Sineater

Twenty

EPILOGUE

Many Years Later

Jin walked through the dark eccentrically decorated home, making his way through the hallway to the dreary bedroom where a man was lying upon the plush king sized bed.

Switching on the lamp that was on the nightstand beside the bed, Jin walked around to switch on the lamp on the opposite side of the bed. He then shuffled over to stand at the foot of the bed, peering around the canopy and gazing upon the sickly pallor of the one he had been called for.

"Morning," Jin said, startling the sick man from his restless sleep. He sat straight up and looked around, trying to zero in on the voice that had woken him.

Sighing, the man spoke, sounding bitter, pissed off even. "I sent for the Sineater." Yoongi had recently found out that he was in the beginning of stage four lung cancer. All that chain smoking had finally taken its toll on him.

"I am the Sineater," Jin informed him, his tone full of irony.

The man huffed, chuckling as he turned his gaze back upon Jin. "Huh." A slight look of fear and wariness made its way into his eyes. "So, Hoseok gets what he asks for... And you and I are left behind. What you told the Vatican has ruined me. Did you know that? Deposed... And degraded. It was you, wasn't it?"

Jin stared at Yoongi the entire time he was speaking, not even a hint of emotion in his eyes. When Yoongi was finished, Jin reached into his jacket pocket. "I have learned alot in a very short time." He pulled something from the inside chest pocket, looking down at it as he opened it. "And in the end... The only secret people keep is immortality." He held the opened barber's straight razor up for Yoongi to see.

Yoongi's smile was defeated as he looked into Jin's eyes. He didn't really like what he saw there. He saw grief, weariness and a man who had nothing else left to lose. It made Yoongi feel less than a man. Jin tossed the razor on the bed beside Yoongi with a look of sheer loathing on his face and hatred in his eyes.

"You ready?" Jin asked before turning and walking away, presumably to prepare himself for what was to come. Yoongi stared after him before picking up the razor.

When Yoongi finally appeared in the doorway of the sun room of his home, Jin had already written the Aramaic symbols on the floor. Barath Mae behind the solitary chair, Barath Sec in front of it. Yoongi nervously shuffled his feet further into the room and slowly sat upon the chair.

"It's the confession not the priest, that gives you absolution." Jin had placed two large bowls beside the chair and pulled Yoongi's arms out to the sides, draping them over the sides. He took the razor from Yoongi's grasp and placed it against the flesh of one wrist, slicing down to the tendon. "Do you understand?" Jin repeated the gesture upon Yoongi's other wrist, making sure the bowls were situated directly beneath the flow of his life's blood.

Jin watched for a few moments as Yoongi became weaker, his legs sliding out from under him as they lost the strength to hold him. He walked behind Yoongi, taking out his small leather pouch containing the things he needed for the ceremony. "Do you understand, Yoongi?" Jin repeated.

Yoongi spoke quietly, too weak to do much more than breathe by this time. "Yes." He stared almost lifelessly up at the ceiling.

Jin took the items from the pouch. "Are you ready to make your confession?"

"Yes."

Jin placed the squared wooden cross upon Yoongi's forehead, the bread and salt chunks upon his bare chest. He crossed himself before beginning to speak in Latin and crossing Yoongi as well. He had stayed behind the dying man. When he was finished saying the Sineating rite, Jin removed the bread and salt from Yoongi's chest, two small tendrils of sticky, sickly sin following it. Yoongi inhaled deeply, ready to be absolved.

Jin slowly pulled the the sinner's food toward his mouth. "She was like a sunflower," he whispered in Yoongi's ear, gazing upon the bread and salt. "God's beautiful mistake." Jin exhaled, staring off in the distance for a brief moment before shoving both chunks of bread and salt into Yoongi's open mouth, holding his hand over it so he was forced to hold it in.

"Choke on your own filth." Jin whispered the words into Yoongi's ear. He held his hand over Yoongi's mouth for another moment, until he was certain he was unable to spit it out, then jerked the cross off of his head and began walking from the room.

Yoongi started screaming, a long, shriek of pain that was otherworldly. His chest began to cave in upon itself, his bones cracking and rolling as the sins, the ones that he had so hoped he would be absolved of so that he could seek heavenly paradise upon his death, liquefied and ate his insides.

He didn't stop screaming until he had no bones left to break and his body resembled that of an ancient, shriveled and mummified.

Jin didn't stop. He kept walking from the former Cardinal's luxurious home and into the dark of night. He was able to find out exactly what sin belonged to Namjoon. It had been enough to keep him out of heaven before his sins had been eaten. He didn't know how to feel about Namjoon trading knowledge for Jin becoming Hoseok's successor.

His thoughts were all that he had been left with once he had become the Sineater, successor to Jung Hoseok, and he had centuries of nothing but gaining knowledge from the sins he would eat and his own thoughts as company.

"And now, it is I. I have been blessed and cursed... For now, I possess the keys to the kingdom of heaven. I will forgive those who deserve freedom. I will damn those who have damned themselves. I will learn to love after love has died. I am the Sin Eater."