Darkness Ethereal | K.TH

Come Back With Me

Even though it sickens me to look at it again, I deliberately make the first move. He's still shaking, face firmly turned away from the corpse.

It's like he wants to deny that he'd caused the body that was now lying lifeless on the ground.

"I'll take care of it," I say weakly. My voice is uncertain— I don't even know if I'm strong enough to carry the body. How was I supposed to know where to get rid of it?

But V looks too shaken. Too vulnerable, and I can't let him put any more stress and pressure upon himself. I'd find a way— I'd figure something out.

This would forever scar him— and he'd done this for my sake, which meant that I had made him murder. Unspoken apologies rush through my mind as I watch him breathe— chest rising and falling in a slight uneven rhythm.

My features twist into a wince as I wrap my fingers around the corpse's collar, feeling the blood smear against my skin. This is reality— the truth. It was something I had to face.

"Stop."

V's voice is cold and icy as he wrenches my grip from the corpse. When I look at him in surprise, I find him staring at the dead man with enough hate and fire to burn through flesh.

"Don't touch him."

Shock numbs my body. But I couldn't just leave the body out in the open— so exposed. Where a police officer or someone else could find it. If V's fingerprints were found on the corpse, then everything would be reduced to ruin.

He might be put in a worse punishment than he was now— and I'd never let myself live to see that happen.

"Then—"

"You," He whispers, pointing at me. Then he asks something that completely throws me off— something completely expected. "What's your name?"

"My..... Name?"

He nods, his eyes filled with such blank intensity that the question is no longer the only thing that throws me off, that confuses me.

My name.

I didn't have to be Chou Tzuyu here. I could be anything I chose to be— not something that my parents had.

Under the fire of his stare, and with blood on my hands— the thoughts race through quick and violent in my mind. There were too many options— too many possibilities for a life-changing decision such as this.

How many times in your life could you choose to be an entirely new person?

I knew it wasn't much, but a remnant of my past suddenly flashes through my head. My only friend— Areum, had used to mispronounce my first name so that it had sounded like Cher instead of Chou.

I'd always liked the sound of her saying it, until she left and moved away to another country that seemed a million miles away.

But at least, this way, I could keep a small reminder of her with me. She'd been the only good thing in my life, had shown me things that I wouldn't have known if it wasn't for her.

"Cher. My name is Cher."

Something in V's eyes deepen. "Cher, then. Listen carefully— you're not going to touch this body for as long as you live. And I'll take care of it, whatever that means."

He doesn't even blink an eye next as he slings the corpse over his shoulder, making it look so easy that it might've as well weighed thirty pounds.