Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first week as Cale Henituse is easier and harder than Cale expects. The words family taste weird on his tongue and he can’t seem to get it quite right. 

“Ha,” he sighs restlessly. Sitting up in bed and leaning against the headboard. Sleep, it seems, would not come easily this night. “Should I wander a bit?”

Unconsciously, his body seems to move out of bed leaving him to wonder if perhaps the original owner of the body were just as predisposed to the unfortunate habit of late nights just by virtue of needing a drink. Truly, Kim Rok Soo could sympathize. 

Letting himself just wander, he eventually stops in front of a room, still in his part of the mostly empty wing, but perhaps abandoned far longer than the study had been when he first demanded its use. There were white cloths covering furniture, the air itself was stale, but something about this place felt…sacred. Like something the original Cale had intentionally preserved but could not bear to part with.

He sighed again and opened a curtain, then a window. The dim lighting of the moon filled the room and he could see more clearly. This was a music room. Perhaps perfectly preserved as it had been, untouched since the last person had come here. Kim Rok Soo, moved a white cloth up from a piano-type instrument, tapped a key…and sighed. Still in key.

The instruments had been preserved as well. Truly a place that had once been full of love, but the piano was not the instrument he felt like playing at the moment. His mood still too detached, thinking of Cale Henituse whose body had become his, whose life he had somehow unknowingly stolen. Of things Cale would perhaps never get to say or experience with his family…and he was reminded of a song. 

Looking around, Kim Rok Soo quickly found an instrument similar to what he was looking for, just an acoustic guitar, but still, perfect for the mood and the song that seemed oddly fitting.

“Mm-mm, mm-hm..” he hums as he strums the guitar, finding a rhythm and balance for the song he’s thinking of (unknowing of the watchful eyes looking at him with mixtures of feelings) and finally feeling.  

“I am insensitive,” a jolt runs through his watchers as he sings, not entirely honest but to them it seems the most honest he’s willing to be.

Uncaring of anyone who might hear as he stares out the window he opened, “I have a tendency to pay more attention to the things that I need. Sometimes I drink too much, sometimes I test your trust, sometimes I don’t know why you stay with me…”

Bitterness was a feeling Kim Rok Soo was familiar with. How could he not be? He was…so tired, as he sang the next lines with something like resignation, “I’m hard to love, hard to love…oh, I don’t make it easy. Well, I couldn’t do it if I stood where you stood. I’m hard to love, hard to love, and you say that you need me...”

He paused, his brow furrowing, looking almost discontent, but he continued (uncertain if maybe Cale thought the same or if it was just something holding him back with phantom indignation and hollow uncertainties), “I don’t deserve it, but I love that you love me good…”

“I am a short fuse, I am a wrecking ball, crashing into your heart like I do…” Did anyone think that way of him? Of Cale? “You’re like a Sunday morning, full of grace and full of faith~”

He changed the word Jesus, had to because in this world there were multiple gods, but he equally had no belief in any of them and he sincerely doubted Cale did if his way of life was any indication. Being trash was great since he could live as he pleased and do as he liked. He would be hard pressed to say it was difficult, other than the inconvenience of having to go to the Capitol as his family’s representative. 

“...And I wish that I could be more like you…” it was a soft reluctance to admit that. Sometimes Kim Rok Soo would rather be anyone else and now he has a chance, certainly it’s as the trashy son of a Count, but still someone not himself, and he meant it. Sometimes he was jealous of what others could so easily do when he himself could not. 

“I’m hard to love, hard to love, oh, I don’t make it easy…” he repeated the chorus, “Well, I couldn’t do it if I stood where you stood, I’m hard to love, hard to love, and you say that you need me…”

He thinks of those cat tribe children that he brought home with him. Sure, he would put them to work but, he couldn’t deny they made him feel warm. The thought that they were willing to stay with him even though he was trash…it was nice. A little freeing since they didn’t know the previous Cale, so he was free to act even more like himself as he wanted without worry that they would assume he was some kind of imposter. 

Kim Rok Soo shivered. Ron and his son were an obstacle of their own, they’d kill him if they ever found out, and he absolutely did not want to be on the other end of their blades…although maybe Choi Han would protect him since he said he would pay him back.

“I don’t deserve it but I love that you love me good,” he whispered. “Yeah, you’ve given me a million second chances, and I don’t ever want to take you for granted, but I’m just a man…yeah, I’m just a man…”

Kim Rok Soo wasn’t sure what to feel, even as he sang. Should he feel relief? Glad that no one is here to watch and listen to him struggle through a song that may not be how Cale felt at all? Or maybe he should be angry at himself for taking advantage of the life Cale left behind (though it’s not like he needs it now since from what he can tell there is no other consciousness present like in some of those isekai novels).

“I’m hard to love, hard to love, oh I don’t make it easy, I couldn’t do it if I stood where you stood…” He stopped, his throat and fingers sore from the small amount of singing and playing, but there was no need to finish.

