the one it rested upon — which bloomed above a strong jaw, right beneath a straight nose and cutting cheekbones. Dark eyes drilled into Jeongin’s and held his gaze unforgivingly. “You must know that to me, the brotherhood you cherished so much has narrowly lasted longer than never at all.”
Jeongin’s stomach dropped as he was unable to tear his eyes away, drinking in the sight, the words; threatening to choke on them.
“The soul you speak of is destined to stay on its intended path until it leads to the realm of the living once more.” Death observed his face, the thumb that curved along his jaw moving to brush over his chin, near the corner of his mouth. “A time when you will no longer walk here.”
Heat rushed through Jeongin’s body, up his chest, throat, mouth at those words, boiling over in a sudden surge he was barely able to swallow down. What did he know? How could his love, his need for Yongbok possibly amount to nothing?
His brother had been the only thing that had kept Jeongin’s godforsaken world spinning.
“My lord,” he pressed out between gritted teeth as he stared up at the god before him underneath brows that were drawn together in anger. “Do you feel nothing for my loss? Have you no pity?”
Death’s lips twisted downwards and Jeongin felt the hand cupping his face twitch — as if anything a mortal like him could say was even capable of truly affecting a god. “Loss, you say? What could I know of it?” He shook his head as if the idea was entirely foreign to him, but there was a faraway look in his eyes that Jeongin found himself locking on, glinting beneath the surface and briefly concealed by a stiff blink. “A god makes no habit of giving, losing, missing.” The deity stared coolly. “He takes.”
And yet, he stood alone.
A thought struck Jeongin then, unbidden and unwanted as he stared Death in the face: For as much power as a god like the one before him might have had, he remained nameless, in solitude, clothed in shadows and decay.
And Jeongin remained spared.
If to take was the ability, duty, desire of a god as it was of a devil, why was his heart still pumping and his chest expanding?
Why was Jeongin not dead?
“This is no loss, mortal,” the man continued to explain, and suddenly Jeongin no longer heard the condescending nonchalance of a god ridiculing his pain. Instead, he imagined… the simplicity behind the soothing touch of a cool hand against his heated forehead; an attempt at comfort. “It is but a temporary separation. Meet him in your next life, after you have grown old and gray.”
His face moved closer until their noses were separated by narrowly the span of a hand-width, eyes searching Jeongin’s. “Or meet him now, if you so desperately wish to be bestowed the misfortune of my grief.”
Jeongin considered Death’s words for what they were: Rather than a threat, it was an offer. An understanding.
He loved his brother. Jeongin had always loved his brother, loved him dearly, loved him most, had kept him closest to his heart out of everyone his entire life, even before their parents had passed. Always had he cherished Yongbok for how good of a brother, a person he was and Jeongin had broken apart under the weight of his motionless hand, hanging limply from his bedside.
Until now, it had been on his mind often; to heal the broken pieces of their home by abandoning his own mortal body, to trade it for the better brother, the honorable brother, the worthy brother, taken by death far too young.
But Jeongin… did not want to die, he realized, not if it was just to abandon the remains of his family to chase the pieces of his heart on his own.
And looking at him, Jeongin thought that Death did not seem eager to take him, either.
He attempted to swallow down all that had tightened his throat like a noose around his neck before.
“If you cannot take me in my brother’s stead and have him returned to our family,” Jeongin placed one of his hands on top of the god’s, gingerly, and pried it away from his face with slow motions, “then I shall not see him either.”
Somehow, the deity before him seemed uncaring of a human holding him, holding onto his cold hand as if he was any man, though dark eyes flickered from their connection back to Jeongin’s face as the latter finally straightened up to sit on his haunches.
“I shall mourn, and I shall weep,” Jeongin spoke as he still felt the claws of loss gripping onto his heart, “and I shall dream that his journey will be swift and full of comfort now.”
Jeongin’s eyes never parting from those of Death, he did not know what moved him to do it, then; perhaps it was his sense of duty, or the sanity slipping his mind, but his body seemed to act without his conscious command as he boldly took the man’s hand between both of his own to vow before him, encasing it in his oath.
“I shall be as my brother was. I shall be as he was. I shall be…” him.
The man’s sharp look seemed to cut across Jeongin’s flesh with ease, peeling his skin back layer by layer until all that remained were his bones and the unspoken secrets carved deep into their ivory.
A hand came to rest on top of his own that were still clutching that of a god.
“Then you shall go,” the man agreed, and there was a strange glint in his eyes that made Jeongin wonder if Death ever had anything to mourn. “Leave and follow your duties. Let the weight of the world twist and contort you into unrecognizable shapes.”
(A minuscule part of Jeongin would always be able to feel it, little hands and whispers, grasping, calling for Yongbok, Yongbok, Yongbok.)
“And once you grow tired of it… You may return to keep me company.”
When he collected the shards left before the extinguished hearth of their home and pricked his finger on a sharp edge that drew redness, Jeongin thought of wild roses in winter, thorns and flushed — bloodied — lips; and considered that as much as Death took, perhaps it was truly Death who had nothing.
He wondered when life would lead him back to him; to the rumored hunter of the valley with no name, the devil, the god, the deity — unwilling to take the little he could.
Jeongin would learn, one day, as the way of the soul pulled him towards darkness once more.
Minho.