#jinchul distancing himself from jinwoo - his love and his death

[hanakihan]

‘Love is painful, and it hurts you in all the wrong ways. I hope you’ll never know love’.

It’s the last words he remembers his mother told him before he found her cold in bed two weeks after. And then it was a mess of faces and voices, unfamiliar hands passing him around like some sort of sold goods until eventually he ended up surrounded by other children and adults in orphanage.

Thinking about it now, he doesn’t really remember much of his childhood - only that it was lonely and divided of affections family members shared. He might’ve been ten years old, but he still understood that it wasn’t normal when his mother walked ahead of him and didn’t make sure if he followed her at all, like he didn’t even existed. It absolutely wasn’t normal especially when he saw other children being carried or hugged by their parents, being paid attention to. He wouldn’t say his family was abusive - it’s hard to tell when your entire family is just your mother, who you can’t really compare with anyone else. From what she shared to him once when they were having a dinner, is that their bloodline is cursed, and that death follows them around, stalks them from generation to generation, taking them at their prime, only leaving behind a fruit of short lived love.

After that she stared at him for a minute and started to weep.

She never loved him like a mother would love her child, wholeheartedly and selflessly. She did, however, cared about him to some degree, since she did provide for him and raised him. Thinking back to it, her final words were probably the last act of her care. An advice, a warning, born from experience, since she felt death breathing down her neck.

Woo Jin-Chul wasn’t loved, never knew proper love, but his ten years old heart ached when his cold unmoving mother never opened her eyes.

And now, as an adult, he’s terrified of how much he resembles his mother, of how much he’s her. The way he cares about certain people but doesn’t love them. And for those he doesn’t care, he feels nothing. It’s as simple as that and this detachment terrifies him, makes something in him conflicted, makes his skin crawl, makes his own mind feel trapped in flesh of this body. There’s something fundamentally wrong about him, even if Go Gun-Hee - and this man is closest Jin-Chul ever felt akin to love for a person - says that Jin-Chul isn’t heartless, that there’s a feeling of calmness and safety around him. That life breathes in him, like world starts to breathe after a long winter under first spring rays.

Jin-Chul cares about his superior the most, still finds his words hilarious, but doesn’t argue.

And then Sung Jin-Woo appears on scene like a perfect mirror to him. Sung Jin-Woo feels familiar, like an old friend, and every time they share same space, Jin-Chul can feel familiar grind of ash between his teeth and taste of it in his mouth.

Jin-Chul is intimately familiar with this, feeling it around his mother at that evening. Sung Jin-Woo reeks of death, he feels like death, he is death. And yet, despite the coldness and detachment, underneath all this ash he’s carrying in him, there’s a burning love. Sung Jin-Woo loves, he loves and cares and protects unconditionally and wholeheartedly, with his feelings and passions yet never gets burned by it.

And Jin-Chul finds himself loving him one day. He feels something warm and gentle blossom on his chest, like first shy snowdrops upon arrival of spring, gentle roots with beautiful white flowers embracing his cold heart with warmth. It’s so sudden and unfamiliar to him that breath gets stolen from his lungs and he hastily excuses himself, leaving mildly worried Go Gun-Hee. He feels bad about it, but he’s so overwhelmed by realization that it makes him laugh. It’s a such beautiful feeling, so light and gentle and he thinks that it’s something he and his mother should’ve shared, too.

And then he covers his face with shaking palms and starts to weep, just like his mother twenty years ago. She loved his father, however short lived their love was, she probably tried to love Jin-Chul despite being unable to. And she paid for love with her life.

Jin-Chul wasn’t afraid of death since it followed him all his life. But now he loves, and fear embraces him, clenching his heart and tugging at roots of love.

Jin-Chul is afraid of love. Afraid of death. Afraid of Sung Jin-Woo.

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@i-bring-crack the brainrot was strong with this one, I’m still thinking about Reincarnation AU and boy does it becomes depressing the more you analyze it—