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chap 15 (end)

Five seconds. He opens his eyes and looks, one last time, at the face of the man he loves, the man that he's fated to. Kairos, the God that stands alongside himself, the God Chronos.

With all the strength he can muster in his muscles, Seokjin drives the dagger up towards his own eyes. He hears Namjoon scream, he thinks, he's not sure, he can't distinguish it from the sounds of his own blood rushing through his ears like a warning sign telling him no, Seokjin, don't do this, don't-

Hot blood sprays all over Seokjin's face and he squeezes his eyes shut instinctively, to close his eyelids on the dagger he'd plunged into his eye, but for the first few seconds Seokjin doesn't feel anything other than the blood on his face. He doesn't feel anything in his eyes, nothing at all, so slowly, warily, he cracks his eyelids open.

The sharpened point of the dagger is mere centimetres in front of him. His eyes widen is shock, in fear, in a dreadful kind of anticipation that's been put on hold and he's confused, for only a moment, because after that the rest of the world around him and the dagger's point becomes visible, and he sees that Namjoon had lunged forward to grab the dagger before Seokjin could gouge out his own eyes.

He's got one hand gripped tightly around the hilt of the dagger, his hand shivering over the top of Seokjin's hand, and his other and holding the blade. It was Namjoon's blood sprayed over Seokjin's face and it's Namjoon's blood that's dripping onto the foliage under their feet. "N-Namjoon..." Seokjin stutters, quietly, in shock.

"Thank god," Namjoon whispers back as he softens the pained look on his face, "I made it in time." And then, just as quickly as it happened, his expression turns sour as he rips the dagger from Seokjin's grip and flings it onto the ground. "What the hell were you thinking?!" he nearly screams at Seokjin.

Seokjin's eyes travel to Namjoon's injured hand that he cradles with his other in front of his chest. There's so much blood that Seokjin can't see the gash or how deep it is. "I- Namjoon, this isn't-"

"This isn't what you were planning?" Namjoon finishes Seokjin's question as he now uses his other hand to hold tightly over his wrist in the place of a tourniquet. "What were you planning? To blind yourself?"

"Mm," Seokjin sounds, his voice small and scared. "None of this would've happened if it weren't for these eyes of mine."

And once those words leave his lips he suddenly remembers what his eyes are for, the curse of having them, so he snaps his head up and looks at the numbers floating above Namjoon's head because surely they were ticking down, surely the seconds were running away from him, surely he should be dead by now-

One second left.

One second left, but even as Seokjin stares at it with wide eyes and bated breath, the counter doesn't move. It stays, frozen, on just one second. The number is pulsating, it's flickering, and with wide eyes and a bated breath, Seokjin reaches up to touch it.

But Namjoon grabs his wrist before he can. "You told me, before your trial, that you are the grim reaper. You didn't elaborate. But I've never stopped thinking about it since you said it, and I remembered how many times you would look at something above my head. I didn't understand at the time, but now I do."

"Yeah?" Seokjin breathes, his wrist still held by Namjoon's bloody hand.

"You can see how long I've got left to live. You can see how long everyone has left to live."

He brings Seokjin's hand back down, away from Namjoon's lifespan that reads just a single second, nothing more, nothing less, and doesn't change. "Yeah," Seokjin whispers in response.

"It was my time to go, wasn't it? I saw it. When I kissed you just a minute ago," he tells Seokjin before he slips his bloody hands around Seokjin's. "You were going to murder me."