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“Khun, look! I got another one!” Bam held up a black shirt, tasteful in it’s style, and honestly, Khun thinks Bam would look good in it. Doesn’t change the fact that it’s yet another black shirt, however.
“Oh? Is it from Jinsung again?” he raised an eyebrow, trying to keep his voice steady and his mouth upturned. Bam nods eagerly in response, and Khun’s lips become strained, “I see. Well, I think it looks pretty good.”
Bam smiles, and Khun tucks that bright light away for a sad day.
He pretends not to notice his hands instinctively clench at the sight of Bam staring at the shirt in fondness. He doesn’t feel a flare of jealousy rising up in him staring as Bam is so happy with this thing. And, no, he does not feel like the shirt itself is staring triumphantly at him, mocking him and laughing at his failure.
He internally cackles at the short lived success this piece of clothing scrap has. Because who is he? He’s Khun Aguero Agnis, and he never loses. Not if he can help it.
He just needs to wait patiently for the right time.
<~~o~~>
It’s near nighttime, and Khun thinks it’s the perfect time to execute his plan.
Silently entering Bam’s room, the occupant already out, training vigorously as per usual. Normally, Khun would barge into the training room and drag the Irregular to rest, but he has things that need to be done, and they need to be done now .
Rummaging through Bam’s closet- yes, Khun knows this is extremely creepy of him, but he can’t help it. Not when that despicable black shirt kept winning, getting one over him. Now, he doesn’t consider himself to be the...possessive type, but this is an exception. Bam is his and he’s not letting this fucking shirt succeed.
A few to the right- oh this shirt looks rather nice, and fortunate that it wasn’t black. Khun stands to admire it for a few seconds, before getting back down to business. He has to work quickly so that Bam doesn’t notice anything. Push these there… Ah.
There it is.
He smirks deviously as he takes out the article of clothing, caring to be careful with it so that no evidence is left behind. It’s one of Bam’s older black shirts, one he got a few months back, but it still has that condescending feel to it that Khun absolutely despises.
So, now it’s one of his victims.
Silently leaving the room, taking immense care to shut the door as muffled as he could, Khun briskly walks down the hallway, wary for any undesirable encounters. Especially with Bam. He can’t afford to blow his cover.
Khun opens the door to his bedroom, the creak almost foreboding for the black shirt. Quickly closing the door and locking it, he makes his way to a closet located in the corner of the room, with a keypad stationed in front of the large wooden door. Inputting a series of codes, the door swings open, allowing Khun inside.
Here lies the final resting place of this black shirt.
Khun almost grins from the excitement of it all. It never fails to make him exceedingly giddy whenever this happens, and he relishes every second. With every time he makes his way to this room, every time a rival of his falls, and he loves it.
He can almost imagine this piece of cloth shaking in utmost fear in his grasp, sensing it’s impending doom. Ah, too bad Khun can’t ever hear it shriek. Though he supposes that would alert some unwelcome company into the scene, so he shrugs it off.
Throwing the shirt down onto a wooden board in the center of the room, as hard as he could because to hell with gentleness, he washes his hands and puts on some gloves. After all, chemicals are involved and he’s not about to risk his hands of being burnt.
He walks to a table nearby the board, lined to the brim with different substances; bleach, gasoline, different assortments of substances with alcohol, you name it. Starting out simple, he grabs the bleach and uncaps it, the muted clinking sound music to his ears and haunting to the shirt.
He smiles devilishly, the expression just a little bit too crazed.
“Well, you little black shirt, I think it’s time to say goodbye to that black of yours.”
The black shirt has never been so terrified in it’s life.
<~~o~~>
Khun chuckles darkly, staring at the jagged pieces of cloth, bleached and stained orange. It’s all cut randomly, both with the thread opener he snagged from a sewing kit and a knife he keeps with him at all times. The sound of thread snapping open and the unraveling of it all was so satisfying, and Khun simply can’t get enough of it.
He even gave the thing the privilege of being thrown into the washing machine, although it did get thrown with his old white shirts that he, honestly, does not give a single fuck about. Oh, and, unlike his usual precise measuring, he dumped an entire thing of detergent into the machine. It came out quite nicely, if Khun does say so himself.
Yet another of his detested rivals falls, and he finishes the job by engulfing the thing in flames, staring at the embers almost in a trance.
Yeah. This is great.
Humming, satisfied with his work, he washes up and puts everything back in its place. Just as he’s about to reopen the door, though, he pauses. Looking around at his surroundings, scraps of cloth hanging from the walls, discolored beyond recognition, ashes accumulating in the bowl he set underneath it…
Something escapes him.
A chuckle, two of them, before he hunches over from laughter. It’s ridiculous, this whole thing is ridiculous, but it’s so incredibly enjoyable to watch this all burn and shrivel and melt. Absolute bliss.
Things have been boring lately, so this was good entertainment, a very effective stress reliever, 10/10. Would definitely do it again.
<~~o~~>
“Um, Khun?” Bam approaches him a few days later.
Khun glances up at him, “Hm? What is it, Bam?”
“Have you,” Bam glances around the room, looking for words, “Have you seen my black shirt?”
“Which one?” Khun snorts, “You have so many of them.”
Bam fumbles around for a description of the shirt, “The one with...I think they were brown buttons?”
Ah, the unfortunate victim of Khun’s from….three nights ago? Oh well.
He shrugs, “I wasn’t on laundry duty, so I’m not sure. Maybe it got mixed up with someone else’s clothes. But,” he props his face up on his hand, staring at Bam, “Why do you need it? Like I said before, you already have so many black shirts.”
“Oh,” Bam scratches his neck sheepishly, “They’re all just really special to me.”
Khun’s eye twitches minutely in annoyance, and he shoves the jealous feeling down.
