This AU is heavily inspired by many different little things (Armored Core and Nier Automata etc.)
for @antiresolution
Mars.
25 years post the Great Destruction on Earth.
4 years since the second war began.
You have suffered too much damage. Breaking 40 km in altitude. Hull integrity at -23 and dropping fast, fuel cells at 10% and 12%, oxygen supply approaching dangerously low levels. Pilot, you must disengage. Pilot, you must disengage. Hellhound must turn back.
Skulls can host eclipses, too.
Taeil is just about fourty five kilometers above ground level when he finds out how.
His bare torso sags in on itself, air pressure contorting ink adorned shoulders against his seat as both of his eyes roll to the back of his cranium. Two eclipses happen at once, whites momentarily reaching for heaven. The longsword attached to the cold, hard mech of steel encased around his body slashes true and bright blue into the enemy unit that'd made it up with him. A last ditch effort that wins him the fight, before both their operating systems succumb to unresponsive pilots and their Cores begin their descent.
An infinite stretch of scorching red dust awaits him below. The unforgiving terrain stretching out dry as far as the eyes can see. Every now and again, large cracks in the ground adorn the bedrock like bleeding gashes across flesh-- some as great as ravines, fashioned as entrances and exits for manmade spacecrafts. If Taeil were to remain unconscious too long, perhaps he would be able to make a crate large enough to rival the awe of those sandy red chasms. Blood painting red on red.
But Hellhound is still running despite the syntax errors and partial disconnect with Taeil's spinal cord. Its peripheral scanner an erratic pendulum as it sways back and forth in search for the earliest signs of conscious eyes. All the while, the digital assistant's grating shrieks occupy the speakers.
Wake up, pilot. The Core is now 25 kilometers above ground. Probability of crashing at 60% and rising. Pilot, wake up. Hellhound is fast approaching 20 kilometers above ground. Pilot, wake up.
For a few agonizing seconds, all the urging and the beeping going on around him translate to a faint whirring in Taeil's ears. His brain and heart hit consecutive records of overdrive while he clambers to thrash less and finally reconnect with Hellhound. The only thing clear in the fuzz is a memory at the back of his head, something like a flashing mirage that doubles as a beacon of light. It's himself, seated on a bunk bed in the barracks back at the base. His bunkmate would've been there too, had he not been sent out to die the night before. Lucky him.
Disappear, thinks Taeil then and now. The only way to disappear from this hell is to die and never come back.
Oxygen floods his lungs first, slowly pouring from the back of his throat as he inches closer and closer to certain death. And then, it happens all at once; notably the system's rush for a generous deposit of adrenaline into his veins. The tubes connected to his forearms and obliques turn bright yellow.
The scanner holds his gaze again, reporting even a grainy moan and the curl of his toes when the new high blitzes past his brain stem.
Everything becomes too loud again. Too bright, too hot. Taeil grits his teeth so hard he tastes blood as he pulls Hellhound's reigns back into his purchase, just shy of Mars' barren surface. The thing sharply jerks upright in the air, crunching and groaning and smoking somewhere.
Two other Cores immediately find him below, one belonging to the squadron captain who's roaring through Taeil's speakers before any of them can land.
"Private Yu? Private Yu! Respond if you're still in there, son. You'd better fuckin' be in there."
"Yeah... yeah, I'm alive, cap. Still in here." Taeil reassures and deflects, just barely managing to steady his panting. Tattooed digits run through his sweatslicked hair so he wouldn't think about the thrashing in his chest.
"What's the situation looking like now?"
When the captain speaks this time, he sounds alarmingly apprehensive. Taeil turns to find the planet dust lifting and brushing past his jet black Core like a bad omen.
"A quick radial scan shows a hangar nearby and more enemy reinforcements approaching at twelve o'clock. Piloted. Got at least two augs amidst 'em. But we have lost all contact with our main base and more than half of our squadron to death in the process. And Yu..." A heavy sigh ends that sentence. "We can't keep fighting like this."
"No, I can keep going." Taeil hears the firm echo of his own voice vibrate through the comm speakers, fists simulating his bloating resolve as they tighten around Hellhound's steering handles. Disappear.
"And we're some of the best aug's out there. We can't just give up on our mission halfway."
Finally, the voice sealed within the third Core joins the conversation. "We weren't sent here to die either, dumbass."
A flicker of orange slices through the dust lingering between them, revealing Wenhan's longsword suddenly erect and pointing directly towards Hellhound's middle. A few good slashes of that could slice through an entire squad in seconds. And Wenhan never once missed the opportunity.
Upon careful inspection though, Taeil notices cracks embellishing the scorching blade. The message written in them crystal clear.
His lips find a soft frown, "So what? I have about 10% of fuel left, and oxygen doesn't really matter. And there's still three of us. We can take 'em if we're fast enough and worst case scenario, at least one of us can--"
"No. The edge seems to be gettin' to your head already, kid." Their captain steps in the middle, hoarse and hasty, "We retreat, now. Come on."
All ally Cores locked on by approaching enemy units. You are heavily damaged and outnumbered. Retreat advised.
"Hear that? Too late, cap!" Disappear. Orders mean nothing anymore. Taeil abruptly rips through the air towards the oncoming barrage of missiles, sweat building thickly on his browbone and cupid's bow. "They're already on us!"
"Oi, I just fuckin said--!"
The blaring around him swells densely enough for Wenhan's shouting to barely fit through the comm speakers, "I'm going to make sure you live so I can kill you myself after this."
Except Wenhan would never get that chance. Not now.
Together, Hellhound and Taeil's central nervous system impressively withstand two and a half rapid-pace engagements, aggressively fighting on the offensive as he's quickly running out of time to stay alive. Sometime after dropping to two percentage of fuel, his tongue grows heavy with an apology at the tip. One he spares no courage or oxygen reserves to say out loud.
All the mourning of what'll be lost to him has been done already, after all.
The emergency system kicks in a second after Hellhound falls to enemy blades. Flashing lights bathe Taeil in blood red as the battle suddenly turns inward. Inside the Core, with himself. Crashing a certain distance away from the still ongoing fight, he can only make out blurry, flashing lights-- the vibrant orange colour of Wenhan's Core's longblade keeping his eyes from rolling back into his skull far too fast.
........System rebooting in emergency mode.... All modifications in place.... Autopilot activated.... Destination: [Redacted].
—
Titan. 10 lightyears from Mars, 14 lightyears from Earth.
31 years post the Great Destruction on Earth.
2 years since the second war ended.
6 years after death.
Titan is known as the vampire planet. Home to one of the most neglected and ungoverned human populations to have ever colonized the galaxy post cataclysm, people usually come here for trouble or to pass on.
