Chapter Twenty: The Night You Couldn't Hurt Me
♡Tae-hyun's POV
I wasn't asleep.
How could I be, when the very air in the room changed the moment you slipped from the bed? The space you left behind wasn't just empty; it was a vacuum, a silent scream I felt in my bones. I knew the rhythm of your breathing, the soft sigh you made when dreaming, the tiny shift of your weight against the mattress. Your absence was a physical wound.
So I lay still. A predator playing prey. Eyes closed, breathing even—a performance crafted over a lifetime in the shadows. I heard the whisper of your bare feet on the cold marble, a sound so faint it was less a noise and more a change in pressure against my skin. I felt the shift in the atmosphere as you approached, a cool draft carrying the scent of your fear—clean, sharp, like ozone before a storm.
And then, the weight.
Not the weight of the knife—a trivial thing, a sliver of steel. The weight of your decision. It hovered above my chest, a trembling potentiality that charged the dark room with more electricity than a lightning strike. I could feel the heat of your body, hear the frantic, bird-like beat of your heart, smell the salt of the tear that traced a path from your eye to your chin before falling, silent, onto my sheet.
The tip touched me. A sting, precise and cool, just over my heart. A punctuation mark in the silent conversation we were having.
Do it, I thought, the words a scream in the quiet of my mind. Prove to me you're as ruined as I am. Prove that my darkness has finally touched your light. Become my equal in this bloody, beautiful ruin.
I waited. Every muscle in my body was coiled, not to defend, but to absorb. I would let you carve your grief into me. I would wear your hatred as a badge. It would be a more honest connection than any vow spoken in a blood-soaked cathedral.
But you… you stopped.
The knife didn't push. It wavered. A sob tore from your throat, so raw it seemed to rip the air itself. It wasn't a sound of weakness. It was the sound of a soul being split in two. The part that remembered sunlit kitchens and laughter warring with the part that knew only gun smoke and my hands.
And in that split second, with the blade a hairsbreadth from ending me, I understood.
You couldn't do it.
Not because you were afraid. Not because you weren't strong enough. But because at your core, in the fractured, amnesiac mess I'd made of you, you were still you. The one who scowled at overpriced coffee but paid anyway. The one who noticed the way light fell in a library. The one whose mercy was a reflex, not a calculation.
The knife clattered to the floor, a sound of exquisite surrender.
I felt you sink beside the bed, your body folding in on itself, waves of silent, shuddering grief crashing over you. Each suppressed sob was a nail in the coffin of my own damned soul. I had wanted a monster to match my own. I had created a masterpiece of pain and isolation. And yet, the masterpiece refused to complete the final, violent stroke.
A smile touched my lips, hidden in the dark. Not a smile of triumph, but of devastating recognition. You had just shown me the one thing I could never take from you, the one thing more powerful than all my threats and obsessions: your inherent, incurable humanity.
I moved then. Slowly. Giving you every chance to flee, to pick up the knife again. You didn't. You were lost in the storm of your own heart.
My hand found your wrist. Not to restrain, but to connect. Your skin was cold, your pulse a wild, trapped thing fluttering against my fingers. I pulled, not with force, but with inevitability. You came easily, your resistance melted by exhaustion and a despair so deep it had become a form of gravity.
I gathered you onto the bed, into the space I had warmed for you. You were pliant, a broken doll, tears soaking into the black cotton of my shirt. I wrapped myself around you, my body a cage of flesh and heat designed not to imprison, but to contain the fallout. To hold the pieces of you together as you shattered.
"Shhh," I murmured into your hair, my voice a low vibration against your temple. The word was useless. A Band-Aid on a bullet wound. But it was all I had. "I have you."
You cried then, truly cried, great heaving sobs that wracked your entire frame. You cried for the parents I erased, for the future I stole, for the sister whose face you couldn't remember, for the woman you used to be and could no longer find. You cried for the monstrous, comforting arms that held you now. And I took it all. I absorbed your grief through my skin, let it seep into my bones, a poison I welcomed because it was yours.
This was the true proximity. Not the careful distance in a lecture hall, not the charged nearness in a library aisle. This was the brutal intimacy of shared ruin. Your tears on my skin. Your broken breaths mingling with mine. The absolute vulnerability of your body trusting mine to hold it even as your mind screamed in revulsion.
I pressed my lips to the crown of your head, a kiss that was a confession and a curse. This is what we are now. This tangled, bloody knot. You can't kill me, and I can't let you go. We are each other's punishment and sanctuary.
You eventually stilled, the storm passing, leaving you hollowed out and limp in my arms. Your breathing evened, syncing with mine in the dark. This was the obsession, stripped bare. Not the flash of possession, the thrill of the chase. This. The quiet, devastating responsibility of being the only shore for a ship you yourself set adrift.
I held you long after you fell into a fitful sleep. I watched the moonlight trace the delicate lines of your face, the tracks of your tears, the parted lips that had whispered hate but breathed trust. You were the most beautiful, tragic thing I had ever owned. And in that moment, I knew a truth more terrifying than any enemy, any betrayal:
You owned me right back.
The knife on the floor was not your failure. It was your victory. With it, you had carved a truth deeper than any wound into my soul. You had proven that my darkness could shatter you, frighten you, enrage you, but it could not make you its mirror. You held onto your light, even if it was just a dying ember, and that ember was the only warmth left in my world.
I would burn cities to keep it flickering. I would wage wars to guard its glow. I would become the monster in every shadow so that the shadow never touched you.
"Sleep, little angel," I whispered into the silent dark, my arms tightening imperceptibly around you. "The monster is on watch. And tonight, the monster loves you most of all."