Jin inhales heavily through his nose. He tried to keep his focus despite the loud and discomfiting pulse of his chest. His gaze strayed from the large metallic double doors, and he turned his head, meeting the pair of coal-black eyes staring up at him from his stomach.
"How many people are outside?" He asks, whispering his words. For some reason, he feels intensely nervous. He shifts uncomfortably in his seat, his toes curled inward in anticipation.
Even his fingers voluntarily stopped from combing the man's hair.
Hiro reached for Jin's hand on top of his head and kissed his shaking fingers, intently studying the wary expression sculpted on his face. "Seven," He replied as he got up from the floor.
His warm hand enveloped the coldness of his beloved's palm. "You're shivering, love," Hiro whispers in worry. His thumb rubs circles on the back of his hand.
"I'll be fine." Jin did not know what made him shudder. The fact that Hiro had an odd sense of intuition or the slight echo of the lock ticking from the door.
The doors of his room swung open, revealing three people up front. Their eyes scanned the room as if it was the first time they had seen it—a female doctor who looked too good in her forties steps inside, followed by two young female nurses. A few seconds later, he saw various heads curiously peek from behind. It was another unfamiliar butler. Beside him was his mother and Mr. Harashi, whose noticeable height barely fit into the door's side frame.
One, two, three, four, five. . .six.
There are six people.
His eyes peek up at Hiro.
He said seven.
Heavy steps echoed through the marble floors, gazes fixed on him with an unspoken weight hanging in the air, and Jin had to bite his tongue—struggling to contain the feeling of embarrassment that gradually fed his deep and murky thoughts, like a roving virus.
He meets his mother's eyes and notices the glistening tears pooling in them. A deep ache hammered through him with a surging rush of guilt, enveloping him like a thick fog. He was unsure how to face her for possibly ruining the greatest event in her life.
The happiest he had seen her.
Deep amber red touches the coldness of his cheeks. He turned his head down and refused to look at her further, his body relishing the heavy feeling of shame. All he wanted to do at the moment was to run farther away from here or disappear somewhere no one could see him.
It was because taking accountability while having to do nothing to make amends took a hard toll on his insecurities—a fact that he had done nothing in his mother's life but gave her more burdens and trials.
The light squeeze around his needled-free hand breaks him from his reverie. His lids quiver and his forming tears come to a desperate stop. His wandering eyes lift from the marble floors.
He blinked at the large palm where his hand was unconsciously resting. A shudder escapes through his shoulders. He felt a tinge sense of Deja vu. His mind brings him back to the little memory of the first breath they shared close—a memory he holds dear.
A thumb slid over the smooth surface of his skin, pressing the softness of the pulsing muscles of his wrist.
"Cold?" Hiro asked in a whispered breath, just enough for him to hear.
Hiro was squatting on the floor, knees bent, and head rested over his other arm while peeking at him. The muscles of his extending arm flexed at the movement of his fingers. They were playing and rubbing the back of his hand.
Jin's shoulders ease, his body softening at the solace the man's presence brings—pulling him away from the lengths of distractions his thoughts powerfully harbored. He timidly nods his head in agreement, glancing sheepishly down at his small toes. He rubs them together. "Yes. . .better."
Hiro did not move an inch and just stared at him while holding his hand—as if they had no audience with them in the room—as if their parents were not watching.
Hasty footsteps scuff the floors, and before he knows it, his fingers momentarily lose hold of the man's hand. Familiar arms wrap around his shoulders. His nostrils caught the smell of fragrant flowers, and the corners of his swollen lids enlarged. A shuddered breath left his lips.
"Oh, sweetheart."
His mother's soft and shaking cry rang in his ears. The melody of her voice sent a gut-wrenching ache within him. Tears pooled around his eyes, and his chest squeezed in too much longing. His lungs scarcely managed to recover a breath.
"What have they done to you?"
She carefully cups both sides of his face—holding him tenderly as her teary amethyst eyes scan the wound on his head. "Oh, baby. Mommy's sorry. Mommy's so sorry." Her voice continues to break and crack. Her light brows furrow to a beautiful curve despite the etched pain on her face.
A tear fell from Jin's eye.
Asami tightly embraced her child again, her frightened and shaken heart trying to find comfort in the feel of his cold body. She pressed her palms unto his small frame to confirm he was here with her, and her sobs only grew worse as well as the ache in her heart—the tremors upon thinking what her child had experienced at moments she was in a comfortable place in his stead.
The regret, guilt, and pain destroyed her hour by hour. She could not fathom the huge crack in her heart as she had failed to give him protection as his mother.
Jin let the emotions wash over him like a gentle wave. A quiet sob left his lips as he buried his nose in his mother's warm clothes. His lips quiver helplessly. He could not speak.
