an unfortunate change in genre

Part 49

A funeral.

It wasn't hard to tell what it was. Caskets, dead bodies, and mourners were always good cues that it was a funeral, even if the overall set up of things had a distinctly foreign look to things.

There were flowers decorating the coffins, pictures of the deceased surrounded by white flowers while a primary mourner stood to one side of the coffins, greeting the other mourners one by one as they came up to speak with him.

Everyone wore a dour black and it was clear that the departed were much beloved judging by the crowd of people inside and outside the venue.

It was a disgusting sight.

Cale had been to plenty of funerals.

Formal ones, informal ones, some that were little more than a few words offered to the still warmed corpse of a comrade, some that were as extravagant as a wealthy and beloved countess passing before her time.

He never really liked them all that much.

The very nature of a funeral was to acknowledge that the honored party was gone and there was something so empty in the act of celebrating one's love for them after it was far too late for that love to reach them.

Or perhaps Cale was cynical and funerals triggered his unresolved issues with his own mother's death.

Cale wasn't sure what he'd anticipated but a funeral certainly wasn't at the top of his expectations.

He knew he had to find Roksu and that simple mission was what drove him through the throng of grieving strangers, speaking in a strange gibberish that Cale found that he could understand.

It wasn't any language he'd ever heard before but perhaps the nature of the situation allowed him to understand it.

It had to be a language that Roksu understood. This whole horrible room was a recreation of Roksu's memories.

A cage of memories that trapped a broken up shard of his soul.

Cale searched the mourners for a familiar head of red hair, noting an unusual amount of dark haired individuals were present. He scowled. It reminded him of Choi Han.

"...damnit, dongsaeng. Where the hell are you?" Cale grumbled, approaching the coffins with a pitter-patter of anxiety in his chest.

Two unfamiliar corpses were dressed up for the last party their bodies would ever take part in. Cale scowled darkly down at them.

They meant something to Roksu. Why else would this memory of all memories be his prison? It frustrated Cale that he didn't have even a hint of who they could be. For all that he knew his brother, there was so much he wasn't allowed to know.

And the mourners were pissing him off.

Among the weeping and condolences, he could hear a strange undercurrent of criticism.

"Look at him. He's not even crying."

"How cold."

"What a pity it was them and not..."

"I know. They treated him so well too."

Cale snarled, turning to find the source of the mutters but his eyes caught sight of something else instead.

He was tall. Dark hair neatly cut. Scars visible along his neck and one decorating his cheek. He was on the muscular side of things and he had perfect posture.

In so many ways, he looked nothing like Cale's dongsaeng.

It was the eyes.

Impassively watching the crowd as he stood by the coffins, accepting shallow condolences with his stoic frown that told most of the world that he was a cold bastard.