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Nothing. That was all Seungyoun could hear or see. He was used to it. For as long as he could remember, this was the only thing he knew – the feeling of nothing. Well, that and his name. Cho Seungyoun. How he got that name, he didn’t know. Maybe it was from a past life? Or maybe it was created from an urge to have something.
“Get up,” he heard, the words echoing.
Despite it being the first time any words were spoken in the emptiness, he understood what was meant by them. He had to get up. He had to get up now.
Eyelids feeling like lead, he peeled them from one another and saw. He didn’t have the words to describe what he saw, but he knew he saw something – a stark contrast from the nothing he was so familiar with.
“Where am I?” he asked, words scratchy and his throat uncomfortable and raw from not having been used in who knows how long.
“Take a guess,” a voice said, sounding bored. Seungyoun recognised that voice – it was the same one from earlier.
Seungyoun turned over to the voice and blinked in surprise. A wave of emotions filled him as he saw the other person (did it even count as a person?) beside him. Large ram-like horns were situated on either side of their head, a dark ashy colour. Looking closer, Seungyoun could see a slight brown tinge to them. Was that dried blood? Its eyes were both terrifying and beautiful at the same time. Its sclera was as black as the night. So black, it was almost as if it was an empty void. The iris itself was a bright purple, an extreme contrast to the sclera. The creature’s facial features were sharp, looking humane, but also extremely inhumane. The creature wore a dark blood-like red suit with a black shirt. Peeking out from between its blazer and trousers was a long spear-headed tail, swishing from side to side like a cat in the dead of night.
Seungyoun gulped. “Who are you?”
“Me?” the creature asked, an air of confidence. “I’m surprised you don’t already know.”
So it was cocky too. Any previous fear Seungyoun had felt was now filled with annoyance.
“I haven’t exactly been around for long sir brags-a-lot.”
“A nickname, how cute,” it cracked a smile, the ends of its mouth going too far, almost reaching his ears. The sight brought Seungyoun close to throwing up. “I suppose I should give you a free pass this time. I’ll say this only once, so listen closely.”
Seungyoun nodded in anticipation. If this creature was making such a big deal about it, it must be something important. Maybe once he says his name something will blow up. Seungyoun’s mind spun in thought.
“Han Seungwoo.”
Seungyoun waited. 1 minute. 2 minutes. 5 minutes. Nothing happened. He looked up to Seungwoo and stared at him expression deadpan.
“The way you built that up really had me anticipating that something miraculous would happen when you said it.”
Seungwoo gasped, offended by Seungyoun’s words. “Knowing my name isn’t miraculous enough.”
Seungyoun was staring to really miss the feeling of nothing. At least then he wouldn’t have to listen to this creature go on and go on.
“Well, Seungwoo, I’m Cho Seungyoun and I have no clue what you are and where we are.”
Seungwoo stared at Seungyoun, his ego forgotten for a second. “What do you mean you don’t know where we are?”
“I said what I said.”
“What was your life like before this?”
“Wasn’t really much of a life. There was nothing. The only ‘thing’ was my name.”
“How…peculiar.”
“Good to know, now can you please answer my question?” Seungyoun pressed, annoyance rising more and more the longer his questions were left unanswered.
“This is Hell, and I am a demon. One of high rank too.”
“Hell? And what rank?”
“Yes Hell, the one people preach that you should try to avoid. Pretty rude if you ask me. What have we ever done to warrant this slander? We may torture the souls down here – but they deserve it and it’s fun. And yeah, sure, occasionally we visit the living and trick them into doing evil deeds, sometimes some of us killing entire towns, but we get hungry. The living are the best meal.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to understand why Hell has such a bad name.”
Seungwoo pouted at Seungyoun. “Meanie.”
“What’s your rank, you didn’t answer that.”
“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Seungwoo said, chuckling. “I am a prince of hell.”
“Prince?!” Seungyoun asked, shocked.
“Well, not like the same kind of prince you’d find among the living. Here, a prince is someone whose powers are superior to those of your average demon. We princes also usually have our own army and palace just for ourselves. Cool, isn’t it?”
“Isn’t…that exactly the same as the living’s princes?”
“It is? Wow I really need to brush up more on my knowledge of the living. Perhaps I should visit them again? Maybe slaughter a few more villages while I’m there.”
“Or you could visit them calmly and not kill them?”
“Where’s the fun in that, sweet Seungyoun?”
Before Seungyoun could express his distaste to Seungwoo’s statement, a small demon came running over to them.
