𝐒𝐊𝐈𝐍, 𝐌𝐎𝐍𝐒𝐓𝐑𝐎𝐒𝐈𝐓𝐘.

when the pendulum swings, he believes that it is the humanity he’s clung onto for the longest time that lacks weight at the end. how risible. it feels like battling a losing war, but life is always constructed that way. its mechanism is never as simple as a child’s play, the gritted reality telling naught if not the survival of the fittest. and who is not the fittest, if not those who hone the demons within themselves? and he’s nurtured them in his cradle. of course, these parasites manifest in him. further, further. again, he runs a hand through his bleached dark silver locks. looks at himself in the mirror: just how vulnerable he might seem when he’s an embodiment of terror itself. shadow-riddled, consuming.

and it’s incessant, the fights between the two sides of this coin. so, tonight he learns to forget all over again. in his tattered jeans and leather jacket, alongside a tucked loose tee, he heads towards the door. sneakers strapped, he heads towards the rooftop bar in the area. knowing the district, it is never a hardship finding a place that would welcome him with open arms, its cacophony inviting. a weekday, yet the nightlife in apgujeong does not discriminate. he steps into the bar without further ado, the security check barely acting as one seeing just how many times he’s visited the hub. under the cloaking firmament of black, the onslaught of shadows might be overwhelming, but he’s accustomed to it.

he heads towards the open bar area, sparing no thoughts towards his surroundings until he locates a familiar face… no, two. he smirks. tonight will be interesting if he deals his card right, and for that, he makes a beeline towards the familiar face. her face brightens up when she spots him approaching her. she notices him before her company does, and it’s apparent that she’s always been holding some kind of interest in idris. it’s not like he’s been clandestine, his status as a member of the prominent gentlemen club might have preceded him… but he’s definitely a charmer when it comes down to both face and traits. and while she might be a tad cunning, she’s also driven by lust.

lee yoora, the youngest of the three daughters, parents fiddling with the financial firms. sisters married, and she, being the most flirtatious among them, hasn’t scored a man of her dreams. three years older than idris, he hasn’t exactly dodged her advances in manners too obvious. he tends to play hard to get… if not oblivious, when he’s anything but. he reads naivety with ease, spinning it in his fingers as he toys around the strings. she’s included, of course; she’d like to believe that his chance with him is not that thin. after all, she has that quixotic role to play: the intellectual woman pruned to become the trophy wife. that’s such a shame, he’d think, but that’s what makes her an effortless target.

“yoora-noona,” he nods at her after the gap is closed. “it’s been a long time since we last met. fancy seeing you here… and not alone, i presume?” he chuckles. eyes falter from her, redirected towards the night’s prey: seojun. he’s heard of the name from the shadier, filthier bars. to stumble upon a face in these two polarizing settings, it’s just uncommon. she’s eager to introduce him to this man, too, etching slight wonder in him whether the man is another influential wayfarer who likes to trace the dingy spots of seoul like him, too. he offers the man a smile in return. “idris, or ryujin. you can call me whichever,” he says. ordering the three of them drinks, he turns his attention back to yoora. “have you been here for a while?”

it’s not like he hasn’t been well-acquainted with this verse, life a subject of penitence, feeling like stepping past another liminality to enter the purgatory.

rinse, lather, repeat. he lets the seconds sink in. his bones house last night’s missions, coming home bruised, but he loved the ache. it anchored him to the precincts of realities, even when uncalled for. he could have gotten out unscathed, sure, but where’s the thrill in that? the bruises disappeared overnight, the adrenaline washed ashore. away. buried eventually, and he’s left with the residual values. he feels them ingrained in him. progressive ferocity that consumes the emptiness, even just for a moment. siphoning the senses, he lets them ebb eventually, getting out of bed.

the cold floorboards is another static. he doesn’t recall the last time he felt something, when the neural system wasn’t dysfunctional. neuroses might not be startling at this point. he is just another metric to gauge the nullified measures. pads towards the living room with the exquisite cityscape exposing its viscera beyond the full-length windows. he’s always liked the veins, streets mapped as its blood circulates, systole, diastole. and stops.