With the planet being largely uninhabitable because of the unceasing snowfall, and the terrain too dead to yield anything other than grave and junkyards, the locals have turned perpetually bitter and angry. Though not at each other. To them, every outsider is a red herring.
Frost solidifies the blood in Taeil's fingertips for ripping a poster off the bar door on the way in. He tightly crumples and pockets his own face, pace steady yet stiff as he brushes shoulders with warmth bathed in club lights and the strong, pungent stench of ale. A corpse doesn't belong on a wanted poster. Neither a bar hidden amidst a raging blizzard, though he's more than willing to debate on that front with any friendly drunk. If they existed.
The bartender expresses distaste at first, chin cocking upwards and nostrils flaring bright purple in the bar headlights. His gaze wanders, assessing for inferiority under a patched jacket until the total opposite is found. The outer corner of Taeil's left eye, where a series of glowing numbers that should've never been there glare right back at him. He visibly scrambles for Taeil's order, or perhaps a gun.
Taeil remains calm, dull nail scraping the worn bartop. Surprisingly, he's simply met with stinkeye and a tall glass of pale ale.
While highly possible that everyone in here has recently seen the face in his pocket somewhere, it's even more possible that everyone in here is merely pretending not to notice their target retreating to the bleakest corner with his head held down. Maybe he's too dumb to not be afraid, to sit there and not touch his drink or utter a word once.
If gone entirely unnoticed, the pager in his pocket will be the only thing that could get him up again. Or his right arm. But that's just the ideal; almost always just a wish.
The beer shivers and curdles to the music blasting through the speakers, foam disappearing as quickly as the whispers begin. Taeil compresses his lips tightly together, stare on the glass hard enough for him to believe he could rupture it.
What's an aug doin' in a place like this? I thought those guys were scarce nowadays... Should be. Corp's huntin' 'em down to the last of their corpses... Glorified half-robot junkies... Wanted.
Ten minutes pass, murmurs of hearsay making a proper round around the room before two men eventually approach Taeil's corner. They don't forget their blatant hostility on the way over, let alone the stench of booze. The one who speaks first clumsily draws his blade mid-sentence.
"Oi, you. You got business to take care of 'round here? How 'bout you take that hood off 'n let us see that pretty face of yours, eh?"
Within an instant the rest of the bar falls drastically silent, drunken chatter replaced by a mix of expectant stares leaving only the dull humdrum of background music.
Taeil's table jerks back and forth from the sheer force the man slams his pocket knife onto its edge with, intentions as clear as day. Were he any other ordinary man, Taeil thinks that would've been enough intimidation to subdue.
Yet the cloak of stillness he becomes while the blade man's friend puts out his burning cigarette on his left hand says entirely otherwise.
Inhale. Taeil counts to ten before finally raising his gaze for the first time in an hour. As it is in the poster, the serial number tented on the soft crest of his cheek twinkles to life. In tandem with the rage now blazing in his eyes though, it probably appears entirely irrelevant.
Exhale. The cigarette man's wrist is snapped backwards before he goes down with Taeil's pint of beer smashed to bits in his jaw.
"Satisfied?"
Knife man is surprisingly agile for a man in his predicament. Red rimmed eyes wide and swings swift despite him being obviously weighed down by arrogance and however many pints he's got sloshing in his belly. He matches Taeil's pace for half a heartbeat before all his coordination takes a backseat in favour of brute force. Nonetheless, Taeil is the much bigger beast. And that's with him hardly making use of his right arm.
Crossing limbs, atmospheric music and their synchronized panting momentarily turns their scuffle into a waltz on the dance floor, with Taeil in the lead and the one responsible for ending it all. Knife man all but sticks to the wall on the other far end of the bar when Taeil finally gets a good grip on him. Lucky ones duck in time while the less fortunate spill their drinks, or even find themselves pushed to the ground as the body flies.
A final, wispy grunt of defeat precedes the crowd's eruption into a rowdy bristle, though Taeil faces some trouble with solving who's mad at him specifically and who's more furious with the idiots who'd picked a fight with a monster and lost.
Naturally, just as Taeil's pager begins to vibrate in his pants, a third man emerges from the chaos. A phoenix out of fire.
First thing Taeil notices is that he's likely sober, or at least his steps are steadier and certain, like there's real purpose behind his intent. He's dressed differently-- proper for the cold, but his drapes fall smooth and gracefully on his frame.
Like he already knows what to expect, he instantly engages on the offense without speaking a single word. Much too hasty for Taeil's squinting to graze across his face, to check for digits that might reflect his own. Easily far quicker than the first two, he successfully throws Taeil's rhythm off, defense forcing him to barely tiptoe around the stranger's onslaught.
A familiar tingle begins in the back of Taeil's head, like the slow blossoming of a flower after winter. They clash like two bulls heavily on edge, neither seeing red yet but equally as determined to win. The bar is reduced almost to half capacity in the process, throng of bar-goers squashed against the walls as they shove around their drinks and cheer. Sweat builds so quickly underneath the layers Taeil is wearing that it almost feels like the beginning of drowning--
Third guy finds his nape and Taeil finally understands how burgeoning feels. Then he sees stars.
—
Same night, just four (?) hours later.
Taeil comes to amidst competing qualities of silence and darkness. Dizzy and temporarily stripped of his senses, a furious panic immediately slithers into his chest, so persistent it squeezes around his heart until he can feel the erratic leaps beating behind his teeth. Closing his eyes, he grits his jaw against his pulse until it hurts, so as to still the frenzy before he's not the only one in these shadows who can hear it.
In what feels like this tiny room, occupied mostly by the bed he's in and the nightstand next to it, Taeil meets eye to eye with fear for the first time in many lightyears.
The unfamiliar air sliding off the walls feels coarse in his throat and lungs, every breath more uncomfortable to draw on than the last. There's something abandoned about the way it tastes on the back of his tongue, like this cycle of air has been stuck in this same room for many centuries before him.
But Taeil endures for a moment longer, waiting for the moving shadows his dread conjures in the corners to pounce and tear his flesh open. Listening, specifically for the clicking of a gun.
Maybe the blizzard outside might even whisper to him his current coordinates, or tell a sweet lie about how the night will end.
Instead of any sound, comes a smell. Taeil shoots upright in the creaking bed as he recognizes that smell and the new layer of horror it sneaks between his sore ribs. Antiseptics and the tacky, strange odour of old bandages.
He lifts his right arm and though it responds by signaling a shard of pain to his brain, Taeil empties his lungs and does not inhale anymore. Thickset fingers stroke across his bicep, tracing what does not feel like the same haphazard technique he'd used to cover it up much earlier in the day. Tracing where there should be a small chip surgically installed beneath his flesh-- where it no longer is.
