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Chapter Text

Sung Jin-Woo's eyes crack open, crusted with frustration, tears, and a millennium of years that don't belong to him ("I am you," his own face spoke back to him, but Jin-Woo knew better than that; the Shadow Monarch hadn't morphed into a being like him, but rather, the essence of Sung Jin-Woo and all his humanity had melted down to sculpt itself into the ruler instead. The Shadow Monarch offered his life, and as equal exchange, Sung Jin-Woo gave himself up-).

"I. What the fuck."

Sung Jin-Woo blinks, and looks up. The Ice Elf is glaring back at him, something malicious, humiliated, and thoroughly offended contorting its crunched face into murderous intent.

It takes him a moment to reorganize his thoughts and his timeline after uh- flinging his soul out of the mortal coil for a quick nap, and remember that he got stabbed.

He replays that thought.

Wait-

This motherfucker stabbed-

"You stabbed me," he says, sounding mildly affronted, and thoroughly accusatory. 

The elf looks at him, flustered with obvious anger, which Jin-Woo feels like it's unwarranted, since he was the one who ended up doing some HGTV unintentional house searching in the middle of goddamn purgatory.

The Sovereign screams, and distracted by Jin-Woo's presence, it (they? do deities have the same common human genders? Does Jin-Woo even care about its gender-?) instantly get decked in the face by Beru's foot.

Jin-Woo whistles. 

Clean move.

His anger dissipates slightly from the satisfying kick.

He peers over to see his soldiers instantly crush the Sovereign's chest like every single ab is a square on a Dance Dance Revolution pad. The elf howls, a terrible scream that shreds their throat and viciously punctures the corners of Jin-Woo's eyes. For a moment, a visual, acid-trip representation of one of those McDonalds Troll Doll toys overlaps over the face of the Sovereign of Frost. 

"You- a human, I KILLED you-" snarls the Sovereign of Frost, froth sloshing between their teeth stained with iron and spite, and with terrifying might, begins to heave his remaining soldiers off of their body. "I KILLED YOU-"

"Yeah, you did," he echoes firmly, because that's kinda the whole point as to why he's profoundly pissed at the moment. "No shit-"

"How dare you defy death by my hand?"

Jin-Woo stares, stricken by the actual audacity of this airfried corndog of dryer lint. 

This is also when he realizes that there's no way they're going to talk it out- then again, the Sovereign did just use his clavicle as a temporary knife block, so talking it out is no longer just a pussy move, but a stupid one. 

At this understanding, he instantly blanks out all of the Sovereign's complaints into static, background elevator music, as he's wholly disinterested in the Doofenshmirtz monologue about to commence. 

And if Jin-Woo hasn't encountered the Shadow Monarch (and something empty sits in the rotten and warm cavity of his ribcage. He's never going to see him again-), he probably would've committed deicide at this moment solely on the basis that for creatures that have the wit of an Elmer's gluestick, they have way too big of a god complex.

Sung Jin-Woo flips the ice elf off, unsure and uncaring if he's interrupting their vent voicemail, because:

1. fuck that. they're the type of people to complain about you in a long-ass email and CC their entire friend group so that they'll have the minimal, bar-line effectiveness of drugstore two-in-one shampoo. 
2. everything flooding between the gated teeth of the elf still sounds like the Mii plaza music echoing in the darkness of the Windows 98 Screensaver. Jin-Woo, quite frankly, has way bigger problems than playing customer service at this moment. Jin-Woo just died, entered a DIY eighth circle of hell like he's Coraline in her Other Mother's world, and realized that the only person who could understand him (a person who's cut from the same hide as he was, like Eve to her Adam, locked out of a peaceful land-) also just dipped out of the act of living. Jin-Woo is frankly too tired and too ticked off to try and comprehend anything composed of more than two syllables and one breath. 

He then sees the elf pause for a moment as they tear through another one of his shadow bears. Seeing the blatant destruction of his property, Jin-Woo rather reluctantly refocuses his attention onto the elf. 

"You think you can climb into godhood? You, a human? I'll finish the job properly so you understand the differenc-" 

Jin-Woo instantly disconnects him from his mental Google translate so that the elf continues screaming in Minecraft enchantment table font. To be fair, even when he was properly listening to the elf, he still couldn't understand them. This is a waste of time.

"Oh. Unexpected." A sudden and jarringly familiar voice says next to him in what's clearly Korean, and Jin-Woo chokes, head snapping over to see a jarringly familiar face staring back at him through the mist.

It's his face, but rather than something frosty and white filtering through netted irises, wisps of cotton and lavender curl from the Shadow Monarch's (Jin-Woo's) eyes like acid.

"I- what the fuck." Sung Jin-Woo echoes the ice elf's greeting from moments ago. 

The Sovereign of Frost's disgust has crumpled in on itself, eyes wide and something akin to trepidation lining the wrinkles of shock carved into their face.

Another Sung Jin-Woo stares blankly at both of them.

"I thought you were going to sleep. Forever. Hibernation, you said." Jin-Woo finally says lamely when nobody else said anything. Even he can sense the guilty and selfish accusatory undertone in his voice. Then again, he thought the only person who could potentially be his confidant was going to disappear. Jin-Woo can't trust anyone but himself, and maybe it's justly pretentious, or maybe it's this insecure sense of paranoia, but what he knows for sure is that it's-

It's somewhat lonely.

Ashborn was enough of Jin-Woo for him to feel comfortable interacting with, and too individual for Jin-Woo to feel like he's just talking to a hollow reflection.

"I thought I'd never see you again." Jin-Woo rasps, and his biceps cramp at the obvious clip in his tone, the way it croaks something vulnerable. 

"...Me too." The ice elf says tersely. 

Both Sung Jin-Woos stare at them, and the Sovereign of Frost averts their eyes. 

The Shadow Monarch makes a face, focusing on Jin-Woo once again, but the sudden fixation stirs a sense of wariness and anxiety in the dredges of his nerves.

"...you're not wearing clothes." Jin-Woo's eyes snap back up. And it's his body, and the surrounding public is shrouded with the aftermaths of a blizzard, fight, and he hopes to god the other citizens had a braincell of self-preserveration and had ran-

Because if not, then the Jin-Woo is going to have to live with the development that his (their?) body just traumatized a random passerby with intense public indecency. 

Ashborn shrugs, seemingly indifferent to being the prime example of being an overall public nuisance. "This entire place looks like an inverted gas chamber, and you're mad at me for being naked?"

"Public indecency!" Jin-Woo retorts.

"Public disturbance," the fucking Sovereign of Frost inputs helpfully.

Ashborn, looking doubly (triply, technically) betrayed by the two of them, scowls, and a sudden wave of black from his feet begins to hug his figure, looking almost like a man wearing a wetsuit. "It's not like I have clothes to make." He holds out a hand. "Give me your sweatshirt." Jin-Woo blinks, and looks over, making unwarranted eye contact with the Sovereign of Frost who looks equally astral projected out of the mortal realm of reality.

Hesitantly, Jin-Woo unzips his shredded and bloodied sweatshirt, and hands it over to Ashborn, who knots it around his waist. "See. Now I won't be helicoptering your schlong by accident while fighting."

Jin-Woo's entire neural processing centers commit a sudden simultaneous triggerwave of cellular apoptosis, as his entire mental sanity has been flung by a discobobulus in Archaic Greece through all seven stages of grief.

"I'm so speechless, yet I have so much to say," is all he can properly enunciate, having so much to ask, yet having no solid belief that the answers will be worth knowing.

"You sound offended." Ashborn murmurs, with an earnest tone of interest; like a child being introduced to a new concept.

"I'm not." He lies. He totally is. Life is a joke and Sung Jin-Woo's the punchline: he's getting damn tired of the world scripting the entire event of things like this is a remake of a Shakespearean play but in a KDrama format.

Even the ice elf is standing aside, letting them have their stereotypical reunited moment as if they literally haven't seen each other five minutes ago (minutes? how does time flow for either of them, anyways?). 

To be fair, they're probably patiently waiting aside solely because Beru is currently trying to play Cat's Cradles with their limbs.

"Hey." And now the Shadow Monarch, a refined character with a stagnant will and composure of every old Asian grandpa in those white people martial arts movie, begins to whine.

Jin-Woo genuinely doesn't know how to react.

"I thought I was going to die off too." Ashborn clicks his tongue, a sneer warping his typically unexpressive face. "You think I want to be here? I thought I was going to finally dump t-" he pauses, eyes rattling on Jin-Woo, and their grimace tightens, "...pass the responsibilities of my powers off onto a respectable inheritor-" Jin-Woo begins to revise his entire perception of the Monarch by this point, "and instead I get fucking dragged back into work? What am I? A corporate slave? What the hell? Life is such a pyramid scam-"

The rest of his complaints begin to filter out into nothing more than the Android phone alarm as Jin-Woo feels a headache crack across his nose cartilage. 

He's literally indestructible. He could probably dilute his blood and sell it as a vaccine. 

But he's getting a raring headache, because every overpowered and ambitious interdimensional-terrorist he's encountered so far either has the mental mouth of a prepubescent teenager who grew up in an Overwatch server, or the sarcastic sanity of a listless middle-aged minimum wage laborer who has nothing more to lose except for their will to live. Jin-Woo actually feels like he's watching a political debate between two presidential candidates for America, if anything.

Jin-Woo wants to go home. 

He can't even feel happy that the source of his insane depression, which was the loss of the only being to truly understand him, has essentially disappeared (and how interesting is that; to feel so content with the ambiguity of emotions in his quotidien lifestyle, to suddenly feel the drastic, overwhelming sense of loss-).

"...it really is you." The Ice Elf's voice is faint and thin, their pale pallor ashening into something muddy and sick. "It-"

"You-" Ashborn points a finger boredly at the Sovereign of Frost. "I already know you're scum. But really? You tried to kill my child?"

Jin-Woo takes a moment to realize his implication.

"Are you calling me your child?" He doesn't even know if he was just affronted. Should he feel insulted?

He looks at the genuine anger contorting the Shadow Monarch's countenance (and is this how others see him when he gets pissed?).

Seeing how serious he is, he decides to feel insulted.

"I thought I was you?" Jin-Woo pitches hesitantly. And the caution in his tone feels foreign. While he's always been used to laying low as his mindset has been operationally conditioned to be one of an E-rank after so many years, he hasn't consciously tiptoed across the field in a long time (eons ago). After the public knew of him, he never needed to decipher the atmosphere and go with the flow; for months, it was everyone else who watched themselves around him, rather than vice versa. Even when he first talked to Ashborn, he justified his brutish straightfowardness due to his wariness against the unknown. 

Now, the Shadow Monarch is berating them like a drunken grandpa, and he feels like the one kid who's trying to explain to their angry old man why rubbing alcohol cannot be a suitable substitute for soju.

"You're basically my child." Ashborn flippantly gestures. "I what? Raised you? Watched over your growth? Gave you my resources and advice? Molded you into a younger adaptation of myself for the sake of inheriting my work, legacy, company? I nurtured you, right?" Jin-Woo thinks about the countless times he nearly died underneath the parenting of the Shadow Monarch and the System's joint-custody relationship. He squints at the Shadow Monarch's bold statement. "I totally qualify to be your dad."

Jin-Woo feels mildly offended. Just because his real dad went the absent-father route, doesn't mean the Shadow Monarch's overcompensating involvement in his life wasn't damaging, as well. His dad might have given him mental and financial trauma, but at least he didn't forcefully evolve him through unconsented monsterhood. 

"And then I hear someone is bullying my produ- child!" The Shadow Monarch gestures towards the Sovereign of Frost currently pinned to the sidewalk by the murky swamp of shadows coagulated over their feet. And Jin-Woo takes a moment to realise that those aren't his physical shadows. His shadows can't properly touch the Sovereign of Frost, and Beru only had pot shots.

