It would have been easier to be met with the insults he'd pushed for. But the unexpected praise was disarming, and Donovan struggled to know what to do with it. He didn't feel wonderful, not in this moment or ever. In any other context between them, he would have taken it as encouragement. Now it was salt in the wound, and left him without any motivation to fight. He'd long since made it a policy that nobody was worth fighting for if you were clearly not worth it in return. It didn't matter how highly Kyu-Sik thought of him, if something else ranked higher. He couldn't compete with the calling of a god, imagined or real.
Donovan hesitated before slipping his bag off his shoulders to retrieve the dagger that he'd carried everywhere for safety at Kyu-Sik's suggestion, wondering if it was more than twisted luck that it had saved his life before. Everything had seemed slightly off about the weapon since the moment he received it, remembered Kyu-Sik's assessment that they were better off selling it. Part of him wished they had. Questioning the validity of ownership wasn't really an option, and Donovan carefully pulled it out of the zipper pouch. His bookbag dropped into the sand beside him.
If he learned anything at all over the years, it was that good things were never his to have. He was reluctant to let go of something that was equally cursed and blessed, but the only piece of the other man he had left. He wasn't handing it over quite yet, quietly admiring the relic that he used to dig up dirt. The sacrilege horrified him almost as much as it amused him, wondering what would happen if he tossed it out into the ocean.
But after everything Kyu-Sik had done for him, he couldn't. Complicit, he offered it by the blade, allowing easy grasp of the handle. There was probably some proper ritual for handling the dagger, religions always found curious ways of dictating simple tasks.