The bedroom door creaks open to the silhouette of a man who never makes it fully inside the room. Adrenaline and the inherent desperation for survival turn Taeil into an angry bull; lethal spring in his step and brunt of his physique prompting their crashing into the hall wall within a singular breath.
The other man, recognized by Taeil by all but his face, squares his shoulders and braces for impact with his arms protecting his torso. Effectively softening the impact of the punches aimed at his lower ribs.
Like this, they exchange the roles they both held back in the bar-- Taeil taking the offense and head start this time.
Somewhat larger and heavier than his opponent, he wields it to his advantage. Actively pinning his body up against the thick stench of cigarettes to keep those arms from getting loose or any slinking away from the corner they're in. His mechanically altered left leg locks into place behind him as it tanks the oscillation between them as a buoy would the sea.
"Not killing me is about to cost you your own fucking life."
"If you're trying to crush my nuts, you could at least start with some foreplay."
Taeil suddenly freezes in place like a stag caught in the headlights. That voice, a bullet to his temple. Last time he'd heard it this clearly was the night before he died, and that was over six years ago.
A sharp intake of breath is the only response he can manage as that tingle at the back of his skull from earlier returns at full, blinding force. It opens the floodgates on memories he'd only dreamt all these years of unearthing again. Lodges a roulette of words-- of a name on his tongue he believed he'd never get to taste again.
Wenhan tugs down the scarf that'd been concealing the lower half of his face. His lower lip is freshly split and barely clean. A keepsake Taeil must've given him during their first tussle.
"Do you want to kill me now?"
The open invitation draws Taeil's thumb from Wenhan's throat to his upper right cheekbone, where his serial number glows faintly in the dark. A habit he'd lost to time and self-afflicted loss. Tenderly, the finger ghosts over it as he echoes the numbers committed to memory in his head, as though caressing the sharp edge of a knife.
Wenhan doesn't flinch or protest. He never once did.
"Should've known..." Taeil finally chokes on the heart in his throat, usual rasp exacerbated by exhaustion and the poor air quality. Tension melts from his tone all the same. "But why the fuck did you have to punch me that hard?"
The corners of Wenhan's mouth twitch with fleeting amusement. "Why do you think? That was for ghosting me almost seven years ago. Asshole."
"You were counting?"
Wenhan's blinks slowly. A crease forming between brushstroke brows. When he opens his mouth again, the inflections unique to his voice change. Sounding crisp, and somehow more honest. "What can I say? I'm a slut for grudges."
Taeil realizes he's now speaking in Mandarin only after he's already rummaging in the next room.
The bedroom hall is barely existent, living room and main entrance arranged just a stride beyond it. Similar to the bedroom, the most tangible presence in the room is an anomalous, possibly planet-borne gloom. Akin to a phantasm lingering at the tips of the fingers, always and never present simultaneously. It settles uncomfortably on top of Taeil's shoulders when he breaches the space.
He chooses the dilapidated couch somewhere in the center and sits on the arm's edge, not risking hinderance nor disruption. From the kitchen, Wenhan produces a sweater out of what feels like thin air for him. It smells faintly of cigarette butts, the sleeves too short to cover Taeil's distinctively tattooed hands.
Wenhan had seen numerous corpses in his life before. Spent countless nights afloat within the darkest nooks of his skull, teetering dangerously close to the edge of haunting. Cigarette smoke had never been good at warding off ghosts from the backs of his eyelids. Though he never stayed long, Taeil's had been the most persistent one. Appearing as inconsequential shapes in the distance, or a flash over his shoulder in the steamed bathroom mirror. Interrupting Wenhan's nightmares like a torch in the dark.
But no burning or blood ever came of it, not like tonight.
Harsh, frost bitten stinging spreads throughout Wenhan's bottom lip and jaw as he swipes his tongue across the gash for crusted blood. Entirely eclipsing the comfort he finds within the icy lick of a loaded gun on the pads of his fingers. The wound throbs and tastes alive, like a kiss full of teeth.
So this is real. Carefully hovering beyond the kitchen counters isn't just a few grams of liquified atomic mass stuck in his brain stem. Corpses and ghosts don't look so warm while shivering in the cold, or ask questions Wenhan can't quite answer.
"So are you going to tell me where we are?"
Wenhan's tongue curls back with the truth in his mouth. His silence palpable and howling across the walls until it's the loudest thing in the room, second to Taeil's swelling impatience. That shift in the rhythm of Taeil's breathing narrowly escaping his notice, approaching footsteps hastening Wenhan's working hands. He knows.
Taeil, albeit warily, closes the distance Wenhan had so keenly been trying to keep between them a second time. Shadow-esque, he towers at the rear of Wenhan's heels, his smoking breath so close it tickles hair coiled at the back of the other man's neck. Wenhan grits his teeth at the sound of his name.
"Wenhan," escapes Taeil's lungs through a whisper-plea. He continues in stern Mandarin, "You're making it really hard for me to trust you tonight... Tell me what you know."
Wenhan's idea of a proper reply is to press a gun into Taeil's palms the same way he would a helping of barley tea. An all too casual quip follows, "Coffins used to be smaller than this. Hide that in your pants. Shoot your dick off and I'm killing you."
Taeil wastes no time baring his fangs in Wenhan's face, exhales cool grimy air on his eyelashes. "So you took it. You brought me here and thought you could soften me up with your bullshit and get away with it."
"Relax. I put it somewhere safer than under your foreskin. Now be quiet unless you want the worst of evil on our asses, because unfortunately, I'm not the villain you think I am--"
But the more he speaks, the more impenetrable of a fortress Taeil becomes. Rationality sinks too far beyond his reach as he cocks the gun in his hand and sandwiches it between their hips. He presses the tip against the softest tissue he remembers on Wenhan's lower belly, nostrils and warm eyes flaring with abandon.
"Give me the fucking chip back. Or this place will soon become a coffin for two."
Wenhan languidly curls a palm to rest around Taeil's thick wrist and finds no reason to doubt that he'd pull the trigger. Part of him even wishes they had the time for it.
"Idiot." He tries instead, "I'm trying to fucking protect you. I'm on your side."
"Bullshit! This is so much fucking bigger than me faking my death and all the other fucked up shit that's been happening, don't you get it? That chip and it's copies have lead so much peril into the lives of many innocents, thanks to the corp." He erratically points to the permanent serial number tented on his cheek, "By our kind. But if you just give it back, I can help rectify--"
"They'll kill you."
