a quiet mind | huang renjun

Chapter 3

"He was a high-schooler!" Renjun gaped, flickering his eyes between her bored ones.

"He was a liar" She threw herself to sit on the counter as more men began to file out from the staff room to clean up the mess on the floor

"Yes but you shouldn't have killed him" Renjun looked astounded.

"Why do you care so much about someone you don't know" She lifted her hand and scrutinised the blood that flowed endlessly from her palm

"Because-" He was about to reveal the fact that he was an Angel; naturally, angels had a strong empathetic heart. "Because that's what any normal human being would do" He correct himself, running a hand through his hair

"You talk too much" She scoffed, taking herself off the counter and walking towards the staff room that had a massive door that said 'Do Not Enter'

"You're going to leave after killing a child?" Renjun was utterly bewildered

"He was 18" She had her hand on the keypad of the door "And you might just be next"

"Xinyi" Renjun called, still not willing to drop the topic. Xinyi stopped dialling in the password "How did you know my name"

"I..." He clearly couldn't think of a good enough excuse at the time.

"You didn't even open the contract" She turned around "How did you know my name"

"Uhm..." His eyes jumped from her gaze

"Are you someone sent to assassinate me? What, you're here to kill me?" She clicked her fingers "That's why you agreed so quickly to signing the contract. You just wanted to kill me, wasn't it. Because even if you signed that contract, me being dead would immediately get rid of all the effects of it anyways"

"No that's not..." He began to back out.

"I've seen this move too many times" She laughed. With two claps of a hand, a gun was brought out to her. Taking the metal into her grip, she spun it around, admiring it.

"Hang on" Renjun put his hands up in a defence

"Who are you" She loaded the gun

"Listen to me"

Xinyi brought the gun up straight to Renjun's head "I don't trust outsiders"

And the trigger was pulled

—

Xinyi slid her card over the pin pad, a square on the floor sliding to reveal a panel of stairs that twirled towards the ground. Slotting the card back in her pocket, she stepped down, eyes bored and body tired. After being greeted by the members as she walked down the stairs, she entered her office. There was a ring in her palm. She rose it to eye level, scrutinising it in a curious manner. It reminded her oddly of the tattoo she had once saw.

She had picked this up after she gave Renjun a bullet to the head. She remembered this particular ring rolling towards her in its own accord, staining the edges with dots of blood as it escaped Renjun's finger.

"What a peculiar ring" She brushed the pad of her thumb over each little indentation, stopping as she reached the carving of a swan. Just as she was about to slide it around her finger, the door burst open. Her jaw fell open, eyes wide with shock as the ring slipped from her grasp.

"There it is" Renjun heaved. With one swipe of a finger, the ring flew towards him and rested comfortably in his palm.

Xinyin thought she had finally gone insane.

Behind Renjun was a flock of feathers; pearly white and a luminescent angelic glow that seemed to emit beautifully from each feather. The wings stretched out and pushed against her room walls, curling and ruffling as if it had its own life. Renjun's silver hair had brightened, a golden orb swimming inside his irises.

"Why...why aren't you dead" She remembered every second after she pulled the trigger. The bullet fired and it pierced right through his skull. There was no way in hell he was alive, let along alive with a pair of wings.

"Taeyong's going to kill me for revealing myself" Renjun cursed, scratching the back of his head as his eyes connected with hers. He slipped his ring on and just like that, the wings seemed to disappear as if it had never happened

"But...how...what?"

"Next time, don't just shoot someone because they're suspicious. It hurts" He clutched his chest dramatically

"What are you?" The words just blurted from her lips

"Renjun" He shrugged

"But I shot you. I-I know I did" She seemed to want to fumble for her gun again

"Shoot me again" He spread out his arms "I dare you"

There was a surprising lack of hesitance as she grabbed a gun from her bedside cabinet and fired a bullet directly at Renjun. She must have been convinced it was all just some hallucination. As the bullet soared towards him, he knocked the ring off his finger with a flick of a thumb.

A snap of a finger; the bullet froze.

Xinyi's body paralysed; everything from the mist of her breath to the ticking of the clock froze. It was pure silence.

Kneeling down, he picked up his ring and tauntingly spun it around his fingers.

Renjun took the bullet into his fingers, placing it gently on the table as he took long, slow strides towards Xinyi. That golden orb inside his eyes shimmered brighter, like the fiery wings of a pheonix. It burned, and it was the first time it had burned so blazingly.

Renjun tilted his head down to meet Xinyi's stone eyes, staring right through the void that brewed inside her irises.

"I can capture her soul now and get it over and done with. It'll make up for me exposing my identity" Renjun encouraged himself, flashing his eyes down to her lips. He let out a small chuckle, before placing a hand around her neck and tilting his head towards hers. A bare centimetre away from her lips, he felt a chill travel down his spine, halting himself as his furrowed his eyebrows. It was a feeling that said: the monster's are here. This wasn't right; catching souls never scared him. But this did.

There was something cold that he felt from her, his breaths evidently becoming shallower as his grip on her neck tightened. Xinyi wasn't even moving an inch, yet he felt as though she was holding him by the throat, taunting him, strangling his existence.

The glow of his wings dimmed and that golden orb inside his eyes bounced around frantically in a need to escape.

He felt cold, so, so cold. Everything inside him felt lost.

Then, he flickered his eyes up to Xinyi's.

On her face was a smirk. Such a mocking smirk