The Afterlife

35) The Corruption

Terrible things happen to good people; good things happen to terrible people. Terrible endings await terrible people, and so good endings await good people - that is fairly how most fiction works, but literature is an unbound entity that has no limitations, and writers can choose to draw the paths they see fit far better.

Sihyeon was an artist that decided to be a terrible person who faced terrible things, and she was going to give just as much terrible things to equally terrible people - it was the equation she saw most plausible.

It was not her leave that made Taehyung's anxiety go mad; it had done so very long ago when his team members were kidnapped and murdered before he could attempt to save them, so it was easy to guess why he made the penthouse their office, a place where all of them can be together and see through their mission to stop both Namjoon and Sihyeon.

"What if she is hurt?" While Taehyung was looking through his papers for anything to know more of Namjoon's husband, Kim Minho approached the meeting Taehyung held to voice is worries the best he could, "what if she is in danger?"

"Trust me, sir; knowing Sihyeon, she is not the one you should be worried about," Taehyung rose from being hunched over his papers to face Sihyeon's father, "it is those she is seeking."

"My daughter?" Minho asked almost immediately, genuinely perplexed by Taehyung's implications, which made Taehyung furrow his brows, confused, in return, "she is just a helpless, kind child."

Taehyung's furrowed eyebrows raised and his lips pursed as if the information actually surprised him at that; beside him, Yeonjun's head ducked, and his arms crossed, snorting for a response.

"Yeah," Yoongi was first to speak, "but right now she's a thirty-four-year-old cop who is off to murder anyone who does not tell her where Kim Namjoon is."

"And by murder," Taehyung raised a finger in the air to hold Minho's attention, "he does not mean kindly chop their fingers off to spill information," his hands clasped and he beat his eyelashes for reference of how relatively merciful it would be if she did so, before his high-pitched voice went back to normal as he sighed, "if they hesitate, they are dead."

It was just true, for when the young man, lying, scared, before Sihyeon opened his mouth and closed it a couple of times without speaking, she was on one knee before him, and her dagger drew a hole in his thigh to make him let go of all of his unspoken words in the form of a shriek.

"See what I told you?" Sihyeon spoke with a calm that contrasted drastically with what she just did; beneath her hands, the knife she squeezed seeped blood from under his pierced skin, and before her eyes, the boy had only his elbows to keep him sitting up and wary of anything else she had in stock for him, "there is nothing, no one to help you or save you but my own mercy, Lee Jaesong," as she spoke, Sihyeon leaned against the knife to draw herself closer to him, and he cried out in response, hand flying to where his body was breaking asunder, "so shush," she stabbed his thigh again, and this was when he fell completely to his back, cursing, "feel the fear silently, just like you did to Ko Dami."

Sihyeon could remember the boy's face from so long ago; she could remember the provocative smile, the undefeated look he wore upon being handcuffed, knowing too well he was not going to stay for long behind bars. He knew the true law would not serve him what he well deserved, and so he was proud of himself as he walked of the house that day between the policemen.

"Please, please, what do you want?"

"Me?" Sihyeon stopped to ask, eyes genuinely glistening with the question, "not much, really," they reflected the light that came roughly from the moon, and at once, her sharp smile erased all light from her eyes, "I am reveling in your screams for as long as they last."