“Seungwoo, I see you’ve found the newest recruitment?”
“Newest recruitment?” Seungyoun asked.
The demon nodded furiously, its beady eyes staring up at Seungyoun. Compared to Seungwoo, this demon was way cuter. Its sclera was black, like Seungwoo’s (maybe it was a demon thing?), but this one’s iris was a soft red, open and comforting. There were small wings on its back instead of a tail like Seungwoo. And instead of large blood-stained ram-like horns, it had the stereotypical red devil horns. It swore a suit, just like Seungwoo, but this suit was a plain black. Maybe Seungwoo’s was red because he was a prince?
“Yes! Have you not noticed yet?” it asked.
“Noticed what?”
“You’re a demon, too! Just like us! However, because you were only recently awakened, you look more human-like than we do,” the demon explained.
“Do you perhaps have a mirror or something so I can see myself?” Seungyoun asked.
The demon was clearly confused by the request but produced a mirror nonetheless.
Thanking the demon, Seungyoun took the mirror from him. He examined his face looking all around, memorising every feature. As the demon said, as time goes on, he’ll start to look different. Everything looked like the features of an average person except for his eyes. Just like Seungwoo and the small demon, his sclera was a dark black. However, instead of having an unnatural iris colour like purple and red, his iris was merely just a lighter shade of brown.
“So…is this what I would have looked like when I was human?” Seungyoun asked.
The small demon furrowed their brows in confusion. “Do you not remember your human life?”
Seungwoo answered this one for him. “He says that before this there was nothing.”
“This is extremely strange, Seungwoo. Do you think the elder will know?”
Seungwoo gritted his teeth in annoyance. “I’d rather not ask him, Dongpyo.”
The demon (Dongpyo, according to Seungwoo) sighed at Seungwoo’s behaviour. “You can’t avoid him forever Seungwoo. Especially now.”
“Can we at least wait a few days?” Seungwoo asked, trying to prolong the time.
“Nope!” Dongpyo chirped.
Seungyoun had been staring at the duo and their back-and-forth, trying to understand what they meant, but he was just left in confusion by their vagueness.
“May I ask what we’re doing?”
“We’re going to talk to the elder about your lack of memory of your human life!”
Seungyoun nodded in understanding. “I’m guessing it isn’t normal to not remember my human life.”
“Correct. All of us here remember our life as a human. It can torture us, plague our thoughts and tear us down or it can strengthen us, build our courage and power.”
“Wow, that’s actually really cool.”
“It’s Hell, of course it’s cool.”
“Hell? Cool? I always thought Hell was pretty warm?” Seungwoo chimed in.
Dongpyo and Seungyoun both groaned as response.
“The quicker we start moving towards the elder, the better,” Dongpyo stated, already done with Seungwoo.
“Can’t we just teleport over?” Seungwoo asked, bored.
“No. First, Seungyoun’s body won’t be able to cope with it, and second, the elder has various protections around his territory that ban all teleportation. If we want to get there, we have to go by foot.”
“But that’s like, an hour’s walk,” Seungwoo complained.
Dongpyo looked over to Seungyoun with a smirk on his face. “You can tell he’s a prince.”
Seungyoun barked out a laugh at that.
⚰️⚰️⚰️
The walk itself wasn’t that bad, as Dongpyo had said, it did only take an hour. However, what was hard to deal with was Seungwoo’s complaining. Even worse, when his complaining turned into flirting out of boredom.
“Seungyoun, your voice is as melodic as the screams of the living,” Seungwoo would say.
As you can see, demon compliments didn’t translate well to others. Or maybe it was just Seungwoo, considering Dongpyo also looked disturbed by the comparisons the older made.
“For someone as popular as Seungwoo, you’d think he’d know how to flirt,” Dongpyo said.
Seungyoun perked up at that. “Seungwoo’s popular?”
“Very. With males and females alike. However, he rejects them, every single time, so it’s odd that he’s coming onto you.”
“Why does he reject them?”
“That one is a long story,” Dongpyo said, hesitant to explain.
“This walk is an hour long, I’m sure you have the time to explain,” Seungyoun pressed.
Dongpyo glanced over to Seungwoo, silently asking for approval. Seungwoo shrugged and Dongpyo took that as an “Ok.”
“Well, Seungwoo originally had a lover – the name and face of which no one can remember, except an extremely select few. All anyone remembers is that the two were inseparable. Wherever Seungwoo was, they were there and vice versa.”
