ILJIN

35 | PRAY

Jesus, I sure hate this guy.

..

Sicheng lived a life almost too coincidentally like Lucifer's.

When he was younger, he was everyone's favourite. The model child, the trophy son, the basis for comparison.

But when his parents passed on, he was forced to fill up shoes bigger than his tiny feet could lift. What choice did he have but to carry the crippling load? He couldn't simply not care. He couldn't simply run away. This was his duty as the only son of the Dong family. So at the ripe age of 16 he took on the position of Clan Head and fell from 'Grace'.

The Devil, they called him. The epitome of evil, of sin, of darkness.

You are the 'cloak' over the brightness of the future, they had said. You snuff the good out of this world.

He had laughed when they said that, because blood had been bubbling in their throats as they spit their final insults at him. He had laughed because didn't they know? These words could never reach him, never hurt him anymore. He had attained a level of self-hatred he was practically untouchable.

They call him the Devil? So be it.

The Devil was just someone everyone liked to blame so they could run from the severity of their action's consequences, anyway, and Sicheng was the perfect 'someone' for that. There was no real evil he brought out. He was charming, definitely, but he was never the one influencing or enforcing decisions, just predicting them. He had never been the one to approach his customers, it was always the other way round. They swarmed to him like he was a piece of fresh meat and they were piranhas. They were aggressive. They were desperate. They were people who knew exactly how things were going to end when they couldn't pay up, and yet still carried on signing the deal.

They knew exactly what they had coming. Yet when the time came, they bared their clashing bloody teeth at him, spitting the same few unoriginal insults.

They made the choice. They knew what they had coming. They knew what their end would look like. They carried on with their poor decision.

Yet when it came down to taking responsibility, it suddenly wasn't their fault. It was all Winwin's. All his alone. He was the heinous, ugly monster who'd twisted their minds, made them stray from their holy beliefs and eventually snuffed the life out of their hollow shell of a body.

It was okay though, Sicheng could play the role. They wanted him to be the Devil? So be it.

"What the Hell is this?" Yilin hissed, eyeing the set up in the warehouse with a very 'what the fuck' expression which the Dong boy swore was the most emotion her porcelain face could afford showing.

He was quite proud of the set-up and the reaction he got for it, actually. It was something he had tinkered with mentally for quite awhile now.

"The reason why I picked Physics as one of my academic subjects," he said nonchalantly, smile creeping up his lips.

There was incredulity in Yilin's eyes as she dropped Lee Taeyong right onto the ground for Sicheng to carry alone, and moved forward to examine the extensively thought-out gears and links. It was a beautiful set-up that would later be cloaked for the sake of the plan, of course. But for now, admiration and compliments were very much appreciated.

Her eyes followed the flow of the fix, fascinated, as Sicheng dragged the Lee boy in, putting him in place and tying his feet up with the strategically-placed the rope. He checked the steadiness of the knots he made earlier and made a sound of approval.