Where you at?

[Jeon Kihwa]

"Souls."

The first time he heard it, Kihwa genuinely thought somebody else was in the house with him. The shock of it caused him to drop his coffee cop, shattering it across the kitchen tile. With his heart leaping hard in his throat, he turned around. Nobody else was in the house with him. It was just Kihwa. Scared, his hand shook as he reached for the broom. Clean it up. If he focused on the task at hand, he wouldn't be so terrified of silly voices. In his head.

But as the day went on, it got worse. Kihwa went outside, in the garden, thinking that the fresh air would help. But it was so cold and foggy out that he had to wrap himself up in a thick blanket as he sat on the balcony and looked out over the backyard. His toes curled inward. He took a sip of coffee. He'd made another cup after throwing the last one all over the kitchen.

The voices came and went but they began to echo louder in his head. They echoed and bounced until he could hardly think anything for himself. When he went back inside, he left the door open, letting some of that insidious fog inside to follow him.

By the time he called Soo Hyun, he could feel it, threatening him. But the more he talked to Soo Hyun, the more he could feel its hold on him solidify. He closed his eyes as Soo Hyun left. But he hadn't left. He was at the door. Kihwa slowly got up from where he'd been sitting with his back against the kitchen cabinets. Sching. The sound of metal against tile, brief but dangerous. He held the knife tightly in his right hand, readying it.

There were already marks on the human body he'd taken over, curious about how easy it would be to rend their flesh. Using the human's voice and the human's smile, he spread his arms out wide as the human's lover stumbled in.

"Soo Hyun-ah," he said, in the cutest pout he could manage. "You took so long. I thought you were going to leave me all alone here..."

[Song Soo Hyun]

The stupid fog made driving almost impossible, and even then Soo Hyun all but killed himself trying to get home to Kihwa. Something about the way he laughed at the end unsettled him. It was... Frankly, it was creepy as fuck and Soo Hyun felt the goosebumps rising all up and down his arms the second he heard it. Good thing he was only fifteen minutes away, though. Good thing there weren't cops on patrol to catch him going way over the speed limit, as he drove like a demon through the streets.

He knew something wasn't right that morning just from the way Kihwa looked--pale and a bit drawn, with a strange brightness in his eyes. Soo Hyun thought it was fever, so he found the flu meds and put them on the kitchen counter for Kihwa to take if he continued to feel worse. Since he couldn't touch his own lover--something he had yet to address with Kihwa, in his cowardice--he sort of ghosted a gloved hand over Kihwa's arm and then hastily ran out the door.

And now he was running back through the door, calling out Kihwa's name. Soo Hyun dropped his phone onto the table by the door with a clatter, hardly caring that it then fell to the ground. "Kihwa! I'm home! Where are you?" Still wearing his shoes, he ran in through the living room and then skidded to a halt. "Ki-Kihwa!"

Knife.

Blood.

Soo Hyun stood rooted to the spot in horror. "Wh--" The word came out in a breathless gasp. "Kihwa!" Heedless of his 'condition,' Soo Hyun ran forward and tried to wrest the knife from Kihwa's hand. "Put that down!"

[Jeon Kihwa]

There was still a soul resting inside the body it currently occupied and it wasn't much of a fighter. It tried, it really did, but it was more frightened than anything else. Fear only made them stronger and it was a human soul at that. Making it harm itself was delicious. Every drop of blood sang to it, and every little sound of protestation only made it that much sweeter. But the human managed to call for help and the help came in the form of a not-so-useful filthy soul.

"You're not human."

It looked at the not-human through the eyes of the human as it wrestled the knife away from him. It clattered to the ground but the reaper inside didn't care. When the two made contact, it smelled a telltale burning of flesh. It contorted the lips of the human into something parodying a smile.

"You're no use to the master." And with strength the human could never possibly have, it threw the filthy yin off and stepped over its body to grab for the knife.

[Song Soo Hyun]

It hurt. It burned and blistered his hands, where he touched Kihwa, but Soo Hyun couldn't just stand there all agog while Kihwa hurt himself! Wincing at the pain, he managed to fling the knife away but then--

"What? I'm--Oof!"

He was about to protest--to lie, a little--but then Kihwa slammed him to the ground and all the air was knocked out of him. Soo Hyun's head smacked into the tiled kitchen floor and he swore he saw stars.

Dazed, he laid there panting for a few seconds as he tried to wrap his mind around what was happening. This wasn't his Kihwa--this was someone else. This was... something else. A shadow passed over him; Kihwa was stepping over him to get the knife. Weakly, he reached out and grasped onto Kihwa's pant leg with bloodied fingers. "St-stop," Soo Hyun coughed. "Ki... Stop."

[Jeon Kihwa]

Not human. Don't bother with it.

