MALEVOLENT HEART | TK

Chapter Eleven

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"Am I going crazy?
Would I even know?
Am I right back where I started fourteen years ago?
Wanna guess the ending? If it ever does
I swear to God that all I've ever wanted was
A little bit of everything, all of the time
A bit of everything, all of the time."

There was blood on his hands.

Staring down at his fingers, crooked, calloused and stained with dark red, the boy couldn't help but frown as he turned his hands over and analyzed every part of his skin he could see.

There was blood on his hands and he knew it didn't belong to him.

He looked up, eyes large and filled with sparkling lights despite the atrocious sight of his hands, of his whole body—of the man behind him. There was innocence in his eyes, the type of innocence one lost only when they got older and they began to understand that no blood should stain a child's hands.

"You did well." The man ahead of him said, his voice as rough as ever and, as the boy looked into his eyes, he couldn't help but find peace in his words—he had done well. "But you could've done better."

His heart stopped beating for a few seconds, seconds in which the poor child started questioning his every move and actions—where were his mistakes? Where were his imperfections? He couldn't have any.

He needed to be spotless.

"I'm sorry." He answered, the voice of the 7 years old echoing softly in the dimmed room. There was no one there besides him and the man but it felt like millions of eyes were watching him, like millions of hands were constantly pushing down on his shoulders with such intense pressure that he couldn't even breathe.

Mistakes were not to be made. Not by him.

"Excuses won't solve anything. You have to do better." The man crouched until they were eye to eye but, for some reason, the child didn't feel like they were equal. "You have to be better. You need to grip that selfishness inside of you, that greed, that wrath, and use it—pair it with your intelligence. Excuses are for those who are allowed to make mistakes. You are not."

He was not.

Mistakes were not to be made, not by him. As he turned around, blood still dripping from his fingertips, the child started repeating those words—words that would eventually stain his brain forever, his soul, his mind, his life.

Mistakes were not to be made.

Those words awoke a type of greed inside Jeon Jeongguk, a type of greed he could not even describe. As he grew older and the years passed him by, turning him into a teenager, Jeon Jeongguk didn't start wanting just one thing—avoiding mistakes.

He began desiring, wanting everything and anything he could have in his hands—the power, the strength, the knowledge, the truth.

He wanted everything but there was always something stopping him from acting out his thoughts—a limit imposed by that man and his status, by who he was and how he had raised Jeongguk.

That limit would be broken the night he'd be asked to save a child from a deserted cabin in the woods and Jeon Jeongguk would finally realize that boundaries never existed, that they weren't real, especially not when it came to him.

He was limitless.

He could have everything he had ever wanted and so, with the thought of that poor child in his head—who had reminded Jeongguk of his past self—the teenager decided he wasn't going to be bound any longer.