How My Brother And I Kidnapped An Assassin

18. Origins

Did Donghyuck know where he came from?

Mark thought this to himself as the latter was too busy screwing back a lamp that had stopped working (Xiaojun was going to fix it, but Donghyuck insisted on doing it himself - Johnny didn't train him for nothing.)

The two were seated at the kitchen table, the only two people in the house, not knowing the others' whereabouts; even Johnny just stated that he was "going to take care of something". Xiaojun and Kun probably went on a walk again.

"These stupid wires are so tiny," Donghyuck complained, setting down the screwdriver gently before grabbing the tweezers. "I can't see-"

"Do you need assistance?" Mark asked for the fifth time that hour.

Donghyuck shook his head. "No," he said sharply, leaning closer to the lamp. "I must do it."

And he continued fixing the object in silence, not paying any attention closer to Mark.

Donghyuck must be used to doing it alone, Mark realized; usually he would be much chattier, always filling up the silence with his words. The quietness at the moment was not something Mark had been expecting.

Leaving him alone with his thoughts. Well... if you could call it that. He was still getting the hang out of it; after all, he had only been in existence for a couple of weeks. Conscious wise, that is.

Mark knew where he came from. He knew where model L, R, K, and TY came from. They had been created, in a lab by the Royal Scientist Jung Jaehyun, for good for the people in the Kingdom of Korea. He knew how Jaehyun had slaved over scripts and scripts of the human genome, how they basically speedrun through the first 20 or 25 years of human life, how they recently have developed consciousness when turned on for the first time.

But Donghyuck... Mark knew that Donghyuck and Johnny biologically weren't siblings. He knew that Donghyuck was first cousins with the Prince of Korea, Highness Park Jisung. But everyone knew the last time someone in the royal family passed away was when the young prince, his wife and their newborn son had been murdered.

It was painfully obvious what had happened.

Now the question remained though: how did Donghyuck survive? Did they take him away when he was still breathing, thinking he had passed? Were babies switched at birth? Was there a decoy? Who was involved? Who helped him escape? Who still knew?

Did Johnny know?

"You're so quiet all the time," Donghyuck muttered under his breath. "Do you forget the human part of superhuman?"

"The origins of that word began with you," Mark. "I am still trying to grasp the definition."

"Grasp the-" Donghyuck set down his screwdriver so that he could clap his arms together. "Humans make their own definition, idiot. You know what I mean when I call you that."

Mark merely blinked in response, trying to process Donghyuck's words. For someone who is still biologically human, he doesn't really know how to act like one.

"Do you find a lot of differences between you and your brother?" Mark asked randomly.

Donghyuck raised an eye. "Are you still scared of him?"

"Why would I- should I?"

"Mark, he's been out to get you since day one," Donghyuck explained, tapping the screwdriver on Mark's head softly. "Idiot. Though now that I think about it, you may have started that fight with you trying to kill me first."

I have been assigned to kill the royal family.

Johnny definitely knew. And Mark was going to have to confront him before the situation got worse.