The stars have teeth.
Minseo knows that. He'd known that when the Touched had ripped his mother apart, nothing left of her but the echo of bones crunching between jagged teeth and the blood pooling over their kitchen floor. He'd known that when his sister had been torn out of his hands, the light fading from her eyes as men thrice her size had dragged her to a dark corner and shattered her spirit like glass. He'd known that when they'd come back for him, yanking him out of his own mother's blood and taking him for the first time under a starry midnight sky.
He knows that now, as he drowns in scarlet and sin, throat hanging out of his skin and elegantly draping over the ground. Death is beautiful, a black-haired lady dressed in white as she kisses the warmth from Minseo's cheeks and lets the last drops of his lost life stain the world crimson.
What a waste.
Every breath is agony, scything through his chest as oxygen whistles past his slit neck---too busy with its daily routine to give him even a lick of air. Minseo's fingers scrabble at the dirty floor in a nervous twitch, feeling nothing but grit and gore, all that's left of the boy he used to be.
What a waste.
He is blind, eyes open but never seeing, blackness filling the space behind his pupils with an aching vengeance. But he feels, still. He feels the lady in white, feels the emptiness in his chest, feels the stars and all their ivory claws. They watch him as he dies in the bare backyard of the whorehouse, a boy made of blood and bone.
What a waste.
It could be worse, Minseo thinks as the edges of his mind pop like an overheated lightbulb. At least I'm finally dead.
But he doesn't die.
The lady in white bends down to kiss his forehead. Her lips are soft and she holds him like he's made of crystal, like he's something precious, revered, loved. As if he is not an orphaned whore with a slit throat, bleeding out beneath the stars. The scent of jasmine and mandarin envelops Minseo in an embrace he hasn't felt since his mother died, and Death presses her halcyon finger to his ruined throat.
"Not yet," she whispers, each word a death sentence in Minseo's head.
Minseo feels it as she walks away. He knows it before she leaves.
It starts off as a stabbing pain in the base of his throat as his skin stitches itself back together, shattered hips forcing themselves outwards and in. There is a strange pulsing in his gut, the sound of blood sloshing around his organs rising to his ears, a grotesque geyser of death flowing back into his body and rumbling in his veins. He can feel bent nails, broken from clawing at his attacker, straightening themselves in their little pink beds as they reach for the iron-bladed knife left on the dusty ground. His vision rushes back full force, the haze in his mind imploding all at once. And as his heart starts beating once more, Minseo is flung to his feet like a marionette on its paper-thin strings. But he is no puppet. He would prefer it if he were.
He is Touched now. Part of the living dead. A creature of the night, more shadow than soul. He is what killed his mother, and what he has always sworn to destroy.
But Minseo is not like them.
The Touched steal. They take, take, take, and they give nothing back. They treat the shadows like playthings, always underestimating the darkness until it swallows them whole. The night is not kind, and the Touched do not understand that until it transforms them into the monsters they were meant to be, the monsters they always have been inside.
His feet leave nothing but dust behind as he pads away from his deathbed, looking back only once. Darkness rolls over where his dead body had been, sweeping away the grey-stained cobblestones and bloody nail marks. Minseo can feel the shadows nipping at his fingers as he walks, practically vibrating with excitement at the idea of fresh meat. He reaches out and strangles the night in his fist until its giggles fade to sobs.
The shadows are cruel. Minseo is, too.
He is not like them. He's read the stories, planned his quest. He is Touched, but not lost.
Every exhale comes out as a wheeze, fogging small puffs of grey in the chilly night air. Minseo does not feel the cold. He feels nothing but the ache in his chest and the blood in his veins, boiling until it spills over the confines of his skin. Brushing tangled dark hair off his crooked nose, Minseo stumbles over to the gate and passes straight through it. Barriers cannot keep the Touched away. Not human ones, at least. Not even in a whorehouse.
The cab is waiting for him outside.
Normally, the Touched walk away. They pursue an afterlife of short-lived joy spent dancing on darkness and kissing the stars. They dismiss the midnight taxi as an urban legend, a figment of their imagination even though they've seen it with their own two eyes. They reject their only chance of salvation for a second death that comes too slow, destroying everything they are until there's nothing left but the shadows inside.
Minseo heads straight towards the taxi.
The driver leans against the side of the cheery yellow car, elbows resting on the roof. He's young, decked in a navy blue, three-piece suit that fits him like a glove. Blonde hair curls away from his forehead as he dons a devilish grin that would have had human Minseo falling to his knees.
But Minseo is no longer human. He is something far worse.
