'•°WHISPERING CARNAGE°•'
-𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐏𝐓𝐄𝐑-
The café was my refuge; this place I can make believe that I am in a caring society. At the tables are my friends, and his, in a transient community.
We, humans, are born to need social bonds. While some people might consider it as one of their weaknesses, others have it blessed to them as their métier. We are born to need a sense of others, even if we are alone. It is terrible for the higher brain to know that we are solitary, that our life path has asked us to learn how to be the warrior instead of the cosseted, the protector and not the protected. Yet there is a need to fool the senses that the arms of humankind is a safe place and we belong to it.
So in this cafe, among the noises of people, their scent, their occasional glances and the chatter of the baristas, I gave my brain a little of what it craved, just enough to see me though. His fingers against mine, his warmth, his breath fanning against my cheek… I felt it all.
Not sabotaging other’s feelings, but this was the only place that didn’t leave me any bitter memories. I could miss him to the fullest here.
“You know you can just speak instead of staying quiet?” Yoongi was always indecisive, hasty and impatient. It didn’t matter as my lips curled in a petty grin, my eyes portraying the shimmer of pain; it always did. And it did its work; Yoongi’s eyes moistened.
“It’s his death anniversary, tomorrow, and I keep having him linger in my dreams,” the voice of hesitation was pliant, hoarse. “I still see him. Beside me, his fingers intertwined with mine. He’s still here, hyung.”
I could see hyung hesitating before his hands strapped around mine, “It has been two years Jungkook-ah. Even he would want you to move on.”
No, no he doesn’t. He loves me like I love him.
My salivating desires, my dwelling brain, my seizing heart, they all try to make the sound of plea and revolt, but would hyung understand?
“Jungkook ah? Please…”
“Hyung, no. There must be a reason. He must be sending me signals. Like he always did,” I muttered, looking down at the half empty cup. The wisps of the aroma were dead by then, just like the withering flowers at the start of autumn.
Yoongi hyung knew how stubborn I could be and I saw his internal dilemma, his loitering eyes, his warm puff of sighs. I could feel he was ready to burst but for the sake of the care he had for me stopped him.
Would he still love me, after all this? Would he?
Or just like the man I loved, hyung would blame me, say I am mad, say I am insane.
I witnessed his gravity-drawn shoulders paint a picture. A clear, concise one. A conflicting one. The soul welcomed a beat, but the heart didn’t. Neither did the mind acknowledge the need for it. I wanted to listen, to give him no more of a chance to sigh saying my name. But, it seemed worthless, just accepting the rise of new walls separating me from Taehyung.
One travels forth after loss of great love, great love of life, his love.
He perished to the greed of another before his very eyes.
He travels through the darkness of death.
Seeing his face in the mist of rain.
“Jungkook? Talk to me, Jungkook-”
Travelling through the darkness of his sorrow. He sees the light. He makes the effort to make way only to be pulled back by the loss of love and the laughter of death.
For he cannot find the truth in the rage and sadness. And now he travels the roads not for new love, but for new truth and new meaning. And he will always feel his pain in his own dark sorrow.
“Hyung, I killed him.”
Yoongi looked at me like he’d seen me breaking down hysterically, his eyes wide, his palms hovering over my shoulders, wanting to comfort me. “Jungkook, do you even hear yourself?”
“I-I do, h-hyung. And he w-wanted to die, to sleep. He said he couldn’t live with hating me, he couldn’t sieve my soul and build a high sanity, a man of morals. He said I was beyond the world and all the tragedies. He said I was enough to burn the sweltering hell.”
“Jungkook, stop it…” Yoongi sighed trying to brush stray strands of his hair away. “I know you always found yourself as the main cause of his death. That’s because you loved him. But, no, Jungkook. We all know what happened.”
“No!”
“Jungkook!” It had been rare that hyung ever raised his voice. But he did. He did, then. “Please Jungkook. Listen to me. It’s-”
“No, you listen to me! He said he wanted to sleep, and I helped him. I helped him while he laid on the bed, struggling to go to sleep.” I sighed, rubbed my eyes and continued, “I helped him go into an eternal slumber. I did.”
My ears turned warm as the words struck against my mind again, the memories serrated enough to rip a hole through my heart that had been stitched back more than just a few times. And every time a new stitch formed, the more knotted my stomach became.
I could see hyung dodge his mind and body sway, sway his head, and his sane mind went blurry. I knew he was scared. Of me. Of his own little brother.
Hyung’s lips went straight, a thin line that only ever came in during the most dire of times. “Hyung?” I asked.
Anxiety could come from paranoia or reality (eunoia), and it took talking with a person who was wise to learn the difference and become calm within. I aspired to be him, but he seemed far from someone who could keep himself calm anymore. Trying to defend the scarred mind from revelations that could only bring agony seemed like the worst option one could ever take.
“Don’t be scared hyung, I won’t hurt you. You are my hyung. If you don’t get scared of me, I won’t even touch you. Never.
I had even told him the same thing, but he said he would embrace death rather than cherish life with me.”
And as my eyes saw the first of the dark crimson blood stained his pale lips as he raised the burnished bronze goblet to his mouth. Sipping daintily, the thick, burning brew ran down his throat, staining his yellowed teeth pink. Like liquid fire, it scalded his throat. He ran his tongue over fleshy lips, now tinted a deep rose, tasting the copper of the fresh blood deposited on the moist walls of his mouth. Relishing it.
“For all the love I could ever shed, you gave me a lifetime of sins…”
Overhead the skies turned purple with bruise-coloured clouds. Rumble and thundering roars - a forewarning of an oncoming tempest. Bolts of blue electricity slashed across the maroon sky, ripping apart the heavens.
Was it death? A skeleton using a scythe to take the soul from its body? Does it have a heart of stone, or is it a demon? The definition of death could be a weapon held by someone who is watching you fall and preparing to use it? Could it be a close friend or family member? Are you being welcomed to Heaven by a light at the end of a tunnel? precisely what is it?
“You killed him?”
The ashes of his beliefs had clouded his eyes, his orbs ready to plummet fire.
Plethora of tragedies swarmed my soul as I swiftly lifted my gaze to match his hazel aura, “I did, hyung. There was no other choice. I stabbed him through his heart, I kept stabbing him until he pleaded death at my mercy.”
“Ju-Jungkook,” Yoongi whispered, looking straight into my eyes. Almost as though he had been searching for any remnants of lies, that I may have been cooking just to prank him.
“He wished for it, hyung. So did Hangyeol. Son Hangyeol.”
“But Hangyeol, he-e-”
I couldn’t really keep my heart at bay, my lips grazing my teeth in an attempt to stop my chuckle seeping out, “You know how I thought he could be my Tae’s friend, another soulmate? You remember how he had paved his step the other way? He had plagued Tae, made fun of him falling in love with me, a man.
He had left him unsheathed, his masculinity probed, his raw skin under blemishes forever. I had to fix him now, didn’t I hyu-”
And I never got to complete my words as I saw hyung’s head fall back, his body plough and gauge, tremble and trickle.
I sighed as my eyes silently witnessed the fourth eternity.
Hangyeol, Taehyung, Jimin and now Yoongi hyung.
One got his karma, the second his wish, the third sanity and the fourth eternity.
But I just helped them now, didn’t I?
.THE END.