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The first genuine kindness had been a hand being offered to him and a gentle smile.
That had been months ago.
With his head ducked low, he walked through the hallways of Bahati. One foot in front of the other. His coat weighing heavily down upon his frail shoulders. Silently, he searched for his target.
Class wasn't currently in session. It was evening, after all, and curfew was looming near. Most children had gone to bed long ago, or at least retired to their room. Or their friends' rooms to later sneak into their actual rooms. After all, it was a boarding school.
None one left, they were already 'home'.
He passed by the toilets, and walked right into a slightly taller student. He stumbled back a step, shoulders tensing. A girl glanced down at him- she was a couple grades above him, older than him. He couldn't remember her exact age, but he knew she was an adult. Eighteen, maybe?
He sneered, fighting down his urge to turn around and flea. He'd be ridiculed if he failed. Maybe they'd abandon him. Maybe they'd kill him.
Then again, the last of that might just be a mercy.
Part of him, selfishly, wondered if the teachers would show compassion, if he were to admit it all. If he were to call it quits now and beg for forgiveness like the coward he was.
The girl was still staring at him. Maybe she'd seen his trembling. Maybe she could smell the cowardice. Overcome with sudden anger, he bared his teeth in an imitation of the half-feral mutts he'd seen getting into fights over measly scraps. "What are you looking at?" he hissed.
The blonde hesitated. Then, she glanced up and down the hallway. "Are they... hurting you, too?" she asked, voice quiet and cautious. As if someone might suddenly appear around the corner. As if the wrong people might overhear.
He looked her up and down, eyes catching on bruises peaking out from beneath her long sleeves. He was vividly reminded of his own from before he'd arrived at Bahati - littering his entire torso -, which were bound to return once he left.
Though, he doubted that their origin was similar in any way.
She seemed like a victim of humanity's cruelty. They weren't the same. Unlike her, Vein deserved the pain.
He didn't say that, though. She wouldn't understand. He said nothing at all.
Why was he even standing here for so long? He had a job to do. The faster he did it, the faster he could get out of here and... well. He wouldn't call it home, but it was the closest thing that someone like him might ever have.
A traitorous part of him whispered that he knew why he was prolonging this. Why he wasn't moving or talking: He didn't want to do this. He was scared.
And wasn't that funny? Here he was, on his way to prove his worth, and terrified of actually going through with it when he'd done it before in a much more primitive manner already.
His stomach ached. From fear or hunger he couldn't tell.
Stiffly, he turned away from the girl and headed down the hallway. There was no point in lingering. He didn't turn when she called for him. Didn't she know that secretly even some of the teachers called him a freak?
In no time at all, he found himself at the bottom of the steps and in the basement. He'd long since shaken the girl off his trail. That was one of the things he was good at, after all: Running away like the coward he was.
His steps faltered to a stop. His lungs ached from nearly sprinting down the hallway and stairs, his still-healing leg throbbed with pain. The basement was dimly lit, but it didn't stop his skin from crawling, the memories of a much darker place plaguing his mind.
His own breathing sounded like static to his ears when he slowly moved onward. He had no idea where his target really was, but down here was a good start, wasn't it? He'd seen him go down here a lot.
As he passed by an open door, he peaked through. Paused when he saw a large, circular symbol painted on the wall. The light was hardly reaching it from the hallway. There was no one inside, so he continued on.
Deeper and deeper into the basement he went, until he eventually found a much different room with an open doorway, from what he could tell. So, he kept to the wall. Just in case. There were people, inside. He could hear them. At least one of them.
"No, no. I don't have any evidence yet"
Vein faltered, pressing himself against the wall next to the open doorway. That was the voice of his target, definitely. But what evidence was he talking about? Had he caught onto why Vein was sent here?
It had to have been obvious. He might have been basically uneducated beyond the basics prior to being sent to Bahati, but he wasn't a fool. Of course a fourteen year old who struggled to read and write, who had nearly bitten several students and treated quite literally everyone like a potential threat was suspicious.
Even all that aside- it wasn't like he'd been signed up like a normal person, anyway.
"Yes, I'm working on it. Once I have enough, I'll send it to you and we'll get rid of this pest"
Vein could feel it when his heart dropped. A pest. He was a pest. Of course he was. He should've known.
His mind flashed to a dark alley, cold rain pelting down on him and seeping into his clothes. To the agony of a broken leg, bent in a way a leg simply shouldn't.
Part of him doubted he'd ever forget the horror of the initial break. Of being held down by two of the three adults accompanying him. Of the panic and fear and wailing of please stop making way for pain pain pain when the bone finally snapped like a dry twig.
With his mind clouded by pain, he'd struggled to comprehend what they were saying. Somehow, he managed to cling onto the order: Gather information.
The next thing he knew that wasn't agony was the rain stopping, a dark umbrella over his head. Kind, dark eyes eyes and a concerned smile.
For a while, he'd thought that maybe he could forget his job. Maybe he could simply live and be normal and start new. Of course it couldn't be that simple. He just... wasn't like them. He wasn't good at being polite. He wasn't good at holding conversations.
Every time he tried to talk to someone, he ended up saying something wrong or strange and scared them instead. Eventually, he'd had to face it: he just wasn't normal, by their standards.
Terror had gripped him anyway, when he'd received his last order. Kill him. Kill them all if he must. Destroy everything he deemed necessary. He'd been scared, but part of him had wondered if telling the man everything would save him.
And now, here he was.
Neither the kindness nor the smile had been real, had it? He'd known all along that Vein wasn't normal, hadn't he? He'd just been a pest and gotten used by both sides all along.
Instead of sorrow, rage burned through his veins. His hands fumbled for the gun he'd hidden within his coat.
