『Schadenfreude』▷ jaesahi。

d a i n t i l y

Basking in the sunlight that seeped through the littlest cracks on the windows of the room was Asahi, as he sat too peacefully on the bench in spite of the tempestuous waves in himself. The vivid evocation of warmth and cold echoed in himself, clashing like the two plates that collided; braving subduction as magma of vehemence rose and created a volcano that erupted instantly in his mind, lava spilling and cascading down his veins to reach his gaunt fingers and setting it aflame.

Asahi remembered. He remembered the way that the corners of his father's eyes would crease whenever he smiled and how his dissonant, gravelly voice would soften each time he spoke to Ettore, young-faced, unattractive but kind despite his old age. In this life, his father was much older in appearance, yet much, much younger of age, calling out to him with a smooth voice rolling off the glib tongue he wielded as weapon to work and saying to get ready for school. His mother's own voice was soprano, at night bellowing from the kitchen that Asahi, dinner was ready.

He also recalled the way that his mother, in the first life, would run her milky fingers daintily down her luscious hair in front of the mirror each morning, smiling softly at the reflection of her. He remembered the time when she'd monikered his father 'Sello', laughing merrily as the man engulfed her in his arms and the way she sung a lullaby to Ettore every night; except he didn't really remember, because he had never met her.

All these memories, he poured into the beautiful melody that he created as his fingers pressed against the piano keys with the emotions that it emitted. His fingers danced around the keys the same way that they used to linger on Jaehyuk's skin, as dainty as the woman who'd first given birth to him had done. He played a piece that told the story of his esse; frolicking happily and pirouetting then oscillating steadily before it slowed into a sound as gentle as drop of drizzle glissading against an aspen tree leaf, spilling out a melody that only he and his nepenthe knew.

Nepenthe.

He'd recalled, the coy smile on Jaehyuk's smile when he asked for Asahi to be his nepenthe.  Foolish was he for asking his nemesis to be so, foolish was he for being unadulterated about it. However, even more foolish was Asahi, for he'd nearly acceded in that very instant; almost let disenthrall what it was he truly wished to say.

The things he wished to speak out loud but shouldn't and couldn't had now all piled up at the tip of his tongue, threatening to slip past his tightly shut lips and made themselves be heard. He wouldn't allow it, nevertheless. Even if they soon gathered into a novel of heart and charmolypi, he would make sure that neither Jaehyuk nor anyone else could ever hear them.

It was already more than too much that Daemon, otherwise  Haruto, had knowledge of who Jaehyuk was to him. It was already more than too much that Haruto had said, "You're a filthy traitor, for loving someone who lives to kill your master." It was already more than too much, that the way that his feelings for Jaehyuk were treated like an iniquity— or was it the fact that it truly was one—  infuriated him enough for him to bare his fangs at Haruto, grasping his whilom comrade's neck with sharp claws dug onto his skin.

It was already more than too much, that he'd turned so helpless against Jaehyuk's smile once again.

Jaehyuk's smile, he found, was amaranthine. Ethereal, unfading, everlasting; immortally beautiful. Not the smile he showed each day to all, but the arch of his lips whenever Asahi said something that seemed to have pleased him, the twinkle in his eyes when he laughed at one of Asahi's unintentional jayus.

It was a difficult quest to see that smile. When Asahi had first arrived to this home, it was a false one that greeted him. Back then, he hadn't known that Jaehyuk was archnemesis. Natheless, he still discerned through the smile that fooled so many others, deemed it untrue despite barely knowing who Yoon Jaehyuk was. Even then when he was unaware, the other had constantly done and said things too familiar, reminding him perennially of the man who had killed him once.