Seems like there’s going to be another death tonight.
And it’s not going to be pretty.
<~~o~~>
Khun sighs, putting on his gloves again. What should he do this time, he wonders. There’re a great many methods, and he just hasn’t done enough of them all. There’s the bleach again, but he did that last time, so that’s a no. His gaze wanders to an assortment of paints on a rack, shaking his head, he doesn’t want the death of this damned shirt to be pretty either.
Well, there’s no harm in good ol’ ripping threads up. Maybe he could render this thing to threads, and then burn it again to remove the evidence.
Yeah, that works.
Trodding over to a cabinet, he opens the drawer and is met with a plethora of sharp objects. Knives, daggers, thread openers, scissors, even a shard of glass he managed to save from one of their many, stupid, drinking parties. He’s tried cutting the shirt with the shard, but it doesn’t really do too much other than catch on the threads and it’s a pain to get the glass to actually cut through.
The scissors look like fun, though, so Khun takes a handful, all having different types of blades, and grabs a bottle of pure white ink for extra flair. After all, this wretched thing needs to be purified before it’s sent off to Hell below.
...
God, he sounds crazy.
He stares at the black shirt, adorned with red random patterns on the cuffs and the collar. If it wasn’t Bam’s specifically, Khun would have admired it.
But.
It’s Bam’s.
So it’s going to perish.
Starting at the hem of the shirt, he makes random cuts, not even caring to keep things organized. Once satisfied with the result, he harshly makes a wide slash from the bottom of the shirt to the top left shoulder.
Midway through cutting the big cut, though, he feels something tug at his chest, seeing this thing get mutilated by him. He shouldn’t be feeling this way, but something about this shirt in particular just… lures him in.
He isn’t sure why, either, so he shrugs off the feeling and gets back to cutting the thing up.
The feeling returns, after he’s finished, and Khun doesn’t know what to do with it.
<~~o~~>
It still nags at him, even weeks after that last murder. Not knowing what exactly to do with it, he takes a break from cutting up and ruining black shirts. As much as he hates to do so, even with the feeling of jealousy towards the black shirts slowly lessening and being directed towards Bam-
...
What, what?
What???
Khun blinks as his thoughts screech to a halt.
Huh?
Him? Jealous of Bam out of all people? When had this developed? He scrambles to sift through his thoughts, this new revelation tilting his words upside down, sideways, and all around.
It’s unfamiliar, and he both doesn’t like it and welcomes it.
Oh wow, his mind is being confusing today. Not like it’s unusual just...actually scratch that, it’s very unusual. Khun sighs, scratching his head, and collapses into a chair nearby. He frantically tries to sort through his memories, trying to think of the last time-
What?
That time? When he was cutting up that black shirt with the beautiful-
Okay, wait. Take two steps back- no, take twenty. What the fuck.
He did not just call a black shirt beautiful. Even less one of Bam’s black shirts. He rubs his forehead, maybe he’s tired. No, wait, he’s always tired, this isn’t anything new. What. Khun’s head spins as he stares at the floor in thought, as if the floor would answer his unspoken questions.
“Khun?” Bam breaks him out of his thoughts, wearing yet another black shirt that Khun weirdly isn’t discreetly burning holes into anymore.
Khun makes a questioning noise, “Hm?”
“Are you okay? You looked like something was bothering you.”
Leave it to Bam to be worried about him. Khun usually feels something warm rise up in his chest, but it feels vacant.
What the fuck.
“Oh, no. Nothing, really,” he shakes his head, both as an answer and to clear the damn thing, because what are these new thoughts he does not understand-
Bam looks extremely unsure about that, “If you say so...”
Khun tries to smile reassuringly at him, but it comes off uncertain. As soon as Bam exits the room, Khun falls back into his own thoughts, picking them apart, analyzing them.
Because what the actual hell is happening to him.
When he finds his answer, Khun rubs his eyes in disbelief, his eyes almost falling out of their sockets. It can’t be...
Oh no.
Oh fuck.
This cannot be happening.
He cannot be falling in love with black shirts.
<~~o~~>
A few months later, Bam stares at the Light Bearer questioningly. Lately, Khun has been buying a lot of darker clothes, especially black ones, and Bam wonders if he’s going through anything. It...shouldn’t be an emo phase of his again, right? People can’t get those twice in their lives?
With his own dear black shirts that were disappearing at an alarming rate a few months back, Bam eventually settled on more blues. When he broke the news to Jinsung, the Ranker, understandably so, looked extremely baffled.
“What? But you look fantastic in black, Viole,” he had gaped.
Bam scratched his cheek, “Well, um, they’ve just been disappearing a lot. I asked Khun about it once and he said that they might have just gotten mixed up with the other’s.”
“Did no one have them?” Jinsung blinked, this was a very abnormal occurrence.
“Nope.”
Jinsung had sighed, patting his shoulder, “Alright, if you think that’s best then.”
Back to the present, Bam stares as Khun maneuvers around the space, humming a soft tune. Actually, ever since he’s been wearing black shirts, the Light Bearer’s looked a lot happier than usual, more light hearted.
When he laughed at one of Shibisu’s jokes, everyone had stared at him, absolutely stunned. Shibisu took him by the shoulders and asked where the real Khun had gone, but Khun just kept laughing. Later, he shrugged and said that good things had happened.
Under normal circumstances, this would make Bam happy, seeing his own friend smiling so much more.
But.
It was after he started wearing black shirts.
Khun’s gaze travels to him, and he gives a small wave. Bam waves back, giving a shaky smile, just as a thought hits him, right when Khun stares fondly at his black shirt, adorned with red embroidery on the cuffs and the collar.
...
Oh.
And a flare of something rises up in him, seeing Khun so happy wearing a black shirt.