No Dogs Allowed

Median Nerve, Brachial Plexus

(ty for reading :D the little star thanks you for your presence)

(EDITED)(Note to readers: Some chapters ahead may not be fixed to be in line with the new edits)

The first person I cut open was my mother.

I'd never been allowed outside of the house in Incheon, then the apartment in Seoul, then the Blue Rooms of Mercy's intricate underground hideouts that she'd placed all across America in innocuous Chinese restaurants, modern art galleries, or subpar pawn shops. Such rooms were typically reserved for bodies, dead or soon-to-be dead, so being holed up in one for the better part of a year could only give a kid so many ideas.

Mercy must've known my train of thought too, because her first words upon meeting me were, "You know you're going to die."

I looked up at her, fourteen and fearful, my father's shadow and my brother's words and my mother's death a vicious metastasis in my bones, growing like a hungry, thorny vine from the inside out. I said, "Yes."

She waltzed across the gray-green stone. She crouched in front of me. "Do you want to?"

I repeated, "Do I want to?"

"Die."

A ridiculous question, for most people. But I hesitated.

Mercy's grin was slow, cold, unkind but unarmed. She said, slower, "Do you want to die, Ghost?"

I said, "Ghost?"

She pointed a black talon at my chest. I stared. Mercy said, "One more chance. Do you want to die?"

I considered her for a long, endless moment. I said, "No."

Her grin widened with life. She got to her feet and walked away from me. "Let me tell you something honest," she said. "No one will ever know you breathed the air of this earth. No one will ever know you bled, or you cried, or you smiled, or you lived. Your existence is as negligible as a grain in this stone." She slammed her heel into the floor just for emphasis. "You were meant to be a nobody, and you will die as such. The unchosen. The ghost."

I stared, but didn't dare speak. I let such cruel words sink into my skin, nestle like ink spiked into the epidermis by fine-point needles. So quick, but so permanent.

"I don't like that, if I'll be honest," she sighed. "I and Fate are not familiar, and if we are, we are not friendly." She turned around in a perfect circle. Her black fingers sparked in the air beside her white teeth. "I think you should get a say, don't you?"

"What're you talking about?" I snapped.

"There are no chances in this world, Ghost," she said. "There are only choices." Mercy splayed her hands wide. "You want to die? Then I will end your misery now, and you will be buried under the empire your father built and your brother inherits. You want to live?" She gestured around us. "Well, I'm certainly not going to stop you."

I pushed myself up to my feet, albeit shakily. I narrowed my eyes. "What's that mean?"

Mercy shrugged. She stalked towards me, then reached out. Her hand slid into my hair and she pulled my head back with a gentle order. A sharp nail sliced across my throat in a definitive line. "A ghost becoming a person is not an easy feat. When you are made to be one thing, the world has a way of making sure you greet it one way or another. To defy the world, you've got to be smart about how you do it. You've got to wait for when."

"My father will kill you if you don't kill me."

"Your father also likes a good game," she argued, blue eye glinting. "How entertaining of a player can you be?"