"i’ll eat you up to the marrow, down to your flesh and blood"

It’s crazy.

Days and weeks and months after he died, he still saw those green eyes in his nightmares. Four months.

Four months, four months full of new ideals, new companionship, and even new love, and yet he still remained haunted by him. Dongrang’s bespectacled face and the mole on his neck, the mole he wanted to bite and dig into until nothing remained.

Every night, he’d see that face in his dreams, pale and knowing, pale and now even paler in the ground. Sometimes it would rot. Sometimes it would kiss him.

Yet he always ended up waking up hungry. 

Maybe it was the fact his meals were light, but before the incident, he didn’t feel at all hungry upon waking up. Now, every day, he woke up absolutely famished, famished to the point he’d scarf down any food for breakfast.

Even if it was rotten.

Rotten like him, who betrayed him. Who betrayed all of them. And why did he wish to consume him with his lips and mouth, bite down deep into the flesh, crack open the marrow from his bones and feast?

Mold, rat poison, he’d scarf anything down if he could when dawn broke. 

Yet as he fell into slumber, he’d always end up starving again.

That night, Yi Sang saw him once more, his old ideal, standing in that damn pasture, the one he fell in. Long blades of grass grew thick from the ground, golden in their glow, perfect for a calf to feast on. He stood in his K. Corp outfit, mole dotting his neck. He wanted to lick at it, suck on it, pull off the skin.

Dongrang seemed to notice.

“Ah. You’re hungry, aren’t you, my Yi Sang?”

It always made him mad when he called him that. 

“Don’t call me that, old friend.” YI Sang sighed, striding forwards, eyeing that mark on his neck like he never did before. He felt for the dagger he always wore on him, and felt the cold leather holder as he always did. Good. “You know for a fact that I’m no longer yours. In fact, I never was.”

Dongrang gave that familiar smug smile. “And why do you think that is?” Wings, Yi Sang wanted to rip the smile right off his face, to tear off his lips with his teeth.

“I never belonged to you, nor Gubo, nor even my current manager. I… I am my own person, and I always have been.” Yi Sang stood right in front of Dongrang, looking up at the taller man. He stood only mere feet away from him, from the mole he craved, from the meat he wanted to fill his belly with until he never hungered again. “The mirror didn’t teach me that. I did. I saved me, Dongrang.”

“Yet the breaking of our league, the break that I caused, made you spiral into nothingness. The nothingness from then still impacts you now, correct?” He closed his eyes. “You are still mine. You always were — gah…!” 

Dongrang’s eyes shot open as Yi Sang threw him to the ground, pushing him down with all of his weight. He brought the dagger up from its holder and cut off deep, snapping off half of Dongrang’s coats and undershirt and allowing him to access his shoulder. He licked his lips as he noticed more moles dotting the skin like little stars, stars soon to fizzle out.

“Yi Sang…” Dongrang didn’t seem upset. If anything, he seemed lovestruck. “Do whatever you wish. I don’t mind.” 

Disgusting.

But it eased his mind anyway.

As much as Yi Sang did his best to choke down the thoughts, he couldn’t help but ruminate over the fact he still loved Dongrang, even after all of this time. With how Gubo treated him, Dongrang almost seemed like an angel in comparison. 

Yet he wasn’t.

Dongrang and Gubo were far more alike than he ever considered, in fact.

He discarded the thought as he finally reached down to bite Dongrang’s mole on his neck, digging his teeth in until he drew blood. He lapped at the little spot of skin with his tongue, his lips curling into a smile when he finally tasted iron. Pulling back from his meal, he swallowed down his reward, blood and skin. 

Dongrang laughed. He was smiling, too. “Yi Sang, Yi Sang—”

Yi Sang cut him off with a swift stab to the chest, raking down. Dongrang immediately realized what was happening as Yi Sang dug a hand inside his body cavity, pressing down on intestines, swiftly cutting through the epidermis like butter throughout his torso and chest. Bodies in this dreamscape seemed to be much squishier, yet also much more durable. Dongrang seemed to be in immense pain, yes, a pain he seemed to enjoy, but not close to dying in the slightest.

“And to think my Yi Sang loved me so much,” Dongrang coughed, blood coming out of his throat, “that he’d consume me. You want me to be part of you forever, Yi Sang.” He laughed, laughed, and laughed until he began to choke on his blood, letting Yi Sang pull him up so he wouldn’t asphyxiate. “Not just in soul, as it always will be, but in body.”

“No,” Yi Sang countered, “I have no need for any of that. I only crave this.” He bit hard at the shoulder, pulling back after a hard suckle and sickening crunch with muscle and bone. He spit out the bone and cracked it, swallowing down the marrow. Dongrang thrashed under him, panting, dizzy from blood loss. 

