by Con Template
Eclipse pointed at DonKi and ignored my demands for him to be quiet. “But you’re not lusting after her like that—not even a little bit.”
“Thanks for the clarification,” I muttered dryly.
“This means that you are either whipped or gay,” Eclipse concluded. “And seeing as you haven’t made the effort to hit on me, I’m pretty sure a girl has got you whipped and whipped good.”
I could see DonKi’s features switch into anger at the accusation Eclipse was hurling his way. He looked outraged. He looked like he was about to scream at Eclipse and deny everything—until his face softened and he confessed, “She has a boyfriend.”
DonKi, you piece of donkey shit! I cursed in my head once he confirmed these blasphemous accusations. Do you know how hard it was to sneak out to meet up with you? How can you be lusting after some other girl when you’re supposed to be the perfect husband material?!
“So?”
“What?” I cried, appalled that Eclipse was dismissing such an important detail. I faced him, revolted that he could be making light of the fact that this other girl was taken. I was upset with DonKi for leading me on while lusting after another girl, but I was more pissed that Eclipse was encouraging DonKi to go after a girl that was already taken. “What do you mean so?”
“And her dad is scary,” DonKi added, ignoring my indignation. “I don’t want to mess with him or make him mad. He’s like a father to me.”
“Why does this bastard’s happiness come before yours?” Eclipse continued as well, paying no attention to me. Almost instantly, the night went from Eclipse impeding on our date to Eclipse and DonKi having some male bonding time while I was trying to get a word in edgewise. “You humans are like that—”
“You mean us humans?” DonKi provided softly, hanging onto Eclipse’s every word like he was a prophet from the Lord.
“Yeah, sure,” Eclipse dismissed carelessly. He forged on with his pearls of wisdom. “Us humans are like that. We try to brood and be morally just, but in the end, we only end up making ourselves miserable.” Severity throbbed in his eyes before he took another whiff of his cigarette. “Just go for her, DonKi. Tempt her, seduce her, cheat with her, and steal her away. If she really loves the other guy, then she’ll stay with him and that’s something you’ll have to live with. But if she doesn’t love the other guy enough and she actually wants you, then you two can be together. Whatever the outcome, at least you’ll know that you did everything you can for her and at least you’ll get closure. Life is short. Do not spend it trying to be a martyr when it is in your nature to be selfish. Your happiness has to come before someone else’s happiness—never the other way around.”
I couldn’t believe the ridiculous “advice” that Eclipse was spewing out. Who did he think he was? How dare he give such sinful and self-serving advice that was not applicable to a human who was trying to make it in a morally just world? I felt terrible that DonKi had to waste his Saturday night listening to this nonsense. DonKi was a good guy. He would never do something so atrocious—
“I’ll do it,” DonKi declared at once, interrupting me from my thoughts. Determination pulsated in his confident voice. “I’m going to convince her to cheat with me.”
“What?!” I cried, flabbergasted with DonKi’s blasphemous words. How did my perfect, ideal guy become another self-serving jackass?
“Good.” Eclipse nodded approvingly, proud that DonKi was smart enough to heed his advice. A frown then disturbed his handsome face. He leaned across the table just as DonKi was about to excitedly dig into his food. “But try not to eat anymore tonight,” he advised, pulling the steaming hot noodle bowl away from DonKi. “Girls respond better to eight-pack ripped stomachs, not ten-pack stomachs filled with rolls of fat.”
DonKi blinked at Eclipse, undoubtedly grateful that he had someone to watch his back before he did something so appalling as to eat more fattening noodles.
Yeah, as opposed to preparing yourself to tempt someone else’s girlfriend to cheat with you, I thought glumly.
“You’re right, Eclipse. You’re right.” DonKi stood up from his seat like he was a man on a mission. He looked between us. “You guys enjoy your night. I’m going to go workout, burn off the hotdogs and noodles I ate, and prepare a plan to steal her and make her mine.”
