⊱Un cœur déchiré⊰

A torn heart

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"Surrealism. Basically letting all of your weird, nonsensical dreams manifest in your arts, right? Letting loose!"

Jungkook hummed from behind me while I squeezed my brain powers to write something literate yet deserving of a high grade. Months had passed since midterm and the teacher kept haunting us like a Virtue that we should already be finishing our research papers... which we didn't start writing until now.

"Hey now, are you even listening?"

"Uh," he grumbled, "I thought we were watching a movie..."

His fingers were threading through my locks in gentle tugs for the last thirty minutes and I never realized. It was soothing and calming that I just let it be.

"Wow, it's growing nicely, I can braid it."

My eyebrows jumped and I turned my head around in surprise. "Braid?"

With an adorable bunny grin, he lifted the end of the braid for me to see that surprised me more than anything for the last decades. My hair was growing longer...

...and I didn't mind him touching it. In fact, I enjoyed his soft brushes.

"Braided purple hair looks pretty," he commented and smoothened out the stray strands poking out of the braid. "It's such a nice color. Suits you."

My face started heating up from the sweet gaze, the way his lovely doe eyes marveled at me. Whenever I held his gaze, that's what I always felt. Warmth. Tenderness. And a bout of jitters.

Those jitters would reach my brain to electrify it and snap me out of... whatever I was in.

"Are you done?"

Just like now when I would blink repeatedly and guess what he just said.

"Not really."

"Ah, we can skip a day," Jungkook chirped, jumping up from the bed and shuffling to the closet. "It's night already."

It wasn't even late and he was preparing for bed. Shaking my head, I focused back on the paper to at least finish the page, but after I finished typing my sentence, Jungkook suddenly handed me thick blankets and a huge bowl of chocolate chip cookies with a buoyant smile.

I raised an eyebrow, pretending to be disapproving. "What are these for?"

"For our stargazing session on the rooftop," he giggled and I couldn't help but break into a smile.

Chuckling, I saved the research file before shutting down his notebook and stood up. "Oh so it's a session now."

"Of course, my stargazing buddy. I'm bribing you with cookies."

He wrapped a jacket around my shoulders as we left his dorm room while bickering about snacks. I asked for ice cream but he nagged me saying I could catch a cold eating it during this hour outside...

The hour which I loved the most.

The hour when all the worries, all the voices in my head would leave me along with a content exhale, interweaving with the serenity of the night and soon dissolving into the darkness. Worries seemed so trivial under the stars.

Sitting by his side under billions of shining stars raining their beauty on me, I realized... I never felt more at ease.

The tides of my sea were ebbing and flowing to the rhythm of my heartbeat.

"You know, you're so mean, not letting me hear you practice for the talent show," I sighed, frowning at him for keeping a low profile until the last day. "As your friend, I'm beyond offended. The betrayal!"

Jungkook broke into a loud, gleeful laughter and his crescent eyes glimmered with the stars. "Success!"

Rolling my eyes, I huffed out a breath and pouted. "But is it true that you won every talent show since your first year? How is that possible? Are you that good?"

He simply shrugged with an innocent smile. "I think I was just lucky. There are so many talented students in our university. I'm not that good."

"I'll be the judge of that tomorrow," I stated, not liking the way he was discrediting himself like this again. It always happened with him. At that point, I couldn't tell if he was being humble or critical of himself. "I think it's not luck if it happened three times. You're hiding your talent from me, you rodent."

Shaking his head, Jungkook laughed with me and tried arguing but failed miserably since I had become a master at praising him after months of practice. I noticed his ears reddening when I won and I chuckled from how adorable he looked.

"Okay, we should head inside. You need to rest before your big day, right? I'll be in the front row to cheer for you," I chimed, standing up from the futon.

He followed and gathered the things to head back before flicking my forehead and earning a slap that caused him to laugh, until a buzz in his pocket caught his attention. Swiftly pulling out his phone, he widened his eyes before taking the call.

"Yeah?"

His eyes widened even more after a beat of silence. "Now? Okay."

"What?" I asked after he ended the call and followed him down the stairs with the bowl of cookies in hand. "Who was it?"

"Jia asked me to go for a late night snack. She sounded exhausted. I'll just buy something and tuck her into her bed after giving it. That's what you said girls like, right?"

