SEOKJIN'S POV
This was life and death.
Not because the excruciating pain was slowly beginning to spread through every single vein of my body and neither because of the fatal power of the Mind Bond; but solely because just watching Y/N kiss another man was more than enough to effectively kill me inside.
What I felt for Y/N wasn't limited to the involuntary amorous feelings augmented by the Bond's mystical hold over me. It was something that ran much more deeper than I could ever explain.
Unlike most of the Mind Whisperers for whom the Bond clicked into place first for the mind and later for the heart, I was the complete opposite. My heart had fallen for her long before the Mind Bond between us had even begun to come alive.
Such a Bond was precious.
It was rare and unheard of for a Mind Whisperer to be bonded to the same person they had fallen in love with.
In most cases, the Bonds often formed with people you least expected them to form with, and that was also why - apart from their innate tendency to play around with humans - most of our kind never bothered to commit to anyone before they got bonded.
But I was bonded to Y/N. I was bonded to her already and despite being madly and helplessly in love with her, I wasn't about to let her treat me like a pushover anytime soon.
"This time you're in for real trouble, missy." I whispered harshly, refusing to look away from her furious eyes as she opened her mouth to retort. But I wasn't taking it.
"Not this time." Shaking my head, I proceeded to push my lips roughly against her soft ones, my grip on her chin firm. Gripping her waist, I let my hands fall to the small of her back, pulling her close and as she seemed to stop struggling, allowing me to deepen the kiss. Something snapped together inside me as the penumbra of the familiar shadows became clearer and clearer, toe-curling warmth seeped into my body and lifting the mist surrounding my head.
I shuddered, feeling dazedly hot as a breathy, lingering moan escaped Y/N's mouth, my brain immediately swamped with her immediate thoughts and apparently - much to my amusement - she needed to catch her breath but thought that it could wait lest we argued again once she pulled away.
Suppressing a smile, I placed one last firm kiss onto her mouth before pulling away and gazing down at her, doing my absolute best to keep my expressions calm, unimpressed and stoic.
"You can't just act so recklessly to spite me and then get away with it, sweetheart." I started. "I'm willing to take your resentment, your anger and your frustration...even your hatred. I'm willing to take it all." I continued, keeping my gaze fixed on hers as she looked back at me unblinkingly, mouth pulled into a straight line.
"What I'm not willing to take though is you pretending not to care for me and deliberately trying to hurt me, when both you and I know that what happened between us in the past was simply a stupid decision influenced by the rashness, lack of maturity and farsightedness on my part." I confessed, finally.
"I've made it perfectly clear time and again that I did not, in fact, intend to break it off with you permanently. I just...did not want you to lose out on a normal life. I was scared, Y/N." Voice shaking, I averted my eyes from hers, suddenly intimidated as her bright gaze seared through my body.
I knew she remembered what I'd told her. But she blamed me for singlehandedly deciding to take a break. She'd never agreed to it. I was the one who'd screwed everything up, jumped to conclusions in a moment of terrible fear and insanity, lost my prudence and disappeared without a single word.
But that didn't stop me from being selfish and wanting her still.
Head low, I loosened a sigh, desperate tears stinging my eyes. Blinking quickly, I swallowed hard and gingerly reached out for her hand before speaking again.
"I was terrified, Y/N. I could sense your feelings for me didn't run as strong for me and again, I was scared...absolutely, bone strikingly frightened of you eventually drifting away from me and then falling into a life of cursed misery just because you were fated to be bonded with me. Losing a bonded mate can be fatal for a Mind Whisperer, Y/N and even worse for the human who's left behind. You know that." My voice cracked.
"Yes, I know I was thoughtless. I know I shouldn't have left you just like that. But I was out of my mind then. And I'm sorry. For everything." I mumbled truthfully, determined to not leave out any part of my actual thoughts.
I did not want her to feel the need to rack through my brain for the truth. I was going to give it to her myself. Genuine and uncensored.
"If you want, I can apologise as many times as you'd like. I can spend all of my immortal life making up to you, if you desire." I stated, unfazed. I'd do this and much more just to have her back.
At any cost.
"Just please...don't leave me now that I've finally decided to be brave and grab onto you. I know I'm being incredibly shameless right now, but this is what I truly feel, Y/N. I cannot afford to lose you again, you...are indispensable to my life. I cannot do without you and absolutely detest the idea of an eternity without you."
Y/N'S POV
My resolve weakened, I blinked, sucking in a deep breath before looking at him again.
I didn't have the fortitude to further torment him when I could quite literally hear everything he said, echoing inside my brain before the words even fell from his lips.