"And so many others after me if you don't--"
The front apartment door standing just a few feet away from the argument suddenly erupts inward into infinite splinters. The gaping clearing allowing safe passage to a group of thugs-- no, government officiated soldiers trained specifically for hunting.
"Kill both traitors on the spot and take that fuckin' chip!"
Wenhan jerks violently in motion; that grip he's just had on Taeil's wrist tightening significantly for the sake of hauling them both as far away from the threat as possible. This is not how he'd expected them to get caught-- at least not this soon. But he'd count his losses later.
"Here. Jump off and turn left, and don't you fucking dare stop running."
Taeil doesn't question it. Blood and adrenaline beat hot and hefty like a second heart in his ears as he finds and flings himself out of the nearest window, just shy of when the rain of bullets begin.
Falling for four agonizing stories with a wild, hungering blizzard slapping and pounding against his skin until it's chipped and cracked by ice and frost would've killed just about any man. Had he been any more injured even now or still housed regular lungs inside him, he wouldn't have made it either.
But he's desperately wheezing upon landing--alive, though briefly blinded by a whitehot bolt of pain shooting up his right arm. The blood curdling scream he indulges is something he can't help, not while this vulnerable and exhausted beyond all possible measure. Burning in his nostrils makes it impossible for him to smell the fresh blood thickly soaking up his bandages, ruining Wenhan's sweater.
Panic and dread are his two lifelines, keeping him warm and alert. A few deep breaths later force him up onto knees that buckle and protest against the unforgiving snow. In two steps he realizes an oddity with the spinal plates underneath his skin-- the stuff that hold his nervous system together feeling dented, or just broken. Defining the beginning of a very long trek.
One he may never emerge from.
Go left and never stop. Wenhan's voice echoes in his head and like some sort of clockwork reaction, Taeil defies instruction to look up and check if he could find any signs of the other man's escape.
Nothing in sight suggests the presence of Wenhan's silhouette, but he is met with a timely blast of glass, metals, rags and flying body parts. Four stories above, the storm tastes fire.
And then it's all bleak stillness once again. Like Taeil is back six years, enveloped by silence as the fiery orange of Wenhan's longblade burns across the glass of his eyes.
This is the longest I've gone without a word to you. Without the debilitating need of your familiarly, your tacit comfort. It feels strange– almost novel, to stroke your back and split you open again. Your blank pages nearly blinding me out of thought. It would seem that people hardly ever stir unless they're upset, depraved, or content. Today I'm here to confess that finally, finally, I'm the latter.
The year's close to ending and reinventing itself again. I remember where I was at this time a year ago; skin between my teeth, on my stomach, my eyes jaded and sleepless. The pain sewed throughout my vertebrae, unending. I remember everything, as does my body. I shiver at the thought of turning my back to the stove. I never do, but that's the only remaining tendril I've left of that person I was last year. Maybe someday he'll find the courage to rest alongside the ones who came before. Make more room for whatever or whoever else I'll become in the future.
That's not to say that I have any inklings of who I am today, though. I still don't fucking know. In my head I'm still six, eight, twelve, sixteen, seventeen, twenty-one, twenty-six. In my head, I'm still just surviving, even in the secure safety of mundanity. Still figuring out what exactly I'm supposed to do with this life I've repeatedly been given a second chance at, for whatever reason. (What is the reason?) Only thing I'm aware of is that I'm alive, that many graves are full because of me, and that somehow, by some sort of divinely conjured up miracle, exactly twelve days ago, I got married.
In Thailand, the knot was tied. 14th of November, ten days after my 30th birthday. Neither of us could speak Thai and yet we signed their papers and welcomed their cheers. Then it was about ten of us combined in a party room, including our photographer and makeup artists. I never knew I could cry so much. Never even thought I'd hit this particular milestone in this life, let alone bawl my way through my vows like a broken dam. Now I understand why marriage is so sought after among all generations. It's not about the wedding itself, but the feeling of it. Like a once in a lifetime high; like the first drug you ever do. Humans are notorious for chasing after euphoria, to the point of inevitable divorce. Or death. As it's only death that could do two apart, after all.
Upon landing back in Seoul, just married and very exhausted, I quit the office job my husband gave me about a year ago. Instead, I'll be opening a bar with my dirty money and setting us up with a second stream of income and thus securing our early retirement in place. Found the perfect spot a while back; a tiny, obscure nook in Itaewon. The alley elevation slightly downturned. Barely touched by the light, drowned in the shores of night. Byungwoo did not trip once on the way up to it, which is how I knew it was perfect. L.32 it'll be called; serving as the perfect little spot for my husband to swing by and hang out after work–alongside others, of course. Who knows? Perhaps while I'm doing this, as I adapt to and grow from it, I'll finally manage to figure out for good what kind of man I am. Or want to be. Will this new thing keep blood off my hands long term, or will I find and hide the crusts beneath my fingernails while fixing a framed wedding photo on my desk?
Only one way to find out. But for now, it's needless to say that I'm happy. I've stopped collecting scars. I've stopped running for my life. I'm sober and have gained weight. I no longer flinch in my sleep. I sleep. I've never been more safe and content than I am right now. My fists have no need to fly anymore, not to protect my life.
trigger warning: This au is based off the godzilla universe (specifically minus one). I focus on the aftermath of graphic disaster scenarios, so I suggest to skip if you're not in the mood!
He stumbles in the second act.
Prisms of light scatter in Wenhan’s peripherals as he stares down at the stage floor. Red and gold pom poms and strings of glass beads hit against rouged cheeks, gouging out small trails the way careless brushes of fingertips do. The sweat curtaining his skin becomes seamless pearls blending into white face paint.
The orchestra continues on, drowning out murmurs in the audience. They’re trained to recover from falls and mistakes like any other performer. Punishment from directors and sponsors is always more severe than a split second of humiliation. He could be up and into the next sequence within a heartbeat.
But he’d caught himself on stinging hands and knees. Motionless until the throb of the fall is a numb pulse and his tongue curls dry to the roof of his mouth. Frozen in place as ribbon dancers and masked figures in loose hanfu move around him. The slightest tremor caresses his open palms.
A guttural screech from a violin in the pit raises Wenhan’s head. Stage lights flood his eyes as he searches blindly in the audience. Dancers to his left hit the floor as the stage sways with a thundering crack and shrieks puncture the air from all sides. A layer of white dust rains down against a fleeing crowd, blanketing colorful costumes in splintered fragments. The ceiling above the audience collapses first, throwing up toxic clouds. Wenhan stumbles to his feet as his lungs shudder to breathe, pressing a sleeve to his mouth and nose as he shoves hesitant crew to the emergency exit backstage.
