A/N: A dose of end-of-exams fruitfulness. Enjoy.
And I'm still working on Jayu.
"Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Those who wish to sing always find a song.
At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet." – Plato
She saw it. She witnessed the whole thing.
He had changed before her very eyes.
Watching the transformation of such a pure person into a being of total corruption sent an endless series of shockwaves surging through her body. Her years of painstaking scientific research failed to provide any explanation for it. With hands that shuddered as though they were pale, dead leaves caught in a storm, she edged to the door. Revolting, critical, pitiful. As a drop of ink spreads over the surface of parchment, seeping through its breadth, spoiling its faded creamy-white colouring and altering the meaning of it forever; so the shock of fear ran through her veins, contaminating her. Tainting, disturbing, perturbing.
As she stared into the wide-open eyes of her lover, devil spawn stared back.
Friends had joked that it was love at first sight. They were inseparable at one point. They had experienced the conventional can't-keep-my-eyes-off-you stage, surpassed the standard kiss-me-quick phase. Gone were the days of the lustrous stare and the loving caress, of racing heartbeats, the song of two souls in harmony; of two-backed beasts, suppressed moans and whispered 'I love you's.
A picture frame collided with a piece of wall inches to her right, smashing the glass into a million shards. She flinched, gasped. He strutted and laughed. His voice was terrible; it was as if there was another being inside him, imitating his laugh in a sickening harmony.
"But why do you flinch?" he asked, mocking concern. He tilted his head to the left. She could only back away further until she hit the door. She reached out behind her, grasping for the doorknob only to find it locked upon location. He laughed again.
Despairingly she recalled how her voice faltered before a microphone and a crowd. She remembered how she flushed scarlet with embarrassment every time he asked her to sing as they lay in bed in the morning, him stroking her cheek. He would remind her in his half-joking, half-serious tone that she had given him strength and charisma, but he needed to hear her sing her heart out to make him "complete", to give him purpose. She thought up a thousand well-rehearsed smart retorts. After all, she hated losing arguments. But soon petty comebacks and witty ego-bruisers lay forgotten, unsaid on their tongues with the beginnings of their intimacies. Beams of sunlight peeked through the half-open blinds and created strips of light on the wall. Birdsong and the sounds of city-chatter were nothing but background noise to their own musical breathing, rhythmic and controlled. This was their song. The song to which words were unnecessary and of which rawness was valued.
The images raced through her mind, blurring together, nonsensical and surreal. The – thing? – before her eyes was so horrifying she wished it to be a dream, she wished to wake up on another clear morning to the sound of light snoring and warm sun--
He advanced. She tried calling out his name with the intention to knock a sense of humanity into him, but to no avail. Her usual cool-headed demeanour long since evaporated, she had a mind of panic. She tried to pull herself together but what was in front of her defied all sense of logic: that can't be human kept flashing through her mind, not with those eyes, those markings – demonic—
"Dark is necessary," his thick voice hissed. "In the way that the sun wouldn't shine so brightly if it wasn't for the rain, and how we'd never feel happy if we had never felt pain…"
Once upon a happier time he would tease that she was too "studious" for him; she would retort that his English "sucked" too much for her. Her musical taste was horrid and he couldn't cook. For both, the frequent petty bickering was always welcomed, as for both, it was the first time they had become so close with someone their own age. "Stupid pointless moments equal hugely meaningful memories," she would say, pushing the silky long hair out of his eyes, the better to see his face, "wouldn't you agree?" He always agreed, shaking his head so his hair fell back into his smirking eyes.
But now, Jin's hair was as wild and unruly as the hair of a feral child. His eyes were like a pair of predators, hungrily cutting through anything that gets in their way. As she stared into these eyes, her heart, like the heart of prey, seemed to have ceased function.
But this isn't Jin, she thought, desperately, frantically, it's demonic. It's the devil. A devil Jin.
"Jin," she shrieked, feet rooted to the ground. "This isn't you, snap out of it… Jin..."
Crimson irises still stared back. They crinkled in an inhumane smile. Jin stretched out his right arm, and his powerful hand wrapped around her trembling cheek.
"Sing for me, Julia."