Words that he could have easily whispered to me and saved himself from the humiliation of begging and apologising over and over, and yet chose to state and repeat just to earn a chance that...really, was nobody's but his.
As vainglorious as they were, his words were also inarguably true.
"I cannot really imagine being with someone else either." I finally admitted, my voice barely above a whisper. "Not when you're all that's been on my mind for the past five years."
A ghost of a smile played on Jin's lips before he cleared his throat awkwardly. "I don't suppose you've forgiven me completely enough yet to allow me to gloat about the fact, have you?" He questioned rather solemnly as I nodded.
"I haven't."
"I didn't think so." He responded smoothly. "But I'm going to take my chances and just say that I missed you too."
Choosing to stay silent lest I had an unpleasant meltdown, I quickly looked away from his glowing face, although making no effort to pull my hand out of his.
"What happened to Eun Ha?" I asked slowly, focussing on the fine cut of his dress shirt instead.
"Who?"
"My best friend?" I prompted only to receive no affirmative reaction as Jin frowned, looking genuinely lost.
"The girl you manipulated to make me come inside the club again?" I tried again, successfully gaining a response as Jin's cheeks flushed ever-so-slightly, his ears momentarily taking on a bright pink tinge before he turned to me.
"Guilty." He murmured sheepishly. "But rest assured, she's probably been tucked away safely into her bed by now and should be rapidly drifting into dreamland."
"How do you know that?"
"I put someone up to the job."
I frowned, looking around and noticing that there were at least twenty other people scattered across the club, all dressed in plain black suits, currently frozen into quiescence and looking exactly like the sort of people Jin could 'put up to a job'.
I turned to him, lips pursed. "Exactly how rich are you?"
"Enough to be able to put someone up to the job of safely escorting your drunk best friend home?" He raised a brow, grinning cheekily. "I know exactly what you're thinking at any given point of time, baby. But don't worry, I won't read and tell."
I gaped at his satisfied expression before rolling my eyes. "Can you turn these people back to normal already? I think the time's been frozen for long enough."
"Too long." Jin quipped, stealing a glance at me. "I can turn it back to the way it was anytime I want, but everything has a price, Y/N. Stopping the natural flow of time does too."
"What do you mean?"
"I pay for the lost time with a fraction of my own life force, Y/N." He explained calmly. "Which means that the moment I snap my fingers to allow the flow of time again, I will collapse due to the energy being sucked out of me."
I stared at him wide-eyed. "So...that means, you are the flow of time right now?"
Jin chuckled. "You don't have to go that deep, sweetheart. It's simple give and take. Nothing in this word is for free." He smirked. "So if you're prepared to drag my lifeless body back to your place, I'd gladly snap my fingers."
"Do it." I piped up, making up my mind. "Since I can always get one of the men in black to drag you back to your place."
"Smart. But the one they're bound to obey is me, Y/N." Jin grinned. "Their loyalties lie here." He tapped his temple.
Great, so those men weren't normal humans either. Absolutely fracking great!
"They are humans, Y/N." Jin chuckled aloud, reading my thoughts. "They just follow the orders that are whispered to them by me."
"So you pay them to manipulate their minds?" I echoed, dumbly.
"Yes, but it's a lucrative offer." Jin smiled. "They get paid for letting me use their exceptionally unguarded minds to not just help me carry out any normal tasks in the human world but also to protect themselves from the legilimency of the evil Mind Whisperers."
"Wow." I whispered, stumped by the interesting piece of information. "So you can counter legilimensy...um, whatever that is?"
"You could say I'm a decent enough Occlumens."
"I do not know what any of that means," I blurted. "But cool."
"Should I take that as a 'yes, I'll be taking you home'?"
I sighed. What other option did I even have? "Yes, I don't guarantee that I won't accidentally drop you in the middle of the stairs or bang your head against a wall though. Just saying." I shrugged as Jin nodded, already grinning.
"That's okay, because one, I have a strong head and two, because—" His eyes sparkled as he snapped his fingers together, the world around us slowly coming into motion as if the frigid ice covering them was slowly starting to melt.
I stared at Jin's eyes slowly beginning to droop as he lazily covered the distance between us, wrapping his arms around me and resting his face in the crook of my neck. "—there's no one else I'd rather entrust myself with."
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CHAPTER GLOSSARY
LEGILIMENCY - Legilimency is the act of navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting one's findings.
A person who practises this art is known as a Legilimens.
OCCLUMENCY - Occlumency is the act of magically closing one's mind against Legilimency. It is ancient, and has existed since medieval times.
It can prevent a Legilimens from accessing one's thoughts and feelings, or influencing them.
A person who practises this art is known as an Occlumens.