A dull tug on my heart made me frown but I dismissed it, nodding at him. Even if I didn't tell him that to have it used on her...

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Not too dull but not too flashy, I had to look my best to catch Jungkook's eyes. Thinking about him had me smiling like a madman to myself. As I was sorting through my outfits to find a suitable one for tomorrow's talent show, a man suddenly showed up out of thin air next to me, nearly stopping my heart altogether.

The ever so nosy moss haired, doll faced Sin wore a tight lipped smile and propped an elbow on my shoulder. "How's it going so far?"

"Well, I'm finally hearing him sing and I was excited until you came. He's just very sweet and cute and-"

"No," Envy interrupted, furrowing his eyebrows, "I meant your mission."

My hands froze over the clothes hangers and I had to take a moment to find anything to say to him. It felt as if someone poured a bucket of ice water or hit me with a terrifying wake up call.

His hands came up to hold my shoulders, making me face him. And his expression was anything but playful like I usually would see on him. "You do realize the agreement is one year, right? Many months had already passed. How's it going so far?" As if warning me, his voice lowered an octave.

Swallowing thickly, I licked my lips as cold sweat ran down my spine. "I'm getting there..."

His eyes darkened and he shook his head as if understanding. "I knew this was why..."

And what he said next never had me dreading more for what would happen next.

"Lucy is calling for you."

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"Have you lost yourself in the process?"

I flinched when Lucy raised his voice, gawking at me filled with incredulity. He chased out all the others including Envy who looked pitiful for me and I knew I did it wrong.

"You're the most ruthless Sin and yet you're turning... soft?" He blinked, not believing his own words. "What happened to "I will punish all those dirty life ruiners"? What happened to proving your belief that men are vile creatures?"

I gulped, fiddling with the sides of my leather skirt. "Nothing happened to that."

"Tell me, my dear Lust, when was the last time you tortured a sinner? Better yet, do you even possess the want to torture a soul?"

My eyes bulged out in disbelief. "O-Of course I do!"

"You're a Sin, not a human." Lucy's eyes narrowed dangerously that made me want to kneel and whimper for forgiveness. "This is a matter of life and death, your whole existence depends on you... If you want to see the sunlight sometime after this, focus on what's important, will you?"

He stepped closer and leaned into my ear to whisper, "Bringing in sinners and making their remaining time filled with anguish for what they did."

For what they did...

My skin crawled when the traces of a sinner's touches burned at Lucy's words. The traces that nearly faded but never left my body, nor my memories. I felt the pain creeping up my bones again. The pain that robbed me of my smiles and robbed me of my sanity.

"Of course," I muttered, feeling my vision blur. "I am the Sin of Lust."

Turning on my heels, I headed straight to where I could satisfy the burning need to alleviate the pain that was taking over me like wildfire. As if possessed, I barged into where the succubi and incubi were torturing the damned souls, not hearing the screams at all, and let my feet take me to the one kept in a separate room I would often find myself in.

The screams he let out when I cut his skin with flames and dipped a knife in his flesh to dig into his bones calmed my mind even for a moment.

"Please end my life instead of this eternal hell," he begged, crying out blood that burned his skin even more.

A menacing chuckle escaped me and I realized that this was, in fact, who I was. Not a human, but a monster who enjoyed seeing people suffer.

"No, sweetheart, you won't escape me forever and ever and ever," I giggled, cutting through his skin in an irregular pattern, listening to his cries with great amusement and watching his blood spill.

"Even if your skin peels off like this-"

Digging into his flesh, I tore his bones and burned it with flames as the room shook with agonizing screams.

"Or your bones break and burn like this-"

The tortures provided a moment of gratification, but no matter how many times I tortured, I couldn't find closure and I would always end up regretting wasting my life over someone like him. I couldn't go back and undo my actions that bound my soul to this place.

In the end, all that waited me after the agreement was this repetition of a brief gratification, lingering hatred and eternal regret.

This heightened sense of emotions would disappear. I was a deadly sin, a damned soul...

But I probably would never enjoy anything more than the stargazing sessions I had with a mortal... who I had to throw into this pit of hell with my own hands.

And I was afraid that would become my greatest regret that would tear me into pieces one day...

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I'm so happy there's so many of you still with me 😭💖

Hope you enjoy 💜

And sorry for the violence. I hope y'all read the first chapter where I stated there will be explicit scenes and stuff.