Seojin tugged soundly at his wrists, trying his hardest to break free, but all in vain. The harsh metal bit into his flesh, but the physical discomfort was incomparable to his psychological torment. With each moment, Sejin's despair engulfed him deeper. Their interconnected senses, which had once been a secret bond, had now become a torturous trap.

To see what was inevitable was the bane of his existence. Why did he have to feel the pain for things he had never done? And for the worst, he was Sejin's eyes; he could see what his twin did, he could feel what his twin wanted, and he could do nothing for it.
Nothing at all.

"What have you done?" Seojin grunted, shocked beyond belief, as a cruel scene unfolded before his eyes- his eyes, yet not his eyes. He felt the pain slice through him.

Seojin became the harbinger of atonement, living under the yoke of his brother's sins. For him, absolution was not in freedom but in living the pain, feeling the remorse, and bearing the consequence of a deed he never did. The irony was that he was bound, yet he was free. Free from the shroud of his brother's shadow, free to sorrow, to repent, and to live through his guilt. Sejin may not have felt remorse, but Seojin did, and he knew it was his cross to bear. It was his journey to salvation.

In the tempest, Sejin discovered harmony in anarchy, a celestial ballet of particles in synchrony, contrasting forces magnetically attracting and repelling each other, weaving the cosmos into an intricate fabric of stunning chaos. His physical form no longer held him. He felt time dilate, the world shrink, and his body split into parts per million until he coalesced all over again.

He witnessed the dark hole, and he envisioned the planets and those million galaxies.

Sejin wasn't a mere witness to the cosmos anymore. He was the universe.

When he reassembled on the other side of the vortex, Sejin was more than a physicist. His eyes sparkled with ethereal light, and his heart pulsed with the rhythm of distant galaxies. Now, the dance of atoms and strings did not bewilder him; he was a part of it, fused by his journey through the vortex. But the universe is a crafty trickster. It gave only to take away.

His landing was rough, and the world distorted around him. The world around him dissolved into shades of reality, replaced by nebulous corridors of fractured time. Batting his eyelids to see his whereabouts, Sejin felt queasy; his surroundings were familiar. The room he was once locked in. As his vision gained clarity and his senses sharpened, he found himself in a small, candlelit room, the cackles of babies echoing around him.

The room was sparsely furnished; an old desk sat in a corner, adorned with books and scattered parchment, as if someone had been interrupted during their meticulous work. A parchment hung precariously off the edge, coated with strange symbols and ancient language- perhaps some cryptic instructions, a guidebook to another realm, or a desperate plea for help. Sejin could not decipher the mysterious inkworks, but he felt a guttural tug.

Gripping on to the walls, he stood up, following the little sounds to reach his destination. Unlike other kids, he didn't grow up with his parents hearing his childhood stories; rather, he was aghast and lonely.

As Sejin's polished shoes made a soft click on the dark, polished floors, a sense of disquiet crawled over his usually determination-filled spine. He found himself standing at the end of an eerily familiar hallway, imagining a question in his mind: Was this all a dream or a twisted leap of time?

His glance fell upon a door at the end of the hallway, partly ajar and inviting him to a world he thought he had outgrown. Strangely familiar smells, faint notes of a forgotten lullaby, and chimes triggered by the rhythm of the wind, all combined in an olfactory and auditory sonnet, pulled him towards the door.

His eyes scanned eerily to find a dozing woman sitting on the soft chair, a maternity gown against her rugged frame. This was the woman who had birthed him, the woman who had fought the world for him, the woman who had spun dreams out of nothing for him. His mother.

The contours of her face were etched with feelings of anguish, love, failures, and triumphs, and she was unconscious, perhaps dreaming of days that were both beautiful and brutal. The love the room emanated was strangely accompanied by a touch of resentment.

He stood in the shadows of the doorway, partly hiding himself against the frame, his gaze fixed on the peaceful figure in the room. The room was filled with a mystifying silence that was only occasionally interrupted by the soft breathing of the mother and the occasional cooing of two little beings, one in the cradle and the other carefully nestled in his mother's arms.

He felt an odd déjà vu as he gawked at the identical twins. One of the infants, though almost indistinguishable from the other, bore subtle markers that only he could identify. It was Sejin in his purest, tiniest form. The other was Seojin, his counterpart, a mirror image of himself. Monozygotic yet carrying their discrete personas, they were too identical, and it was a common error to mistake them for each other.

But he knew he had spent more time in that cradle than in his mother's lap. This was a stark realisation that dawned upon him- a truth that was both refining and refining.

Seojin was the mirror image of him, albeit a more innocent, carefree replica. He was the symbol of all the happiness, love, and light-heartedness Sejin had left behind in his pursuit of formidable intellect and nefarious power. A feeling of jealous resentment stabbed and twisted inside him. Seojin was the person he could have been had he not succumbed to the lure of the malevolent muses.

