#naomxs

          A structure stood tall in the midst of Seoul, glass windows adorning every panel, every corner with the mix of sunlight reflecting from the glass, leaving fractals across the street, among cars and people bustling by.

The lines were busy, the calls were coming in at a record pace, drove upon droves of companies trying to tie the knot and become a business partner or whatever else it was that they always wanted.

Shixun walked through the front doors with an air of apathy about him. He wore a dark grey suit, large black sunglasses that covered most of his face to keep his identity on the down-low and in seconds he felt his throat drop at the line of people bombarding his assistant, he had half the mind to turn around and leave in that very moment.  

She spotted him though, she gave him a look, one that said if you try to walk away, I'll find you and kill you, then your children and their children too.

The company was not his favourite place to be, it was not something he could ever find himself excited about, instead it was like a contract with the devil, the pain of having to be an adult mixed into one psychotic blood contract.

He felt his heart sink into his stomach as he approached the elevator, finding some sort of peace inside of his duties as the representative at his parents company.

♏: my muse tracing a scar of your muse’s</p>

It was on one of their earlier meetings that the first scars were found. Of course, being a ‘part time’ circus performer, the scars were expected. He was the dagger of the show, the one with the perfect aim and the perfect grin.  He was the childish one, ready to fool with the joker and toss a blade carelessly at the apple perched on said joker’s head. 

But he’d never missed. 

And this accuracy came with practice; years and years of bloody, aching practice. The greatest evidence for his slow journey to the mastery of the dagger was on his hands. Thin lines of white and pink danced upon his fingers and his palm. With each scar came a story — ‘oh, this one was when I picked up the blade wrong, this was when I removed it wrong, this was when I cleaned it wrong, and this was when I …’ He could go on for days.

But on that one day, when he and Naomi decided that baking and hand decorating baked goods was the best idea in the world, she had discovered his spider like threads. She had grabbed his hands and scolded him, praying for him to stop playing with sharp objects and to take better care of himself. She turned his hands about, thumbs rubbing small circles into some of the longer, larger scars. Taehyung remembers his fingers shaking slightly at the touch. Once he managed to blurt out the reason for the scars, she just shook her head, eye brow arching as if commenting on his daring decision.

‘Of all the things in this little world that you decided to master, you thought knife throwing was the best you could do?’

Taehyung recalls nodding pitifully at this. He lowered his head, waiting for the words to continue flying from her mouth. Instead, a kitchen blade as handed to him and she walked off with a plain cookie, seating it upright on top of the fridge.

‘Show me.’

It was on a trip to the seaside that his most mysterious scar was found. It ran along his left shoulder, curling dangerously as it bordered his neck and chest. Taehyung doesn’t remember anything about it, however. It’s just there.

At first, Naomi didn’t see the faded scar. It wasn’t until his silly jest for a water fight that he heard her call. ‘What did you do this time, idiot?’ Those were her exact words. Taehyung would have smiled at them, had he the chance to return to that point. His reply was simple; he had carried a larger blade incorrectly and it fell out of the sheath to cut him. Nothing major.

In all honesty, he had no real idea how it got there.

He remembers Naomi trudging through the crystalline sea water to, first, cause a tsunami to rush over him, before grabbing his arm and pressing a finger to the beginning of the scar on his back. He shivered. Maybe, just maybe, he could find out what this one scar was about.

And just maybe, he could tell Naomi, one of his dear friends, about a scar that existed from birth; one that deemed him different from other humans.