Name: [Redacted] ; Date: September 8th, 2021
Ruthless.
That’s what his father was, definitely.
He was as ruthless as he was impeccable, he had insanity dripping out of the cracks of his disciplined facade.
Jeongwon is pretty sure his father was a maniac who had honed and perfected a silver tongue and become a master of the art of war and violence.
He was ruthless and inhumane.
As they both sit across from each other at the table, and they eat in complete silence, Jeongwon feels his presence drilling into his eardrums.
They say nothing for the longest time, and Jeongwon has trained himself enough to know how to tell his nerves to calm down, so his hands don’t tremble when he takes his fork and knife and starts eating.
Today’s menu? Steak. Rare. The rarest there ever has been, the cow might as well be alive, mooing in front of him before Jeongwon slices a piece of it and starts devouring it like a caveman.
The red liquid does nothing to dissipate his worst nightmares and day terrors, and makes an excellent job of disintegrating any hunger he might’ve had before coming down for dinner.
“Eat, it’ll get cold” The man said, eating with not a single emotion on his face.
Jeongwon goes for the fork, attempting to forget how only a few hours ago it wasn’t myoglobin pouring out in front of him, it was blood.
How it wasn’t an animal, but a human.
He cuts a piece, marvelled at how his hands don’t tremble, and at how, while vile is rising up his throat, he ignores it as he eats the food.
Each bite is torturous, the consistency of it isn’t that too similar, but the fact it’s flesh, and it’s pouring red, makes Jeongwon want to scream his lungs out. He wants to throw up, vomit until black tar comes out of his mouth as he purges everything that could ever hurt another person out of him.
He doesn’t, he can’t.
Not only that, but he can’t even think about it for long, he can’t even voice it out, let it out in any way.
So he just eats. Bite after bite, and cut after cut, he allows his mind to slowly drift away to a better place, somewhere where his hands don’t have blood in between its folds and under his nails.
You see, it’s just routine at this point.
There’s been five years of this already, what’s another five? Ten? Twenty?
In a city that knows no law and follows no regime other than war, in a place so untouched by sunlight every day is spent under the grey dome of clouds that hide such a hideous place from the sun and the moon and the stars, Jeongwon isn’t but another part-taker of the madness.
So he eats, despite the churning sensation at the bottom of his stomach.
—
— L.