“What?” Yi Sang cracked a smile, blood trailing down his lips and his tongue. He used the knife to cut through more muscle from his shoulder, pulling it out to show Dongrang. “Do you want a piece?”

“I — Yi Sang, hah… Of course.” Despite a chunk of his shoulder missing, both his torso and chest being cut open, and overwhelmed by a clear lightheadedness, he bobbed his head ever so slightly forward to take a small bite out of the flesh.

“What?” Yi Sang, for once, felt overcome by a certain smugness. The type of smugness that had taunted him on Dongrang’s face for years. Why not give this scientist a taste of his own medicine? “Are you too sick to take even a little more? I thought you were one of K. Corp’s top scientists, Dongrang.” He resisted the urge to shove the rest of the muscle into Dongrang’s mouth. “We were worth betraying for this, hm? You can’t even scarf down a platter of your own justice.”

“Since when did my Yi Sang become so confident? My, my. They truly have corrupted you, haven’t they?”

Yi Sang opted to shut him up with a sharp tug of his heart, breaking a few vessels before placing it back down. No. I shall save that for last. He took great joy in how Dongrang thrashed and wailed under him, sometimes asking for “more”, and he’d obey like the dog Dongrang clearly thought he was. Yet he’d always defy him in some way, bite a little lighter than Dongrang wanted, pull at organs he wasn’t expecting, scrape his nails down bare muscle as they twitched under them. 

“I love you, Yi Sang.” 

Yi Sang refused to tell him the truth — refused to tell him that he still loved him back. 

He kissed him instead, feverish and rough, iron mingling across his tongue that he swallowed down without so much as flinching. Dongrang tasted good; really good. This was the most exquisite meat he had ever tasted, and it was completely raw; and also completely for him and him alone. He swiped his tongue across Dongrang’s lower lip before biting down on it and tearing it off, and when he ate it, he tried his best not to gag. 

“That close to vomiting, Yi Sang?” Still capable of speaking despite losing half of his lip. If only this were real, and he could truly feel all of this. Alas, it was impossible forever now, as he was locked away underground, probably right beneath the K. Corp lab he worked in for so many years. “Am I that repulsive?”

“Absolutely not.” He took another bite out of his shoulder, digging down through marrow, drinking up his blood and veins, biting out chunks of muscle and doing his best to keep them down. “You’re a delicacy, Dongrang. A shame you’re so rotten on the inside.” 

“A shame, I know,” Dongrang trailed off. The blood loss finally seemed to be getting to him, as he slurred his words. “I’m just a horrible person, aren’t I?”

“Yes, you are.” 

Yi Sang gave Dongrang another kiss, pulling away with a red string of saliva before crashing his lips into his again and again, kissing him as he raked the knife up the side of his body, blood staining his coat. He reached down to tug at his tie, pulling Dongrang’s lips closer against his own, biting at his tongue and tearing off a piece. When he was finally done with his work, he latched right back onto his neck, where the mole had once been and where he had left a concave mark. 

He bit down harder than ever before, tearing at his neck like an animal, a lion ripping out its prey's throat; an intelligent little crow twisting a worm around in its beak. When he reached Dongrang’s Adam's apple, he adjusted his position and ripped it out harshly with his teeth. Half of the other man’s neck was completely missing, his throat torn out, and yet he still opened his mouth to speak.

“Good boy.”

For whatever reason, those two simple words brought a whole new rage throughout Yi Sang. Though he promised to prolong this meal as long as possible, he ripped out Dongrang’s heart as though it were second nature, letting the fluids drip into his mouth before he chewed at it, then he pulled out a veiny chamber.

Yi Sang chuckled. “Last chance, Dongrang.” He shoved a piece of Dongrang’s own heart to his face. “Do you want a bite? Or do you want that nibble of one of your pathetic muscles to be your final meal?”

Tears of pain were long since welled up in Dongrang’s eyes, though despite half of his neck missing, despite a segment of his hypodermis being gone, despite his own heart being ripped clean from his body, he reached up to put the entire thing in his mouth, chewing slowly before swallowing it. 

Though, considering half of his throat was gone, the way it disappeared was a mystery.

He opened his mouth to show Yi Sang how he had feasted, to show him that he listened. For once, Dongrang had listened. And by the Wings, it was delicious. 

Dongrang’s voice began to grow weaker, slower, and more slurred. “This ‘revenge’ was pointless, wasn’t it?”

“Who said it was revenge? Maybe I was just hungry.”

“Just… Just hungry…”

Dongrang closed his eyes, though his breaths remained heavy. Even after he chewed on his lungs, even after he tore them out and swallowed them, even after he consumed most of him down to the bone, he remained breathing — remained alive. 

“Why did you do it?”

Dongrang didn’t respond.

“...That’s quite alright, Dongrang. I don’t need an answer.”

So Yi Sang swallowed down every inch of him.

And, for the first time in four months, he woke up satiated.