the presence on the other side of the door snatches his attention; it’s the shadow that pulls his focus apart prior to the doorbell. this is a part of the consequences: each existence that casts shadows, no matter how minuscule, swims into his awareness in an instant. this feels like a prolonged punishment.

he reaches the door in seconds, rubbing the nape of his neck before ruffling his unkempt dark silver locks. yawns once as he opens the door for her. “it’s still six minutes before my alarm,” he says, indicating a protest that isn’t meant to be masked, although he wonders if she realized he opened the door fast enough to imply that he had been awake prior. “you’re not supposed to come before six thirty either.” not like she needs a reminder, it seems. the girl looks… oddly delighted, as always. there’s something mechanical about her, the idiosyncrasies that permeate into the atmosphere almost eerie, inhumane. he has yet to pinpoint the source of it, but he doesn’t believe he wants to. exerting unnecessary efforts might be a distraction, but he also believes in the wisely chosen distractions.

closing the door behind him, he lets out another yawn as his sight follows stella heading past the open living area to reach the kitchen with the fresh produce. assigned: her doing the shopping the evening prior to restock. another eccentric custom he’s used to, pretty much, and therefore, another eccentric request.

office schedules are vacant today, and he doesn’t feel like going out. perhaps a day reserved for his artistic endeavors. maybe he can dismiss her early. “do you even sleep?” he eventually asks as she does the routine around the kitchen. approaches her to get his dose of caffeine even after knowing that it does nothing to his system, just as it would dilute alcohol as fast as possible. he hums at the scent of morning coffee served in the black mug, the added cream accompanying the dash of sugar inviting. sips at it after settling himself on the stool behind the island, the cool granite top another additional inducement to keep him grounded, somehow.

“don’t you get bored doing the same things every day?” he wonders after the third sip, eyes occasionally flicked at her, but he keeps his gaze mostly on his phone, checking the messages from last night. nothing encrypted, nothing decoded. he’s supposedly free for the day.

maybe this is wishful thinking.

well, it definitely is. the void isn’t going to fill itself, it seems, so he relents. fiddling with possibilities. the axing thought is schemed around a plan that has been a constant incisor. the creed has classified it under file delta: an operation pushed down under, almost to the backburner considering the fact that the project is subordinative. this is almost obsolete. he’s brushed over the shadows a few times, it feels. the target has always been elusive, the mutation telltale. this time, he’s determined to not loose the knot, knowing that within the second he’s in the presence of the target, he will have to lock the standpoint.

one year, three months, two days. he believes the man has ever been in his perimeters at least twice. always managed to slip, at least both times. it is almost shameful. he is not used to having failures clattering behind his gritted teeth. this is the trophy for himself, sculpted via psyche so stubborn he doesn’t know how to bend.

this is almost purposeless. it is not like the creed still cares; the case has been dropped weeks ago, the loose mutant serving none in their chalice. enhanced speed — of course, there is no need for such deviance within their rank. the abundance of the mutation has been infesting the creed just fine. but this, this feels personal. and he knows that this mark is around, in seoul. the clandestine reports on sightings of the mutation have been caught on his radar.

tonight, he’s putting an end to this restlessness. first, narrows down his options, which proves to be another latticework entirely. the target is, of course, faster than he can ever be… but it proves as such considering the absence of face. he believes that the information is retained, detained. there’s something that the creed is hiding from him, but isn’t that another routine? some of the leads given sometimes are counterfeits, too. he’s always been placed in a test. again, again.

again.

he puts on his jacket, snatching the essentials. vacating the edifice, he heads straight to his first point suspected. calculated the cardinal points of the man’s probable locations; he believes the latent motives of someone escaping another organization, they shouldn’t fall far from somewhere indistinct. and to hide, being nondescript… the target is good, but idris would like to believe he’s better. he’s faced mutants like the target prior. many, many of them. he senses their shadows before they sense his presence, so by that measure, he’s about thirteen steps ahead of them.