"Mhm, I'll call you back soon"
Slowly, Vein peaked around the corner and frowned when he realized that the doorway only seemed to be open. There were bars separating him from his target and from this angle, he couldn't spot any other way to get into the room aside from what looked like a ladder.
His target was facing away from him, staring down at a phone. At least that gave him some time to figure out what to do.
There were papers strewn about a table, bars on the other side of the room. There was some sort of tank as well, and he assumed it to be oil, maybe. Did they heat the building with oil? He wasn't quite sure. Then again, it seemed to be out of order, which made sense. This room seemed to be blocked off.
It didn't really matter, anyway.
His eyes fell back on the bars, and he swallowed hard. Maybe, just maybe, he could squeeze through? He was pretty thin and small for his age beneath the rather bulky clothes, hadn't hit his growth spurt yet.
Quietly he crouched down and squeezed himself through.
His leg ached, still not fully healed, but it wasn't like had much of a choice. Slowly, he lifted the gun. That was when his target turned to face him.
Dark eyes widened. First in recognition. Then in the natural fear anyone with a survival instinct possessed when faced with a loaded gun. "Ying," he said ever so slowly and the redhead hated that he blurted out such a soft name instead of anything better, anything less close to his real name, when he'd been asked for his name, "what are you doing?"
There was no judgement. Only patience and thinly-veiled terror. It didn't matter, or at least so he told himself. "Fulfilling my mission" Vein's voice shook more than he would've liked. Trembling, he raised the gun when his target stepped closer.
"You don't have to do this" Mr Cheng told him, something cautious in his tone. The words made him want to shout in fury. Or cry, perhaps. The lie stung, with how sincere he sounded.
Vein didn't respond, steeling himself for what he was about to do. Eyes drifting over the desk and catching on an odd looking notebook. Was that the information he was supposed to bring back? He'd seen the symbol on the cover before.
Yet the miniscule moment of distraction was enough. Without warning, Mr Cheng closed in on him, hand reaching for the gun. To push it down. To disarm him. To make him vulnerable. To get close so he could hurt him like everyone else did.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Vein pulled the trigger. He didn't see where the bullet went. His ears rang terribly, and the recoil sent him stumbling back.
There was a shout of pain, and when he opened one eye, chest heaving with fear, he saw red. On the desk. On the papers. On the floor. Slowly seeping from a hole in Mr Cheng's shoulder. The man pressed a hand over it, but the blood wouldn't stop- it simply dripped down between his fingers, staining his hand.
He'd seen the adults shoot people in nearly the same place before. Most of them died because they didn't get medical attention. Mr Cheng would too, wouldn't he? The adults were right. His parents had been right. Everyone had been right. He was a monster.
"Ying" the man didn't sound mad, despite the pain on his face, and the redhead staggered back towards the bars. The less-bloody hand reached for him, but all he could think of was pain, and all he felt was panic. "Ying wait, please-"
But Vein didn't wait, eyes on the blood, and he dropped his gun. Turned and bolted for the bars and squeezed himself through the narrow gap, into the safer room on the other side. After all, getting in there was impossible without navigating through the entire maze that was the basement. He rushed for a corner where he retched, sobbing.
The words "Monster, monster, murderer!" played through his mind on repeat, and he curled in on himself, pressing his hands over his ears as if that would make the voices in his head shut up. It didn't, if anything, it made it all worse.
He risked a glance to the bars, and Mr Cheng was still there. Reaching through the bars and begging him to come out as if he was a scared animal, not a murderer.
And for one long moment, he stared at the outstretched hand. Wondered if it was too late to take it, but ultimately turned his back. He just had to wait now, didn't he? The man would die, he'd take the book and complete his mission.
Then why did he feel so empty, knowing that?
There were steps, fading away. Then the creak of the ladder. He hadn't thought of the ladder. With renewed panic, he leapt to his feet. Rushing for the bars and clutching onto them. His eyes widened when he saw the teacher climb it, nearly already at the trapdoor.
His eyes dropped to the table. The book was gone. Cursing, he squeezed through the bars and nearly slipped on the blood pooling on the floor.
A creak reached his ears, then the sound of the trap door locking. Mr Cheng was gone- maybe he'd even survive, now. His eyes darted across the room, terror constricting his lungs until he thought he couldn't breathe anymore.
There was a lighter.
Without much hesitation he grabbed it, flinching when he managed to get a small flame. His eyes fell on the papers, then the tank. If he let Mr Cheng get away, he might tell someone. He might already have.
Now that he wasn't focused on his target but his surroundings, he noticed the smell of rotten eggs beneath the stench of blood.
Steeling himself with a shaky breath, he laid a line of papers from the tank to the bars and squeezed himself through again.
He was already a monster, and his mission was already turning into a failure. The lack of information might be excusable, if he at least destroyed the evidence and killed all possible witnesses.
He dropped the lighter onto the paper trail and made a break for it. Because that was not an oil tank.
The explosion came sooner than he expected, and he stumbled behind around a corner for safety. His ears rang from the noise. Still, he forced himself upright, stumbled onward. He took two steps at a time up the stairs, silently praying that he'd caused a good enough distraction.
He hadn't taken into account that the basement was made of cement, and the ceiling of the room with the gas tank of wood.
Confused and panicked shouting reached him over the static ringing in his ears, and with a start, he realized that the fire was spreading fast.
He heard students shout in fear and pain, but he didn't look back for any of them. Cheng Weimin and the notebook would burn, or the man would bleed out. He didn't have to care anymore. What was done was done.
A man managed to get into the building, didn't even notice him crouched around a corner. The door was open only wide enough for someone small to slip through, and Vein took his chances. He needed to be gone before the police arrived. He needed to be gone, period.
So he fled, heading right back into the darkness that had brought him to this point.
After all, now he was the monster the adults said he was.