He whirls around. Iron is standing to the side, and rest are guarding them from the public's blurry view, or-

He pauses.

He sees a mass of shadows and tar playing Go Fish in the background.

"Oh. That was because of me." Ashborn mutters, and Jin-Woo blinks, startled, and sees that the Monarch is carefully observing him. "They probably see us as one soul, so feeling my nonchalant mood, they interpreted it as a dismissal with your consent." He pauses, eyes flitting over to Jin-Woo who's glaring at him. "Hey. I have no will to nanny an entire army- don't worry. I won't play with your toys."

Jin-Woo stares, glaciers melting in the pits of his stomach. He doesn't like that there's another person in command of his people. Doesn't like people touching his things.

And right now, Ashborn has a personality that Jin-Woo simply is contrary and often antagonistic with; yet- 

He finds himself shrugging off his apology, indicating that it's whatever. For some reason, he finds himself vaguely okay with the Ashborn, someone who's an extension of him with little maintenance. One soul.

He hears a groan, and looks back over his shoulder, to see shadows dribbling from thick, licorice ropes webbed across the elf's shoulders. 

Stunned by the fact that the Sovereign of Frost can't even tremble in those livewires, Jin-Woo stares a bit closer. He then realizes the shadows are slowly encasing him. 

And Jin-Woo, always a sucker for strength and greedy for godhood (an untouchable place and status where everything in his heavenly eden is safe from things below-), is instantly raptured by the odd skill. To the side, The Monarch snorts. 

The tarlike substance hardening across the elf like instant cement seems to leak from underneath the heels of Ashborn. "See, don't need an army," he gestures to his feet, and Jin-Woo's lips knot into a firm line, unwilling to express outright admiration. 

"Traitor." The Sovereign of Frost leers, something similar to raspberry Kool-Aid splattering out of it gaping maw. "You've grown weak, lost sight of what's important for selfish, arrogant and lesser beings who can't fight for themse-" 

"Shameless." The Shadow Sovereign barks, steamrolling over the elf's bitching. "You're still pissed after you bullied my child?" The Shadow Monarch glowers at the ice elf, and Jin-Woo glances at him exasperatedly, distraught by the Monarch's sense of shame that could rival Yoo Jin-Ho's. 

Now, Jin-Woo noticed something was off about Ashborn the moment he Urban Dictionaried the word 'dick' with zero hesitation.

But now, now-

Ashborn holds the same atmosphere, the same wavelength. But he feels- different. Younger. Human, in an Earth-like sense. Jin-Woo supposes that doesn't really matter, as long as Ashborn is still the same entity (Jin-Woo was wrong. He will later come to regret this, when he realizes that Ashborn might as well be a second-hand, overpowered Yoo Jin-Ho). 

"Your lack of respect for deities leagues above you is pitiful and ignorant," Asborn murmurs, his profound words twisted into a scorning that reminds Jin-Woo of the temperamental grandma who lives downstairs who wields a normal broom that is somehow still capable of hurting Jin-Woo despite his Achilles'-like defenses. 

The ice elf is silent, terror etched into every twitch of its facial muscle, their nerves and dimples crackling like a livewire.

Jin-Woo wonders if Go Gun-Hee expressed fear in front of the elf.

And while he understands the concept of fear, the desperation and struggle against inhabitants above you-

He sincerely hopes the elf never had the satisfaction of seeing Go Gun Hee's expressions (emotions are intimate, something that things like the Sovereign of Frost and himself aren't worthy of witnessing-) the way that he is to them right now. 

Jin-Woo does have to credit the elf's faith, however; they haven't once ran away like their companion, and they have yet to dissolve into empty apologies or shameless bargains.

Not like it matters.

To Jin-Woo, the credit is nothing more than a glob of spit in an oil puddle.

Then, something thrums his ear, and his drowsy mind attempts to focus (and is he slacking off? He just had his chest carved into like a cheeseblock, maybe he's still stuck in the fog clouding the River Styx. Not like that's okay; for real- he has to get his shit together before someone else decides to debone his spine like a Jenga tower).  

A slither of tongues cradle his left ear: 'we caught the other sovereign.' He inwardly smiles. 

Igris is pretty damn efficient.

He looks over, and see Beru standing to the side, after dying a multitude of times to the Sovereign. Even Jin-Woo's mana tank drained just from reviving him. He should reward his shadows some more. Maybe Jin-Woo will let Bery watch one historical drama with the terrifying vigor of every American public highschool theater kid watching Hamilton in Broadway. As a treat.

Or maybe a real treat. Like a Scooby-snack. Can his shadows even taste things? What would they eat? Crackers?

He suddenly feels like he's been slacking as an underpaid dogwalker over his hundreds of shadow soldiers.

He digs out his phone, still unfamiliar to the touchscreen of a smartphone, and fumbles to Google if ants like sour candies. He waits for the search to pop up (and the load is slow. He looks at the low data bars, and glares at the Frost Elf who's currently having a loud and charged argument with the Monarch. Dickhead probably kicked down the nearest cell tower like it's a stack of Legoes while on his rampage). As the search page doesn't pop up, he fiddles with his other apps out of impatience, only to glance at one of the few conversations in his messenger app. 

"I- what are you doing? Already on your phone after you died? See. This is why you got stabbed. Because you're always on your phone."

Sung Jin-Woo blinks, looking up from his screen to find Ashborn boredly at him, an arm looped around the shoulders of a decapitated ice elf. Huh.

Something sick and sloshy stirs the nausea in his stomach.

He wanted to be the one to deliver the final blow.

Then, he thinks about how the Sovereign of Shadows is him, and the blood pulsating behind his eyes slowly simmer down.

He can't blame the man for beheading him. While the Frost Sovereign was losing it, Jin-Woo felt nothing but a gradual build of annoyance from the cognitive hotline looped between him and Ashborn. "Oh. I'm messaging Yoo Jin-Ho that we don't need his sister anymore." He waves his phone. "You'll be our third member."

Shadow Monarch tilts his head. 

Then, looking Sung Jin-Woo in the eyes, he tilts the horror-stricken head in his hands in the same angle as his own.

The corner of Sung Jin-Woo's eyes crinkle in disgust at the modern, Romanized circa 2022 AD of a golden retriever with its ball between their claws. 

"...you know who Yoo Jin-Ho is, right?" He pockets his phone, and begins to stretch, his joints splintering like Rice Krispies. 

"Of course. I laid dormant throughout your memories. I unwillingly lived vicariously through you, like an audience trapped in a movie theater." A pause. Then: "if your life was a movie, you'd have a thirteen percent on Rotten Tomatoes."

"I'm leaving you on your own if you continue acting like this." Monarch narrows his eyes, and Jin-Woo holds up his phone. "You might have my memories, but I'm the one who has Google maps."

The Shadow Monarch falls quiet.

"...a fifteen percent." 

"I thought you'd be happy now that I'm here with you." Sung Jin-Woo ignores him, busy somersaulting over an entire crowd of phones plashing his way, pretending like he's not trying to hide a doppleganger underneath his tattered jacket that he tied over his head like a Babooshka.

Hearing a literal Monarch griping beside him while Jin-Woo is trying to make his escape away from the chaotic crime scene (graveyard), with a whole stunt double just trailing beside him like he's not the reason why Jin-Woo's entire concept of reality is imploding in on itself like a Texas Instrument calculator boiled in a pot of hot vinegar-

He almost wants to snap that he was happy that the Shadow Monarch didn't just settle into dormancy to hibernate like the dodo birds and dinosaurs do, until he realized that Ashborn is a genuine agent of chaos, and by the unbreakable transitive property, that forces Jin-Woo to be an agent of chaos as well. 

"You were elated when you saw me with a physical form in your world. Confused. A bit shocked," Ashborn relays his observation with an impassive tone, swerving as a reporter staggers towards Jin-Woo.

Jin-Woo effortlessly dodges her, vaguely humoured that she nearly ran into someone who might as well be Sung Jin-Woo's edgy middle-school persona that was personified into a sentient player like a Sims avatar that had gained free will and Self Awareness.

A Monarch. A monarch who is effortlessly more powerful than Jin-Woo, who might as well be Sung Jin-Woo but with a personality disorder (though, in complete fairness, Jin-Woo from the sidelines can say with absolute confidence that every peak hunter he's encountered so far has only proven his unscientific theory that one's strength has a inverse relationship with their mental health. Seriously. Almost all of of them lie on the range of 'vaguely psychopathic' where all genial smiling politicians bed, to 'the criminally insane' where he's surprised the government continues to offer them TV show interviews instead of catalogues of nearby psychiatric hospitals.

Of course, there are many emotionally established people who don't have the moral decision making skills of a lampshade, but all of them happen to have the MBTI personality type of 'PTSD,' so by this point it's really just picking your poison). 

"You were sad, before." Ashborn confidently claims as Jin-Woo decides to instantly dip, ditching the rowdy surroundings as he allows a shadow to engulf his being and transfer him to a nearby rooftop, his lungs deflating and ribcage shuddering from the coldness of the Abyss webbing between his fingers, swarming through his every membrane.

He opens his stinging eyes, and finds himself standing on a rooftop, surrounded by three other shadows who blink at him expectantly. He looks down, and sees a deck of cards. 

"Hello." Well. He picks up the deck, and seats himself between Tank and a shadow mage. Might as well play in his shadow's place outta compensation for ruining their turn. 

Then, he feels the shadows around him tense, and he himself stiffens by the familiar sensation of trepidation, and whirls around.

"You're happy to see me."

He stares.

"Did you track my shadows?" He finally asks, staring at Ashborn with stupid incredulousness. No shit. He's literally christened the 'Shadow Monarch'. It's not like the man's powers are going to be tracking down chairs or drawing perfect circles. 

"No. Our souls are entwined, so you're like a hotspot in my cognitive bunkers." Ashborn responds indifferently, tapping his forehead.

"...anything can be a hotspot when there's nothing else in the room." Jin-Woo says casually, as he shuffles his cards. "I bet if I rap your cranium, it'll echo."

Two marbled eyes sweep across their little circle.

"Says the guy who's losing at Go Fish." And before Jin-Woo can protest that he just arrived, Ashborn is already nudging aside his crossed legs with his own. "Let me play." The Monarch intrudes with ease.

Jin-Woo's almost shocked by how he instantly shuffled aside to let him sit, and only freezes after realising how oddly amicable his reactions are.

"Hello," Ashborn greets the surrounding shadows, and an eruption of whispers inflate the quiet air.

At this, Jin-Woo flinches (and when was the last time he flinched in this new era of his lifetime-). He frowns. The strange sense of excitement and something almost warm and grateful lining his gut, is not his. That reaction, that recoil- was not his.

This fire smogging his lungs is different from the frostbite of anger that often chokes his feelings and pollute his brain: this heat is kin to the glowing warmth he felt when his mom woke up (and he's insanely upset, almost scared, by the way that this current emotion feels more like an bonfire inferno, hotter and fuzzier than the feeling of when his mom woke up, the person he was waiting for years-). 

Jin-Woo exhales a cloud of intense emotions that seem to sizzle on his tongue, and he almost wants to scold the rest of his hundreds of shadows, at Beru specifically, as their excitement had aroused his adrenaline, while their intense thoughts and hisses of anticipation had swarmed his head like a cloud of flies.

He feels dizzy by the sudden onslaught of emotions.

At least none of them seem afraid or surprised by Ashborn's appearance; Sung Jin-Woo doesn't think he can handle an intense onslaught of stress. 

It's surprising. He doesn't remember the last time he felt this thrum of excitement; it differs from the adrenaline of a hunt, of scrabbling after monsters with his life teetering on the line. 

