Black Silk ✘ Minsung

Chapter 16

  "Is she gone?" Jisung mouthed, scared of making any kind of noise. Minho did not answer and fell silent instead. It looked like he was paying attention to whether she has left or not. Jisung patiently waited for him to answer, not daring to move an inch. After a while, Minho nodded and removed his hands from the younger's waist. Jisung immediately crawled from under the table and with red cheeks as he opened the main doors to the room, revealing the two devils patiently waiting for them.

  "Let's quickly go," the angel said as he went down the halls, directly heading towards room 0325, the journal hidden under the sweater he was wearing. As he was about to take a turn, someone grabbed his hand and stopped him in his tracks. He saw Minho looking down at him with Hyunjin and Chan right behind him.

  "Where are you going? Your room is in the other direction," he said and Jisung tilted his head to the right. "or do you think you are coming back with us?"

  "Yes?"

  "Then you are wrong," the devil stated as he turned Jisung around with such an ease that it surprised even Minho himself. Jisung looked offended because even though these two did not get along well, he was still grateful that the devils decided to help him and will continue to do so.

  "Look, hyung," he said, catching Minho off-guard by the use of honorifics. "I know we don't get along and you probably hate my guts but I need your help on this. You don't have to pay attention to anything I say or do but please, let me be in your room and settle this with Hyunjin and Chan. So please, do me a favour and just ... try to overlook my presence."

  The older looked stunned by the younger's words but the pleading look in his eyes made him nod for some reason. Jisung smiled a bit and looked at Hyunjin and Chan, who looked even more surprised than Jisung by the fact that Minho said okay to this. They decided not to comment on it while they made their way towards their dorm, Jisung following closely behind. Minho watched them disappear as they turned around the corner before choosing the opposite path.

  The moment the door to their room was shut, Jisung pulled out the journal from behind the cloth of his sweater. He sat down on a chair that was by one of the desks and when he was about to open the journal, he realised that he couldn't. There was no lock on it or anything but he just wasn't able to open it — no matter how hard he tried.

  "Why," he let out a breath as the activity began to tire him out. "can't I open it?"

  The two devils were looking at him, amused. It for sure seemed funny to the two of them because they knew what to do in such a situation while Jisung did not have enough experience to figure this out. So watching him struggle like that was more than humorous for them.

  "Would you mind helping me?" he asked, desperation apparent in his voice as he tried to put even more force into separating the pages of the journal. Hyunjin came closer to him and put his hand on the book. Jisung watched his slim fingers trace the letters engraved on the leather cover. When the angel looked up and saw the devil mumbling words in a language he did not understand, he assumed that it was Latin.

  Hyunjin closed his eyes and said: "Aperi fores ad intellectum, quae olim clausae erant ad proprium bonum,"

  The book fell on the ground, immediately opening. Jisung stared at it, mouth agape.

  "What in Harry Potter was this," he said as he dropped on his knees and grabbed the book in his hands, slowly examining the pages. On the first one, there was a picture of Seungmin and he couldn't resist but think that his mentor was handsome even when he was a child — during that time, no baby is handsome (coming from Jisung's own experience since his mom was an L&D nurse). Before he flipped the page, he looked up to Hyunjin and asked him what was the thing he said before.

  "It was some kind of spell," he explained and Jisung did not believe him one bit but decided to keep his words to himself even though Hyunjin probably heard them, too. "The original is in Latin and it translates to 'Open the doors to understanding that were once closed for one's own good' or something like that. I don't know, I don't understand Latin."

  That sentence made Jisung and Chan laugh because neither of them did speak the already dead language but it worked and solved one of their problems so who were they to complain about this matter?

  Jisung flipped the pages as the two devils sat down on the bed and patiently waited for the angel to find some kind of essential information meanwhile they were talking about some other things.

  The angel read all the words very carefully and it was also very educational for him since he learnt a lot of new things about his mentor that he never knew. For instance, he found out that since Seungmin has pure angel blood flowing in his veins, not only the said blood but also his tears are very powerful and would be able to heal any kind of injury. Only one small cut, one drop of blood or one small droplet of tears on the damaged spot and the regeneration would kick in almost immediately. But he did not only find out nice things. There was a thing that lowkey crept him out. Seungmin had an older brother. His brother was born three years before Seungmin. Incredibly adorable baby, as described in the book, that was born half-angel and half-human. And that was something the mother was not happy about. Mrs Kim did not mention how but she only stated that she had to get rid of the baby as soon as possible — that she refused to raise a child that did not have pure angel blood running through his veins. And Jisung knew that was completely messed up.

  It took him only a few other pages before he read about the angel's weaknesses. He immediately alerted the two devils who stopped talking and averted their whole attention to the younger.

  "It says that his main weakness is The Holy Fire," Jisung said, looking up at them since he knew what The Holy Fire was and felt quite proud of himself for not being as stupid as he may seem sometimes. "but that is something that traps him and weakens his powers and it may even result in ... killing him."

  The air got stuck in Jisung's throat, while he was looking for more options and information that could be useful for them and wouldn't end up with his mentor being dead.

  "Here!" he shouted, pointing at the three bullets, "There are two of them. First, rose petals dropped in the tears of a miserable human. This one makes him feel nauseous and due to that, it forces him to tell the truth, and the truth only. Second, the smell of oak branches gives you the ability to lead you wherever you want him to go, just have the branches with you for the whole journey and he will follow without any problem. That's brutal. Oh, and there's also salt and silver."

  Chan sighed, "What shall we do? All of these seem like they will cause more damage than help."

  Jisung shrugged before sighing. He turned at the two of them and smiled slightly, closing the journal.

  "I guess I will have to find out myself."