CW: Ableist language, violence, physical abuse, gore.
The Dasom she sees is not the one she knows.
The Dasom she sees is light. The clean exhilarance of a wind battered cliff face. Soaring firmament, violently blue. She is the summer, unadorned and somnolent heat, and the fierce petrification of tundra, both wonderful and cruel. She is reborn, spirit returned to the living dead.
“I have missed you, my love.”
The Dasom she sees is beautiful. Dressed plainly in a creme top and long blue skirt that flows to her ankles. Her hair is brushed silken and twisted into an elegant bun. The jaundice in her skin is gone. She’s a gently flushed peach with clear eyes that are polished obsidian.
The pet name makes Dasom frown and shift uneasily on the couch. She watches Kahin glide over to the open windows and quietly close them. One after the other. “Please don’t call me that, Lila. I haven’t been that for many years now.”
Kahin pauses at the second window, staring out the glass to the dilapidated house across the road. Her emeralds narrow a tad, as if she could see through those half-rotted walls. “It has been too long,” she hums, turning to face Dasom. “In fact, it has been five years since our last meeting.”
Her visage is stunning, even in the simple green cloak she wears over her dress. The hood sits upon her head, partially obscuring the mass of loose tresses pooling upon her shoulders. Despite her reservations, Dasom can’t help but admire the sight.
“If I recall correctly, I threw you out of the house,” Dasom says, a subtle tug at the corner of her mouth. “And I told you to never show up in front of me again.”
“Indeed.” The Madame gives her a rare look, warm and endearing. “And look where you are now. If you had accepted my assistance that day, perhaps you would be still living in that house. And your son would still be by your side.”
Dasom rises to her feet, chin raised and hands clenched in the folds of her skirt. “Do you know where Subin is?”
“Subin?” Kahin’s lips arch. She glides towards the couch, brushing past the tense woman, and elegantly sprawls across the cushions. The hood is flicked back to reveal the expanse of her curls and the entirety of her beauty. “You still call him by this name?”
“That is his name. What else would I call him?” Dasom’s soft voice is at odds with her hardened expression, a dangerous glint in her eyes.
“He calls himself Rin the Rat.”
“Where is he, Lila?” The Easterner pauses, trepidation flickering in her gaze. “You…you didn’t…take him, did you?”
Lila stares back at her with an eerie calm. “That boy is truly your son. I was so convinced of his potential. He was more than I ever wanted. More than you, even.” She sighs and crosses her legs, eyes growing hooded with apathy. “But he betrayed me last night, Dasom, and now he too has slipped from my hands.”
“You touched my son.” Dasom’s silent fury flares, but she keeps it contained behind a cold facade. Only her powerful glare is indicative of the turmoil within. “How dare you touch Subin.”
“From what I witnessed during his training, it was not just I who laid a hand upon him.” Kahin raises a brow, her eyes glittering with malice. “You have been a rather poor mother, Dasom. The scars you left on that boy are incomprehensible.”
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
Dasom blenches and averts her gaze, the fury snuffed to a broil. She slowly sits down beside Kahin, hands clasped tightly in her lap. Her dark eyes wander to the cold hearth, swept for the spring. “I have changed, Lila,” she says, quietly. “For those first three months, whenever I wasn’t searching for him, I was just drinking myself into a stupor. I thought that I wanted him dead. I told him so, the last time I spoke to him. I said that he should have never been born. When he disappeared…” Dasom shakes her head, smiling grimly. “When I thought of him…hurt or dead somewhere…it terrified me far worse than what the future could ever bring.” She grips her skirt in both hands, twisting at the cheap fabric. “I never stopped loving him, Lila. Even when I was hurting him. I still loved him.”
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The Madame raises a brow. “You mean–”
“Yes. I fear for his mind.”
“My. That is an interesting development.”
Dasom hesitates, before reaching out to take the other woman’s hand. Her touch is careful and light. As if she were wary of fully committing.
Kahin does the rest – latching onto those slender fingers with an iron grip. Her smile is achingly beautiful.
“Lila,” Dasom starts, gazing down at their clasped hands. “I want to apologise to you. Sincerely apologise.”
“Whatever for?”
Dasom locks her jaw. She raises her eyes to meet the other’s, heart clenching when she sees that tender expression. “All those years ago. Before Subin. I betrayed you. I didn’t think of the implications of my actions. I only knew how deep your hurt was when you followed me to the East. And…by then, I couldn’t do anything about it. For that, I am truly sorry.”