It's something warm and goopy and slow (so slow in comparison to everything, but it doesn't feel tedious- if anything, Jin-Woo wants it to last-), and he feels viscerally uncomfortable by this feeling (and for a moment- it almost feels friendly; like home). Emotions are practically artifacts and fossils after the system appeared in his life- a gradual decay that he didn't realize until Jin-Ah asked why he hasn't laughed recently, or when the granny who lived in the apartment room below him asked if someone was bullying him and if she had to Broom Beat their ass. When he said no, she asked if someone died. He said no. What was he going to say? That it was him who was buried six feet under, in a double-room dungeon that encased his character like a coffin?).

"Oo. Emotions are intense, right?" A molten voice drags him back out, and he looks at his own face. As always, it's stony, but there's a wrinkle underneath his eye- an indication of concern. 

He doesn't think he makes that expression when he's worried- no, he knows he doesn't. That's not me. And for a moment, the face staring back at him, doesn't look that much like Sung Jin-Woo's face anymore. 

It looks warped, almost.

He takes closes his eyes.

He swallows, the danger of this scalding his throat in a lump of lava.

And maybe it's nerves, maybe it's Maybelline, but he blurts out, eyes hesitantly threading open: "I guess I am happy." He admits truthfully, and Ashborn inclines his head, a smug twitch flitting across the corners of his mouth, and creasing the folds near his lashline. 

And Jin-Woo was sad when he thought the Monarch was going to disappear. It was wholly self-centered, though. He was more disappointed than upset that the only person who could potentially relate to him, who already knows enough to understand, was just. Peacing out of life.

However, for the very-much-not-dead Ashborn to be sitting knee-to-knee next to him, amongst a gambling party of shadow soldiers (and he faintly notes that Iron, who had tagged in, is currently gnawing on one of the cards), in the mortal realm, feels almost unlawful.

He's pretty damn sure this is violating something. Intergalaxial laws, heavenly tablets, Newton's Fourth law, whatever law-

There's something here that feels like an insidious brand of illegal immigration going down right here.

Jin-Woo then thinks about how they're technically a gang of mass murderers. 

He purses his lips at that thought. Coincidentally, he decides to let this existential, pseudo-identity crisis go. 

Next to him, blissfully unstressed for a man who was Beybladed headfirst into a Butterfly-effected tornado, Ashborn is arching his back as he loudly pops his spine. "Haven't felt like I had a body in a while." He glances at Jin-Woo. "Don't ask me how I suddenly physically manifested a replica body of yours, because I don't know."

"You don't know a lot of things. I used to think your kind were omnipotent," especially since they seemed to be the top apex predator, right underneath Teletubbies and god. 

"I feel like that you just insulted me."

"Absolutely not."

"...you were a lot nicer when we first met."

"You were a lot more normal when we first met." Jin-Woo instantly retorts. He has a sudden thought as he reminisces over the past couple hours of meeting this man, who acts like all of his neural organelles had been centrifuged into slush. "Are you a shadow? It'd explain your body and its unique properties," Jin-Woo theorizes, as he places down a card. To the side, he watches as Tank sweat as they glance back at their deck. Clearly, not having regular dexterous hands, is really shaking up their game.

"No. I'm not like your shadows. I am completely independent of your powers, but our bloodline will always tie us together. I'm...I guess I think I'm a companion? In complete fairness, I don't really have an answer for you at all. I just know that it exists because you physically do, too."  

Sung Jin-Woo mulls over that.

"Oh. So like a dog." He snaps his fingers.

"I- what."

"Yeah. You know. Like a pet? Loyal. Family." A little shit. "Acts on their own. Leashed to their owner at all times."

The Shadow Monarch doesn't say anything. 

Sung Jin-Woo glances up from his deck, and catches his blank gaze. "What?" He asks curiously.

"Nothing. Just thinking that you're a lot ruder than I thought you were. Very blunt."

Sung Jin-Woo squints at that accusatory and completely false statement. "You're a lot less composed than I thought you were."

"I blame that on your personality mixing with mine," the Monarch replies loftily.

Sung Jin-Woo scoffs, as he plucks a card out of a trembling shadow's deck, before glancing back at him. "And where do you think my sudden bluntness came from?"

The Shadow Monarch scowls.

Jin-Woo stares curiously at the multitude of colours and scents that contort his own face. He hasn't made those expressions before (or at least, not when he filled out into his role as a S-Ranked Hunter). 

It's odd, almost alien to see them in front of him.

For a moment, he feels childishly compelled to mimic the Monarch's facial expressions.

"You know what. Let's just leave it at that we're the same people. That way, we won't start blaming even the way we eat on each other." 

"Fine. We're the same." Jin-Woo agrees affirmatively.

He places down his card.

"Except in terms of wit," he whispers, and reflexively recoils a bare foot comes slamming down against his shoulderblades. 

They are not the same.

"...stop calling me dad, I am not your dad-" Sung Il-Hwan remarks with spiritual determination that should be federally illegal for a man who's halfway dead.

Ashborn glances at him indifferently. "...is this what humans call 'tough love'?"

"No! I am literally not your da-"

"I heard of this. Authoritarian parenting style. A lot of commands, little elaboration, and calloused shows of affection." A pause. "Or perhaps this is just the Asian parenting style-" 

Sung Jin-Woo stares at the Muttering Monarch with mild disbelief. "Dude. He's literally dying." He gestures with a strangled noise.

The Shadow Monarch tilts his head, meeting his slumped dad's gaze.

"I see." He finally says. He doesn't say anything more. Then, "I'll take care of him." The Monarch casually promises Sung Il-Hwan, and Jin-Woo has a sinking and annoyed suspicion that it's about him, but then he sees the way that his father's eyes cloud just slightly, as if he's letting the coldness of death drag him down. He stops feeling annoyed.

"Watch over him, since I can't do it anymore." Il-Hwan rasps, and the Monarch doesn't say anything, just watches with unsettlingly still eyes.

Jin-Woo finds himself frustrating, for withholding the biting remark of- you never even done it in the first place. 

"Jin-Woo, I'm sorry I couldn't be there for you-" his father croaks, unashamed of spilling out his sticky guts and saccharine apologies out in front of a third party. Jin-Woo's mouth twists. His father is so pathetic. Then again, Jin-Woo knows firsthand that people whose souls are about to be snatched by god working overtime, don't really get to be picky about their last words.

Jin-Woo accepts the clammy grasp of his father's hand, and he stares at his father's horrendously scarred knuckles that engulf his unblemished ones.

Oh.

He's holding his dad's hands.

Something pathetically hopeful squirms into the capillaries of his eyes (because the fact that he's holding his father's hands is miraculous within itself; a dream viewed as impossible less than just a couple months ago. So is it really that pathetic stupid of him to hope for a little more? For a couple weeks of life? For him to come ho-). The parasite festering on the surface of his scleras invoke tears and something dangerously desperate in his gaze. He quickly glances down, his trembling lashes shuttering over his line of vision, hoping his father doesn't see the glimmer.

And he's unable to look at the seeking gaze glittering in the sunken sockets of his father, of Sung Il-Hwan (and he should just give in, should grit his teeth and look because his dad is dying and Jin-Woo can't even meet his gaze; it's not even that big of a deal, and Jin-Woo knows he'll regret not gathering his guts and just giving into what his father wants- 

he's dying, and Sung Jin-Woo can't even bring himself to simply look at him.

But didn't Jin-Woo do enough? Jin-Woo held back his resentment; didn't Jin-Woo hold back that retort just seconds ago? His anger, his condescending glare at how pathetic and cowardly his father is for spilling this all now when Jin-Woo is the unvoluntary dumping ground for his littered remarks and unwanted pleas-

He says he has it the hardest, but this man is dying before his son he hasn't been able to see in years, with no idea if his son will even view him as a father.

Something in Jin-Woon clots and gurgles-)-

"Jin-Woo, I should've done more. I watched over you, I wanted to protect you, I just want you to know I love you-"

"I know." He says firmly, his voice unexpectedly cold and even he winces, lips bolting shut so that he doesn't say anything more that'd just screw things even farther. His eyes rattle in their sockets, spasming to the side, looking everywhere but at the hot and cold grip on his hand, at the person staring steadily at his countenance.

"I'm sorry."

And Jin-Woo doesn't want an apology- he wants his fucking dad but how can he tell him that? How can he-

What the fuck is he doing here. Jin-Woo has not felt emotions this intense even before his personality evaporated, leaving dredges of the apathetic Shadow Monarch.

He chokes, and something slimy and gross and nauseating bloats his lungs, and short-circuits his stuttering breath. 

He should respond. At least-

Let him know that he probably loves him too. Or definitely cares about him.

He should say something. 

(he doesn't)

"Are you angry?"

A sudden voice that's so steadfast, radiating clarity and independence while Jin-Woo's emotions are whipped into unidentifiable mush, slices through the foam. Jin-Woo suddenly wants that voice to tell him it'll be okay (because it feels reliable, and Jin-Woo has never felt that from others ever since the moment he was weak to the moment he became strong).

Instead, he locates the source of the voice. And Jin-Woo, even with a misty filter gridding his vision, carefully observes the casual nonchalance his own face (and it's not him, it doesn't even look like him, how dare it-). The Shadow Monarch tilts his (his?) face, waiting for an answer. 

Jin-Woo doesn't wipe away the hot tears that remain starchy and disgusting and gross on his cheeks, and he doesn't know if he should dodge or lean in as his absent father does it for him. 

Yeah.

He watches as his father evaporates into pixals, data, something of warped genes and code of Mother Nature with no interpretation.

He feels sad. He thinks. 

And through the link of his entwined soul with Ashborn-

He senses curiosity. And it feels perverse, troubling given that this is about Sung Jin-Woo and his interaction with his dead dad, and the earnest and pure intrigue invades the the grief simmering in the divots of Jin-Woo's lungs, diluting every strong feeling that feels like Sung Jin-Woo circa Shadow Monarch. 

And perhaps sensing his disdain, the Ashborn looks away, but Jin-Woo feels his feelings of third-party interest crash into him like a tidal wave, and he nearly goes under and marinates in the apathy (but then he thinks about his dad who he couldn't look at up until the last minute, and the overwhelming tundra of sadness that feels like a long-last friend for him, freezes over the lake).

He exhales, and it's not like the Monarch's lilting hum; it's something wracked and grossly fragile, and he feels simultaneously ashamed and relieved and he doesn't know why and doesn't care to figure out why. 

They're definitely not the same person.

"Bro-"

 Yoo Jin-Ho's expression freezes.

"Thanks for the ride," Jin-Woo says tonelessly, sliding into the backseat of his van with practiced ease, deciding to forgo shotgun due to his newest companion. With equal familiarity, the Monarch scoots in next to Jin-Woo.

"Bro...and bro...." a pause. "Bro without pants?"

Immediately, a blanket of ink wraps around Ashborn's body.

"...did you just latex yourself on command?" 

"He kinda just got a body." Jin-Woo clears his throat. "He hadn't bought clothes yet." Jin-Woo attempts to explain, feeling the need to defend this involuntary flasher given that this is Jin-Woo's body that's being paraded about. 

"Second time getting a body, really," the Monarch mumbles, crossing his legs, Jin-Woo's jacket creasing around his hips. Jin-Woo wrinkles his nose.

Jin-Ho continues staring, and slowly, shifting forward, he reaches for his shiftstick, eyes never leaving the rear view mirror.

"...so aren't you going to elaborate?" Jin-Ho asks, and the car jolts as it backs up.

"Oh." Right. Having a sudden clone of yourself appearing out of absolutely nowhere after dying on live television, is probably distressing for others on most days. "This is Ashborn." He introduces.

Jin-Ho twists his body over from the driver's seat, and just going off of the exasperation on his face, Jin-Woo realizes he has failed to elaborate.

"...as a nickname." He clarifies, figuring that 'Ashborn' sounds like the edgy name given for a middle schooler's Sonic the Hedgehog OC made out of Crayola washable markers that was posted on DeviantArt. 

Jin-Ho looks even less reassured by Jin-Woo's careful consideration.

