So gasped, his breath cut short when the frigid water hit his skin with full force, and almost immediately puckered it up into goose bumps. Shivers quickly spread throughout his body, and he tightly clamped his teeth together to keep them from chattering. Nevertheless, even after his legs began shaking, he stubbornly remained in place under the pulsating stream, until the cold began to gradually numb the pain in his head and chest. Trying to fight off a sudden wave of dizziness, he squinted his eyes shut and propped his hands against the marbled tile of the shower stall, before he turned and sank to the floor with his back against the wall.

Hues of red—blood red—started swirling before his closed eyelids, then mixed with images of himself. His face, clothes and the sword in his hands dripping with blood, raging flames devouring the last evidence of the carnage he had created—for her! He had made it so no one could come after her and accuse her of any wrongdoing. For her, he had destroyed every bit of the evidence that could have implicated her in the attempted assassination of the Crown Prince. Then he had gone to see her in her chambers…

"Do you know what I've done for you, Mother?" he had asked her, smiling.

She had ordered him to leave, called him an animal.

"It was for you, Mother," he had told her.

"Mother, Mother, Mother," she had interrupted him with disgust. "Hearing you call me 'Mother' makes my skin crawl," she had said.

He had asked her why she wouldn't care if he were injured, why she wouldn't ever look at him, and told her that he had so desperately waited for it.

"You are not my son…You are the son of the Kangs in Shinju," she had declared.

Then he had told her what his life had been like with the Kangs—how they had thrown him into the largest wolves den in Shinju. How he had fought the beats all night, had survived, and then burned down the entire mountain. How he had been beaten, and locked up by his adoptive mother for days on end, without food or even a sip of water.

"What about it?" she had asked. "A mother only recognizes a son who will make her shine," she had said. "You are my shame, disgrace and flaw…That's why I sent you away!" she had told him.

Strong hands on his shoulders ripped him out of the trance. So forced his eyes open and wearily raised his head. Blinking through wet strands of his long, black hair, he realized he was still sitting on the cold floor of the shower stall, shivering even though the water had been turned off and what seemed like a dozen or more towels were tightly wrapped around him. Another two or three towels in the hands of Baek Ah, who was kneeling in front of him, were working to rub feeling back into his frozen arms and legs.

So met his brother's distraught gaze with a blank expression. "She called me an animal...She said I'm her shame, disgrace and flaw...That's why she sent me away," he muttered dejectedly.

"What?...What are you talking about, Hyung?" Baek Ah frowned bewildered, forcing himself to remain calm as he gingerly brushed some of the wet hair from So's face. "And what in the world were you doing? That water was ice cold...Are you intentionally trying to kill yourself?"

"She said hearing me call her Mother makes her skin crawl," So replied, still staring vacantly at his Namdongsaeng.

"Damn it, So-yah...get it together!" Baek Ah went off at last, snapping at him with his best 'Wang Yo imitation'. "What the hell is going on with you?"

So's face twisted into a mask of pain, and he drew a sharp breath through gritted teeth when Baek Ah shook his shoulder. It brought him back to reality at last.

"Stop already!...I'm awake!" he groaned, struggling to free himself from the assault of the towels.

Baek Ah quickly withdrew his hands and muttered a contrite apology. "Can you...do you think you can stand up?" he queried, suddenly unsure what to do next.

"I guess...maybe...I don't know," So admitted, looking around the bathroom, then back up at his brother. "What did I miss this time?" he asked, a tired strain evident in his voice.

"I don't know, but you need to get out of here, get some clothes on and get warm," Baek Ah stated resolutely. "You've barely recovered from a collapsed lung. If you end up with pneumonia now..." He left the rest unsaid as he moved to one knee beside his brother, carefully pulled up So's left arm and draped it around his own shoulders. "I know this is going to hurt like hell, and I'm sorry, but I have to get you up out of here, okay?"

So merely responded with a resigned glance and kind of a 'go ahead' nod, then braced himself for the inevitable.

#####

"Not a...word...of this...to anyone," he choked out between agonizing gasps of breath, after his Namdongsaeng had managed to get him up, out of the shower stall, and seated on the toilet lid, then started to gently unwrap the towel cocoon.

"Of what, Hyung?" Baek Ah bestowed him with a serene gaze. "There is nothing to talk about."

"Gomawo!" So muttered with a faint, yet grateful smile as he instinctively covered the still visible bruises on his torso with his arms.

"You should probably keep that wrapped with an ACE bandage for a couple more weeks," Baek Ah commented. "Just to help stabilize those ribs."

"Should be some over there," So motioned with his head at the tall cabinet in the far corner of the bathroom, grimacing as he gingerly probed his sides with his fingertips.

"Uwa!" Baek Ah's eyes widened in awe when he opened the cabinet doors. "Are you running your own pharmacy in here?"