As the sun steadily ascended, its glowing red beams piercing through the misty morning, he unsheathed a delicate and intricate dagger. The radiant ruby hilt shimmered with an eerie allure, while the blade gleamed ominously, hinting at a dark destiny. A voice reverberated in his mind, distant but unyielding: "Put an end to his existence," it urged. The task at hand seemed simple- plunge the dagger deep into his brother's heart and bring about his ultimate demise. Yet, the complex presence of their mother cast a shadow over the path, making the path to such a resolution far from effortless.

A sudden impulse took over on his part to draw from within himself something terrible before calling up memories of killing her when he was still just twelve or thirteen years old! How he burned her alive, which caused her pain for eternity, and to stab her with a dagger would be nothing. Rather painless.

'She deserves it.' His mind kept muttering and mumbling as if death was not everything and her being a mother was biased and cruel. She deserved to die again, and again.
He could kill her again- nothing new.

The vile and disgusting thought crept across the bandwagon in his head: he would do it.
Right now.

It was beyond rationale, beyond human empathy, and yet he held onto it. The more he justified it, the more real it became, and the more vivid his dark intentions bloomed.

Once again, he found himself plunging into the depths of his memories, eager to revisit and reenact that harrowing spectacle. This man, burdened by his troubled past and haunted by what could transpire, felt trapped in a suffocating web. The impulse, though monstrous and terrifying, propelled him forward.

His trembling hand hovered over her heart, the tip of the knife unsteady. In the room, there was no outcry or condemnation; only an intense silence draped over them, akin to a solemn shroud. With a heart-wrenching cry tearing through the silence, the deadly silver pierced through delicate fabric.

She was a vision of beauty, her chestnut locks flowing down her shoulders in graceful waves, while her wide, almond-shaped eyes were filled with tangible terror. In her arms, the baby squirmed, sensing the unease that permeated the room, mirroring the heaviness of the horror present.

There was no music to accompany this horrific dance, only his heart's irregular pace against the terrifying quiet. The man was a born murderer, as evidenced by his certainty. The knife in his fingers seemed familiar; it was an illegal pleasure he was enjoying for the millionth time. But he was influenced by the alluring pull of destruction, the rhythmic pulse of desire taking over his conscious consciousness.

He stabbed with blind wrath and twisted joy after promptly executing the strike. Even as he detested the monster he was becoming, a part of him relished the sick pleasure of power, of holding a life threadbare on the cliff. He was possessed by a desire to create suffering; a cruel, twisted fulfilment nestled deep within him, and he revelled in every cry that came from his victim.

The woman flinched, biting back a cry, her eyes never leaving the man's face. The baby under her protection squirmed, confused, in its innocent oblivion. Blood seeped from the woman's chest, staining the small child bundled in her arms.

"No... nngh, please... Please..." She gasped, desperate for the simple mercy of death- a quick end.

Her wails and sobs permeated his hazy head; the begging was ineffective.
Sejin snatched the baby, his feet braced against the chest of his mother, his eyes vicious.
Time appeared to elongate as he observed the pure and unsuspecting child, oblivious to the destiny Sejin was about to determine. Giants materialized from a sense of moral responsibility, hovering over him, while the sound of the baby's cry reverberated endlessly throughout the chamber.

Sejin swayed uncertainly, his eyes shifting back and forth between the diminishing figure of his mother and the tiny being in his grasp. This was not merely a decision that burdened his hands; rather, it resonated deeply within his soul. The weight of his choice ominously loomed within the confines of that secluded room, a query that challenged the very essence of his humanity.

The flimsy shine of the dagger shaded a red along the room.
"No, ple-"

Finally, the baby's cries faded into the background, and the room's deafening silence swallowed them whole, leaving only the muffled sounds of despair, echoed through the emptiness. Time seemed to regain its merciless march.

He did it. He killed him.
He killed his brother!

He stood in place, staring down at his bloodied hands. Streaks of deep crimson smeared against the thin, papery skin on his palms, finding their way into the crevices of his curled fingers. He had done it. He had killed him. He'd killed his own brother. The thick smell of iron hung heavy in the air. A scarlet sea stretched where his brother had once stood- his life, his essence, seeping into each crack of the ageing wooden floor.

"Sejin-ah...my baby Sejin..." A desperate cry slipped off his mother's lips, her hands trying to pull the little baby lying lifeless on the floor.

But he had just seen himself, safely in his cradle. His mind reeled, spiralling into a churning vortex of disbelief and torment.
"No, Sejin can't be... He was in his cradle. No, no, this isn't Sejin, no!"
This was all a bad dream, wasn't it? A nightmare he could shake himself awake from.

"You never let me rest in your lap, never... Tell me you are lying! Tell me, eomma!" He shook his mother, wrapped and dipped in red, her lifeless body, pallid and free.
The world slithered to a halt. His life seemed to stutter and play out in a torturous reel of anguish.

"I did not kill myself, no!"

_________

Every end calls for a new sunrise...