"Will you give me five minutes of your time? Please." (Jinu, I have come back for more pain)
The demon tilted his head back, eyes lifting to the heavens as though entreating them — not for mercy, but for some sort of intervention. Perhaps a prayer for patience, or the silent, desperate plea of one who imagines a lightning bolt splitting the earth beneath another’s feet. If you hear me, strike them down where they stand. He dares some higher power to intervene, to strike Jinu down, to grant him an escape from the torment that refuses to loosen its grip. Bargaining with some higher, crueler power to rid him of the weight of this past. But nothing comes. Nothing ever does. And so the memory clings — like burned flesh fused to his skin, an old wound that refuses to peel away, haunting each of his steps with the stink of sorrow left too long unburied.
It had been so long since last he’d thought of it, of him (a lie). He had thought it ended. Had told himself it was done, that the flame had guttered out, cold and forgotten. Yet here Jinu stands, here his voice coils into Ji’s chest again, sweet and ruinous. Why now, why more heartbreak, more ruin? Ji’s pace faltered, his gait slowed to a crawl, arrested by his own hesitation. And Ji, foolish creature that he is, stops walking altogether. Halts as though tethered by invisible strings, some aching, invisible bond that should have long since snapped but never did. Something broke in him, quiet and small, as he realized how willingly he invited the torment. Why savor the taste of a voice that once brought him nothing but ruin? Why torture himself so? Why cradle the wound instead of letting it scar? Was he truly so pathetic?
A sigh slips from his lips, soft and resigned, the sound of surrender disguised as breath. His gaze falls, fingers worrying at the hem of his shirt like the nervous fidget of a lover caught between longing and loathing. And when he speaks, it is not sharp but almost tender, bitter, bruised at the edges, the words a reluctant gift of gentleness, ❝ Five, Jinu. Against all reason, I will grant you that much. ❞
Because curiosity gnawed at him still — a morbid hunger to hear, to know what his ghost had come to ask of him. Despite every wound, despite every betrayal, some part of him still aches to listen. Still wants to believe. Still cannot, even now, quite let go.