Realizing that they're going to murder someone on the highway at this rate, he leans over to the front seat, and with restrained strength, lightly flicks Jin-Ho on the forehead.

Jin-Ho's head smacks hard against his cushioned driver's seat.

Jin-Ho sputters, mouth finally catching up with his thoughts. "ohmygodtherearetwojinwoosinmycarrightnow. Am I dying? Am I going to die? I think I'm being punished-"

"Hey. I thought you liked m- us," Ashborn snaps from the back.

"He's me." Jin-Woo finally settles with, deciding it'd only unnerve Jin-Ho more if he realized there really was what someone might consider a separate Sung Jin-Woo who's stronger than the Lite version, running around with his own free will. "Just. Two different bodies. But me. Don't worry about it." 

"I'm his long-lost brother."

Jin-Woo scoffs at the Ashborn's obvious lie, only to freeze as he sees Jin-Ho nod slowly, understanding laxing his facial muscles.

"Oh! Jin-Woo, you have a twin?"

"No."

"Yes."

Jin-Woo falls silent, and whips his head over his shoulder.

The Monarch shrugs. "What else are you going to say about my existence? What? Disprove that I'm not your identical twin?"

Jin-Woo flips him off.

"Hi! I'm Jin-Ho! I view Jin-Woo as my older brother, I hope we can get along! And your name is-"

"Start driving before I flip this vehicle like a tortoise."

"Hey! C'mon! Jin-Woo, you never told me you had a BROTHER-"

"I did." Jin-Woo says with zero processed forethought, since all he wants to do is shut Jin-Ho up before this spirals even farther because the damn Monarch, a battle leader and war criminal with the cunningness, leadership abilities, and individual strength of a demigod, is a fucking enabler and agent of chaos who has zero compassion for Sung Jin-Woo's, his literal other-half's, mental stability. "Didn't we establish that you were my brother?"

And he doesn't even bother looking at Jin-Ho's face as he collapses into the backseat, glowering darkly at the Ashborn's twisted grin. 

Fucker.

Dumbass.

'I can feel your resentment even without touching you,' a thought crams into his brain.

And he doesn't really understand the mechanics of this whole telepathy thing, but he doesn't understand a lot of things past the fact that he wants to peel the Monarch's neck open like a limp stick of string cheese. 

'Resentment? You're such a mess. It's bloodlust, get it right.' 

He looks over, to see Jin-Ho staring at him with terrifyingly large and ocular eyes, expression flickering with something wild and intense.

Being severely allergic to any form emotional interaction, he crowds himself into the corner of his seat, back hunching defensively. "...why aren't you driving?" Jin-Woo asks stonily. "Take us to the association- I already texted Woo Jin-Chul that we'll meet him there."

"Yes, of course, Hyung-nim!"

"...why the 'nim'-"

"You know that I seriously consider you as family right? I'll never leave your side-"

"Step on it before I Uber my way over." He would've instantly swapped places with a shadow he attached to Woo Jin-Chul's back, if not for the fact that he kinda wanted to see Jin-Ho.

Especially since he knew that the kid at one point probably genuinely thought he had died. 

He doesn't exactly get it, the kid's attachment to him (or at least, he didn't earlier. Now, maybe because he just had a test trial with death, but Jin-Woo somewhat has a clearer understanding of where he emotionally stands with Jin-Ho and vice-versa), but he figures it'd be pretty severe to hear that someone you believe to have loved had just died.

And to Jin-Woo, he's never felt a stronger love than the one he had (has) for his family.

Maybe a few friendships had overlapped into this emotional ravine, given that he cared enough to ask Jin-Ho to pick him up.

"Of course! Dude, I'm really-" and suddenly, the exuberantly explosive voice filters out into something drier, a bit more deadpanned, and a lot less like the Jin-Ho he knows.

Something anxious (and when does he feel anxious-) causes his joints to ache, his bones to grind. He senses the heavy atmosphere, and he doesn't know what to do. 

He looks over, and to his surprise, he instinctively knows that the heaviness of his emotions, the substantial depth of it, involves Ashborn too, who's peering at Jin-Ho through the rearview mirror, surprisingly quiet for once.

"I thought you died." Jin-Ho states what Jin-Woo had assumed.

"I know." He says simply. Then, something in him tells him that's not an appropriate answer, no matter how reassuring Jin-Woo himself might think it is.

'tell him we're sorry.'

"...sorry. We- I wasn't careful." He finishes stiffly. He hasn't apologized for anything in a long time, and it feels awkward and disharmonious as it clatters and fights its way out of his mouth.

Jin-Ho's eyes are still fixed on the road (thank god), and the boy answers with almost uncharacteristic matureness: "caution? Anything you do is by default the most cautious setting of them all! Don't apologize. It's seriously not your fault, and it's not like you can do anything about it now. But just. You know. We would've missed you. Not because you're the saviour of the world. I'm sure your brother can understand-"

He can't.

'I can't,' and at that unspoken statement, Jin-Woo looks over at Ashborn whose expression hasn't changed once. 

Then-

'Well. I once couldn't.'

Jin-Woo waits for a continuum, but it doesn't come.

"-ike. If the world ends, the world ends. Might as well live long enough to see it, amiright? So just. We want to stay with you as long as possible." Jin-Ho finishes, calmly entering another lane, and for a minute-

Jin-Woo feels like he and Jin-Ho had a role reversal; he doesn't feel like the older brother at the moment, the one who indulges in his younger brother with advice and companionship.

he doesn't like this feeling. He feels lost.

'me too. let's kill him'.

Absolutely not.

'i was joking-'

"Jin-Woo? Sorry, was that too much? Did I overstep?"

He blinks, and looks up. Jin-Ho's eyes are fluttering upwards, clearly trying to read Jin-Woo's attitude. Anxiety etches deep on his face, as if afraid about Jin-Woo's reaction to his heart-felt emotions. 

Jin-Woo doesn't know what to say. He apologized. That's all he knows what to do, because he knows he can't make promises, can't offer anything much more than that.

(all of a sudden, he feels like he understands his dad a bit more. he also feels a bit bad, for his unbridled resentment upon hearing his dad offer apologies that were simultaneously earnest and hollow all at once. he feels worse, knowing his father will never know anything but that)

"I'll try." He says the second best thing. "I don't plan on leaving you guys anytime soon, either."

Jin-Ho smiles.

For some reason, Jin-Woo's lips almost twitch to as wide as his.

"...I can't believe I thought the amount of Sung Jin-Woos were going to hit 'zero' after I thought you died, but instead, you broke the Law of Conservation of Matter, and came back with two of yourselves," Woo Jin-Chul doesn't snap often.

But he just verbally did, and quite honestly, he thinks he mentally did long before today, as well. 

Sung Jin-woo looks at him dryly (the Sung Jin-woo without inky shadows hollowing out the contours of his face. Though, Woo Jin-Chul can't even tell if this rather parasitic characteristic would serve to tell him if this was the Sung Jin-woo he knew, or the Sung Jin-Woo who decided to meoisis out of it own body like a full-grown baby-). "No. I technically did die-" Jin-Woo corrects.

"That is not reassuring."

"Oh. You know what is reassuring? You saying that." Jin-Woo compliments earnestly, probably because Jin-Chul is one of the few people who doesn't want to see him get hit by a car. Jin-Chul closes his eyes behind his sunglasses, as if that could stave off the impeding migraine drilling through his sinuses. 

Jin-chul arcs a twitching brow, and reluctantly, opens his eyes.

To his disdain, both (2x, deux, er, double, t w o) Sung Jin-Woos stare back at him blankly. "Then." He begins, words like molasses as his brain is currently thinking at the pace of a waterboarded infant. "What you are trying to tell me is that thing-" Jin-Chul punctuates his snippy attitude with a gesture of his hand. The Other Sung Jin-woo who looks like a melting wax sculpture composed of tar and Tokyo sewage sludge stares down at his quivering pointer finger. And it even has the same deadpannedness as the twinning man sitting right next to him. Yet, perhaps due to the past couple months of staring at Sung Jin-Woo's face while trying to figure out if his temper is on the range of 'faint bloodlust' to 'serial killer with the moral compass of a microwaved potato,' Jin-Chul can instantly tell that this Other Jin-Woo is vaguely ticked off. 

In other words, Jin-Chul who is acquainted with Jin-Woo, but not acquainted with Other Jin-Woo, will probably end up hanging from the ceiling with his entrails as an aesthetic noose.

Jin-Chul slowly lowers his accusatory finger. 

Before the man can pull a Prometheus on him, Jin-Chul rephrases his sentence: "you're trying to tell me that your identical brother who looks less human than one would expect a human to appear as-"

"You guys have a furry as a hunter. He is literally a steroid-jacked Wolverine-"

"Is your brother?" Jin-Chul answers faintly, any motivation he has within him to learn the secrets of the world, Sung Jin-Woo, and capitalism, dying out at the faint and deep-rooted understanding that he's too tired for this and that he can't take another shot of espresso or else he's actually going to experience kidney failure at the young age of thirty-six. 

"More like his dad, really," the Rip-Off Jin-Woo answers reassuringly.

Jin-Chul stares at him, feeling not at all reassured. He looks at Jin-Woo, as if just through the stress cracking his capillaries, he could convey the question as to why is this questionably clothed flasher wearing his face, is calling himself his dad?

"Kind of? He's like. He's like a second me?" Jin-Woo finally tries to answer. "He looks like me." He says, as if that holds any empirical explanation within his words.

And Woo Jin-Chul doesn't know how to tell Sung Jin-Woo that just because a dripping sculpture carved out of dirtied slush is wearing his face, that doesn't mean they really look alike at all. "He looks like if someone tried to draw you based on a scientific textbook definition of you as a physical being." Jin-Chul corrects him, syllables dribbling like syrup and thoughts festering in his rotten brain cavity like maggots.

"You think you're sooooo funny with your quirky little commentary. Go back to narrate a false story on Tumblr, you dickhead." Other Sung Jin-Woo sneers.

Jin-Chul stares. Then- "how do you know what Tumblr is-" Koreans don't even really use Tumblr-

See, Jin-Chul's having a moment. And he still hasn't gotten his shit together from a couple hours ago, when he was a hormonal wreck due to seeing a young man die (and he knew that young man. Not only was he the peak of earth's humanity, but Jin-Chul knew him, knew his family situation, dug through his background like an obsessed stalker because that's what most government officials do- and when he saw Jin-Woo collapse like a puppet with snapped strings, he realized he was what? A decade younger than Jin-Chul? A child in his eyes-?). 

Maybe he's just sensitive. He's been in this line of work for over a decade. A seasoned professional.

He didn't even cry when he heard the news of Go Gun-Hee (he didn't even think about him as a person. Jin-Chul simply thought about the space that man had left behind, and how desperately humanity has to try and fill it up before something else floods in). 

But right now, he's thinking about how Boss must've felt in his last moments. And how now, employees won't have water-cooler talks with their cool CEO-superior about the new Mr. Donut flavor that had recently came out. Or how the office will no longer carry the underlying menthol scent that old people always carry, whether the mintiness comes from cigarettes or Altoids. 

He doesn't think it's even selfish, that he's thinking about missing Boss for who he was to him, as if Gun-Hee's mentorship and companionship with Jin-Chul means anything compared to Gun-Hee's relationship with humanity itself (but Jin-Chul knows that his boss would be the first to say that personal relationships are the reason why the protection of their manmade society even matters, in the first place). He doesn't think it's selfish, either, for feeling insanely lost and devastated at the prospect of losing him, regardless of how Jin-Woo's loss would impact mankind.  

And on a normal day, Jin-Chul wouldn't act so unprofessional- least of all towards Sung Jin-Woo out all people.

However, for some reason, Sung Jin-Woo feels rather personable today; less aloof, more grounded in the mortal realm. Maybe dying does that to you. 

Maybe seeing your greatest murderous idol with the fate of the world on his shoulders dying, does that to you. 

