Ishihara // ATEEZ ✔

1 Ruins

He trembles but he has stopped rubbing his hands. Instead, he slams his palms on the ground and looks straight to the general. "My family is crippling in debt and I have just lost my only job. Someone has been selling untrue stories about me until my employer kicks me out. It was never true! Now my child is sick, and my wife is taking care of her while our resources run out. I'm trying to live by the gold bars while I go find another job."

Akira buries the tip of her sword to the ground, making it stand just inches away from the runaway's hands. He flinches, but continues to stay put. She descends, so that their eyes are now of the same level. "Then you should've stolen from the noblemen, not the queen, you fool. That's how you live. Punishment for thieves in the palace is execution."

"Yes, I know that."

The runaway's resignation almost makes her falter, but she quickly regains her composure. She stands up while snatching the sword. She lifts it past her shoulders. "Say your last words and you may never see them again."

Tears roll down his cheeks. "I thought that maybe I could catch a glimpse of my son in the palace. He has been shipped off to the palace to take up a job because he wanted to help his family. I don't even know what the job is. His incompetent father could not do anything because we know that working in the palace pays really well. He has been sending us money but lately we have not heard of him. I was actually out looking for him, but I hesitated for a moment when I saw the gold bars. I never wanted to steal but it was too strong of a temptation. You royal people leave your gold bars lying around the palace as if they're just dirt but people like us will be able to-"

He never gets to finish his sentence as he feels a slash across his neck. The wound opens, and blood spills out, but to Akira, who is now wiping the blood off her blade, it is only a colourless liquid. Lifelessly, he falls backwards. The lieutenant eyes the blood and mutters, "Yellow. A pure servant."

"I do not need to know that."

"Yes, your highness," the lieutenant playfully replies.

"Shut up. If the queen hears you, she will kill both you and me. Stop calling me your highness when I do not have an ounce of royal blood in me, let alone be a queen."

"Well, seeing how close you are to your queen, you might as well be one." He sneers. "But you sure are ruthless, you didn't even let him finish the sentence."

"I do not want to hear a pointless a story. I have already told him that it wouldn't change his fate. I only listened to it because I had to bear with your childish requests." She glares at him.

The lieutenant does not reply, but instead goes over to the body. Out of conscience, he slides down his hands over the runaway's eyes and closes them. "Rest easy, Choi Daehan."

She lifts a questioning eyebrow to which he replies, "Ah, he wrote his name on his collar. They must be living in a quarters that house a lot of families. Writing the names is a way to avoid people taking away the belongings by accident. Though they do take them on purpose sometimes. I really wish I could know what his son's name is. Maybe we could've at least tracked his working son in the palace. I wonder who it was though, I don't remember any of the servants looking like him. Maybe he looks like his mother instead."

"You sure do talk a lot for a lieutenant."

"Ah." He puts a hand over his mouth. "Sorry," he winks.

"Call for the rest and ask them to bury the body. Find his family and deliver the news that he is no longer with them."

"Yes, general." He salutes and then after a thought, he adds. "I like how you still have the heart to bury his body and inform his family. Proves that you may be ruthless but you still have a tiny bit of heart."

She doesn't answer; she walks over the ruins, carefully avoiding the obstacles set in front of her. Her destination is the palace, on her way to meet the queen to deliver the news that they had managed to capture the thief. Leading her horse, she sets off the moment the sun dips into the horizon. She does not take the moment to appreciate - it's not like she can see what colours blend in to make up the sky. She cannot even confirm what the colour of the sun is. Ever since birth, there is only one thing she believes from other people - what the colours around her are. She has no idea how orange looks like, let alone complicated colours like turquoise. It is described as a mixture of blue and green, but she doesn't even know what blue and green look like!

Her world is composed of black and white. People ask her, isn't it hard? Then she answers, how can it be hard when she doesn't even know what it's supposed to originally look like anyway? This is the world she knows, and the world that she has come to love. A lot has been said to her - you're missing out a lot! A colourful world is a happy one. She snickers at the thought, how can a world be a happy one just because you spread some colours? She can never imagine how it's like to have colours in her world, like how others can't imagine how it's like to not have them.

Black and white envelope her. Black and white are her sanctuary. She will not run away from them, they are what make her safe. After all, she thinks: would she bear to kill when she sees the actual colour of blood spilling out from her slain prey?