Steely fingers squeeze Dasom’s hand. “Do you know what hurt me the most?” Kahin lilts, regarding the other with deep affection. “That you could so easily switch your devotion to him. A man not even worthy to lick the bottom of your shoe. Your pure devotion, your love, was completely wasted on him.”
“He…” Dasom falters, lips pursing in silent anger. “He was wonderful. Before he forgot about me and his son.”
“Hm. And now here you are. Alone and penniless.” Kahin shifts closer to the other, until her face is mere inches away. “And here I am.”
Dasom’s breath stutters. She feels her chest searing with sweet pain she’d long forgotten. Long dormant emotions stir, giving life to a love she had so intently abandoned. The pain of being with this woman could never surmount to the pain of being apart from her. She had long endured for two decades and yet time has worn down her will like shearing wind to stone. With little awareness, Dasom brings her mouth to Kahin’s, grazing her lips against the other’s with a shivering breath.
And then she stops. She dips her head, following her sinking heart, before drawing back. She can feel those heated emeralds, boring two holes into her skull. “I can’t,” she whispers, shoulders trembling. “Not again. I can’t do this again.”
“Why not?” Kahin intrudes on her space, closing the gap between them once more. Her breath puffs hot against Dasom’s brow. Her hand gently cups her cold cheek, thumb pressing into her flesh. “He’s not around to steal you away. Things will be different this time, my love. It will be better. And who else do you have now but me?”
Dasom almost falls for it. She feels herself wavering. Her weakness is amaranthine. “No,” she says shakily, extricating herself from Kahin’s grasp. “No, Lila. I have Subin. I always have Subin. And I want to do better for both of us.” A delicate smile unfurls, brows tilting above dewy eyes. “When I bring him home, I’m going to find a way to earn coin. I will school him properly and send him to the Imperial College. We will leave the Slums. We will have a proper home. A proper family. All the things he never had, I will provide for him. I want to do for him what you could never do for me. What he could never do for us.”
A maddened glint enters Kahin’s stare. She snatches Dasom by the throat, grip tight but not yet painful. The latter gasps and snags the Madame’s wrist, trying to pry herself free.
“I know you still love me, Dasom,” Kahin purrs, before pressing a tender kiss upon her mouth. When she draws back, she licks her lips with pleasure. “I can taste your devotion. It’s still in there, waiting for another to latch onto. Give it to me.”
Dasom grimaces, struggling against her confines. “I don’t love you, Lila,” she whispers, lips trembling. “After what you did to me. To Subin. I could never love you.”
She grits her teeth and yanks hard at Kahin’s wrist, tearing herself free. Dasom shoots her feet and stumbles back, panting lightly as she massages her throat. “I don’t want to be under your control, Lila. Don’t you remember what I told you last time? I don’t care for anything you could give me, because I will always be paying for it with my soul. Perhaps I could once afford to give up my soul for you. But now I can’t afford it anymore. So please…” Dasom holds out her hands, palms out. “Please. Just leave me and my son alone.”
The Madame of the Roses stares at her beloved for an eon, her visage impassive and dark. Eventually, she rises to her feet and drifts towards Dasom. She brings her hand to the woman’s cheek, brushing her fingers over her silken skin. Big black orbs watch her in silence, both entranced and guarded. Fingertips slide from cheek to jaw to neck.
“Do you remember our first night together? In Aswi Chadan?”
Dasom is in a haze. She nods minutely, barely breathing. “I do.” Her voice is a mere wisp. A fragile thing.
“That night, you showed me your true devotion. You told me that you would die for me. You took a knife and plunged it into your hand. I have never met anyone who loves as deeply and entirely as you. Your obsession is sublime. A gift from the gods themselves.”
“Lila…” Dasom tilts her head into the other’s touch, sighing softly. Her gaze is steeped in silent yearning.
“So it is a shame,” Kahin murmurs, her thick black lashes casting shadows in her lifeless eyes. “You were my last hope. And now you are gone.” She angles her head and presses her lips upon the other’s, ever so gentle and sweet.
When she removes her hand, a needle glints in Dasom’s neck, quivering with every rapid pulse.
***
When Rin goes to see Dasom, the house is on fire.