The suffocating words struggle to come out of his throat.
His eyes tightly shut close. The thick strands of his damp lashes cling to each other through the continuous flow of his tears. A loud and shaking sob left his lips as his weight leaned against the slightly larger frame of her body. He wailed sickly in her arms, finally finding the desire to surrender from helplessness—not because of relief.
"I-I'm sorry, eomma."
He will always be her bitter curse.
Asami violently shook her head, and her shivering fingers wiped the tears under his eyes as hers persisted in falling past her cheek, moistening the youthful sight of her.
Jin's tears prevailed.
"Sweetheart, no, baby, why are you apologizing? Shhh."
"Your wedding." He looked at her, his eyes squinting in half as he choked in a sob.
Asami hushes him down. Her shivering lips kissed his injured forehead gently to hide the pain in her eyes. She looks up at the ceiling while thanking God. She rubbed his frail back. "Weddings can be postponed. Don't worry. Mommy's not mad. Mommy. . ." She can hardly speak from trying to hold back a cry.
"Mommy can never be mad." Her strained breath whispers to him. The valley of her thumb brushes the apples of his cheeks. They were moist and flush with his heavy tears. "I should have taken you with me." She breathed forcefully but could not help but mourn. Her eyes search his entire face. "Every day. . .Every single day, I regret leaving you on your own. Mommy is so sorry. . ."
She cups his face, her eyes beseeching for forgiveness. "I'm sorry, Mommy was not there when you were in pain and scared."
Jin slumps his forehead on her shoulder, looking down at the blurry image of her cardigan as he struggles to breathe through his nose. His body trembled violently as he let himself fall into a vulnerable state. Is it really not?
He sobs.
Is it really not his fault?
"How scared you must have been," The words coming out of Asami's lips barely manage to leave. Her shaking voice echoed through the quiet room—shrouded with the sounds of soft sobs, willowed tears, and surrounding frowns. Eyes hover down at them with sympathy and heads bent patiently for their grief.
Jin cowers in her arms, shutting the tears in his eyes weakly as he slowly nods. "I thought I wouldn't see you again, eomma." He gasped for air.
Asami gobbled her sobs and embraced Jin tightly, burying her face to the side of his injured head. "Oh, sweetheart. I miss you so much."
Not too far from the shut doors of the quarter, two figures stood in the empty corridor. Mirroring the empty walls with no framed smiles, Hiro stood head-to-head with his father—whose eyes pierced at him. His face turns placid to conceal, however his studying gaze remains, capturing every drop of harbored anger and disappointment.
"I did you favors." Harashi's brows furrowed up, hurt and frustrated. Unlike the thick golden ring on his finger that pinches the thinness of his nose bridge, a grudging curse left his lips. "Years, Kai."
He had let his behaviors slip through his morals in years of his life. He had undertaken to not look back at the past and list every single time this conversation crawls to a cycle of events.
"But this?"
Harashi's lips thinned to a thin line, matching his patience as he looked over his kin. "For the love of gods, whose lives do you think karma could fuck if things don't put to a stop?"
Harashi looked at his apathetic kin and his blood surged to the ceiling. "God forbid this family finally touches pure souls."
He exhales, trying to find strength despite his helplessness, torn in this one-sided conversation.
"Do you think I deliberately escaped that life only for you to follow that madman's footsteps? Do you hear me?" Harashi grimaces at his stubbornness.
"No." Hiro looked at the man in front of him, the corners of his eyes itching.
Harashi Woo gripped the front of Hiro's pressed shirt and dragged him to a nearby and empty room, shutting the door behind them in a loud slam.
"Goddamnit, make it make sense! You drove this madness to start! Those people are after the trails of what you caused!"
"What would be left if she knew what truly happened?! They're innocent people, Kai! She's a mother and unknowingly risking the life of her child on the day she was to be a part of us! The only thing she wanted to protect."
"And you expect them to look at us the same way when they know what you are?!"
Hiro's fingers twitch. The itchiness on the back of his neck crawls and shrieks painfully through his spine. His ears ring achingly.
It's okay.Jin told him it was not his fault.
It's okay. Jin told him it was the bad guy's fault.
His chest and lungs squeeze air out of him and replace them with something cryptic.
Jin told him he should not blame himself.
It's okay.
No.
"It's best, to let the incident boil down during the investigation." Harashi Woo's quiet and firm voice rumbles around the room, filled with regret and self-blame. Heavy security was already breached. That bloodbath only proved the nemesis' assumption. "Leave the woman's kin." He could have stopped it. He could have by the chances he had failed to take action.
"It won't happen again."
Harashi pauses, his eyes turning to his own, alarmed.
"If you wish nothing as much to do with me, you will never see me, but never use that to fulfill your control of hiding them away from me."
Please. "Anything. . .but that."