The voice was strong. It was roaring in his head, even as he heard the disgusting sound of a head hitting tile. The knife was almost within his grasp when he felt something touch his leg. Kihwa's entire body shuddered and the scene came into sharp focus. Taking in a deep breath, Kihwa stumbled back and away from the knife that was mere inches from his fingertips. There was blood on the knife. His arms, his legs, his shoulder--too close to his throat--all throbbed. When he raised his hand to the side of his shoulder, it came away warm and wet and red.

Then he heard the voice--not the voice in his head but the one on the ground close by. Kihwa turned to see Soo Hyun on the ground and he immediately let out a horrified sound before turning back toward him and dropping beside him.

"S-Soo Hyunnie??"

[Song Soo Hyun]

Nausea came and went in brief waves as Soo Hyun struggled to hold on to Kihwa's ankle. He felt something thick and warm dribbling down the back of his head, too, and his hands were bruised and blistered as if he'd thrust them into an open fire, then smashed them with a brick. They felt like that too.

"Kihwa..."

What had gotten into him? Why was he suddenly acting completely... well, crazy? Soo Hyun didn't say as much over the phone, but hearing voices and wanting souls and all of that was definitely not a product of 'tiredness.' Was it... him? Was his being a yin somehow affecting poor Kihwa too? Soo Hyun already couldn't touch him, couldn't do anything but brush a sleeve over him. Now this?

He groaned as another wave of dizziness hit, and then fell back as Kihwa suddenly stopped. When Soo Hyun looked up at him, into his worried face, he seemed more like himself again. "Don't... don't listen to the voices."

[Jeon Kihwa]

"O... okay."

He was trying not to but they were strong, roaring voices. There were lots of them, too, and some of them were sorrowful and some of them were commanding and the loudest was threatening. Kihwa didn't really want to harm Soo Hyun, he found. He was just... what happened to him was just collateral. For some reason, Kihwa felt a deep need to go out, to hunt people down, to... harvest them. And afterward...

Afterward...

He looked down at the marks carved into his own flesh. In that brief moment, his hand shook and the knife fell again with another clang. He hastily pushed it away, away from himself and from Soo Hyun. Cautiously, he took Soo Hyun's head in his hands and stared down at him. The threatening growl in his voice wanted him to hurt him. To twist his head, to kill him and be done with him--he's in the way. But Kihwa, the one he'd always known, the only one he knew, the one who didn't have strange voices in his head, he only wanted to hold him, to reassure him, and to love him.

But...

His hands were doing something to Soo Hyun's face. His touch--he swore it!--was gentle but Soo Hyun's skin darkened as if he held him with bruising force. Horrified, Kihwa removed his hands.

"I-I don't know what's happening." Was it all a nightmare? He pinched himself hard on the arm but it did nothing except leave a red mark.

[Song Soo Hyun]

"Agh!" Soo Hyun twisted away from Kihwa's touch. He didn't have to look in a mirror to know that the skin was bruising, turning marbled purple and black and blue. It hurt but not more than his hands and not more than his head, where he'd smacked it hard on the floor. Nobody had touched him since he discovered that human touch burned and bruised. He hadn't let anyone get near him--not even the celestial who turned him into this monstrosity.

But he couldn't send Kihwa away. Kihwa flew all the way from Korea to be with him and... Soo Hyun loved him. There was no way that he could slam the door in Kihwa's face; he was too selfish for that.

Now, though, it felt like his decision was coming back to bite him hard in the ass. He struggled to sit up, tried to pull his sleeves down and his coat collar up to hide the bruises. "Don't... don't worry." God, he felt like he'd been beaten up. Everything throbbed and ached and his vision was worryingly beginning to double every so often. Soo Hyun shook his head lightly as though that might help.

"You need to get to the hospital." Somebody there must be able to help Kihwa, like a psychiatrist.

[Jeon Kihwa]

Maybe he was imagining it. Hallucinating it. Soo Hyun was in pain but that was because Kihwa pushed him or attacked him. Or worse. And now, all he could stare at were the bruises he'd left behind without thinking. How did he do that? He didn't think he had it in him. All his life, Kihwa had been a gentle soul, he'd never hurt a fly! Now he was staring in horror as his boyfriend sat bruised and battered on the floor.

He was hearing voices. Seeing things. He shuddered a little.

"No," he said. "I need... need the souls. Need the souls. Need to get back to... the... master."

[Song Soo Hyun]

"Ki-Kihwa..." Soo Hyun tried to rise but when he did, the entire world spun. He sat down quickly and leaned his back against the cabinets behind him, feeling warm, wet blood trickling down the back of his neck. If anybody needed a doctor, he might, but he was far more alarmed by what was happening to Kihwa.

