the DEVIL [JJK+KTH]

|40| Only Human

Chapter 40: Only Human

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A/N: ond prepare yourself-

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The skies had long grown grey and black like mounds of ashes of a thousand corpses. The cold wind brew harsher, swirling and cutting through the streets and sky-high buildings.

Winter was never warm.

For Taehyung, winter was everything he disliked.

Taehyung wasn't some certified Grinch... or maybe he was- maybe... he could only resort to disliking things he couldn't have....

The lights, the joy, the warmth-

For long as Taehyung could remember, it had always been cold ever since the day he had embraced HyunWoo's cold corpse in his arms, crying and pleading.

Not a day of warmth.

Wallowing in the cold for so long, Taehyung had succumbed far beyond the layers of frost, scarring his heart and soul alike, turning frigid and hard. Even if wisps of warmth would seep out of his poor old heart, the world would still jab him with ice, mocking and humiliating him.

And for what? Because he was still human? Because he couldn't feel pain just like any other?

He was good at pretending. Pretending that none of it hurt.

He was only 15 when he first wore that mask and then he could never bring himself to remove it...

He could never.

Taehyung breathed out, his eyes solemn as he stared into his reflection. He bent down to pick up his tie and put it around his neck, tugging onto it and twisting it around to place a knot below his collars.

Taehyung tugged onto the lapels of his plain suit, exhaling exasperated. He turned away from his reflection, his eyes immidiately falling on the brown-yellow pages he had been studying the entire afternoon.

It didn't make much sense- no really, apart from the fact that it was picked out of fantasy genre-  there wasn't anything realistic that could help him.

Angels, Demons, Heaven, Hell whatnot.

The bloodied runes found in the shack, were indeed inscribed in the book. Calling it, Silver Runes or so... and they were supposed to... summon.. The Kingdom of Legion?

Taehyung felt dizzy. He was irritated with the fact that he had wasted away half a day trying to study something so effortlessly bizzare that could have been some petty conversion-bait used back in the 1850s to amass gullible people.

There was no hints about the author either and it made Taehyung wanting to throw the book in his trash, but something within him held him back- so there it laid, on his table, still intact.

Taehyung walked closer towards the table, flipping to the page he had book marked.

The characters were written neatly in exquisite ink and some fine portraits were drawn to depict certain supernatural things.

Some pages irked him, some pages bored him, yet there were still many pages left to read.

Pressing his lips together, he flipped through the pages and the images drawn grew even more bizzare with each page.

It was this one particular page, that he felt his blood almost freeze in his veins. He let out a feathered breath, his fingers trembling over the image.