The man (boy) even joked to him earlier. 

It simultaneously unnerved and relieved him of a pressure he didn't even know he was carrying.

He wishes Gun-Hee was here to see it. He would have been very happy to talk to this side of Jin-Wo.

Instead, Jin-Chul clears his throat. "You ever watched Spiderman? Yeah. He looks like a Walmart salesrack version of Venom," Jin-Chul smothers his emotional turmoil with a monotonous statement, while pointing at the Downgraded Jin-Woo (because nobody could compare to the original-). Other Jin-Woo's fingers are melting into black tentacles because that's just a normal thing apparently.

"He was not this rude in our previous memories," Other Jin-Woo murmurs with a drawl that feels wrong coming out of the stoic Sung Jin-Woo's mouth, eyes lazily flitting up at him. 

Jin-Chul's lungs contract. His eyes are as frosty and cloudy as Jin-Woo's, but there's something sharper in his pupils than his, something that smells like ozone and battery acid, and it instantly warms Jin-Chul's metaboilsm and flushes his legs with blood to stagger up and run-

"It's because of you." Jin-Woo responds to his clone with equal indifference. "He was never rude towards me in general. Meaning you, must be the problem™."

Jin-Chul feels just vaguely faint, as god sledgehammers him in the face with two temperamental twenty-year-olds with god-complexes and the strength to back it up, ready to square dance in Go Gun-Hee's (Woo Jin-Chul's) office. 

"We are the same person-"

"Absolutely not. I refuse." 

And Jin-Chul didn't even know Jin-Woo, a man who nobody would even want to argue with, much less a man who would care enough to verbally duke it out with a random being in the first place, could bristle like a teenager who's getting relentlessly annoyed by their sibling.

"You two, calm down, don't worry, you're both mass murderers and terrifying figures on the mortal realm," he finally intervenes, trying to placate the two, hoping his years of tedious and involuntary social experiences will pull through, and that his ambiguous but arguably positive relationship with Jin-Woo will offer him some sort of diplomatic immunity between these two monstrous existences who could invert his kneecap like a toy suction cup. "Stop arguing," he says, well aware his voice sounds more pleading by the end of his statement. 

"He started it." Jin-Woo shrugs stiffly.

Woo Jin-Chul stares. And never thought he'd be hearing such an infamously middleschooler phrase coming from Sung Jin-Woo, who argues with his fist and has the emotional repression of every functional being in society who lost all the light in their eyes after their freshmen year in college. 

"I- right." And maybe Other Jin-woo really is his long-lost twin brother who got reunited today after a tragic strike of death like this is a recycled Disney movie plot (but with an Asian character who isn't the hacker sidekick for once, because even billion-dollar industries realize that they have to work on their PR).

After all, they certainly argue like they're brothers.

And at first, Jin-Chul really didn't believe the two were siblings. Actually, when he watched as two Sung Jin-Woos barged into his office like his room is Best Buy and they're Americans during Black Friday, he thought Other Jin-Woo was a monster of some sort. He certainly appeared more like a two-dimensional entity, given his distorted figure that never seems to look right no matter how hard you try and decipher his appearance, with tendrils curling around his slim nape like ivy, squirming out from underneath his sleeves and pantcuffs like paint water. He barely looked three-dimensional, with how black and depthless the inkiness that shrouded him was. 

Sure, this implies that Jin-Woo encountered a monster that looked just like him (and quite honestly, Jin-Woo himself is practically a monster by their standards, so seeing an emofied version of him doesn't even scare Jin-Chul anymore. It's like two immortalized cryptids cancel each other out like factors in a KFC foodchain out in the American midwest, leaving him feeling vaguely empty and a bit hollow inside), but he feels like there comes a time in life when he needs to stop questioning things.

He watches as Other Jin-Woo puts a fist straight through his desk like a paper holepuncher as Original Jin-Woo tries to perform a lobotomy on his skull with Woo Jin-Chul's crappy Binc pen.

Woo Jin-Chul slowly closes his eyes.

He opens them, and once again, they're unfortunately still there, fiddling with the items on his desk with the subconscious twitchiness of a young adult who probably slams back an entire Gatorade bottle of Five Hour Energy to last them through their internship shift. Except rather than twirling a pen or snapping a binderclip, they're strategically dismantling his entire desk like it's a hands-on Ikea display room. 

He sighs.

Is this what it's like to have kids?

He inwardly stiffens.

He would've never had that thought just yesterday. If anything, to him, Sung Jin-Woo was his superior- still is his superior. A boss-like figure, intangible and someone he should never overstep his boundaries with (and Jin-Woo seems to set clear boundaries between him and others, just by his one-track mind that focuses on the pressure of living rather than the relief of it).

However, Jin-Woo he-

He doesn't know if Jin-Woo feels different because the Other Jin-Woo is indirectly exposing a part of him that Jin-Chul has never witnessed before, or if it's because he just died the other day. And while this kid's revival should be concrete reassurance, it just makes Jin-Chul feel worse. Because how long will that immortality last? And Jin-Woo is not the type to rely on luck, so what if this happens the next time? What ex-machina will drag him back into the mortal realm the way that Jin-Woo does with his soldiers?

For a guilty moment, Jin-Chul wants to label his shift of perspective on the idea that maybe, he's realizing that Jin-Woo feels more human, brought down to earth from Jin-Chul's deictic pedestal he situated him upon. He thought he was different- that he was one of the few people in Korea (on Earth, really-) to see Jin-Woo as just a man. 

Seems not. 

If so, then he's really shameful.

"So. Why are you two here?" Jin-Chul interrupts both his internal conflict as well as the Sung Jin-Woos' outward conflict. The two tear away from their bickering, disgruntedly turning to Jin-Chul.

Totally what it's like to have kids, he realizes with an inward grimace.

"You knew we could transport between shadows. So you're just easy to teleport to." Jin-Woo finally explains. Great. So Jin-Chul is not only a convenient janitor for his messes, he's also their favorite teleportation pole. "Also. So far, you've taken everything I've thrown at you in stride," he adds calmly, sounding rather unbothered for a man who straight-up admitted that he knew that he's an entire carwreck of a giftbag for anyone to deal with. 

So he knew, and he still let Woo Jin-Chul roleplay underpaid nann like this is an average damage-control job, almost like they're playing house. 

He mentally exhales once again, the sigh ricocheting out of his ears as his brain continues to melt out of them like vanilla ice cream. "It's easier to just accept things as they are and go with the flow," he replies with resigned acceptance.  He really can't be bothered to tango with an existential crisis or god's own mutinous child in the form of Sung Jin-Woo who breaks into his office every now and then with a duplicated version of himself.

"Oh. In that case, since you're so open. He's really a sovereign who decided to commit deictic treason through the sole reason that he likes me a lot." Sung Jin-Woo confides casually.

"Don't flatter yourself." Other Jin-Woo immediately retaliates before Jin-Chul can properly digest the rotten meal that Jin-Woo spoonfed him with little regards for his physical or mental health. "I just got tired of politics, and babysitting a kid to explore powers too large for any mortal and distinctly human worlds to handle like they're nothing more than a Tamagochi egg, sounds a lot more fun than convincing bigshots with the ethical comprehension skills of a toaster strudel to not commit genocide."

"I'm terrified by how in-tune you are with mortal modern pop culture."

"I study you and your surroundings and I hear everything your soldiers hear. Also, your orc is a plethora of information since they're stuck with Jin-Ah. Now, she's an entire Wikipedia of today's pop culture- anyways, basically, if Beru can speak like every old man from those romance KDramas your mom likes to watch, then I can listen to Jin-Ah at three in the morning, surf through random fifteen-second YouTube videos from two-thousand-and-seven, in three-sixty pixel quality that appear in her recommended." A pause. "Besides, you're the same thing, aren't you? You're sooo obsessed wih American references because if Jin-Ah, too! Don't act like you aren't- I was literally you for the past year-"

Woo Jin-Chul, in the midst of Sung Jin-Woo² domestic political argument that could determine the fate of the building and quite possibly the entire western region of South Korean in the next .02 seconds, is desperately trying to reboot his failing frontal lobes. 

Jin-Woo just straight-up confided in him that he shimmied his way into a destructive deity's graces and is now bringing him into South Korea for sightseeing, in spite of the fact that his dance partner is certainly on Earth's No-Fly list, all because Jin-Woo is apparently good company. 

Go Gun-Hee,,, and given that the heavens had taken away his boss right before the introduction of this B-rated antihero movie plottwist, as if salvaging him from the shitshow of the secrets spilled here like this is either a western church's confession booth or the backroom of a brothel (not like the distinction matters given that the two are vaguely synonymous in some scenarios), he wonders if maybe God is good.

God should've taken him out with a stroke too, if he's left playing damage control with this convoluted, and morally bankrupt backstory that feels like the missing epilogue of the Holy Bible-

"You're. You. You are a sovereign. Like the ice elf?" He attempts to verbally organize the dump of information that Jin-Woo basically shat out on his desk and left it there for him to clean (suddenly, he understands Adam White's innate frustration whenever he encounters Jin-Woo).

"Yeah. Why?" Other Jin-Woo hums nonchalantly, jaw at a lax incline.

His voice is steely, though.

Not like Jin-Chul minds. Besides, he's not discriminatory, especially when it comes to facing intimidating hotshots. Jin-Chul doesn't really feel anything knowing that this thing, wearing Sung Jin-Woo's reassuring face (the hope of humanity: an overgrown boy who argues with his own shadow-), is of the same species as the monster that murdered Go Gun-Hee.

Maybe it's because Sung Jin-Woo clearly likes this monster, which to him, is good enough. Because Jin-Woo clearly liked Go Gun-Hee; and that is enough to convince Jin-Chul that Go Gun-Hee's murderer couldn't have colluded with Jin-Woo², or else Jin-Woo would've tried to dismember him like Mr. Potato Head. 

Besides-

This.

This inclusion in his life, feels good for Jin-Woo.

Jin-Woo doesn't express emotions that aren't volatile. His acts of affection are nonexistent, and sometimes, Woo Jin-Chul wonders if Jin-Woo even has time to care about the positives in life. Or, more likely and concerningly, if he even innately feels complicated, personal emotions outside of his realm of responsibility. 

But he also saw the way Sung Jin-Woo cradles every word from Jin-Ah's mouth in his calloused hands, the way stress grips his jaw and dislocates his gaze when Go Gun-Hee expressed vulnerability to age (and no matter how great, strong, or clever someone is, you can't outsmart sickness, you can't outlast time-). Jin-Chul noticed the way his eyes crinkle whenever Yoo Jin-Ho grimaces.

Sung Jin-Woo does not (maybe even can not) smile when you do, but he'll always frown alongside with you. 

(And maybe it's because from what Jin-Chul has noticed, Jin-Woo's concern is almost a variant of his anger; equally intense and overwhelming, and it sharpens his gaze the way bloodlust does)

Today, he watched as Sung Jin-Woo's lips straighten into a twitching line, as the sovereign in front of him, wearing Sung Jin-Woo's face, gave a wicked smile gated with shrapnel teeth that's plaqued with amusement and something complacent, like a cat playing with its toy.

He wonders when Sung Jin-Woo will smile like that, too.

"Sovereign," he addresses when Sung Jin-Woo squared make eye contact, looking like they're furiously discussing something with just their glares.

And honestly, knowing Jin-Woo who keeps yanking out random OP skills like his entire existence is the mysterious Mickey Mouse ke-Tool that always conveniently shows up for the most terrifyingly specific situations, he probably is shittalking about the situation right in front of Woo Jin-Chul's oblivious presence.

"So you're not his shadow?"

"If anything, he might as well be mine." Deep-Fried Jin-Woo shrugs, ignoring the way that Jin-Woo's cold glower reflects displeasure and a cocky sense of challenge. 