So shrugged unperturbed. "Like I told Jungie...bad guys like me need a lot of that stuff."

For a moment, Baek Ah merely stared at him aghast, before he rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Sometimes I think, you actually want to believe all those stupid rumors about you," he scolded, grabbing two rolls of 10cm wide ACE bandage from the top shelf.

"Get me a bottle of antibiotics too…third shelf down, on the right."

He retrieved the requested item, then made his way back to his brother. "Should you be taking these without doctor's orders?" he queried, however, as he handed So the bottle of antibiotics, then ran some water into one of the cups on the bathroom sink.

"Fever indicates an infection, Penicillin fights infection...I don't need a doctor to tell me that," So gave back nonchalantly, swallowed two of the pills and downed the water, then added, "And as far as those rumors are concerned...just ask my Mother. She'll tell you they're all true."

"Yeah," Baek Ah frowned dubiously, reaching for the first roll of ACE bandage. "What was that about anyway?...What you said earlier..."

"You mean about all the nice things my Mother said to me?" So queried with a despondent smile, which turned into another grimace when he raised his arms to let Baek Ah wrap his ribs with the elastic bandage.

"Yeah..."

"Why?...Are you surprised?"

"I don't know," Baek Ah shrugged, "but I guess I shouldn't be, considering what she's done, and what was in those..." he cut himself off and cringed.

"It's okay," So assured him. "That little episode earlier kind of jogged my memory...helped me remember just how highly she thinks of me."

"You remember what was in those papers?"

So merely nodded, his eyes narrowing forebodingly, and his lips tightened into a thin line.

Baek Ah had to fight the impulse to stop what he was doing and retreat a step—or two, or three. Although his Hyung was nothing like the 'bad guy' his reputation and the rumors about him made him out to be, So could still, even in his current, almost pitiful state, be quite intimidating. But I can't really blame him. That woman has made his life miserable from the day he was born. Wasn't bad enough she tried to frame him, but to put an actual hit out on your own son…

"Yah!" So broke into his thoughts. "I don't know how much longer I can hold my arms up."

"Oh! Sorry!" Baek Ah flushed embarrassed, then quickly finished bandaging his brother's ribs. "Is that okay? Not too tight, right?" he asked when So dropped his arms with a wince and a hitched breath.

"It's fine. Thanks!...Hand me those clothes," So motioned toward the stack on the other end of the sink.

"I just grabbed one of your zip-up hoodies...Figured that would be easier to put on than anything you need to pull over your head," Baek Ah muttered, sounding almost apologetic.

"It's fine," So repeated, then reluctantly accepted his brothers help with getting dressed and his hair dried and brushed. Hae Soo and Soon Deok had repeatedly taken on the job of brushing and braiding his long hair during the time he had spent in the hospital—both of them quite obviously enjoying the task. Baek Ah on the other hand seemed to consider it a rather annoying chore, judging by the irritated sigh when his attempt at braiding failed for a third time.

"Good enough, don't worry about it," So assured him, trying not to smirk at his Namdongsaeng's obvious exasperation. "Maybe I should get it cut anyway."

"Noona would kill you with her bare hands...and Soon Deok would help hold you down," Baek Ah stated matter-of-factly. "Those two are in love with your mane, and truth be told, I've been considering letting mine grow out too. Long hair on guys seems to be a total 'chick magnet' these days."

So cast him a roguish grin over his shoulder. "And which chick are you trying to impress, hmmm?"

"I...oh...well," Baek Ah sputtered, his cheeks turning a tell-tale crimson. "You don't know her. She's one of Lady Hae's people, and I've met her a few times when we were..." he interrupted himself, but then remembered that their secret was already out, and finished the sentence, "cleaning up in here."

"I didn't even get a chance to thank Lady Hae for all of this," So remarked glumly. "She must have spent a fortune…"

"She probably did," Baek Ah conceded, "but she would be pretty upset if she found out that you know about it. We all had strict orders from her not to tell you anything about it...She didn't want you to worry."

"I would have noticed sooner or later, that most of the stuff in here is brand new. Yesterday I was just a little...preoccupied."

Baek Ah gave a short, cheerless laugh at his brother's choice of words. "That's probably the understatement of the century, Hyung. You were out of it!"

"Yeah, well," So shrugged, "let Soon Deok drive you across five levels of speed bumps with cracked ribs, and see how coherent you still are afterwards."

"Point taken!" Baek Ah raised his hand in surrender, then sighed. "Now can we pleeeease get out of this bathroom? Dinner's been ready for over an hour, and I'm starving."

So still grimaced as he got to his feet, but then motioned for Baek Ah to move out with a quiet chuckle and the hushed comment, "And here I thought worrying about food was just Yo-hyung's problem."