Wenhan watches as a beam of overhead lights crashes down onto fleeing bodies. Snapped metal groans above from the weight of the collapsed ceiling. Shattered glass pops under his feet as he stumbles back to escape the gush of water from gutted pipes in the walls and stripped live wire. The low whine of twisted metal above ends with a sudden snap. The debris in his throat chokes him more than the pain of his legs pinned beneath steel beams.
He stares up at the open sky now painted in smoke and filled with the clamor of emergency sirens. A shaking hand grasps weakly at his shoulder, and he doesn’t recognize the face smeared in blood and dust to his left. A body smashed beneath slates of plaster and metal.
Wenhan stares up at the sky, holding that hand in his until fingers no longer tremble and everything is still.
-
February 23, 2008
The WPC (West Pacific Coalition) was formally established after an unprecedented attack killed thousands in Shanghai during lunar new year celebrations. This international security effort is recognized by the governing bodies of China, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Curated teams of military personnel and emergency responders are deployed based on high risk scenarios regardless of nationality to prevent further loss of human life and destabilization of global society.
–
Tiles bleed cold underneath knees tucked in front of an empty hole in the wall meant to house a cross. Two weeks ago, the wood had been needed to repair the roof due to a small quake’s aftershocks. Now, no one wanted to make time to properly dress the space for anyone to pray, or mourn, or curse. Rebuilding Busan’s port communities took every willing pair of military hands. Any spare unwilling ones were busy burying the dead or clinging to a warm body, leaving no room to beg God for favors.
Yet, it’s a quiet space, even if mostly abandoned. Away from shuffling bodies of overworked soldiers and unfamiliar faces.
Taeil stares down at the spray of grey and white now dusting his army fatigues.
“Does that work?”
The man perched over him reminds Taeil of a bird. Every feature of his is sharp. The way each angle meets the next throws shadows under dark lashes and glaring cheekbones. Simultaneously jarring and soft. The way you wouldn’t expect a row of feathers next to talons. Even the accented Korean on the other man’s tongue feels pointed. Calculated. Almost too precise to be comfortable.
“What…” Before Taeil realizes his reply is more of an exhale than an answer. “--does what work?”
The other man pauses, but the amused twitch of his lips lingers. He mirrors Taeil’s kneel, leaning a little awkwardly to the left instead of straight. His right leg isn’t fully tucked under his thigh. The way he presses his hands together is enunciated, as if he’s trying to overcompensate for his role in a silent film. He crosses himself, gesturing wordlessly to the sky.
Stunned silence is the weight on Taeil’s bottom lip as his mouth opens, before the gnashing of teeth beheads words dying to form. His eyes fall on the burning end of the other’s cigarette, as if he’s watching the dying ember of his own annoyance. Taeil exhales through his nose and nods his head at the smoke. “--does that work for you?”
“Only when I don’t have anything better to put in my mouth.”
“Asshole.”
“Close, but it wouldn't be my first choice.”
Taeil starts to stand, tempted to shoulder check the stranger on his way up. Rationality was never his first choice. He was always chastised for emotionally charged decisions during training. Prolonging this conversation would likely end with his fists bruised and both of them bloody. It was the first week in this base. A reputation built on nothing couldn’t be used as leverage, no matter how good he thinks that sharp nose would look broken.
“It was an honest question. Do you ever get what you ask for?”
Curled fists open and close at his sides before he turns towards the door without answering. A much larger figure fills the frame, blocking Taeil’s exit. Dark eyes glance over a familiar wrinkled face. Taeil’s posture goes rigid. He bows his head to the senior officer.
“Ah, I see you two met.” There’s the threat of a reprimanding edge, though it seems directed at the soldier behind Taeil. “Private Yoo, this is Private Li, a pilot from Shanghai.”
Private Li was now standing as if the casual collapse of limbs on the floor had been snapped upward by a pulled string. He still leans into his left side, as if he can’t wait to drop the salute once no one’s watching. Both men meet eyes, but this time neither of them are smiling.
“Your new partner.”
–
Wenhan tears away flyers from the front door of the barracks. The images are grainy pixels enlarged sloppily to fit its new frame of cheap computer paper. But the painted features of the subject are clear enough even from a distance.
“What a waste. You look so pretty, ge–”
Wenhan tosses shreds of paper at the face crinkled with laughter to his left. The mandarin that rolls off his tongue is an effortless shift.
“Then you can tape it together and jack off later.”
“Shit, hey– hey, hey,” Hong shields his face and steps out of the way of an elbow aimed at his gut. “It wasn’t me. You know who thinks pulling this shit is funny.”
Even if the construction of this military camp had been congested to a rural corner in the city, their barracks only had four bunks. Compared to other soldiers forced to sweat and curse during the summer in a room with 18 other men.
Wenhan’s busy emptying a shelf of one of his roommates, tossing the best snack wrappers a guaranteed death payroll could buy onto the empty bunk next to it.
“You met him, right? Did you ask why he was transferred here? What's he like?”
What comes to mind first is the silhouette of a stranger’s back. One man on his knees in an empty room already abandoned by the hands that built it.
Wenhan blinks. A dimple forms between his brows. He smooths a thumb over his forehead as if it would iron out the mental crease.
“Ask him yourself.”
Wenhan gains the uncomfortable weight of Hong’s arm across his shoulders and leans away from the warm breath on the back of his ear. Hong doesn’t even whisper, confident in the disguise of their native language.
“I heard he volunteered for a suicide mission.”
Wenhan pauses. Considering superiors kept information to themselves until mistakes rose the death toll. It wasn’t so unbelievable they would consider going on the offensive before signs of an attack in the east sea. But Hong was overzealous, often inflating the truth with his desire for grandeur.
“I also heard he killed someone, so it was either that, or prison time.”
The mandarin comes from neither of the men, but from behind. Fluent as if it flowed from the memory of a native. He shoves his shoulder into Hong, watching the other dramatically collapse as if he’d sniped him. Taeil stands in the open doorway, wearing neither a smile or a frown. Hong still carries enough shame to apologize, while Wenhan feels the corners of his lips curve up.
Taeil doesn’t seem offended enough to start a fight as he walks further in, prompting Hong to throw an arm around his shoulders and continue rattling off in Mandarin.
“It’s always a suicide mission. Even if it’s true– just makes you stupid like the rest of us.”
Wenhan starts to roll up one hem of his pants as Hong interrogates the other soldier. He presses fingertips into skin, where his kneecap meets the solid metal of his calf, massaging tiny circles into the joint.
