Dancing With The Devil

the deal.

Fey Mansion - 14 years ago

They say family is power. What is power? To be better than others? To best hold off evil? Is power happiness? All family ever got me was despair, misery, and loneliness. So what am I really fighting for?

I picked at the paint chips of the doorframe that I hid behind listening in on my family's bicker. Something about this argument felt unsettling. Like the feeling you get when danger is near. A sixth sense I believed they called it.

"What happened to your brother?" Mom asked Taemin as he was ordered to sit at the kitchen table. "Mommy, some boy was hitting Sehun so Jaehyun hyung beat him up." His tiny feet kicking around in fear, leaving dirt marks on the table. Dad sat silently listening. That's how I knew this was going to end badly. Whenever Dad was silent, he was calculating something in his head and all it takes is one very small trigger to set him off.

Sehun was being bullied at school. I always thought, "why would anyone pick on the kid with the murderous father?" It seemed bizarre to me as if poking the mama bear is the best way to hunt.

Jae had attacked the bully, smashing his face against a brick wall. The kid had a cracked skull and lost some of his front teeth. He was rushed to the hospital and I don't know if he ever recovered.

Growing up, Jae was ruthless, a little too rough on the playground, played with Dad's lighter whenever he left it out, stole scissors from Miyoung's sewing box, had a serious temper problem, sought trouble more than the rest of us. He was a live wire, a thrillseeker, the god of mischief. I loved it. I loved to follow and learn from him like he was the coolest person in the world. The only scary thing was — he was just like Dad. He was just like the man I feared most.

Not only were his prepubescent features just like Dad, but he had took after Dad's temperament, violence, bloodthirst, courage — I loved him but I was also terrified of him. Dad knew of these similarities as well which was why he promised he would never let Jaehyun take over the family business and as mafia king. He was reminded too much of himself. He saw Jaehyun simply as a threat. But he wasn't all that bad.

The only one of my siblings I ever saw priorize family above everything else was the big bad wolf of us all. Jaehyun always took the drastic measures to protect his family. Well family is a strong word. "Siblings," that's more like it. He always took drastic measures to protect his siblings. You mess with one of us, he'll mess with you so much worse. You take from us, he'll take twice as much from you. That's just who he was. He was more a big brother than Joonho ever was and don't tell the others, but he was always my favorite.

If Dad hit me, he was the first person I'd tell. If Taemin snatched my favorite stuffed bunny, he would be the one to get it back for me. If I didn't want to eat my vegetables, he would sneak them off my plate and put them onto Sehun's plate when he wasn't paying attention.

Dad shot up angrily from his seat as the slight trigger he needed to attack was not hearing of the gory disobedience of Jaehyun but hearing the weakness of Sehun. He grabbed him by the neck with a strong fist, "you let another kid beat you up?! I raised you to be better than that!"

My brother struggled to breathe in his grip, tears streaming down his fearful eyes. "Appa I'm sorry!" He tried to choke out with a lack of air. "Minseok! Stop it!" Mom screamed as Dad let go of Sehun's neck. He fell to the ground with a thud, his face slowly finding its color once again.

Sehun was the weakest of us all, it's no surprise. We all trained together once we were old enough to move our limbs with coordination and I learned early on that he could never cause harm to another. Not a fly, not a person, not the worst criminal in the world. He couldn't do it.