Page 46 of Doubts of the Egoist
“I have time. I’ll eat here. Take my meds here, too.”
“Yeah? What else will you do here? Sleep? Take a shit? I paid a fortune for your eyes. I’m not going to watch you fuck them over again. You will get your recordings later. Out!”
Iron fingers wrapped around Kuon’s biceps and yanked hard, indicating that Yugo was tired of playing nice.
Kuon swayed, and the room spun around him. His shoulder slammed against the rack. An unmarked leather box moved an inch, revealing a pistol hidden behind it, the black barrel trapping Kuon’s gaze.
“Why are you always like this? You never consider what I want,” Kuon whispered, swallowing the bile that rose in his throat.
“Why should I? You don’t know what you want, so there’s nothing to consider.” Yugo’s dismissive words made Kuon’sfingers curl around the gun handle. “If you can’t snap out of it, I’ll do it for you. We’ll talk when you’ve calmed down. Until then, you’ll do as I say.”
“I do know what I want, and that is to see everything the wayyousaw it. I want to know everything you did, and to see the look on your eyes as you did it. I want to see the past how it happened, not how I remember it. That is exactly what I intend to do, with or without you,” Kuon said and put the gun to Yugo’s temple. The lethal calm the weapon represented cooled his emotions. “Remove your hand and step back. You’re hurting me.”
Yugo’s expression darkened with deep, raw emotion that promised nothing good.
“Are you threatening me? Are you out of your mind?” Yugo laughed, peering at Kuon incredulously. “Put the gun down, and I’ll pretend this never happened. You won’t dare to shoot.”
The headache became unbearable. Kuon felt tired and hurt. More than anything, he wanted this exhausting conversation to end. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, there wasn’t an ounce of remorse or fear left. His voice didn’t break when he said, “I guess I’m not the only one who doesn’t know me. Step the fuck away.”
Yugo lunged. Kuon pulled the trigger.
CHAPTER 14
An angry metallicwasp zapped past Yugo’s temple and drilled into the ceiling. A deafening bang rang out, its mocking echo rolling up and down the narrow room. The two men recoiled from each other. The back of Kuon’s head slammed into a shelf. He turned toward it and clung to it for support, while Yugo dropped to his knee, clutching his ear and hissing through his teeth.
To ease the crushing pressure in his ears, Kuon opened his mouth. When that didn’t help, he swallowed a few times, trying to silence the persistent ringing bouncing around in his hollow skull.
Still holding his ear with one hand, Yugo stared at the ceiling. A hole marred the white surface, plaster flaking off around it. Unsteady on his feet, Yugo rose and turned to Kuon, shock and disbelief clear in his dilated pupils.
“Are you out of your fucking mind? Shooting at me in my fucking home?” Yugo’s nostrils flared, thick veins bulging on his temples and under his eyes as he shouted the words, but Kuon barely heard them. “Do you have a death wish?”
With every word, Yugo inched closer until his frame towered over Kuon.
When Yugo’s cold, cruel hand closed around his throat and squeezed, Kuon remembered the concrete basement, the months of isolation, the painful, brutal rape, and the flesh-shredding strikes of the whip.
“Step back,” Kuon said, raising his voice to hear himself,as he pressed the gun to Yugo’s thigh. “Or the next bullet will go in your leg.”
Yugo smirked, watching him with frosty disdain and an evaluating tilt of his head. His eyes narrowed on Kuon, as if he saw him for the first time in his life. He released Kuon’s throat and placed his hand heavily on the shelf to steady himself.
“Why did you come here? For recovered memory therapy?” The bitter words crashed against Kuon’s lips; he lip-read rather than heard them.
“I don’t know… Maybe.”
A wry, unpleasant half-smile twisted Yugo’s thin lips. He still held his other hand flat against his ear, eyes fixed on Kuon’s mouth. “Was it even real? Any of it?”
“Why do you ask me?” Kuon croaked. Every word built an invisible wall between them, brick by brick, and Kuon didn’t know how to stop its growth. He jerked the gun toward the screen where his younger self squirmed on the bed, edged by the relentless attention of Yugo’s fingers and dick. In the past, they tortured each other with biting kisses, misunderstandings, and silence, and there was nothing real between them except a passion that burned and hurt more than it healed. But had that changed? “How am I supposed to know when I don’t even recognize who that is? You did this, so why don’t you tell me? What I’m feeling, is it just a capture-bonding afterglow? Because what you did to me should be unforgivable, and yet…”
Yugo furrowed his brow, dark madness swirling in his almond-shaped gray eyes.
“I see…” Yugo sighed, then said calmly and clearly, emphasizing every word, “Drop the gun, and I’ll forget this. You’re tired and confused. You don’t have to remember the past.Isn’t it enough that I do?”
“I’m sorry.” Kuon truly was. He also wished it were enough, but there was nothing worse than not knowing his place in this world. Kuon felt lost. He needed to know exactly what Yugo did to transform the man embracing Lena Vogel into the shaking wreck clinging to the Black Duke’s shoulders. What he saw on the screens was a twist of fate, Yugo’s obsession, Kuon’s burning hatred, and the insurmountable barrier of moral principles that both bound and separated them. Not love. “I have already lost myself once. I won’t repeat that mistake. Don’t get in my way.”
Yugo pulled away, swaying on his feet as if dizzy.
“Don’t get even more lost in that desperate search for yourself.” Yugo’s lip twitched as if to say something else, but no sound came out. Remorse or contempt sharpened his features as he nodded a few times. The look in his eyes made Kuon’s stomach twist, but it was too late to take back his words.
The gunfire stillrang in Yugo’s ears. The room swayed before his eyes. His head throbbed, and an acrid taste of gunpowder lingered on his tongue. A piercing pain settled in his left ear, accompanied by a high-pitched ringing as he stared into Kuon’s dilated pupils. The vague realization that Kuon would never be able to let go of the past fought its way through the mental fog caused by the gunshot.