"...he's...my benefactor." Jin-Woo elaborates hesitantly, and Jin-Chul doesn't know if that they're not aware that everything they're answering him with are just leaving him with more questions, or if they simply couldn't care about his crippling mental state at the moment.

He glances at the Cryptic Variant of Jin-Woo. He catches his smirk. 

Yeah. Okay. At least he definitely knows and doesn't care.

In comparison to him, the original Jin-Woo could be compartmentalized as a niche archetype of a himbo. 

"Yeah. I provided and raised him, gave him everything he needed and overcompensated as well-" Other Jin-Woo reaffirms. Then: "you could I say I was his sugar daddy."

Woo Jin-Chul instantly calculates the property damage fees that Sung Jin-Woo (2x) could make if they decided to go for each others' jugular right now. Realizing that the astronomical sum already surpasses this district and their four neighbouring ones' net price, Jin-Chul impulsively decides to play Jesus and throw himself in between them as a potential sacrifice for the greater good. "Great!" He claps his hands loudly, physically stepping between the two while knowing damn well that either one of them could play his ribcage like a BC artifact of the first glockenspiel if they so desired- "other than the fact that I tend to be tightlipped and have zero real friends to even gossip to if I even wanted to, is there another reason why you're here? Because if not, you should head home. Your sister and mom must be worried about you...and Mr. Sovereign after seeing the news." 

Sung Jin-Woo's face uncharacteristically scrunches up. And not with unbridled resentment, or thirst for revenge, or just the usual hormonal emotion that every young adult with the unresolved and irrational weight of the world's future and fate on their shoulders would inevitably develop-

But rather, it scrunches with something that reminds him of concern. But Jin-Chul has seen concern on Jin-Woo, and it looks nothing this soft, nothing this laidback. Jin-Woo looks concerned as if the entire world will collapse if he doesn't urgently fix something wrong within the next hour. His concern, even for family members and friends, fall along the same lane. 

Probably because he only ever appears concerned when he's signaled that their lives are in immediate danger. 

This type of concern, which is concern out of empathy, rather than a concern out of a problem, is foreign. Jin-Chul wasn't even aware Jin-Woo has never shown this type of emotion- at least to him- until now, when the sudden strangeness of it all struck him stupid. 

"The other reason why we chose to came here is because we don't know what to do about him." Jin-Woo informs. 

"You what."

"Him." He points to the Sovereign who is probably on par with Sung Jin-Woo (if not stronger), talking to him like he's a stray dog he picked up off the streets.

He stares at the Sovereign who's now shredding through Woo Jin-Chul's armchair like the threads are made out of Twizzlers.

He promptly believes that Sung Jin-Woo's attitude is warranted.

"I mean. Hide him in your shadows?" Jin-Chul offers lamely, being rather out-of-sync with powers that meddle in the abyss and the dead. After all, if Jin-Woo doesn't have an idea, then who else would?

"Absolutely not. Listen, I will hang out with the barracks of my army and treat them as individuals with their own worth- but if I'm going to be here, I'm staying here. Outside of the mosh pit. I'm too old to be partying hard with a bunch of toddlers." The Sovereign instantly rebukes, with a finalizing tone.

Jin-Chul doesn't know how to respond. He doesn't know how old Sovereigns are, or their history and lore, but all he knows is that they're old enough to view creatures like the humanoid ant that follows Jin-Woo around like a sentient Roomba, as a baby. 

Jin-Woo scowls, but doesn't sound surprised nor defeated, just-

Jin-Chul does a doubletake.

He's sulking.

The world's strongest and overpowered hunter who could pinch someone's stomach and instantly trigger kidney failure, is pouting in his chair. 

Then again, he is being stalked by a pseudo-deity with a perpetual need for attention.

"...Right. Okay. Well. Just ask him to change his appearance-" Jin-Chul suggests stupidly, knowing full-well they probably scoured through these ideas before him. 

"Can't. This is my appearance. This is my body- it's not something artificial," the Sovereign drones, as he rhythmically pinches Woo Jin-Chul's stapler, creating a shower of bent staples across of Woo Jin-Chul's desk. "I'm made out of organic material, too, just not like the cells that you see on earth." Wow. Every biologist's wet dream. The Sovereign continues to punch his stapler. 

To the side, Sung Jin-Woo is staring at his wasteful act with a scandalized expression.

Okay. So they're both useless. Jin-Chul claps his hands. "In that case...." the two of them look at him, Jin-Woo with an anticipatory gaze that feels mismatched with his calm countenance, and Other Jin-Woo with unnerving curiosity (and it feels vandalizing, for some reason).

He's pretty sure that Other Jin-Woo hasn't blinked in the past seven minutes since he invaded Woo Jin-Chul's space and immediately established dominance by breaking his window after trying to helicopter Jin-Woo out of the twenty-seventh floor by his ankle.

Fortunately, Korea's S-Rank Hunter Sung Jin-Woo did not get flung out of Woo Jin-Chul's window, while unfortunately, Woo Jin-Chul needs a new window.

Woo Jin-Chul smiles genially. "Sung Jin-Woo, I'll prepare a fake birth certificate."

He watches as Other Jin-Woo lose it so hard that he breaks his metal desk that could withstand even Go Gun-Hee's rage like it's nothing more than the flat edge of a crowbar, while Jin-Woo himself chokes so violently that he nearly upchucks his entire meal over his own shoes.

"Trust me, this'll work."

"Half of your plans involve my half-assed instinctive self-preservation skills duped by Mother Nature over the evolution of my semi-suicidal personality." Jin-Woo deadpans. "Don't involve ou- my family with your fatalistic strategies revolved around your moral composition of a boiled egg." The 'S' in the 'S-Hunter' might stand for suicidal at least 75% of the time (to be fair: this unofficial statistic applies to Jin-Woo mostly because he's been spoiled reckless by his independent resistance against fatality since he has the immortality of a 3310 Nokia phone), but that doesn't mean he's going to drag the rest of his family down with his questionable enticement towards death. 

"...are you sure you want this name?" Woo Jin-Chul looks up from the information that the Shadow Monarch inputted, stunting their conversation short. 

"Of course." Jin-Woo looks at it, and makes a face. It's still exponentially more normal and less embarrassing than having publically call what people deem to be a human, 'Ashborn.' Anything is better than that. 

"...with this last name?" Jin-Chul says, something pleading in his tone.

Ashborn gives him a look. "Do I look indecisive?"

At this, Woo Jin-Chul wordlessly gathers the papers without a voice of disapproval. When he neatly stacks them together, he nods, "well. Whatever. No matter how unbelievable these come out as, as long as you look like Jin-Woo, you can do whatever you want with or without ID. Give me an hour- no, less than an hour, and you'll be a South Korean citizen. Just. Don't get into a fight with anyone. We'll sacrifice you for Jin-Woo any day," he warns, smiling wanly at the Ashborn, but Jin-Woo's eyebrows pinch together at the iciness in Jin-Chul's tone. 

However, Ashborn doesn't appear bothered by Jin-Chul's odd tone, and instead, glances at him curiously, before shrugging. "The only person who can even play with me for more than a couple seconds is him." Ashborn jerks a finger at Jin-Woo, and he scowls at the sudden spotlight of attention. "Which is why he should keep me around him at all times-" he leans close, only for Jin-Woo to clamp a large hand over his face, shoving him aside. 

"I am not bringing you home with me."

"Why? You want tomorrow's headlines to be about how the world's strongest hunter has been found crashing in the back parking lot of those sketchy McDonalds, kicking it back with the drug dealers who curb there?"

"I just hate your plan-"

"I think it'll work."

Jin-Woo huffs.

"I am not gaslighting my family into believing they had a second twin brother this whole time and forgot about him for the past twenty-something years-"

"...so you're telling me that I had a second twin brother this whole time and forgot about him for the past twenty-something years?" Jin-Ah summarizes with the efficiency of a Cliffnotes editor.

"Yeah."

She looks vaguely put-off by this revelation.

Jin-Ah looks him in the eye. "Shadow clone jitsu is a real skill?"

Jin-Woo looks into the distance, the traumatic events of today flashing before his eyes like he nearly (had) died, with only his last couple memories being of his own body speaking like a kid who has the personality of backwashed Listerine poured into an empty Monster energy can. So basically, he just sped-run through all seven circles of hell except all his memories are stuck on 'violence'.

He finally makes eye contact with Jin-Ah once more, and she must've seen something in his gaze, because she judgmentally arches a brow even though he hasn't said anything yet. "I wish all of this was just a skill." He says hollowly.

If possible, she looks even more concerned. 

To the side, the Ashborn (or, according to the birth certificate that Woo Jin-Chul whipped up with the speed of an underground information broker, 'Sung Qin Yu'), waves politely, before facing Sung Jin-Woo. "You really couldn't act a little better in front of our baby sister?" And honestly, that should've ticked him off.

He huffs out a disgruntled noise of amusement, and Ashborn smirks at this, with the self-pleased demeanor of a child who's gotten a reaction it wanted. Attention, sugar, any of that. 

A bit like Beru, if Beru gained the independency of a person realizing it's reality is just a stimulation.

"Anyways. Jin-Ah." 'Sung Qin Yu' clears his throat. "I got lost in the system since I was a kid-" 

"Abandoned." Sung Jin-Woo corrects. "Put up for adoption."

"Stop trying to discredit my likability."

Sung Jin-Woo gazes at him innocently. "Why would I ever do that when you're doing it perfectly fine on your own?"

"Anyways, here's my birth certificate," Ashborn hums proudly, handing over the one that they personalized like arts n' craft.

Sung Jin-Ah hasn't spoken a word, yet, she still accepts the paper with unfaltering calmness.

Sung Jin-Woo already knows that her lack of reaction is simply due to the sudden circulation of 'what the fuck' clogging up his bloodstream.

She stares at the certificate for a long time.

Finally: "why is his name written in Hanja but his last name Korean?"

"Different languages?" Jin-Woo just rephrases the truth of her question.

"??? Why is his first name Chinese?" 

"...international adoption."

"My name is Qin Yu," Ashborn adds approvingly.

She Looks at Him. 

"Isn't 'Qin Yu' just 'Jin-Woo' in Hanja but put through Google translate eight tim-"

"No." Ashborn instantly says, like the absolute Liar he is.

Jin-Woo wonders how he's gotten to this point, where he's lying to his family that an overlord of a ripoff Starwars galaxial army is currently his identical brother, and not his benefactor into otherworldly success, if success was measured by how quickly he could play Jigsaw with the earth's continents like everything's nothing more than puzzle pieces in his hands.

"Oh hey mom." Jin-Woo hears his own voice say even though he hasn't said anything within these past few minutes, and his head snaps up, and he sees his mom standing by the doorway, hand loosely gripping an iron skillet that nearly clangs against the floor as she staggers forward. He tenses. She looks at them.

"Hey. Son." She finally responds, smile plastered on her face. "Sons." She finally rephrases when neither of them greet her back.

She looks at them for a terrifyingly long moment.

Finally, she turns to Jin-Ah, who has an equally hollow gaze, who mutely hands over the slip in her hand.

All three children fall silent as their mother take a look at the birth certificate that's been falsified by Woo Jin-Chul and the whole-ass South Korean government for Sung Jin-Woo like this is a high school project except every individual is actually pulling their weight instead. 

"I gave birth to a second son who's a twin?" Park Kyung-Hye says with mild disbelief. "Mmm. Yeah. No. I feel I would remember this."

"I have an older brother who's a twin?" Jin-Ah finally echoes, sounding more astonished than troubled.

They're taking it better than I thought they would. A voice slithers into his cranium, and it melts so easily over the flat of his skull, that for a moment, as those words were echoed in his voice, Jin-Woo genuinely thought he was thinking them.

He replies after gathering himself: well. Mom probably seen weirder things in life. He doesn't specify, knowing full well that the other half of him would know the vibes he's indicating towards. After all, his mom one day woke up, and decided to slip into something more comfortable than her pajamas: a coma. 