except when the place is crowded, the shadows merge. it grants both of them anonymity, sure, and he’s certain that if the target is already made aware of the creed coveting his head, the target wouldn’t be that… reckless. or so idris believes. he might have miscalculated the man’s intelligence.

one. that’s the name. almost ironic, considering the singularity of the target’s presence. he’s tempted to scoff, mind approximating the latitude, longitude, now. in the core of this black market set underground, the buzzing place is a location intricate to track. he is somehow guided by instincts. there is no radar, just this visceral lead that carries him to this point. and that’s when he spots the target’s back.

it fits the description of the target once briefed. the creed refused any further investigation, but upon pedantic observation of what has been given, idris is able to discern other features. not exactly standing out, the man is bargaining something with a woman behind a stall. a communication device, perhaps.

there are eyes on him, then on one. he feels somehow distinguished. furrowing his eyebrows, the peculiar feelings rise. the hair on the nape of his neck stands, reminding him that this close, the target resembles his own from the back… almost. he’s seen his own reflection through the mirrors in the training chamber too many times, to the vortex of confusion. it feels surreal. he can feel the influx of unease, but he lets the shadow underneath the target tangle itself surreptitiously around the man’s ankle. tendrils of black that secure, fastening the man so that he is cut off any escape possibilities.

the woman behind the stall notices him prior to the target. she looks startled, and when the target turns his head to determine the source of tacit shock, that’s when idris realizes as to why.

they’re a dichotomy. one’s face is his own.

he has never felt so stripped all of a sudden. nowadays, nothing can really catch him off guard, but this one certainly does. his mouth agape, but he doesn’t loosen the furtive attempts to keep the man anchored to his own shadow. he schools his expression to that of feigned normality, and smiles. “oh, here you are,” he says with tints of unhinged familiarity. his rapid heartbeat betrays him, sure, but he’s always been an exquisite actor. “i’ve been looking for you everywhere. thought i lost you in this market—“ he hums, head tilted as he casts a look at one, then the woman. “are you done?”

feeling the high and low, complexes riddling his mind with question marks. most evenings, he does not understand how to feel, how to cope. with his hands, with his heart. there’s hollow space in the chest where they should be: the heart with hands framing it. like a sacrifice in the ritual of emotions. sometimes it should feel clutched, sometimes it should feel jaded. that kind of fluctuation, volatile to the point of normality. he is a flask of unintended emptiness, still.

that’s when, in his jaunt, he desists the search for a man.

locating the said corrosive agent does not pose any difficulty. this is his point of view, askew: chanyeol is just another puzzle with pieces scattered on the floor. sometimes, chanyeol is also another picture with shards shattered against the wall. it is insurmountable, the curiosity. but he halts his train of thoughts, the diversion becoming the focus now. he saunters towards the usual corner of the bar, assigning himself the seat next to chanyeol.

the tale found itself in the juncture of unfortunate moments. arbitrary meetings like this one are perhaps too haphazard for some, but after a while, he has learned chanyeol’s whim to visit this bar. his perspective is based on patterns, after all, and there is no such a thing like coincidences. the fact that there is no routine becomes a routine, for feelings are not totally unpredictable. there are metrics to everything in this world, and he’s honed the ability to calculate each of them with a deadly precision since he was a child.

chanyeol is not exempted. and he doesn’t really look at chanyeol as he occupies the stool even when there are plenty of vacant seats next to them.

no. tonight, he longs for a company.

it might be tacit, but his act in itself would be verbatim than anything else. an act that speaks, its utterance synonymous to pervasive statements. it is just embedded in his person. he orders his drink, and when it comes, he still doesn’t look at chanyeol. speaks, however, to the man next to him, signifying the recognition axed in the present. “long day at work today?” he inquires, but this is just a siphoned thought. nothing more. he has no issue engaging in chitchats, but he doesn’t indulge in them. it always leads to a larger scale, and this is of no exception either. “you look beat.”