Taeil’s attention lingers on the flash of silver jutting out where one would expect to see flesh. Wenhan could recognize pity in anyone's face. But the look Taeil casts at his prosthetic is devoid of surprise or even embarrassment for having been caught staring. Maybe more like a stranger in a museum. One who could only be voyeur to a past they could never live inside of or understand. Every glance strangely intense despite the impossible distance.
But without pity.
“Pretty sexy, isn’t it.” Wenhan kicks his heel against the solid concrete floor. “My eyes are up here.”
“I was looking at your third eye.”
Taeil catches the extra set of blankets Wenhan throws without missing a beat.
–
No one enjoys the nightwatch at Taejongdae.
Wenhan prefers the weight of briny air on his tongue to the suffocating anticipation of everyone at the military base. He’s empty handed for his shift, with nothing but the weight of a buzzing comm system strapped to his side and the soft glow of the lighthouse glancing over dark waters below. Weapons wouldn’t save anyone on the ground. Time was all they ever had as a counter strike.
He walks the length of the highest cliff’s paved trail, roped in by steel fences peppered with rust. Other soldiers stationed on the southern tip of the city are wandering shadows in the night. There’s no one close enough to hear him as he hums the beginning of a melancholic note. No one around to complain as his voice rises in volume, competing against the claw of the ocean’s wind and lick of waves against carved rocks.
Then he’s twisting on his heel, grasping the butterfly knife hidden at his side. Golden light from the silent carousel of the lighthouse spills over Taeil’s face, lighting curious dark eyes and outlining the soft slopes of his cheeks. His open palms face outward to Wenhan in surrender.
“Are you a fucking idiot?”
Taeil steps closer, dropping his hands as he falls into Wenhan’s retreating pace. The only reply is the soft tone of Taeil’s singing, off key and unsure as he repeats the last line of the song Wenhan hadn’t finished.
“If you can sing like that, why are you out here?”
Wenhan carries on in silence. The lighthouse careens over black sea water.
“I wasn’t asking god for something.”
He turns back to Taeil. The abrupt stop has them breaths apart. He can see the dark circles pressed under both the man’s eyes. Chapped lips sealed thin. A small mole marks the corner of a tense mouth.
“I was cursing him, actually. For giving me the grim reaper as a partner.”
The tense curl of Taeil’s mouth softens. The coil of anticipation is gone, as if a switch had been flipped. The entire man’s body relaxes. On the cusp of revealing something more, but pulling back. He sighs like a tired old dog and raises his hands to the heavens.
It’s not the first time other soldiers warned new recruits about Wenhan’s reputation as an indirect death sentence. Some would even request to transfer before he’d meet them face to face. No one wanted to disprove potential mythology.
“Idiot.” He barely speaks above the sound of the ocean. But Taeil hears him, kicking up rocks and dust at Wenhan’s heels as they continue up the slope. He sings in broken Mandarin at Wenhan's back.
But his eyes are trained on glints of silver and white bobbing in the black churn. The glow of the lighthouse sculpts the distant shapes into what looks like overturned buoys. He stands still, staring into the sea as if he could will away the sight of dead fish rising to the surface. Taeil calls his name, but the roar of white noise drowns out any thought or instinct.
His comm device revives with a series of orders in Korean, Mandarin, Tagalog. Sighting along Taejongdae. Prepare for immediate impact.
Wenhan’s collar digs into his neck as Taeil forces him into a run. White dead bellies of fish are swallowed by a rising dark form. The lighthouse fights to glow around the massive shadow, illuminating pulsing coils of scarred flesh. An aching roar ruptures the air before the tower collapses into a wave of dust and shattered stone. The ground becomes sand beneath their steps seconds after warning alarms fill the air.
Taeil shoves Wenhan forward with desperate violence as the cliff beneath their steps crumbles. He turns back once his feet meet the solid safety of grass and arms of trees, lunging to grasp at Taeil falling into empty air. Fingers lock around Taeil’s wrist. Wenhan bites into his tongue, tasting the rush of blood and feeling the hot burn of torn muscle as he fights against the other man’s dead weight hanging over the cliff.
Taeil’s fingernails carve bloody trails down wenhan’s arm as he struggles for a strong grip. His body drags against the ground, slowly inching over the edge.
Not again.
His arms are shaking, tips of fingers pulsing numb.
TW: Mature themes, death, violence, blood, all that jazz. Read at your own discretion.
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight
It is said death with the tongue is useful, but I find words too soft an instrument to smash a man’s skull. And tongues useless.
featuring @chenosias
[August 29, 2023, location: confidential]
The basement is a fleeting nightmare you enter with your conscience and cognition far detached from yourself. And as you ascend to the surface again, everything you've seen and heard below, unless significant in any way above, stays behind on the backdoor's threshold. These were the rules for as long as Kijun could remember, an onslaught of repeated relays to you in the car on the way; and really, of such importance they were that everyone who dared come and go here were adamant on the notion of colouring within the lines of this rule. At least if you wanted to keep your head.
Valuing his sleep and sanity, Kijun never dared bring even a toe overline and nevertheless, he couldn't ever truly get accustomed with the unseeing nor the forgetting. But coming here had sometimes been a necessary part of his job as a mediator, and given how seriously he took mediating, he'd eventually taught himself brute force and found enjoyment within the process of tricking his mind with the pleasure of pulling teeth. Thus forcing himself apart from lesser men that cowered, while mitigating some the guilt that often came with memories and dreams.
This they called bravery or balls, and said that if you did it enough times a numb void would become of your heart, as his did—a silence that he could never return noise to again. It grew like a tumor, held his heart hostage and made his work easy, much like a basement in and of itself, for many years of reflex. But for how long could the heart remain obscured and content in the dark?
Car tires come to a screeching stop in front of a plain-looking duplex residence, unobtrusively sitting between two others alike and in an alley so narrow it can only fit one car at a time. Behind the veil of tinted windows, it appears as some sort of anomalous, jagged figure bled into reality by helter-skelter shadows and the sun. Off it wafts the unease of staring into a void you can sense is bottomless. Yet that's all it takes—one glance as a flicker of the switch inside Kijun's heart. It retreats into the darkness with one final warning from the driver, before the car door unlocks for his emptied ribcage.
Expectedly, Yunho is the first to greet him on the way in through the backdoor, which extends to a naturally lit alcove preceding one of the empty living areas. As it is outside, the abode's pale bowels are cold and barren as a wasteland; made in plain sight that this was, after all, not a home made for living. After all these years, eerily, it hasn't changed.
"Glad you decided to show up, kid, even though you're recovering. Didn't sound like you would over the phone back then."
"Sure. Is it just us?" Asks Kijun blandly, as he tightens his signature leather jacket around himself and discards the memory of his initial hesitance. And drawing the blade tucked against his ribcage that much more within reach.