So yeah. This is probably the least of her worries after waking up to years later in the future, while finding out that her adult-child-son-thing is currently playing cornerstone in earth's human society.

'And Jin-Ah? Honestly. Since the other day when we- I caught her gambling Mahjong with Igris and the others with my savings bank, I think she's rather resistant to the abnormal by this point.'

A baritone hum of agreement combs through his brain, weaving itself deep in his mind.

Is it really me?

Ashborn's presence feels like home (because the only one he could ever find solace in was himself, anyways).

He looks at the Shadow Sovereign (Ashborn. Sung Jin-Woo. Qin Yu. Himself?), and finds him staring back at him.

They smirk in unison.

"You know." Kyung Hye finally says slowly. "I'm pretty sure I only had one kid. Like. I'm very sure that I only gave birth to one son." She looks at them dead in the eyes. "I know. It's crazy. But wow. It's almost like I only did give birth to one son."

"You did. Don't worry," Ashborn consoles.

Kyung Hye in fact, does not appear reassured by this statement.

Jin-Woo decides to step in. "Really. It'll work out. Woo Jin-Chul is currently composing a fake backstory and ID for him so he can pass as my twin. He can also take care of himself. He can break every international law, including all of the universal conceptual laws the way I do, and nobody can tell him no." 

Kyung Hye, if possible, looks even more distraught by this revelation. 

Ashborn, clearly thinking it's his turn to reassure her, begins with, "you could say that Jin-Woo technically gave birth to me, or vice versa-"

"I did not."

"Oh. Like when plants asexually reproduce?" Jin-Ah snaps her fingers, looking very pleased by her conclusion.

"No. Absolutely not-"

"Exactly like that-" Ashborn illegally says in unison with Jin-Woo's automatic rejection.

Jin-Ah looks at Jin-Woo with a strange gaze, and Jin-Woo's foot cramps instinctively, as he can instantly sense that she's silently judging him again. "You know. One of you is already enough," she finally says with a displeased tone.

Ashborn appears affronted by this statement.

"This isn't even a 'there can only be one Jin-Woo' situation, since I took up another name," Ashborn gripes, an arm clamping around Jin-Woo's shoulders like a headlock.

"Mm...Jin-Woo. Is he your friend?" Kyung-Hye inquires, eyeing his arm warily, appearing discomforted by the charismatic smile Ashborn flashes towards her. "Your friend who looks exactly like you and is currently dripping tar all of my carpet?" Her voice borderlines mild displeasure at her last statement.

Immediately, all of Ashborn's shadows vacuum back up into his body, leaving their carpet spotless.

Kyung Hye's browline skyrocket up at this, and for a moment, she appears contemplatively impressed. No, mom, please. And he knows that look. It's the same look she gives to the sellers at the day markets when she's close to paying a clearly higher price than the produce that she's buying off of them. Except right now he's the scammy seller, and Ashborn is the defective produce. "So, Jin-Woo, he's your friend?" She repeats her question, sounding exponentially less stressed than the first time she interrogated him.

"No." He has standards, after all. Actually, his only real friend (if not closer? It's not like he has experience to compare their relationship to, after all) is probably Yoo Jin-Ho.  

He thinks about Yoo Jin-Ho.

So maybe he doesn't have standards.

"Oh. In that case, he checks out. Don't worry ma. If he acts up, Jin-Woo will take full responsibility," Jin-Ah automatically snorts, immediately shaking out of her stupor, terrifying Jin-Woo with her sudden flip in demeanor.

"What?" Jin-Woo asks tersely, as he tries to escape from Ashborn grasp.

"He's totally not human for one." Jin-Ah says tonelessly. "I really don't know why you tried to convince otherwise." And Jin-Woo, startled by this observation, glances at him. And he's always been shrouded by shadows, soldiers' fingers brushing against his ankles as if groping for a cape, large paws and claws corseting his waist like a chestplate anytime he walks into a building full of hunters.

So looking at Ashborn, who mirrors that sense of self-confidence through the way that black swirls around his knuckles, curling around his joints like earthworms and centipedes, Jin-Woo thinks that he doesn't seem that different.

Then, he realizes: it's pretty hard for most people past his family to view him as a human. Meaning even if Ashborn is an alternate font of his typed description, to everyone else, by transitive property, since Jin-Woo is a beast in their eyes, so is Ashborn. 

But Jin-Ah? Who sees him as her brother?

"How can you tell?" He finally asks, too curious to ignore this. Ashborn however, doesn't appear phased by her declaration, as if he wasn't even expecting to pass as a demihuman or demigod. 

Jin-Ah makes a face. "What human doesn't have a shadow?"

"Oh. I forgot Earth had those," Ashborn blinks, now invested in the conversation. They watch as ink seeps from the soles of his dusty bare feet like blood, gushing over the ratty Hello Kitty slippers that Jin-Woo decked at him before entering the house. The ink pools around him like a puddle, before manipulating itself to reflect a humanoid shape. "There!"

Silence.

The shadow blinks. 

"Shadows don't have eyes." Jin-Ah notes.

The two headlights of white poked in the shadow's existence, are suddenly flooded with the same black that makes the rest of its body. 

"Yeah. So as I said, definitely not human." Jin-Ah continues with her unwavering tone. "I'd be more concerned if he was, to be honest." She stretches midway through her sentence, popping her back. She looks bored of this conversation. 

"You'd trust a monster more than a human?"

"You want me to trust a human who looks exactly like you?" Jin-Ah scowls. "Besides. There's another and bigger reason why I trust him: you're pretty straightforward. You trust him enough to bring him in, and to treat him like that in front of your family. He really can't be that bad." Then, more thoughtfully. "He kinda acts like you when you were still an E-rank, but with the confidence and snark that you have now," and there's something thick and murky in her tone, and for some reason, it's unreadable to Jin-Woo.

He suddenly feels very bad, and he doesn't know why.

Something dry and spearmint brushes against his wrist, and he realizes it's Ashborn's fingers.

He retracts his arm.

"Anyways. I trust him. He has good vibes. But if he's really that bad, you'd probably crack his sternum over your leg like a lotus root."

"He is that bad." He thinks about Qin Yu's real personality. He doesn't know if it's substantially worse than his previous, regal and composed appearance. 

"See? Straightforward," Jin-Ah snorts, scratching her neck. "Anyways. Qin Yu. I'm Jin-Ah-"

"I know everything about you already." Qin Yu says simply, holding up a hand.

She blinks, stunned, and Jin-Woo's suddenly concerned that Qin Yu's statement would sound odd or unsettling. But rather than appearing disconcerted, Jin-Ah simply looks at him, as if waiting for his explanation.

He doesn't have one. How does he vaguely summarize the existence of something like The Shadow Monarch in a short coherent sentence that doesn't need substantial comprehension of one's lore of the universe and themselves like this is a fantasy manhwa?

And something must show on his face, probably something akin to stress, because she shrugs nonchalantly, glancing back at Ashborn with casual intrigue. "Well. Qin Yu. I don't really know what you are or why out of everyone's face, you chose someone like Jin-Woo's-"

"I'm not that bad looking."

"No, but you look like someone filled your brain cavity with instant cement from Walmart."

And at that, she leaves, padding over to the living room before digging through the sofa mattresses to retrieve the remote. 

Jin-Woo hesitantly glances at his mom, who's still staring at the falsified birth certificate, expression unreadable.

She finally looks up, and for some reason, Jin-Woo's palm itches at the fact that he can't decipher her Look™ (and when did that happen? When he didn't feel the need to read people anymore, since his existence itself felt like a cheatcode to any forms of socialization to get what he wanted? But what does strength do when it's against his mom?). 

She glances at them judgmentally.

"Isn't Qin Yu just a phonetically translated version of your name, Jin-Woo?"

"...so you're telling me you had a long-lost identical twin with zero background information, who just conveniently showed up, deus ex-machina, after you sent the entire world and news outlets into a cardiac arrest because you played dead like a possum." 

Jin-Woo hums. "Does it sound believable?"

Jin-Chul looks up, and at the alleged Shadow Monarch wearing Sung Jin-Woo's face, with half of his femur currently melting into an oily puddle of shadows.

He pauses. Then, "honestly. The fact that he has that indescribable Lovecraftian demeanor while remaining fully capable of conducting societally acceptable interactions unlike yo- some people of no specific niche, makes him thoroughly convincing as your blood relative, even without the 'identical face' card."

"Yeah." Jin-Woo says firmly, with too much confidence in this half-assed plan Ashborn made while delirious on humanity. "So. None of my family members believed it."

"Not surprised."

"But they went along with it. They didn't even really question me, at all." Surprising, but not at all surprising. Jin-Ah learned from a young age to not question half of the shit her older brother, who was also a minor not that long ago, was doing for money. He drilled that into her, since knowledge is a legal liability, and it's also just plain annoying to have to talk to his younger sister for longer than ten minutes. Meanwhile, his mom, for all her cleverness, wit, and adaptability, cannot just know what happened in the past five years. He changed, Jin-Ah has changed, the world has changed, and only she hasn't.  And everything has changed in a significant and unrecognizable manner. To her, having a monster-twin spawn out of her (un)familiar son is probably just as random as her son suddenly becoming an S-Rank hunter who has the entire government in his pocket. Like. If there's any point in her life to learn about the most bizarre and unexplainable phenomenas of the world, it's probably right now when she already has no semblance of mankind's conventions and norms to compare them against. The moon could blow up right now and he could just tell her that this was just another Tuesday for them, and she'd just have to take it because like, how crazy is that compared to everything else she just kinda had to accept on a random weekday that she was forced into consciousness? 

"Really? No questions at all?" Jin-Chul sounds doubtful. 

"They did question why we picked Ashborn's legal name."

And Woo Jin-Chul, being the kind person he is, does not call them out on the fact that he was the one who did try to stop Qin Yu from picking those characters for his name.

"What about Jin-Ho?" Jin-Chul inquires, dunking an entire can of Redbull into the coffee machine to brew his third cup of black coffee. "He's your closest friend, right?"

Jin-Woo, figuring that he's an A-rank Hunter, will probably metabolize his drink with all the questionable substances he stirred into it in less than twelve minutes.

"Only friend," Jin-Woo shakes his head.

Jin-Chul raises a brow at this.

"Oh. And you, I guess. I'm friendly with you." Are they friends? Probably not. Friends hangout, play games, do all that stuff. "So I guess you're my friend."

He's never had a chance to do 'friendship' stuff, even before becoming a Hunter, so he might as well create his own qualifications for being friends.

Qualification 1: they have to compare to the standard of Yoo Jin-Ho, which Jin-Woo thinks that due to Jin-Ho's...unique...character, it'll be pretty hard to fulfill. 

Jin-Chul clears his throat, and he looks oddly flushed by this statement. Wondering if he did something wrong, Jin-Woo adds: "I mean. If you don't. Mind."His tone staccatos, uncertain as to what this atmosphere is. To the side, Ashborn is scoffing. "We like you as much as we like Jin-Ho," he can tell, just by Ashborn's emotions pulsating next to his heart.

Jin-Chul chokes even harder. 

Jin-Woo stares, a bit lost, overall helpless. "Was I always like this?" Ashborn mumbles, staring at him. "Geez. If all my subordinates saw me like this..." Jin-Woo doesn't quite get it, but he knows for a fucking-fact that he just got backhanded. He glowers.

"I. Thank you, Sung Jin-Woo," Jin-Chul finally says, voice stabilized and eyes fixated on his laptop. He's still flustered red from nearly dying on his coffee, though. "Thank you too, Qin Yu," he nods towards him, and Ashborn looks away, face stony, but the tips of his fingers feel warm, and he knows Ashborn is discretely pleased. "So. Jin-Ho knows about your situation?"

