The playful line "If he be Mr. Hyde, I shall be Mr. Seek" highlights a key point that is often misread by contemporary audiences, queued by centuries of inventive adaptations to expect a story of split personality or even something akin to demonic possession. Just as Mr. Utterson humorously takes on the name Mr. Seek to suit his role as a searcher without any associated change to his psyche, Dr. Jekyll merely takes on the name Mr. Hyde as a transformative disguise. Hyde is not an alternative personality or an overwhelming malevolent entity. Hyde is not the Hulk. Hyde is Batman, the mask Jekyll wears to protect his public identity from the consequences of his private indiscretions.
(fair warning, shen jiu. I don't think anything else needs to be said)
...
Shen Jiu was tired. He was tired of being everyone's last choice. His disciples, his martial siblings, his qi-ge. In a room full of demons and killers he would always be the last person to be saved. To be worried for. To be wanted.
Maybe that was why, when Shen Jiu had came across Heart Child's Spring Blossom Tree on a mission, he didn't hesitate to force his spiritual energy through his twisted and scarred meridians into the plant.
Maybe, he would be someone's first choice, if that someone had only known the best of him he could show.
...
Shen Jiu realized, seeing his child, his A-Yuan, protect a beast, that he wasn't even his own child's first choice. He bled and fought to protect his child, only for his child to stand in front of that demon. For his child tell him that he hated him after he had pushed his A-Yuan away to protect him from a monster.
Shen Jiu realized then that he would never truly be someone's first choice. Even his own flesh and blood's choice lied away from him.
...
Shen Jiu would never be someone's first choice, he learned that the hard way in his life. Because, why would anything in Shen Jiu's life be easy. Why couldn't he just be someone's first choice, someone's first want. Why?
Dragon krs idea- this is before the start of the novel and before Choi Han reaches Harris Village.
He's warm. What had once been the neutral temperature of his house as he drifted to sleep, after reading the novel The Birth of a Hero, became a warm, wet blanket. It wrapped around him slickly. It feels uncomfortable.
That isn't good. Not knowing something isn't good. The wet was suffocating and he stretched out his hand to find the end of the blanket.
Kim Rok Soo shakes abruptly. He frowns, but finds that his face feels strange. His limbs are cramped in a tight space, but the walls begin to give way under his squirming. He shrugs his shoulders, butting his head forward, kicking with his legs.
The wall which is also wet and slippery cracks under his arms and he pushes up with his feet.
His nose breaks into the cold air. Kim Rok Soo breathes, opening his eyes to a dark expanse above him, the stars looming above him. Except the stars aren't the same as he remembers. And he feels strange, in a foreign body.
He looks down to see what are clawed, red paws, and the remains of a wine-red shell. Whatever he had been thinking was happening... it wasn't this. Was it because of his nature, or the environment he grew up in? He didn't bother to think any further about his body when he still didn't know what was around him.
He was in a forest, regular as any that he'd seen before in Korea. Minus the wavering motions of something in the air. It was an odd, instinctive feeling, rather than something he could see.
It told him that something was approaching.
Without any time to think further Kim Rok Soo scampered over the broken remains of his egg and stumbled with chubby little paws over to a bush. Unfortunately for him, he appeared to only be the size of a small dog, or a medium sized cat. His senses expanded naturally to feel across the forest floor and towards what was approaching.
A bear-like creature-- with purple fur, 4 extra limbs, and long horns trailing down its back and a long tail-- emerged from the growth and quickly went to sniffing his egg shell. Then, Kim Rok Soo's heart dropped, it looked directly at his position in the bush. Well, that isn't good.
Kim Rok Soo jumped out of the bush right as the bear leaped forward powerfully. Moving quickly he loops around a tree right as the bear slams into it and hides in the monsters blind spot, instinctively using the strange movement he sensed in the air before to turn the attention of the bear away from him.
It must only work to confuse the bear because while it doesn't follow the motion, it struggles to catch a whiff of Kim Rok Soo again. He skillfully uses his paws to silently move behind and away from the bears line of sight. It must not have very good hearing, and it ambles around, disoriented. In a moment of instinct alone, he uses something to prevent the grass from making any noise, too.
Kim Rok Soo is panicking about how to escape the bear when a black line suddenly appears in his line of sight, and it pierces the bears skull out of nowhere.
The beast slowly falls over, dead.
The black line moved so fast that not even Kim Rok Soo saw it. His red paws tremble. He looks at the felled bear, revealing a small tree branch embedded in its head, bleeding steadily from the fatal injury.
...