Yunho, perpetually amused and properly clad in his formal suit, extends an arm within the general direction of the basement's entrance somewhere down the right hall. "Everyone else's downstairs."
Lead by his stare alone, Kijun follows.
Two men are on standby on each side of the doorframe, and the two bow with a fleeting stiffness when they approach, their neat black suits creasing and dimpling through the motion. Used to gang formalities, Kijun keeps his head up and his scowl tightly chained across his features, his guard so high it heats his blood and draws pinpricks up to the back of his neck. Neither of them return the favour on the way in.
Soon to be discoverd below is what Yunho meant by everyone, being just the two of them and the other men that belonged here in the undigestible stiffness of the basement, rendered to inconsequential heaps by lack of light—at least for now. There are precisely two of them as well, suspended upside down on thick ropes and stagnant time by their ankles, tied wrists reaching for the floor. Like slaughter hung up to dry.
When Yunho flickers on the basement lights, irrefutable proof of days spent without a meal or much water lay palpable between concave abdomens and protruding ribs. Bruises and dried blood tell tales of long and painful beatings on either side.
The one on the far left is slightly larger, his fingers seeming to have grown swollen and purple with shatter and then neglect. Kijun, who's completely unphased by the tableau in front of him, wonders if the broken bones were a just punishment administered after an attempt at escaping. Remembers how often it had to be done before—how many times he'd partaken in the beatings himself.
After all, if given the chance, dogs on tight leashes often bite their way to freedom.
Noticing Kijun's fixed stare, Yunho chimes in from the side, "That one on the left'd almost killed you last week," He says, "But this one's your guy. Caught him sneakin' around the club on Sunday and apparently, he knows plenty. Here—"
A bucket of water Kijun knows is ice-cold immediately follows the smooth voice pouring over his shoulder, which is almost caught amidst the sudden deluge were it not for his reflexes. The water splashes as intended onto the target body hanging on the room's right, resurrecting him from a deathly stillness with some seconds of vigorous floundering. He's alive.
This is Kim Woosik, Yunho had informed Kijun on the phone earlier in the week, while extending his invitation to this questioning. Woosik'd been working undercover as a messenger for the Green Gang leader for a while, recovering and buying information from accomplices working in the club. Their job this morning was to find out just how much he knew, and who, exactly, it was that told. If there was one thing Kijun was good at, it was carving out rats with only his tongue. Then his knife.
"Kim Woosik," Kijun calls out as he finally tunes into his other self, merciless and unforgiving if he'd ever seen it. The heavy bass in his tone passes and reverberates across the damp walls and limbs with a commandeering urgency, Woosik immediately stopping his squirming to listen as he no doubt hears nearing footsteps in the echoes, then feels Kijun's presence when he crouches down by his head.
In this moment, everything happening outside the two of them ceases to exist, Yunho's lighthearted warning not to break him too soon falling upon deafened ears. This place was made for breaking, and breaking alone.
Kijun rips the soaked sack off Woosik's head to begin, and—briefly freezes. Met with two eyes he instantly recognizes, all bloodshot and reflecting shock and the vivid memory of mourning staring back up at him, Kijun feels icy blood and dread rushing up to the back of his skull. Has to quickly war confusion off his brows by aggressively ripping the piece of duct tape off Woosik's mouth. The latter screams as his dry lips split red, alive. He should be dead. I saw you die.
"Who the fuck are you?" Demands Kijun from the ghost turned rat, overtaken by a surge fury so profound it tears and shreds through him thoroughly enough to quickly become all he can feel.
But nonetheless, Woosik smiles a dangerous smile, like he knew all along that this day would come. Spits blood and teeth at Kijun and earns himself a square punch in the face—the sheer force of that singular blow so hard it cracks and skews Woosik's nose completely. It also throws him off balance, erratically swaying on the rope as the walls reflect broken moans and convulsions that can't be muffled by hands. Neither should they exist today, to begin with.
Kijun figures he'd question Yunho later in favour of satisfying his current rage instead. Grips onto Woosik's hair hard enough to sting the scalp bloody, too, and spits, "You fuckin' traitor."
"You fuckin' idiots. Yeah, it's me." Woosik chokes on every syllable he can't grind out without hurting himself, tongue too large in his mouth in this position and agony. But his eyes—oh, how the fire never falters. "Y'thought I'd ac'ually go and die for that greedy fuckin' bastard y'call a boss? Fuck 'ou— I'd rather be a traitor than a fuckin' dead on this turf."
A violent silence ensues at this, lasting only a few laboured breaths from the hanging men, but enough for everyone to feel it's onslaught ten times over. Kijun stands with it, shoving the head in his grip away from him with harsh dismissal. Takes a few extra moments thereafter to produce a smoke from his pocket and light it up, then another, for him to gather some manner of composure back into his voice, in spite of the fires that are laying waste to his insides. Blood, fresh from his split lip soaks into the circumference of the cigarette.
He stars over, while effortless, long strides bring him around this Woosik far too quickly for the other to keep up with, "So, that's why you decided to fake your own death to get out? Just so you could go die for another greedy fuckin' bastard? S'that it, Jung Hyungmin?"
The name tastes filthy and bitter on his tongue; not because he cared that much about Hyungmin's loyalty. Until this day, Jung Hyungmin was supposed to be simply a good friend from the past; someone Kijun had known well since they were seventeen and nineteen. And most importantly of all, he was supposed to be dead. Yet no matter how hard Kijun tried and tried again, life then knocked on his door and proved itself a force he could only bend when it came to his own death.
He had wondered what Yunho meant when he'd said on call, nowadays, we can't even trust death to do it's job. Now he knows; the explanation being a bloodied nose, ugly stabbing scars Kijun recalls stitching openly stretching across the length of his spine and abdomen, and a snake tattoo etched into his inner bicep. Green Gang.
"Yes, Kijun. Y'd be surprised t'know how many have done the same shit. People get sick of bein' manipulated to fuckin' hell, from bein' lied to practically all the time and worked literally to death for personal gain. I didn't choose this life t'be someone's fuckin' toy, and neither did you."
Kijun sneers, though he's merely playing along now after having detached himself from the past, "You know nothing about me. And I ain't surprised at all. Found that informant of yours at the club—works as one of my boys. He told me as much." He crouches next to Woosik again, this time bringing with him a confident lie and the blade he had sheathed under his jacket. Before Woosik can find the strength to surge forth, Kijun brings the tip of the knife up to the base of his throat. Smiles the smile of someone who knows.
"That's before I cut his fuckin' tongue out'ta his mouth, 'course. Future proof problem solved."