"Oh. He directly met me," Ashborn chirrups rather happily, and Jin-Woo sees the way that Jin-Chul jolts in his seat, eyes flitting up quickly before averting, clearly momentarily distracted by the fact that it's Jin-Woo's face who's gurgling hyena laughs these past ten minutes, that it's Jin-Woo's voice that's crooning out ideas and humming out stories.

And honestly, Jin-Woo thinks it's not that bad of scenario, being a witness of this carwreck of a shitshow. 

If anything, he's the one suffering here, while everyone else is just an audience member to this circus act. If Jin-Woo is the clown, and earth is the circus, then god must be the ringmaster.

As if sensing his simmering irritation, Ashborn flashes a smile in his direction, before winking.

Jin-Woo and Jin-Chul stare at him judgmentally. 

"I can't tell if you're disgusted or enranged by my existence." Ashborn comments happily at their directed gazes.

"Distraught," Jin-Chul blurts honestly with zero regards for his sense of self-restraint by this point. Jin-Woo has noticed that these past two days, Jin-Chul had utterly gathered the ripped mental filter he lodged in his throat, and tossed it out the balcony of his room. 

Either he's spiralling, or he's frankly just stopped giving a shit about keeping on the downlow now that he's the boss. 

Whichever scenario it is, Jin-Woo relates to both. 

"I just didn't image the Shadow Monarch would be like this." Jin-Woo mumbles almost sardonically, allowing one of his shadow ants to manifest underneath the meeting room's large coffee table. He lets it nibble on his fingers.

And he hasn't noticed before, but-

They're kind of cute.

His soldiers. Their individuality is admirable in a way, and while he felt distant, detached from their loyalty and unique presences, for some reason-

He's starting to notice.

"What do you mean?" Ashborn yawns, stretching over the table, before flopping over it. Suddenly, tendrils of shadows curve out of his spine like excavated ribs, forming a blanket of exoskeletons over his body as a makeshift cocoon blanket. Jin-Chul glances up from his papers, and looks torn as to whether or not he should treat him the way he would treat Jin-Woo. Jin-Woo can tell, because Jin-Chul has the expression that Adam White always makes whenever he's forced to spontaneously take up damage control due to Jin-Woo's unreasonably sporadic impulses. 

"Mm...it feels like Jin-Woo is more of a monarch than you are, if that makes sense," Jin-Chul finally admits with obvious hesitance, though, his voice doesn't sound apologetic at all. 

The threads mummifying Jin-Chul right at the table snap near the head, exposing Ashborn's eyes and mouth. "Yeah. That's because I gave myself up for him." He answers simply, and Jin-Chul doesn't appear confused nor judgmental of this. Rather, he makes a noise of acknowledgement, with an appropriate amount of fixation as he glances up from his laptop. 

"So if you think about it, as alchemy, necromancy, all those genres would say, Pythagorean's Fourth Theory: equivalent exchange."

"That doesn't sound right." Jin-Chul immediately says.

"See. That sounds wrong, but I don't know enough about STEM or, on the other end of the scientific and logical spectrum, necromancy, to dispute it." Jin-Woo mutters agreeably.

"Meaning the personality and characteristic I'm adopting and sandpapering down to my own, is mostly from what Jin-Woo used to be like." Ashborn concludes.

Woo Jin Chul this time, does lose it over his laptop, a strangled noise erupting from the pits of his cough.

Meanwhile, Jin-Woo's mind blanks out.

"I- no way. I was not like that, I would've notic-"

"Did you even notice you were gradually becoming like me? The change is so vast, yet, the sensation is so natural." Jin-Woo falls quiet at the sound of Ashborn's soft explanation, his sudden steadfast tone that clips from his previous lilting one pinching Jin-Woo's nerves, the deadpannedness tensing his organs. "Call it brainwashing, but remember, we're two sides of the same coin. Now that I'm here with most of your old personality, eventually, we'll balance each other out, and we'll develop in similar yet different fashions. You might've not noticed this, but you're gradually becoming more like your old self." 

Jin-Woo frowns at this.

"You don't believe me?" Ashborn smothers a snort beneath his hand, and the sound of it would be almost leery to anyone but him. It just sounds sad. A bit scared. A bit mocking, because how dense would you have to be to not notice (or on the flipside, the darker explanation that Jin-Woo doesn't want to think about: how strong is this manipulative force that he doesn't even notice this)? "Well. That just proves my point. Anyways." His voice softens, just for him. "It's not scary. And don't think about it as some larger force controlling you or changing you- people change on their own all the time without realizing. The concept of evolution and peoples' free will interact...and eventually people change. It's not scary to feel certain things. Changes." 

"...you're rather in-tune with the human species, given your history and identity." He mutters, unwilling and unable to disguise the acid corroding any gratefulness in his tone.

"Of course." Ashborn says casually, unbothered by Jin-Woo's obvious frustration. "Because right now, my identity is in-sync with yours, specifically with the dormant emotional characteristics you had before you encountered the system. I learned and felt things because of you." He confesses casually.

Jin-Woo glances up at the mention, but Jin-Chul is clacking away at his keyboard, having quickly regained composure in just seconds.

Well, even though he's definitely listening in since there's no way he can't even given the proximity between them, Jin-Chul isn't the type to gossip.

"Anyways." Ashborn yawns. "I want to try sleeping as a human."

"You're totally not a human."

"I'm human enough. I want to try dreaming."

"You've never dreamt?"

"My kind does not dream. We only have one sense of dimensional reality, and it's one where we change things. Dreams and their world, is something fascinating to me. Goodnight."

"It's eight in the morning."

Ashborn ignores him, and his shadows engulf him like a flaming pile of shit. 

Jin-Woo stares at the blob once more, and turns to Jin-Chul. "I think we shouldn't clear out the building. Just let them see, they'll see Ashb- Qin Yu at one point." Earlier, before they went off-topic, they were talking about the Association and how Jin-Woo wanted Ashborn to register as a Hunter.

Jin-Chul suggested clearing out the testing center to give them space, but Jin-Woo doesn't see the point in that. It's inevitable that people will catch a glimpse of two Jin-Woos just running wild, especially now that Jin-Woo has concluded that Ashborn has the impulsive self-restraint of a fratboy teenager (so maybe he was onto something when he said he was a lot like the younger version of Jin-Woo). And it doesn't help that Ashborn doesn't listen to no god but Himself. 

And Jin-Woo is kinda assuming that Ashborn is going to stick by him. 

(He doesn't-

He doesn't know for how long. Maybe for as long as Jin-Woo himself lives. Or maybe Ashborn will continue living past him, because in the end, Jin-Woo is composed of flesh and bones (and he's definitely not a human anymore, but all species have their own limits). He'll die one day, and he doesn't know where they'll both end up by then.)

So, to make life easier, might as well register Ashborn as a Hunter. With the Hunters swarming Jin-Woo almost all the time, they'll eventually learn about Ashborn. And Jin-Woo is ecstatic over the idea of having a third member of his guild who's as functional as he himself is, if not more.

"True. And it's not like anyone's going to question or try and stop someone like you, especially if there's another person who looks exactly like you." Jin-Chul says, though, he still appears grim by the idea of dealing with the sudden exposure of a second Jin-Woo wandering around this planet. 

"And I'll immediately register him underneath Ahjin." Jin-Chul reaffirms. "You sure you don't want to give a public announcement about Qin Yu? Everyone wants to hear from you, especially after people claimed you died only to come back again. It's only been less than a day since you pulled a Jesus and revived, you know-"

He shakes his head, and Jin-Chul sighs, but it doesn't sound disappointed. Rather, he looks vaguely humoured by Jin-Woo's firm denial. 

"You've been sighing a lot." Jin-Woo comments.

"You guys are stressful."

"Mm." He doesn't even deny it. 

Jin-Chul grimaces, tucking his shades on the top of his greasy hair, revealing sallow and decayed eyebags. "Also, Thomas Andre has been asking about you." ...Thomas? Right. He should also try and visit the other white boy too, the one called Lennart. "I think...he might've seen the Monarch given that he was at the scene. And Liu Zhigang keeps asking about your personal address once more."

"Liu Zhigang?" He cocks a brow. He's only really talked to him once, and he felt eccentric, steadfast, a bit shameless. But overall, Jin-Woo walked away from him feeling as if he's quite likeable. 

He glances at the black cocoon slouched beside him, because Ashborn, a cryptid who probably spurred the lore of midwest Mothman, feels parallel to Liu Zhigang's character. "Why?"

"When we asked him, all he mentioned was something about a present."

He cocks a brow at this. "I see." Is Liu Zhigang in Korea? Probably not. 

He hopes they'll cross paths soon, though.

"Anyw-"

The door to the empty conference room slams open, and both of them turn to the door.

A secretary bustles in, not at all noticing Jin-Woo or the lumpy black trash-bag slouched right next to him. "Sir! Sorry for intruding, but a very powerful figure has visited. It's Choi Jung-In!" 

A fanboy, then.

"Choi Jung-In?" Jin-Woo repeats, startled. He has a good impression of him.

The secretary glances over, clearly surprised by the intrusion, only to freeze.

They make eye contact.

"Hello." Jin-Woo greets, because his mom raised him with manners.

The secretary's eyes tip back, before he impressively manhandles his fleeting consciousness and performs an awkward bow. "Sorry! I- you're- oh god, I'm so sorry for interrupting! You guys must be holding an important meeting-"

"Actually." Jin-Woo cuts in. The secretary immediately shuts up. Jin-Woo has a idea. "We were." The secretary ashens. Jin-Woo leans forward, fingers interlaced on the table. "Do you think Sung Qin Yu is a bad name?"

The secretary blinks.

Silence pervades, once more.

"I....it's interesting?" He looks at Jin-Chul, looking very stressed by today's turn of events. Jin-Chul however, out-stresses the man just by appearance alone, and is clearly immune to the employee's unspoken cries for guidance. 

"Give me your honest opinion," Jin-Woo insists exasperated.

The secretary emits a gargled noise like he shoved his vocal chords into the sink's trash disposal. "It's... it's weird...sir."

"I'm younger than you."

"It's weird, young master."

Sensing that this conversation is absolutely going nowhere, Jin-Woo looks pleadingly at Jin-Chul, who now looks exponentially more pressured by not one, but two glares for help spotlighting him. Jin-Chul just waves his hand, capturing the secretary's attention. "Serve to whatever Choi Jong-In asks for-"

"He wants to see you." The young man answers, suddenly flipping into a state of sudden professionalism, pale visage constructing into one of seriousness. Ooh. Of course there would never be anyone incompetent underneath the late Gun-Hee's hires. 

"Oh." Jin-Chul looks at Jin-Woo. He shrugs. Jin-Chul must be busy, and he is more or less here just because Jin-Chul has a more solid view on things unlike other people who know about Ashborn's existence. In other words: he's just here to vent about his current state of life.

"Send him in." Jin-Chul demands, and the secretary leaves. Jin-Chul turns to him, looking vaguely amused.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Jin-Woo scowls.

Before he can question if he can still consider him a friend if he pulls interrogation tactics on him, the door swings open once more. 

"Woo Ji- Sung Jin-Woo?" Choi Jong-In blinks, startled, before his shoulders lax. "Oh. I'm glad to see you're okay," and something earnest crumples on his face, and Jin-Woo shifts, and the ant beneath the table screeches.

Choi Jong-In does a doubletake, the relief on his face immediately tensing up.

"It's...she's friendly," Jin-Woo clears his throat, tapping the ant on the head. "Sorry for interrupting."

Choi Jong-In looks at him, clearly startled by his statement, and Jin-Woo subconsciously flickers his eyes to the side, having already developed a habit to share eye-contact with Ashborn ever since he started latching against him like an overgrown tumor. 

"Oh. What's in that trashbag?" Choi Jong-In asks conversationally, catching his gaze. 

"My brother."

Woo Jin-Chul, for the third time today, sputters on his drink.