“Good luck, DonKi,” Eclipse said with a regal nod that a general would bestow to his soldier. “Never give up. Remember: your happiness is the only one that matters.”
“Thanks man!” DonKi shouted before looking at me and saying, “This guy’s a keeper, Grace. Don’t let him slip away.”
And with that insightful advice, DonKi ran off, disappearing into the rainy night while leaving us in his wake.
“You know, I really like that DonKi,” Eclipse murmured approvingly. He took a drink of his soju. “He’s a lot more open-minded than I thought he would be.”
“I can’t believe you just did that,” I grumbled quietly. I glared at Eclipse with disbelieving eyes. “You just advised him to tempt a girl to cheat with him!”
“I didn’t put a gun to his head,” Eclipse countered unapologetically. “You humans are inherently selfish creatures. You may think you have evolved since the dawn of time and became ‘civilized,’ but the simple truth is that none of you have evolved. You’ve just become very good at hiding your true nature. DonKi had it in him to cheat. Hell, he’s probably considered it a thousand times. You saw how it happened. I didn’t even need to push him in any direction. He was hanging onto my every word before I even finished what I was saying.” He sighed empathetically, taking inventory of my disappointed eyes. “You shouldn’t be too disappointed with DonKi. He’s a good guy. He’s just doing bad things—at least from the perspective of a human anyway.”
“And what is your perspective?” I inquired pointedly.
A shimmer of pride sparked in his eyes. “He’s fighting for what he wants, and he would take no prisoners in the process. I applaud anyone who can fight their society’s expectations of them and do what they believe in, no matter how hated and despised it may make that individual to the majority.”
I blew out a dejected breath.
“You just told the guy I had a crush on to go and steal someone else’s girlfriend,” I reiterated in terms he would understand, not even truly absorbing what he was saying. I was too preoccupied with my own selfishness. I gulped down my soju as the torrential rain and the crowd around us livened up in the background. “You not only screwed me over, but you also screwed over the boyfriend. If that girlfriend of his actually becomes a hoe and cheats with DonKi, then he would be devastated. I don’t care how you spin it. You were the catalyst, and you know it. DonKi may have had the bomb in him, but you lit the fire and ignited the destruction to come.”
Eclipse nodded at my retort, impressed that I was calling him out on his bad influence.
“Well, that little love triangle is their problem, not yours, Gracie.” A playful smirk outlined his lips. “And you’re not even attracted to DonKi like that, so I don’t understand why you’re acting like you just got the love of your life taken away from you, Teacup. You think he’s easy on the eyes, yes. You think he embodies all the morals that would make him the ideal husband, yes, but that’s where the attraction ends. You feel nothing for him other than your admiration for the potential he has to be a good husband.”
I shot him a dry look. “You think you know so much about me, don’t you?”
His shoulders lifted into a coy shrug. “There are some things about you that I’ve observed and can deduce, yes.”
“Give me your deductive reasoning then,” I prompted unthinkingly. He was always such a smart aleck. I wanted to challenge him to see how good he really was.
Eclipse gave me an “are-you-sure?” look. When I nodded carelessly as my confirmation, he went to town, effectively making me regret giving him the green light.
“You see DonKi—or more specifically the morals and virtues that you thought DonKi had—as b
eing your savior, the thing to save you from your own sadistic personality.”
My blood chilled at the verity of those words. Not too keen on letting him know that his deduction touched a nerve within me, I kept my face free of emotions. Despite how uncomfortable I felt with how on point he was, I continued to listen.
“You’re very satisfied with your life, very much so. But the distinction that should be made is that you’re satisfied, but not happy—not by a long shot. You know that there’s something wrong with you and that you cannot continue living life as this sick, sadistic human being. You’re aware of all of this, but there’s little to nothing you can do about it. You can’t do anything about it, but someone else might be able to help you—someone else might be able to save you. Someone holier than you, someone pure, and someone with admirable morals because you trust that in being around them constantly, you would endeavor to be like them. In turn, you would be able to quench your sadistic tendencies and be the person you’ve always dreamed you could be: a normal girl. Completely and utterly normal.”
