Angel ✦ Nomin

32

"I'm sorry, what?" Jeno gawks at the boy.

"Hendery," he repeats without missing a beat, "Why? Do you recognize that name?"

"Actually...yes. I do," Jeno admits as he slowly takes a few steps towards him.

"Really? Where from?"

"Xiaojun," he answers, and Hendery's eyes shut. He bows his head and remains silent for a few moments before speaking.

"Xiaojun," he chuckles with a disbelieving shake of his head and a small smile on his face, "I haven't heard that name in sixty years."

Jeno finds himself taken aback by this revelation. Nearly a century without hearing Xiaojun's name? Truthfully, Jeno found himself vaguely jealous. He wishes he didn't have to hear that name, either.

"How come?" Jeno inquires.

"I never wanted to," Hendery replies bluntly. His voice is monotone and apathetic. He was clearly quite serious about this, and it baffled Jeno that he would be considering the doppel in purgatory that came for Xiao embodied him. Xiao clearly cared about Hendery, so why didn't Hendery care about him?

"Why not? What happened between you two?" Jeno asks, earning a deep exhale from Hendery. He pushes his hair back and out of his face, his fingers combing through his silky hair with ease.

"I fell in love with an evil, evil man...I knew that from the moment I met him," Hendery starts, "I dismissed this, though. I dismissed his behavior a lot, if I'm honest. More than I'd like to admit. I was a naive kid with a dangerous attraction to someone I shouldn't have. Well, I say 'shouldn't have' like I had a choice."

"What do you mean you didn't have a choice?"

"I've seen my file. I've seen his as well. We were doomed to be soul mates," Hendery rubs his eyes slowly.

"Doomed?"

"Doomed."

This further confuses Jeno. They were soul mates; why does Hendery carry so much resentment towards Xiao if he's supposed to love him? Granted, he was exceptionally valid in this, but if anyone in the world could love him and accept him unconditionally...wasn't Hendery supposed to be that person?

"If he's your true love then why do you say stuff like that?"

"Did he...speak of me often?" Hendery questions curiously, "I assume not."

"Well...no...only once when we were wandering through purgatory and ran into his Doppel. It...looked like you," Jeno answers.

"I can't say I'm surprised," he mutters, "What did he tell you about me?"

"Just about how you died."

"How did Xiao explain my death, exactly?" Hendery leans forward in his seat, awaiting Jeno's reply.

"He said that you two snuck out to go into the woods together to talk. He said you both went separate ways when it was time to go home and that your body was found two weeks later at the bottom of a lake. He blames himself for pressuring you to go and not walking you home," Jeno recalls.

"Funny he should say that," Hendery lets out a light laugh with a disconcerting air of amusement, "He always liked to repress that memory and deny what happened. What really happened."

"What? What do you mean?"

"I wasn't killed by a random predator on the street," Hendery confesses.

"What? What happened?" Jeno asks, grappling for some type of sensical explanation for how Hendery could have died. Though a tiny voice in the back of his mind was whispering the exact thing Hendery was implying and would quickly reveal.

"Xiaojun murdered me."