The ramshackle building is swollen, near bursting, heavy gut sagging with ravenous inferno. Wooden slats groan and bulge. Glowing ribbons catch the dense currents of smoke, flowing from blazing windows. There’s a black river caught upwind, pushed into the sky. Forked flames cavort as they are belched and their hellish fingers mould the beast like a titan tempering glass.
Fire has a voice. The howling swansong at a lonely pyre.
Rin drops the bag in his hand. Baked goods scatter and roll across the dirt. The old witch across the road, Nuwa, she’s yelling something in his ear, yanking at his arms, grabbing at his shoulders–
She’s still in the house.
He’s not really thinking and maybe that’s the point. A hard kick knocks the door off its hinges and the sudden blast scorches his flesh. Strange numbness spreads. Darkness trickles into his vision. His balance is thrown.
Celestial light instinctively radiates, sending a resplendent sheen through his skin. The crimson wash of the blaze ignites his eye bloody. He’s blind but his body moves automatically with agility not his own, puppeteered by force unseen.
Dasom’s sprawled across the ground. She’s under the dining table, a smoke filled oasis in an infernal sea. He dodges explosive pockets and kicks down obstructions with eerie calm, but it’s taking too much time. The house warps and heaves around him, as if gripped in the violent throes of death, urging him faster, pushing him harder, until he’s there, kneeling by her body and dragging her from this hellscape.
She’s already blistered and broken. Her eyes have shrivelled into dehydrated husks. Her mouth agape. There’s a blackened tongue. Her body writhes in his arms, shaking and contorting as the very blood is boiled from her veins.
But she moves with him.
She places one foot after the other, following him to salvation. Her will is powerful, allowing her the last reservoir of energy. For the first time in his life, he sees her as an entity to rival the gods. The omniscient presence of the mother, his mother, far more breath-taking than a faceless Empress.
Dasom is radiance. He sees it now.
Safety is but a few steps away, unobstructed save for the carpet of budding flames.
Luna’s boreal glow pools in his core, sending a fierce jolt of energy through his failing body. A suffering gasp and seizing muscles. A silent scream. A will not his own. Luna’s presence crowds his cognition. Foreign yet familiar.
And just as he takes another excruciating step, a pair of small hands shoves him hard. He staggers and tumbles, striking the doorstep with his head.
Fresh air opens up his lungs, the heat still suffocates his pores. In the distance, or perhaps right upon him, there’s a terrific, ground-shaking crash.
He flips over onto his front, pained breaths coming in torrid heaves. Where he’d been standing is now a burning wreckage with splintered beams and fragmented debris. The roof had caved in, near crushing him if not for Dasom’s saving hand.
And there she is, just on the other side of the wreckage, standing straight and tall like an obsidian statue.
She stares at him and he stares right back. His vision is broken. She’s but an impression, chalk in the rain, blurred and washed away. And yet, he sees her with more than just his eye. Something far greater and immense than just his senses.
And then the inferno whips around her form like a great constrictor, turning her into ash. Her smile is the last thing he sees.
She leaves him behind to the ruin of their home.
Excruciating pain like no other explodes in his head, sending him reeling and convulsing. He grips his splitting skull, eye rolling back as he’s inundated with images, sounds, and sensations, alien and incomprehensible. Everything has a distinct identity: the very touch of his mother’s hand. Her sacrificial bond.
When he comes to, he’s lying on his back with Nuwa gazing down at him. Her gnarled mouth moves silently.
He glances to the house, now but a charred pile of bones. There’s a scorched beam still standing upright, petrified coal with a fractured form. He hopes it’s Dasom. The last echo of her life, imprinted upon the world like a fading ink stain.
***
Under the cover of the night, a figure aims a revolver at the boy.
There’s the slightest tremour in her hand. A flicker in her gaze. Uncertainty seeps into her resolve and corrupts her will.
With a sharp intake, she drops her hand. His screams, blistering raw, reach her from a distance.
She thinks that maybe she’s in pain, but she can’t feel anything beyond her own doubt. Kahin pulls the hood of her cloak over her head and sinks into the shade.
Tonight, desolation reigns.
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…
I-I WON’T LET YOU WIN!! I W-WON’T CRY
runs away
Thank you for the chapter!! ❤️❤️
😭 GIMME UR TEARS DONDONNNNNNNN!!!! And thank for reading as usual~~ <333☺
Sighhhhh lemme just go kill someone real quick ☺️🔪
T-TERRIFYING 😩
bruh