Pained [1/2]

[honou_no_izumi]

Title: Pained

Series: 블랙/Black

Characters: Kim Joon/Reaper #444, Han Moo-gang

Summary: Nothing was truly as it seems. It's a fact he always knew in his line of work, and something... he needed to be reminded of.

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"Han Moo-gang...! Did you decide to bury the truth for your mother's sake?"

Immediately, he could feel extreme pain erupting from his chest. But then, of course. Inside this human chest, was his heart. His real heart. The heart that was stolen from him by his other mother, in order to save her own son. And he knew why his heart felt this pain.

Betrayal. It was the sense of betrayal that he was feeling.

How could Moo-gang do this to him? He loved Moo-gang like his own full brother, not just a half-brother. He cared about him very much. So how could...?

Guess in the end, unlike a half-brother who was not fully of his own blood... Moo-gang decided to choose his own mother. The mother that betrayed him. The mother that killed him with her own hands!

Like mother like so...!

"No... I have to go. I can't die yet! No!"

444 stopped pacing, as a memory from a time not so long ago resurfaced inside his mind.

"I have to go and ask her how she could do such thing... and why!"

444 blinked. 'Ask her?' That time... did Moo-gang say that to mean that he still wanted to hear the truth from their mother on what she have done in the past before he could accept his fate to die so early? Did that mean that Moo-gang...! Moo-gang!

...didn't intend to hide the truth of his death?

"I still have things to do...!"

Suddenly he could recall clearly how much anguish Moo-gang's soul had shown him before 007 and 416 dragged him away. Back then he thought that those outbursts were just the usual human soul's vain outbursts whenever they refused to accept their deaths. He used to see those outbursts many times before after all. Coming from tens, hundreds of souls that he collected before Moo-gang's... each of those screams he had ignored and stomp on coldly, which earned him the title of the most cold-hearted grim reaper in the Underworld. Yet now...?

Gradually... one by one, other observations that he used to note around him ever since he possessed Moo-gang's body came back to him again. All these times, even as he gets distracted by the random cases and investigations that the humans who still thought he was still Han Moo-gang dragged him to; and causing him to be unable to pursue his true goal that was to recapture his runaway partner, there was something that had always remain constant. Moo-gang, before his death... had been rigorously trying to find out the truth of his–Kim Joon's–death. After being requested by his mother to do so, because she still felt that there was something suspicious about it. Not Moo-gang's mother... but his mother.

Moo-gang abandoned the life he used to have prior to this, and decided to become a policeman. Even when Moo-gang never really suited to be one, this baby brother of his. Who couldn't really fight on his own to defend himself, without him coming to the rescue.

444 snorted to himself. But that kid... that small boy really did surpass himself back then. That time when they were being chased by Wang Yong-chun and were almost caught, and then little Moo-gang bravely dashed out and hit the man's face with a brick. That small kid who could barely be allowed to experience any kind of excitement, for worry that it might be too hard for his weak heart to take.

How could he, for a moment... thought that his baby brother; to think that Moo-gang could ever do something so terrible to him?

A tear fell out of his left eye as 444 touched the droplet that streaked down his cheek and stared down at his hand. Somehow that very action caused many more tears to fall down as he sobbed.

"I'm sorry... Moo-gang. I shouldn't... have doubted you..."