“This is enough…” he sighed and returned everything to how it was, closing the door softly behind him as he made his way back to the room and slept.

Chapter Text

He had been careless. Thoughtless in his meanderings. He sighed. Why is it so difficult?

Cale - Kim Rok Soo - had just wanted to vent and suddenly it seemed there were more whispers around him. Perhaps a servant had heard? 

No, he shook his head to ward off the thought. The servants never came close to him, perhaps the arbitrary actions of the original had served as a warning, but no one other than Ron seemed to truly serve him. Hans was one of Cale’s father’s watchers from what he had seen thus far. Not sneaky enough to evade him but around enough for him to know that Cale’s father had worried for his son in the most inane ways. 

He couldn’t say they were ways that mattered, but certainly he spoiled his son - gave him whatever he wanted and took care of any problems or mischief Cale had caused, but nothing that would scream he loved him. From a certain perspective it actually seemed more like guilt.

Maybe he was thinking too much, but in his wanderings he made his way back to the music room. It was late, the night was still…maybe he could put thoughts into music again? 

Would that ease the burden of knowing that he was taking the things that belong to Cale?

This time he did choose the piano-like instrument, sitting at the bench and running his fingers along the keys to get an idea of what the chords sounded like so he could recreate the song he had in mind. 

He began a soft melancholy tune, letting it echo and reverberate through the empty halls of Cale’s wing in the estate. 

“I wrote a song, a journal, gave it to the world…told the story of when I was just a child,” he sang softly. “I sought understanding, clarity in truth, by baring all the wounds inflicted on my youth…”

His heart throbbed thinking of a younger Cale, alone in this area of what should have been his home. No one starts drinking that young…not unless it’s intentional, and Kim Rok Soo, who’s only experience had been…he shook his head. Don’t think about that…

“You criticized my choice to stand up to my past, to give the pain a voice so that it too could pass,” he continued. “But I felt brave and filled with pride as I let go… of bitterness that wouldn’t leave or let me grow.”

He couldn’t fully understand Cale, not his motivations or desires, but he wanted to. Someone, anyone, should know the truth, because no one deserves to be so completely erased from existence by someone else. Cale deserves better, better than him…

“But I will spend a lifetime trying to understand…why someone sharing my bloodline would not lend me their hand…”

Kim Rok Soo couldn’t tell if it was an unwillingness to connect or a matter of having done something wrong and unforgivable that the old Cale would have scoffed at, because money certainly didn’t equate to the parental love that a child would have needed. Ugh, it was driving him crazy, but it was also exhausting to deal with because he was eating with the family and interacting instead of them all avoiding each other the way they had avoided Cale in the novel.

He didn’t understand. He couldn’t.

“Am I supposed to apologize?” he asked softly, volume increasing the more he thought about Cale and the things that might have led to his past. Was he more similar to Rok Soo than he originally thought? Sure, Cale probably should have apologized for some of the things he did, but considering how the family acts, should he really have? His voice increased slightly with each additional question in the song as he sang the verse three more times.

Deruth had heard the rumors, Cale in the music room, something that had not happened in years, or perhaps it had since he seemed so skilled. Did he just never hear or did no one care enough? It had been a mere whisper in the halls that Cale had gone into the room at night and the undeniable proof made his own heart ache as he listened to the song his son was singing.

“I loved her more than myself, but she made me choose…”

Who, Deruth wanted to ask and yet he knew it wasn’t his place. It had been so long since he had a proper conversation with his child.

“...Between her and my father, and so I refused…”

Deruth’s breath caught. Perhaps, was this song about Jour? Was this song something that was written after she passed? Or was it about now? Was Cale still choosing his mother even now?

“I fled her house and wrath eleven years of age, followed the crooked path that led me to a stage, the curtains opened up, my heart followed the lead…the music wouldn’t stop and I could finally breathe.”

Eleven? Had something happened then that Deruth did not know? It seems almost impossible, nothing could hurt a Henituse, especially not in their territory, without Deruth knowing something or the servants knowing something and reporting it.

“But I will spend a lifetime trying to understand,” Rok Soo thought back to his own past, “Why someone sharing my bloodline…would not lend me their hand…”

He stopped, not wanting to repeat the question about apologizing. It made it feel too real and he wasn’t sure he was ready to accept that. So much seems to have changed and yet nothing at all between the novel. While glad that he had avoided being beaten by the main character, wasn’t Choi Han too…calm? He shuddered remembering Choi Han saying he would pay him back, really? What kind of nonsense…

Have I done something? Kim Rok Soo immediately discarded the thought. Impossible. It would be far too troublesome to involve himself any further than he had now. He was only going to be travelling to the capital so that nothing would happen to Basen and he could live a leisurely slacker life. He nodded determined to himself.