"Not going to walk away?" the driver asks, straight white teeth flashing in his perfectly-tanned face.
"No."
"It's not too late to back out, you know." The remark is blithe, a lighthearted jibe lobbed from between smooth lips as the driver taps the roof of the cab with a flawlessly-manicured cuticle.
"I'm Touched. I'm dead."
The driver's brilliant blue eyes glint with the predatory appraisal of an antique collector gazing at some olden artifact. "I know." He saunters around the cab, coming to a stop right in front of Minseo. The driver is barely two inches taller, a fact Minseo notes with a hint of pride. "So, where to?"
Some call him a monster. Most call him the Needle-Mouthed Man. But Minseo is Touched, and the shadow-touched call him something else entirely. "Take me to my Master."
Around them, the night is silent.
Slowly, but ever so surely, the driver's smile widens. He peers down at Minseo's bare feet, filthy clothes, and haphazard hair, and he grins like a shark that's just spotted dinner. "Where's your money?"
A scowl spreads across Minseo's face, and he glances at the ground sullenly. "Don't have any. They killed me and you think they're going to be nice enough to drop a few coins in my mouth?"
"Two gold coins as payment or I can't take you. You know the drill."
Minseo lunges forward with his murderer's knife and guts the driver like a fish.
The man doesn't fall.
Instead, his skin, stained scarlet with Minseo's rage, sloughs off his body in thick chunks, pooling on the ground and running in rivulets over Minseo's bare toes. His face falls off in one fell swoop, eyeballs popping out of their sockets and dropping to his feet. Tendons peel from his joints, a slick ripping noise drifting to Minseo's ears. Minseo catches a glimpse of glistening red muscle before it's gone too, melding with suit and blood and viscera until nothing's left but a gleaming ivory skeleton.
The driver chuckles.
"Oh dear." He reaches for his stained jacket, shrugging it around his bony shoulders, and Minseo resists the urge to throw up. "That was a nice suit, too."
"And that was a nice disguise," Minseo snarls, knife clutched between his fingers so tightly that his knuckles blaze white. He will not tremble. He will stand strong until the driver lets him in. He will still his beating heart and force the shadows to their knees. "Charon."
The skeleton regards him coolly with his eyeless gaze, but a spark of respect waltzes in the empty sockets. "Haven't gotten one this fiesty in six hundred years. I'd say you've earned your trip, huh, boy?" Without waiting for an answer, he walks back to the driver's side and resumes his casual stance against the taxi, bones digging into the roof. "He'll love you. You've got a bit of bite to all that bark."
"I don't bark," Minseo snaps, tightening his grip on the knife.
The driver shrugs. "They all do."
"I'm not like them." Minseo finds himself slinking to the skeleton's side, reaching for a door that he knows his own fingers will never be able to open. Sure enough, the driver's hand is there before his own, glistening bones poised over the door handle. Up close, what's left of him is sharp, and Minseo knows the driver could slice him to ribbons if he wanted to. But he's toying with him, giving him a chance to prove himself. Seeing if Minseo's a worthy student for the Needle-Mouthed Man.
"What do you want?" the skeleton asks, his empty-jawed grin revealing a mouth full of bone instead of teeth.
"Peace. Love. Happiness. My mother alive and well. My sister safe with me. My father back home," Minseo answers without hesitation. An invisible deck of cards unfolds in his hands. He draws out the ace and keeps it in his heart.
The skeleton cackles, a grating noise that reverberates through the air like nails on a chalkboard, rattling shrilly in the hollow recesses of Minseo's stomach. "And what do you need?"
In response, Minseo steps into the cab.
The stars have teeth.
But Minseo's damned if he's going to let them eat him alive.
word count: 1693 words
okay so 1.38am counts as tomorrow, right? right???
HIHI SO i couldn't sleep (#insomniatingz) and i decided it would be a GREAT idea to start writing, because i'm an idiot. who can't sleep. and it was either get a headstart on this or continue with my 30k (and it's not even halfway through---) Jakehoon fic. and i've been working on said fic for the past 19 days, so i decided it was time for a break.
i am like literally so happy with how this is going wtf---like the start line and end lines??? man idk i'm just built different at 1am tbh
so...yeah! chapter 1! and i already managed to a) nearly hit the round one milestone and b) get in the first prompt! i really hope you like Minseo so far, he's kinda b!tchy in my head ngl but tbh if i got prostituted and then murdered i would be b!tchy too
please let me know what you thought of this chapter! feedback, constructive criticism, and comments are always appreciated!
ok love y'alls mwah mwah good luck my onc babes i'll get back to fanning in the morning
xoxo, Alex