“Where are they now?” Seungyoun asked.
Seungwoo tensed at the question and Dongpyo smiled sadly.
“They’re dead.”
“Dead?”
“Well, as close to dead as a demon can be. A few of the lower demons had gotten careless, starting to attack entire countries instead of just villages like we had previously done. Obviously, those upstairs didn’t like that, and so a war broke out. So much suffering was involved then. With the powers of the big man behind them, the angels were much more powerful than us demons. Had the war gone on for any longer, we all would have died, and demons would cease to exist. Seungwoo’s lover knew of this.”
“What did they do?”
“They sacrificed themselves. They sacrificed themselves to the angels.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they were the most valuable of all demons. Not only were they one of the oldest demons but they were also the strongest. Some even rumoured that they had been a saint in their previous life, just like how Lucifer was previously an angel. That rumour made even more sense when the man upstairs willingly stopped everything once he had them.”
“Ok…but why does no one remember their name or face?”
“That was one of the consequences of the sacrifice. Not even Seungwoo remembers.”
Seungyoun looked over to Seungwoo. Instead of the proud man he had once seen, he saw a sad man. A man so sad that he masked all of his feelings with a false cover.
Before Seungyoun could stop himself, he found himself creeping over to Seungwoo. He opened his arms wide and wrapped them gently around the demon, holding him as if he was a precious glass.
Seungwoo was frozen in shock, then melted in Seungyoun’s embrace. It was so warm. So welcoming. So…right. Seungwoo rested his head in Seungyoun’s shoulder and breathed in, savouring this moment of vulnerability.
They stood like this for a while before Dongpyo grabbed their attention by coughing. “As cute as this may be, we really need to hurry up.”
“Buzzkill,” Seungwoo moaned.
Seungyoun laughed before asking, “How much longer left?”
Dongpyo was silent for a few seconds. “About 5 minutes. It’s straight ahead.
“Wow time flew by,” Seungyoun said.
“It tends to here in Hell,” commented Dongpyo.
Seungwoo then cracked a smile, another one of those eerie ones that nearly reached his ears. Except, now that he actually knew who Seungwoo was, it didn’t scare him as much as last time. As much. It was still terrifying.
“I say we have a bet,” Seungwoo proposed.
“What would that bet be?” asked Seungyoun.
“The last one there has to do whatever the first one asks.”
“Is that not a little unfair on me?”
“Why? Are you scared?”
He was a little, but Seungyoun would never admit that. Instead, he said, “Never. It’s on.”
“Have fun doing what I want, darling,” Seungwoo commented before speeding off.
Seungyoun and Dongpyo were both kicked into motion by this. Seungyoun could easily tell he would lose. That’s why he was hesitant about it. And now that it was actually happening, he was starting to regret agreeing to it. Especially as he saw that Seungwoo and Dongpyo were both way ahead of him. Seungyoun frowned.
Right at the end, of the path was Seungwoo and Dongpyo, both waiting for him. Neither looked like they broke a sweat, while Seungyoun was slightly panting.
“It looks like I won~” Seungwoo said, a teasing tone to his voice. Then, he faked a gasp as he looked to Seungyoun. “Oh no! It appears you lost.”
Seungyoun didn’t say anything and instead stuck his tongue out at the demon. Seungwoo blew a kiss to him in response.
“Both of you stop so we can go in,” Dongpyo said.
This shut Seungwoo up.
Seungyoun stared at the building they arrived at. It was high, that was for sure. There had to be at least 7 floors, each with high ceilings. The building itself was a dark grey. It felt like it was absorbing any and all light that came its way. Seungyoun shuddered slightly.
“Is this it?” he asked as he followed Dongpyo and Seungwoo up the stairs leading towards the door at the front.
Seungwoo nodded then knocked at the door.
A loud voice called out to the trio, “You do know there’s a doorbell, right?”
That voice. Seungyoun recognised that voice. But from where?
“Are you going to stand there forever or are you going to come in?” it asked the trio.
This time, Seungyoun took charge as he pushed the door open and stepped in.
He was right about the high ceilings. There was enough space between the floor and the ceiling that you could have put two normal sized buildings on top of each other and still have more room left over.
Standing in the centre of the room was another demon. From the title ‘the elder’ it was obvious that he was one of the older ones, except he looked more like Seungyoun than Seungwoo and Dongpyo. He too wore a suit, a white one. Rather than horns, he had two little stumps where horns would have been. His sclera wasn’t black like the rest of the demons, instead a dark grey and his iris was a deep gold. No wings and no tail were to be found, but his fingers were sharper than the average person’s.