I smirked at him, never in my life feeling more like an open book.
“It must be nice,” I commented after a stretch of silence. I refused to allow his observations to affect my composure. The time to reflect on his observations would be done in the privacy of my own home. For now, my emotional wall was going to remain intact. I spent more than twenty years keeping myself at a distance from the world around me. I wasn’t going to allow a Demon to know how much his words impacted me. “It must be so nice for a Demon such as yourself to make observations about a little human girl when she knows absolutely nothing about you.”
Eclipse caught me off guard when he nodded in concurrence. It may have been too forward of me, but at that moment, I could swear that Eclipse felt slightly bad for putting me on the spot. He easily relinquished the tension around us by saying, “All you have to do is ask, Teacup.”
I gaped at him, stunned.
I couldn’t believe his words.
Since popping into my life, Eclipse, being as outspoken and exhausting as he was with his Alpha-Demon personality, had surprisingly been very good at being secretive. In the past, when I tried to learn more about him, he would always cleverly brush me off or be evasive with cryptic answers that I couldn’t figure out. The fact that he was opening the door for me to ask questions was a completely new development. It was an opportunity that I did not plan to squander.
“How old are you?” I immediately asked, feeling excitement stream through my body. Even though I hated having Eclipse in my life, the bitterness I felt for him couldn’t be overshadowed by the cool fact that I was interacting with a Demon of all things. Suddenly, I no longer felt apprehensiveness around him, only excitement and immense curiosity.
“A few thousand years old,” he answered, as if it was normal to outlive lifetimes.
“A few thousands?” I repeated slowly, gazing at him with intrigue.
“I know that may sound like a lot,” he responded coolly, “but in my world, I’m actually one of the youngest ones. ‘A few thousands’ Demon years is the equivalent to being in your mid-twenties.”
I should have felt disturbed that he was so much older than me. On the contrary, the fact that he had lived past the lifetimes and had seen the world pass him by made him all the more alluring and attractive to me. One of the reasons I didn’t have a boyfriend was because I had a tendency to get bored of guys too easily. The main trait I looked for in a guy was for them to be worldlier than me, so they could help pull me out of my shell and help me discover more about the world around me. Needless to say, I was shocked that Eclipse was fitting the bill more and more in terms of being my ideal guy.
I cleared my throat when I realized that I was treading in dangerous waters. I shook the intrigue for him from my face and covered it with feigned snobbery.
“Don’t you think you’re a bit too old to be hitting on a twenty-year-old girl?”
His lips curved into a slow and sexy smile. His sultry gaze challenged my spoken words.
“You don’t like older men?” was all he had to say to leave me feeling hot all over again.
I started to panic. Oh no, he was using his charms again.
“I draw the line at four years,” I snapped, trying to dig out of the hole I was getting myself into. I couldn’t afford to be distracted by Eclipse’s charms when I was being given the rare opportunity to learn more about him.
“In human form I’m twenty-four-years-old,” he provided with an irresistible smile.
“You know that doesn’t count.”
“Perhaps you’d like to inspect my body to make sure I’m up for the task of turning you from a twenty-year-old girl into a twenty-year-old-woman?” The smoke sensually curled away from his decadent lips. “I think you might be impressed with what you’d find.”
I swallowed past my dry throat, refusing to let that enticing imagery cloud my mind. “Will you always be twenty-four-years-old?”
He chuckled lightly, impressed with my efforts to ignore his sexual innuendos. He followed my lead and returned to the original topic. “No. In human form I still age, just not on an annual basis like humans.”
“Why do you disappear so often?” I inquired, venturing off to another topic entirely. I was anxious. I feared that if I didn’t ask my questions fast enough, he’d stop answering them soon. “Where do you go?”