Kim Rok Soo stiffly looks around him. Is he going to end up being a snack for whatever killed that bear? The bear has enough meat doesn't it? Can't it leave him alone? He was just born.
Unexpectedly it isn't a monster but a boy, a teenager, that emerges from the trees and stares at Kim Rok Soo. He's wearing makeshift clothes and holding a rusty knife. Kim Rok Soo shudders. Can he escape from this guy? Then the teenager notices the egg shell on the ground and looks back at Kim Rok Soo.
"You..." he speaks in Korean. "You're just a baby." The Korean teenager lowers his eyes. "I can't kill a baby."
Insulted, Kim Rok Soo opens his mouth to argue. He's 36 years old. He isn't even close to being a baby!
The teenager looks at the wine red dragon blankly. The brief emotion in his eyes falls away like an illusion, and he anxiously taps his knife with a restless finger.
...
Kim Rok Soo sees the dead bear out of the corner of his eye.
Actually, being a baby isn't so bad. This guy looks strong, let's piggy back off of his strength and get a free ride out of this forest.
With his mind set, Kim Rok Soo sits his bum on the ground and curls his tail around his waist to sit on his paws, not the floor. It's comfortable. Should he try to be cute or something?
He yawns, tired from running around immediately after waking up from the egg. This is annoying. If the teenager doesn't take him in, won't he have to survive out here on his own? He doesn't know if the monsters here are edible.
Unbeknownst to him, Kim Rok Soo just displayed behaviors identical to those of a cat.
His eyes closed from yawning, Kim Rok Soo opens them to find the teenager crouching directly in front of him.
Way too scary!
"You aren't trying to attack me. You... is it because you're a baby?"
Kim Rok Soo tilts his head. Does this guy expect a baby to respond to him?
Choi Han swallows. In this place... maybe he can have a friend? It has wings, maybe he could teach it to lead him to people like him.
Choi Han stiffly opens his arms, keeping the knife positioned outward, and though his blank expression is unnerving Kim Rok Soo is tired and hungry, so he yawns again and steps closer. It couldn't be too dangerous, right? The teenager carefully wraps his arms around the small, wine red dragon, lifting it up and holding it as if it were a human baby.
Briefly, Kim Rok Soo wonders if the teenager can properly fight if he's holding something, but he decides to not worry about it. If a dangerous creature comes again like the bear, he's sure the teenager would throw him away or something.
Kim Rok Soo tucks his chin into the teenagers neck and shoulder, appreciating the warmth, and slips into a light sleep. Choi Han strokes the baby dragons back. The scales are slightly chilly. Faintly, Choi Han senses a deep strength within this creature.
Maybe it would be better to kill it young.
Kim Rok Soo sleeps, unaware of the rising killing intent.
Choi Han shifts the baby to one arm and taps his knife handle with the other. He should get it some food. It's a baby, so it'll be hungry. It should be fine without milk, right?
Sakura has a very... unique idea of how to relax in her enclosure.
I love how silly she is. She gives me surprises all the time. I'll never fully understand her reasons, but that's okay. Creative types like her are meant to be appreciated.
The light through the window makes her feel warm. The piano song is sweet and peaceful. Her chest breaths calmed. Everything feels cozy, like waking up in the morning after a soft dream.
Penelope remembers the first time she entered the house. The smell, their friendship, the kidness of the words she found there. She never knew a home can feel like this.
She figure out that a place in her heart was there waiting for that moment. She felt in love of all of them.
She loves them still. Even when she doesn't have the right words to describe it. Even if sometimes she wasn't able to said it at laud.
She never knew what a home was before that day.
They share it with her because their kindness.
They're so nice and beautiful. They look like a paint. The smiles in their faces make her feel like an stranger. They look so happy together. He looks happy again.
It something there she can't reach. A feeling of being there and not being there really. Like she's watching the scene from outside, like an spectator in a theatre. She doesn't belong there.
The music takes her to another time. Another life, but with the same dream. To have a home, not a house with empty walls and without noises. To be loved. To feel desired.
She always wanted to know how he feels to belong to someone. To a family, specially one like this one.
His smile makes her remember other smiles. The first time he saw this boy smile her heart felt out of her body. Now, she feels she cannot breath. She doesn't want to. She would love to be froze here, in this moment, and never let go.
Now, she feels like she took his smile from him.
A sad and at the same time warm feeling full her chest. This is all she ever wanted, but it's not hers. Maybe was a beautiful dream but she needs to wake up now.
She needs to give up the house of her dreams and to build a new one, a real one. Because it can't be a home if she doesn't belong there.
Even if it's not a perfect house, it will have love and laughs, it will have a family, and it will be hers.