He looked as if he was about to say something snarky, but his words were caught when his eyes passed over to Seungyoun.
“Where did you find him?” the elder asked.
“He’s the latest recruitment for our team. We actually came here to ask you about something weird with him,” Dongpyo stated, becoming the spokesperson.
“Could you not have phrased that differently,” Seungyoun mumbled.
Seungwoo heard this and smiled sweetly at Seungyoun before rubbing at his back.
“What about him is ‘weird’?” the elder asked.
“He doesn’t remember anything about his past life. He says that all he remembers is ‘nothing’ and his name,” Seungwoo spoke.
The elder stared at Seungyoun before speaking. “I would like to speak to him. Alone.”
Seungyoun looked at Seungwoo for confirmation. Seungwoo was tense. He didn’t trust the elder. But he still nodded at Seungyoun to let him go speak to him. If it meant they would have answers, he would have to accept.
⚰️⚰️⚰️
Seungyoun was confused as to where the elder was bringing him. They had gone through at least 12 halls and 2 flights of stairs. Finally, the elder stopped in front of a large door. He pushed it open and dragged Seungyoun in with him.
At the very end of the room was a sword encased in a glass casket and a large portrait over it. Seungyoun shook in fear when he saw who was in the portrait. It…was him. Or at least, a more demon-like version of himself. Instead of ram-like horns, small stereotypical horns or stumps, this version of him had long pointed horns that took up a large portion of the portrait. They were a dark red, so dark you could barely even tell that they were red. His eyes have the classic black sclera but the irises were a dark red, just like the red of his horns. His suit was a black, but the shirt was a dark red. The same red of Seungwoo’s shirt.
Seungyoun turned over to the elder. “What’s this?”
“You.”
“It’s not me- I’m nothing like that.”
“You’re not now, but you were then.”
“Then?”
“Did you ever wonder why it was only your name you remembered?”
“I thought it was so I knew who I was.”
“Partially.”
The elder paused for a few moments then beckoned Seungyoun to come closer.
“Read the name here.”
Seungyoun looked at the plaque underneath the portrait. Engraved in neat calligraphy-like text read, “Woodz? What significance does Woodz have?”
The elder smiled at Seungyoun. “Read the very bottom.”
Seungyoun looked closer. There, at the very bottom of the plaque, in the smallest text Seungyoun has ever seen, was the name, “Cho Seungyoun? That’s my name! Why is it here?”
“Take the sword out of the casket and your questions will be answered.”
“Will the owner not be annoyed that I’m taking their sword?”
“I’m sure they won’t mind,” the elder said, smirking.
Seungyoun turned to the casket. It was a beautiful sword. A stark contrast to everything else around them. Unlike the usual colour scheme of Hell, this sword was different. It was a bright, shining gold, with bright blue jewels encrusted into the sheath. The elder lifted up the casket and Seungyoun picked up the sword.
Right as he did, white flashed in his view and red-hot pain shot through him. His head hurt, things growing out of it and images flooding his brain. His breathing became ragged as he tried to survive through the pain. But once the pain had ceased, he had never felt better. He looked down at his clothes. He was now wearing a suit like all the other demons. The same black suit and red shirt as in the portrait.
Seungyoun looked over at the elder. “Thank you for bringing me back, Wooseok.”
“Don’t thank me. I wouldn’t have even known you were back if it wasn’t for Dongpyo and Seungwoo.”
“Seungwoo… how do you think he’ll react?”
“As extravagantly as he usually does,” Wooseok said with a smile.
Seungyoun smiled. “I’d hope so.”
Then, he sped off, running through halls and down stairs until he was finally back at the entrance. Seungyoun’s heart felt full as he saw Seungwoo there. With all the memories of the time they’d spent with each other, it was like a fresh breath of air seeing him again.
Seungwoo looked up as he heard the noise of someone coming. Who he saw he didn’t expect. It was Seungyoun…except now he recognised him. Seungyoun was his lover this whole time. Why didn’t he recognise him? Why couldn’t he recognise the man he loved more than anything else?
As if he could sense what Seungwoo was thinking, Seungyoun smiled and spoke calmly. “I put a spell on myself when I left. I didn’t want you to remember me and suffer by trying to get me back.”
Seungwoo smiled back. “You always knew me well, darling.”
“As always,” Seungyoun laughed. “Now come over here you big baby and give me a kiss, I’ve missed you.”