“My responsibilities as a Royal Demon do not stop because I’ve chosen an extracurricular activity in Seoul,” he answered loftily. “I disappear often because I go home, back to my Kingdom. I’m a busy entity. I have Arch-Demons to give commands to, a divided monarchy to help watch over, and my own section of the Kingdom to govern. The fact that I’m here with you right now . . . eating noodles at a food stand in the middle of the rain means something, Gracie.”
“Why do you want to turn me into a Demon so badly?” I couldn’t help but ask. It was astonishing that a being as powerful as him was sitting here and eating noodles with me. “Why are you so adamant on taking my soul when there are millions of other girls ready to give you their souls?”
“Because I want you in my bed without fearing that you’d die after your first orgasm,” he replied briskly.
I could already sense it. Eclipse was closing up. He was going right back to being the charming, outspoken, yet secretive and closed off Demon.
“There’s more to why you want me so badly,” I hastened to add, afraid that he would stop answering my questions soon. “I just know it.”
The certainty in my voice caught his attention. He appraised me curiously. “What do you think you know, Teacup?”
“I know that you’re sexually attracted to me and that you’ve taken quite a liking to me. I also know that you’re a very cunning and ambitious Demon. I doubt the Demon of Lust would be this persistent and waste time going after a human girl’s soul simply because he wanted to have sex with her and because she’s famous.” My unblinking eyes fixed on his. “There’s a reason why you’re so persistent. There’s a reason why you want my soul and why you’re not going after anyone else's.”
Laughter poured from him before he inhaled another round of smoke. “Perhaps you should put yourself in my shoes and feel the lust I have for you, Teacup.” He placed his arms on the table and stared deeply into my eyes. “That nosebleed of yours means something. It means that I want you really badly. When I first met you, you didn’t get any nosebleeds because even though I wanted you, it wasn’t to the degree that I want you now.” His lips lifted into a doting smile. “Perhaps it’s because you’ve become my forbidden fruit. My desire for you grows with every passing day. That alone is reason enough for me to still be here, pursuing you as opposed to going after some other human girl. I only want you, Gracie.”
“Eclipse,” I said through gritted teeth. My patience with him was wearing thin. His explanation of his desire for me may have been true, but I also knew that there was more that he was keeping from me. “Stop treati
ng me like I’m some stupid human girl. Just fucking tell me the truth.”
The stubbornness in his demeanor faded upon hearing my hostile words. I don’t think I had ever cursed at him. The simple fact that I did unnerved him.
Finally stowing his inflexibility away, he said, “There is a cost to wanting you, pursuing you, and endeavoring to make you mine, Gracie.”
My eyes broadened while my heartbeat thumped in harmony with the rain. My curiosity was undeniably piqued. “And that is?”
Eclipse didn’t say anything for a long time. He merely took interest in numbly staring at the rain falling around us. He may have been resigned to telling me the truth, but that did not mean it was easy for him.
“What is your cost for pursuing me?” I asked again. This time my voice was soft and melodic.
My serene voice successfully lulled his attention back to me.
He studied me for a long second before finally revealing, “If I fail to turn you into a Demon, then I will become human and die.”
The world around me came to an earthshattering stop. I blinked uncomprehendingly, feeling a shock of paralysis stunning my body. I couldn’t believe my ears. “Wh–what?”
“If I don’t claim your soul and turn you into a Demon, then I will not have fulfilled my end of the deal,” he elaborated clearly, holding my eyes with every word. “For that, I will pay the price—which is to become human and ultimately die.”
I was flabbergasted. For the longest time, I remained speechless. It was only when a whiff of freezing wind sped through us did I finally find the words in my confounded state.
“Why would you make such a deal for yourself?” I gaped at him with enlarged eyes. I recalled him telling me that his fate was sealed with mine. I thought he was being overdramatic, but it was clear now that he had lost his marbles. “Are you nuts? What Demon would make this type of deal?”
He grinned faintly at my questions. It was obvious that he expected me to react like this, to not understand why he was willing to make such a deal.