"Don't listen to the voice," he said faintly, reaching out and curling his fingertips around Kihwa's forearm, safely covered by cloth. Even so his fingers tingled unpleasantly. "Get to the-the hospital. Please, the hospital. Not th--"

"That won't be necessary." The new voice startled Soo Hyun. He looked up to see the guy from the Moonlight Inn standing in the kitchen doorway, looking strangely calm. It was an almost out of place expression, for somebody who had stumbled across a scene like theirs. The guy--was his name Ryan or Bryan or something?--looked at Soo Hyun, then at Kihwa and it was the latter that he addressed.

"You have work to do."

[Jeon Kihwa]

The hospital. Not. The.

Not the...?

He waited but Soo Hyun didn't finish the sentence. In fact, he wasn't able to, because there was another presence in the room with them. The same presence that had been trying to direct him to find the souls, to bring them to him. With his nostrils flaring slightly, heart leaping into his throat, Kihwa turned to look up at him. His voice was familiar as one he'd heard in his head. His face... was not. Had he met this man before?

"I... I..." Can't, he wanted to say. He couldn't leave Soo Hyun like this. At the same time, almost against his will, he felt himself standing up. Walking toward the stranger and away from Soo Hyun, as if in a daze.

"Yes, master."

He felt strange. Outside of his body. It felt like he was watching some cliched old horror film and his role was that of a zombie. Not brains, but souls. Yet it was real. It was so real that he could feel every beat of his heart and every step that he took.

[Song Soo Hyun]

"Good." Ryan nodded and turned to leave.

Soo Hyun remembered his name now. Ryan. It was Ryan. He and his family moved to Hazleton a little over a year ago to set up the Moonlight Inn, but Ryan didn't usually go into town. His siblings had jobs in town but Soo Hyun rarely saw Ryan himself, or his parents.

Why was Ryan here? Why was he telling Kihwa that he had work to do?

"Ki-hwa. No, don't--" Soo Hyun said weakly, in broken and breathless syllables, reaching out to grasp onto Kihwa's ankle. No. Something wasn't right. Kihwa shouldn't be going with Ryan, he should be calling 911 so that an ambulance could come take him to the hospital. All of those gashes on his body, and the strange and terrifying things he said before...

"If you know what's good for you," Ryan said mildly--though his expression turned a shade annoyed, "you'll let him go, Yin. This doesn't concern you."

"...no... Kihwa..." Soo Hyun's grasp on him tightened. "Hospital..."

[Jeon Kihwa]

Tilting his head slightly, he repeated the word yin quietly to himself. What did it mean? In this context, he was assuming it was a nickname for Soo Hyun. But if it was... well, Soo Hyun and this man didn't seem very close. If anything, the sound of Soo Hyun's voice was pulling him back toward him. The physical touch, too, helped. Kihwa looked down at him, his heart feeling all wobbly and fragile, unsure.

"Hospital..."

He agreed, though. The hospital. Not for himself, though. He was pretty sure that Soo Hyun needed it more. That bump on his head looked bad. Kihwa could swear he saw some blood on the side of Soo Hyun's neck, dripping from a bad wound. That got his attention.

"The hospital! He needs to go to the hospital." He felt strange, though, like everything he was saying and hearing came from a long tunnel.

[Song Soo Hyun]

"...yes. He needs to go." There was a strange smile on Ryan's face. "I'll take him. You have a job to do, remember?" His voice was soft now, persuasive, reasonable. He stepped forward and laid a hand on Kihwa's wrist. "You have a job to do."

"No!" Soo Hyun didn't know what the hell Ryan was doing but his gut told him that it was bad. He glared at Ryan, at that seemingly innocent smile on his face and the cold glitter in his eyes. "Don't listen to him Kihwa!"

"You have a job to do." Ryan kept repeating it, in his quiet and soft voice.

"Remember? Your job. Go do your job. I'll take care of him."

[Jeon Kihwa]

I have a job to do.

Slowly, he nodded. The physical touch somehow warped reality, creating a world where the man before him--his master--was the whole of it. His eyes darkened as he stared at him. He had a job to do. He remembered. But he also had a strange feeling in the pit of his stomach. Hadn't he been fighting something? ...something. What was he fighting? Kihwa felt like he was fighting something even as he started to move away.

Souls, he remembered. That's what he was doing. Collecting souls for his master. Yet he paused because another voice broke through. That voice made his heart beat faster. The adrenaline made him turn around, fighting whatever it was that was attempting to wrap him up in a cocoon of ignorance. Don't listen? His gaze met Soo Hyun's. He wanted to say something to him. He strongly wanted to but the voice kept ringing in his head that he had a job to do. Kihwa's lips parted, as if to speak but the words were a torrent in his head, a constant battle. Over and over again, he heard them telling him he had a job to do. He had a job to do. He had a job to do.

"I have a job to do," he said dully.