Yoon Bum x Reader: Mindfuckery

Chapter 22: Confession

"It was... Mr. Yoon."

It was now that Yoon Bum's panic reached terminal velocity. Tears of hurt and betrayal gathered in his eyes. The officer stood abruptly, prepared to cut off any route of escape to the door were Bum to try and run. His throat tightened when Seungbae retrieved the handcuffs from his belt.

"Mr. Yoon, you are under arrest for the abduction and assault of-"

"No, not him." You spoke up and they both froze in place. "His uncle." You emphasized and Seungbae's posture eased a bit. Bum gazed at you in awe. "I'm prepared to make a statement..."

Yoon Bum was not the onerous tyrant you initially convinced yourself of; he was just a catastrophic mix of lovesick and regular sick. He was the prodigal son who came home, finally admitting the world defeated him, and left his life in the hands of another. After a long agonizing journey, his poor exhausted heart chose you. Even if it was only temporary, Bum had returned to his rightful ways, and you couldn't simply ignore that fact.

At first you felt that revenge was warranted for your suffering, but then you had to wonder... was it really necessary? After all this, it seemed that you were no mentally worse for the ware. All your psychotic episodes had been faked; and your depression was mostly faked. On top of all that, the doctors told you that your legs would heal too. Bum, on the other hand... he must have had no idea the force he would reckon with when he abducted you, how you would torture him so. Your suicidal farce had destroyed him so thoroughly, and in a weird way it felt as though you were almost on equal footing at this point. Granted, the original sin in question was definitely his, but in terms of psychological turmoil, you had certainly reaped the spoils of war, effectively plowing your submissive captor into the dust. Bum didn't need to go to jail; you had already punished him. So what else was there to do except... forgive him?

In the surreal light of freedom, you were able to unearth a piece of wisdom that had once been hidden from view. Whether or not it could be called a silver lining was still to be determined. Something had dawned on you during this unique and backwards learning experience: a sick sort of self-discovery. There exists an old wives tale that regards not judging books by their covers alone, and that there are things behind the frosted glass that one cannot see; and you realized they were both incredibly astute. No one truly knows what they are capable of, what the other side of the glass looks like, not until they've been there. It is obscured by preconception, warped and twisted by personal bias. That house was the other side of Bum's glass, and perhaps.. even your own.

You had visited that place, witnessed his outlook of desperation, seen the things it can make you do... then experienced them. Yoon Bum had manipulated, struggled and fought to survive, killed someone. And when faced with the same desperation, what had you done? Exactly what you thought you had to. You manipulated, struggled and fought to survive... and killed someone... It was during this reverie that you discovered you and Yoon Bum were the same. If anyone were to ask why you did the things that you did, you would tell then that you did what you thought was necessary. But then... couldn't Bum say the same thing? Though unintentionally, you had driven him to the brink of loneliness, and he felt the only way to remedy his despair was to steal you away for himself. Detestable as it was, he was... kinda right? They say two wrongs don't make a right, but it appeared that several hundred in a row seemed to achieve some sort of results. It felt akin to rolling a set of dice: no matter how unlikely the outcome or how unfavorable the odds, if you keep on rolling, the dice are bound to land on the desired number eventually, even if just by chance. Somewhere in an amalgamation of torment and strife, you and Bum had found common ground, found love.

Was Bum a terrible person? Pretty much. Abhorrent and flawed? Absolutely. But somehow... none of those things had been enough to lessen his value in your eyes. Amidst the tears and the wreckage, he had proven himself worth the trouble. The inside of the looking glass was no longer as misshapen as it once appeared. You had performed countless acts that, from the outside, you thought yourself incapable of doing; like housing a strange man from the streets, using clever schemes and deceit for wicked personal gain, or even thoroughly calculating various ways to end someone's life. If this situation were looked upon with an ice-cold eye, one could even argue that your methods were more disingenuous and cruel than Yoon Bum's. Perhaps it was this humbling thought which swayed your heart, but perhaps it was something more...