Believe Again: 'I'm Sorry'

This was all his fault. All because he was weak, and stupid and couldn't do anything right. He had been naïve enough to think that Mint Eye wouldn't touch the people around him if he went along with them. Evidently, time spent apart from this organization had dulled his senses, made him forget about just how ruthless and merciless it could be to obtain its goals.

He felt like all energy had escaped him, and his body was slack, only held up by the chains pulling his arms above his head. She was right there, and he couldn't so much as go to her, hold her and make sure that she was okay.

Okay? If his hands were free, he would punch himself.

He had just watched her get tortured, her skin cruelly ripped apart by Sejun as if she was hunted prey. He had already vomited twice, seeing the blood—her blood— on the floor, and breathing in its stinging metallic smell. Each time he looked at her he still felt just as sick. He wished he could look away, think about anything else, but Sejun had left her here, unconscious and bleeding, for Saeran to look at. To make sure the image of her bloodstained face and arm, her screams that continued to ring in his ears long after she fell silent, and the horror he felt as he watched the light in her eyes go out, all haunted his mind forever.

His gaze fell back on her arm, and he felt bile in the back of his throat beginning to rise once more. But he forced himself to look. This was what he had done to her, and it was all his fault.

The image of the Mint Eye symbol, carved into her skin with the silver blade of that knife, was barely visible under the sheet of drying blood covering her arm, some of it splattered onto her face that was now a ghostly pale. Her lips were almost devoid of colour, but he took comfort in the fact that she was still breathing, albeit weakly. Her chest continue to rise and fall, but he could tell she was barely hanging in there after that ordeal.

Tears stung his eyes again, even though he thought he had run out of them by now. He knew Sejun was doing this to spite him, to get revenge on him and to make him suffer. And Saeran had lost all dignity in front of the man, reacting exactly as he had wanted. Saeran had cried, screamed, begged for him to stop, but that only seemed to spur Sejun and his sadism even more.

And now here she was, bleeding out, looking close to death.

Saeran had long stopped believing in God, but he had no choice here. Even if he managed to get out of his chains, he wouldn't be able to carry her and run fast enough to escape, especially not when he'd just gotten another vial of elixir forced down his throat.

He found himself praying to anyone out there listening to the scrambled thoughts running through his mind, to save her and protect his brother, the family and friends that he'd found after so many years of being alone.

Maybe he was never meant to be happy. He thought he'd just found happiness, the kind his brother had always promised him. And just when it had come within his grasp, it had to be cruelly snatched away from him, trampled on in the dirt and presented to him, deformed and destroyed.

Maybe what his mother said was true after all—it would have been better if he was never born.

"Sae… ran…" Her voice was soft, barely audible, but he heard it anyway and immediately he tried to get up, momentarily forgetting about his binds.

It didn't seem like she was conscious yet. Her eyes were still shut. Only her lips were barely moving, to utter his name again.

"Don't talk," he said, biting on his lip to keep it from trembling. He didn't deserve her speaking his filthy name, it would only taint her even more. He was the reason she had been taken here, and the reason she might even die if help didn't come soon enough.

"Sae… ran…" A single tear, transparent and pure, flowed down her cheek. He wished he could cup her face, wipe her tears away, hold her close to his chest and never let her go. She should have stayed away after he'd warned her — maybe then she would have been safe, continued to live her life normally. Even if she would be sad for a while, she would be safe. And that was all that mattered.

"I'm… I'm sorry," were the only meaningless words he could tell her. She probably couldn't hear him anyway.

An apology was all a broken person like him with nothing, could offer.

And Saeran continued to weep, realising for the first time what it felt to be in his brother's shoes.

The meeting with the Prime Minister had been set for an hour, under the pretext of a project that Jumin's company had been hired to work on for the government. Jumin had assured his assistant that he would have plenty of time to settle both his matters on the agenda.

Jaehee had looked unconvinced, seeming to have little faith in the Prime Minister's character, given all that Saeyoung had told them.

Nevertheless, Jumin was confident. If there was one thing he was certain of, it was that at the end of the day, people did only what would benefit them. It was a matter of survival, nothing more. Only the fittest would remain, and Jumin knew that people would stop at nothing to be the last one standing.

The meeting went smoothly. It was a video conference call, since the Prime Minister was too busy to travel down to the office and there were also security concerns. Borrowing that reason, Jumin had specially requested the Prime Minister to join an encoded call to ensure that it could not be tracked or recorded by third parties, citing the excuse that information relating to the project had to be kept confidential and this was a matter of his company's practices.

The seasoned politician had agreed to the request easily.

"Thank you, Mr. Han. I'm glad we've come to an agreement on these matters."

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Choi. I will have my assistant follow up on what we've discussed here shortly."

The older man nodded, wrinkles showing as he smiled at Jumin. He looked as kind as the media portrayed him to be, but Jumin could tell that behind his kinds words was a calculating mind; each word that Jumin spoke added to the overall sum of his usefulness.

Just as expected.

"Well, if there is nothing else, I'll have to excuse myself first, I have another meeting later."

"Actually, there is one more thing I wanted to discuss," Jumin spoke, which piqued the man's curiosity.

"Regarding the project?"

"No, it's about something more personal. To you."

He watched as the Prime Minister's expression darkened almost imperceptibly, his gaze sharper now. Presumably, he did not like the tone of voice that Jumin was using here. People never did.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Han. I have some other matters to attend to. If this isn't about work—"

"Prime Minister Choi, with respect, I think you'll be much more interested in what I have to say than the work waiting for you," Jumin cut in boldly.

"Oh?"

"We'll have someone else joining the call."

There was a moment of silence to contemplate this. And then, he spoke again. "May I know who that is?"

"That's what we're planning on telling you," Jumin said, just as a third person entered the call. In the black bar beneath the faceless profile, the name read, 'Saeyoung Choi'.