North - South

A candle in the dark

Jeong Hyeok instinctively stroked the watch at his wrists, as if he could cling to the small object, as if it could give him the brave, as if Mu Hyeok could.

The sight of the yellow envelope on the desk was causing all his body to tense. The muscles stiffening, the jaw sharpening, the head starting to pulsate at drum intensity.

He had received many of them, through the years. Different in content, all equally terrifying.

The first had arrived just half a year after his comeback from Swiss. A yellow envelope, well positioned at the centre of his desk. He had thought that someone had just left some documents for him to check. Opening it, instead, something metallic had slipped off.

It was Mu Hyeok's watch.

On that day he had nearly died of a heart attack, so much being the emotions that the sight of the vintage Chopard he himself had bought for his brother had unleashed inside him. But then new envelopes had arrived - a shirt marked with mud and blood, a sandal, and the last, horrific, a whole human nail, dirty with blood as if it had been ripped off his finger - and the rush of emotions he had felt the first time had like faded, as if he was getting addicted to the horror. 

Someone was playing with his nerves. But it was a good thing. It meant that the battle wasn't inside his head only. Besides, it meant that Mu Hyeok was alive.

Jeong Hyeok opened that last bag, someone must have left it while he was busy in a colleague's room. This time it was a lock of hair that slipped on his hand, which had the man sighing with relief. At least they hadn't ripped him off another nail, at least they hadn't hurt him. Out of instinct, he neared the lock to his nostrils, hoping to smell his brother's scent, but all he was able to perceive was a slight mixture of dirt and sweat.

And even if it wasn't like the first time anymore, and he knew he wouldn't have died of heart attack, he likewise knew that he wouldn't have had the brain to keep working, on that day. Therefore, he put the lock back in the envelope, and the envelope in a plastic one to protect it from contamination. That one - and the others -, he was sure, would have become an evidence, one day. Then, with the new evidence in his brown leather working bag, the man wrapped the day one hour earlier than the official time. 

It took him some time, to find the market. He didn't visit it often, what the government gave him was more than sufficient for his frugal necessities, and he didn't need more, or had no brain for thinking about his needs. Finding a market stall with female items was rather easy, instead, he recognized it from the flashy colours.

"Are you looking for cosmetics?" The vendor, a young woman with a smartass face, encouraged him. She would have done it many times, through their short meeting. And without giving him time to reply, she lifted the white sheet which was covering the back of her stall.

"These are from down south. This is skin toner and this is cleansing cream, this is day cream and that one is night cream. Which one do you want?"

The question confused him more than solving an advanced quantum physics equations.

"All," he replied, vaguely proud. At least he had found a reply! Though he didn't know it was just the beginning of his misery. The woman moved to another side of the stall indeed, lifting another corner of the sheet.

"Do you need underwear? These are from down there as well."

Things he had never seen before - and when he said never he really meant never - hit his eyes with all the fierce of their colours and shapes and shameless meaning... bewildered, he needed some second to realize what they were and move his gaze away. Lips pressed, Adam apple bobbing over his neck, and all his body stiffening and his breath getting short for the second time on that afternoon but for a totally different reason.