We Are Bulletproof

Jeon Kihwa had disappeared.

In his place was... something else. It enveloped him in darkness and warped him. It turned him into something that was no longer quite human. How could he know this would happen when he chose to visit his long distance boyfriend? How could he know that a vacation would change his entire life? The course of his journey had taken a sharp turn for the dark and little did he know that it would make his dreams impossible to hold onto.

Just when he'd been rising in stardom. Just when people were learning his name.

Jeon Kihwa couldn't even remember his own name.

Blindly, he searched for souls. A rush of excitement ran through him when he found one, a strange emotion he'd never felt. Excitement, of course, but this was a different kind of excitement. It was a rush of need and maliciousness that he'd never felt. After all, Jeon Kihwa, he didn't have a malicious bone in his body. Before all this.

But as the dark of the night finally began to lift and the sun began to peek through the thick Oregon forest line, the mindlessness, the numbness, it began to melt away. In stages, he began to come back to himself and when he finally found himself again, he was in the middle of a foreign home. It looked like a living room, with a couch and a television buzzing in the background.

The people sitting on the couch were still. And as Kihwa blinked, he realized it was worse than that. They were covered in blood. Kihwa looked down to find that he was straddling another person. He looked to be a teenager and there was a hole through his chest, his eyes staring up at him without seeing. Glassy. Kihwa blinked and then let out a startled, horrified cry.

No more.

Nothing else, no more conflict.

The voice kept repeating in his head even when the master was no longer speaking aloud. All he knew was that he had to do it. There was no more fighting it. He had tried, if only for the love of Soo Hyun but now his head buzzed with so many demands that he could barely even remember his name above it all. He didn't look back, although some niggling part of him wanted to, before he left the room and then the building. Humans.

He needed to find human souls.

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.

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.

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.

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."

"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.

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??"

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.

"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..."

*just a creepy laugh*

_{make the voices go away}

S... souls...?

No. I don't need anything except souls.

Of COURSE!