𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐞𝐦𝐲'𝐬 𝐇𝐮𝐬𝐛𝐚𝐧𝐝 || 敵の旦那様 (𝐁𝐋) ✔ [COMPLETE]

76. Choiceless

He was never ill-treated in the dungeons. He had been provided with the best of comforts and luxuries a prisoner could be offered with, wherein he was provided triple sheets to cover himself with and been given even feet warmers to keep the night chill away. And yet he couldn't help feeling cold—an incredible, nerve—numbing cold as the days passed.

Everyday people came to see him. Somebody; anybody would stand at his cellar door with news that he considered absolutely unnecessary. The first day the Prison Guard came back to tell him that he'd be exempted from the regular impoverishment the prisoners have to suffer under the Emperor's special orders. The next day another man- presumably the Minister of Capital Affairs—made a personal trip to his cellar to let him know that his death sentence had been reduced to a banishment. And the banishment was to take place on the seventh moon of the coming week.

The day he was originally supposed to be killed had become the day when his banishment was supposed to take place. It was obviously good news and yet he hardly had felt joy over the fact.

In fact, the words 'seventh moon of the upcoming week' kept him up at night.

Two more days passed and Fu Lin felt the cold from his feet spread across his torso, freezing its way right into his heart. He wanted to believe it was because he was grieving the death of his family; because he was fretting over the fact that he couldn't reach the netherworld just as his family did.

He wanted to believe the chill in his body was from the yearning he felt for his family.

But he had disappointed himself yet again when the cellar door opened and the light of it awakened him from his disturbed sleep. Through the haze of his rudely awoken vision, he could make out the figure his instinctually cowardly self knew. He immediately stood up alert, his eyes widening at the man before him.

He sniggered at himself, a malicious smile spreading across his lips. Of course, who was he kidding?

He knew the moment the cellar door opened and the way his heart threatened to break out of its ribcage, that one split second- all the cold and frost in himself melt away. And that he'd been waiting for him to come and see him.

But the man before him was absolutely not him.

"I swear people have never looked this disappointed when they see me, not even they knew I was there to kill them."

The man standing behind the guard had a slender figure fastened with the prison uniform, and his face was as expressionless as ever. Fu Lin could never miss the aura of bloodlust and smell of murder he gave off- the assassin who was disguised as the rider on their way back from the Minister's Manor.

The guard pushed him in, rather rudely, and locked the cell without an explanation. The assassin stood staring after him with a peculiar gaze; his expression was an eerie blankness.

He sighed as he said, "Old habits die hard- my hands are itching for some blood to wash off the filth in them." Then he stopped himself as his gaze bored into the guard, "You're lucky my hands are in a cuff."

The guard looked like a sloth bitten by a snake as he began running, almost falling on his way. Fu Lin briefly glanced his way, encountering the gruesome breeze of ruthlessness around him, and twisted his head away as the assassin looked his way. He looked like somebody who breathed death as air and drank blood to quench his thirst, and Fu Lin's cowardly senses were kicking in.

"So we're cell mates, huh?"

Fu Lin ignored him, not daring to look behind him.

"Is it not boring to gaze at walls all day? Let us talk. I feel restless if I don't do something-especially killing."

Fu Lin's breath hitched. "Seventh Prince... I don't bite."

Fu Lin, unable to take it anymore, said, "But you kill."

"Indeed, but not anymore. Hopefully." He stretched himself on the prison floor as if it were his home, "I have decided on not shedding blood anymore."

Fu Lin said, disbelieving him, "That was not what it seemed like when you talked to the guard."

"That was simply to put him in his place," He shrugged, closing his eyes, "It seems the situation demands I stay here for quite a while and I cannot have prison guards walking over my head."

Fu Lin's gossip-loving self couldn't help but ask, "What are you doing here in the prison? I thought you were smart enough to not get caught?"

"I turned myself in," he said.

"Why?"

"Because I found myself not wanting to kill anymore," he said unbothered, "I only killed so that I could find human emotions within myself."

"So you found them? Emotions?"

"I believe I did," he spoke, shuttering his eyes closed, "I had this rabbit I fed because it wouldn't leave me be. I'd give it the scraps of vegetables I eat and took care of it. Once during a mission, I accidentally ended up killing it and decided I'd not kill henceforth. It wasn't a pleasant feeling to see its dead body from among the hundred corpse mound I made that day."

The talk of the corpse reminded Fu Lin that this guy was dangerous and he went silent.

"What about you, seventh prince?" The assassin asked this time, "What are you doing in the prison?"

Fu Lin didn't bother to answer.

"Indeed, why did I bother," he laughed mildly, "The infamous Seventh Prince of the Silver Mountain who threw his life on the pier to save the enemy General and ended up getting imprisoned because of indomitable love."

"It was not out of love!" Fu Lin seethed. "It was out of gratitude. I do not wish to owe anybody."

"What a horrible liar you are, Seventh Prince," the assassin clicked his tongue, "Because that's not how it seemed when you looked that disappointed at my arrival. I would argue you were eagerly waiting for somebody."

"I did not." He hissed.

"You can run away all you want, but know that he probably will not come," the assassin said rather seriously. "Not again. Not this time anyway."

Fu Lin remained silent at that, not meeting the assassin's gaze.

The assassin yawned as sleep took over him, "This was probably his way of telling you to choose him- his absence."

Indeed, that could be it, Fu Lin thought as his heart trembled.

But the truth was he didn't have a choice here- never from the moment he was born. And neither did Haoran.

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