Maybe it's because he's wet, starved, desperate and upside down, because the lie connects immediately. Woosik is suddenly reduced to an eerie stillness again, his toes so white it must feel like death slowly encroaching into his skull. His mouth becomes a thin line, his eyes a thousand slices through Kijun's flesh. The latter doesn't mind.
"There it is, Yunho hyung. The truth." Lifting off again, this time off the air off success, the blade follows Kijun's generous height all the way up to Woosik's abdomen. Aimed precisely where Kijun knows his vitals are. "He knows it."
"Yes, and we only need a name."
"Fuck—y'selfish fuckin' bastards. Cut out my tongue. 'm not givin' y'all jackshi—" But Yunho shoves the water bucket under his head before he can finish disagreeing, the implication of it becoming all the more horrific when Kijun brings the sharp end of his blade back to the tender flesh at his throat. Tuning his stare downwards, he recalls how Hyungmin had been many things, but a hero had never one of them. "Wait, wait, wait, okay, okay I'll fuckin' tell you! Jus' don't—"
If anything, he was always just another traitorous coward.
"Then spit it out, bitch."
"K—Kim Namseong. He knows everything."
/
[September 2, 2023, location: confidential. / ft @chenosias]
"Now, let us pray."
Two ancient hands raise skyward in avid calling of the holy spirit. Summoned along with them are long, white robes of cotton, suspended properly by gleaming, silver cuffs, and at opposite end, presumably God in the action of thousands of feet stomping upright in the pews, hands joining. Kijun checks his watch and notes that it's been about an hour since the church hall had become fully occupied, with both him and Osias included in the mix, at whichever God's mercy. The prayer drawls on without his own participation, though wholly embraced by his searching gaze.
The pastor remained as he always remembered him; an old, hunch-backed mausoleum of sin and holy nightmares. And perpetually equipped with a frown that always haunted his face, provoking unease at rest. To the others around them, he may be a devout zealot and Messiah, drawing garbs of cotton, modest silver and a large crucifix around his neck, blessed directly by the God they pray so heartfully to. But all Kijun sees is a crook in a suit and tie, well tucked beneath a hard mask like a second skin. He was a cartel knave at heart and he was good at being so. As was Kijun, though.
In the pew next to him sits Osias, dark, brushstroke brows shifting and settling repeatedly to and fro on his face. He carries curiosity on his sleeve; catching details in the crowd ahead no average joe would ever see, then releases them with the occasional stray nudge or remark into Kijun's shoulder. Watching and listening to him quickly becomes half of Kijun's mind, counting freckles like stars whenever the hall erupts into drab musical bumps and leaves him only with long, black coils and a perfectly smooth, tan cheekbones.
The moment Osias finds the truth in backhanded preachings from the pulpit, though, by way those eyes skew dark brown and stare sidelong with did he just fuckin' say what I thought he just said? on the tip of his tongue, Kijun figures he'd done well by rejecting Yunho's company and bringing Osias instead. The growing glint in them susses out philosophy and cartel poetry he's probably heard many times before, both in Korea and America, the realization doing something most glorious to his handsome features that Kijun, satisfied and amused beyond imagination, would never forget.
Never trust the preachings of a gangster priest. Presses his elbow to the one beside him and murmurs blasphemy through repeated worship, all to be occasionally shushed by the grandmas sitting behind them.
But they steadily lose interest as the service itself ultimately has no place in their itinerary tonight. The person they're actually here for stands five pews ahead with his fingers crossed and eyes closed. In worn hoodie and jeans he appeared as benign as it got, far from the clandestine chamber of secrets he actually was. What would a man like that pray for, wonders Kijun.
It's ironic how society has always taught the next about how and when it's important to fear God, rather than fearing the immediate violence of being alive instead. After all, the only hurdle between man and the God they bend the knees at night for are themselves.
A prayer can only save you if you are alive.
"In the name of the father, son and the holy spirit, Amen."
That's their signal and purely by design, as well as everyone else's. Unhurried and careful to keep small and out of sight, Kijun raises from his seat as the crowd surges and begins to drift towards the exit doors, wordlessly nudging Osias behind him for that extra overlay of obscurity. Five pews behind them now, Kim Namseong, none the wiser, claps his bible shut and thinks of his successful attendance as a telltale sign of safety within the same breath he fails to register the head full of luscious coils sprouting ahead of him, as the only sign of yonder bloodshed.
They tail him out, that blissful ignorance lasting him four whole blocks and a brief convenience store trip to home though at his front door, it becomes a carelessness that would be taxed at the cost of a tongue.
A risky operation soon ensues within strict Green Gang turfs, and is executed by just two men and their trusty blades.
It begins and ends in a back alley apartment block just two preceding buildings shy off the main road, the residence itself a narrow and unkempt street-level hall that reminds Kijun of his days spent in Gyeonggi prison. The thought even tickles a bitter chuckle out of him given the recollection that were this to go completely wrong, he would end up either dead or in prison yet again. Osias hears him in the silence, of course, sounds self-assured enough for the both of them as he echoes off a smug grin a sentiment off the side, just his boyish excitement and encouragement pulling Kijun's shoulders back with an immediacy that arrests him into resolution.
So it goes, the Green bastards, grim reaper and pigs all be damned. Blood can only be paid back with blood.
"Go on, then." Speaks Kijun only around the last corner up to their destination, encouragement returned in kind with a firm clap on Osias' rear.
Their plan was a simple one for the sake of avoiding too many complications and potential injuries: After Namseong gets home from his usual church service schedule, Osias will knock on his front door a couple minutes later and make conversation about anything random. Which, if he's not immediately recognized, would in turn allow Kijun just enough time to sneak up to the scene once Osias gives the clear, and pounce on Namseong. Palm muffling the screaming and an arm locked beneath his jaw, they'll have to knock him unconscious as soon as time and the ferocity of Nameseong's squirming will allow. And then that'll be that.
The only thing that manages to slip past them is a stray punch in the jaw behind him, which later in the night at their own hideout, Kijun will spend nursing with a half-frozen can of Terra beer, Osias already drunk and going off about something in English.
For now, they work in silence, speed and efficiency of it's use within their tandem paramount to their success. This was neither of their turfs after all, so a throbbing jaw would have to wait until their fates are once again only theirs to determine. While Kijun strips and ties up the unconscious body by the joints, Osias searches the room for anything that might alert the Greens of their meddling, smashing Namseong's phone and watch for good measure. Then he's hauled into the only armchair in the neglectful goshiwon space and gagged. His head silently hangs as though shame plagues him hushed and visionless, his neck bruising purple from their recent struggle. Kijun almost allows a pang of guilt grip his heart, except he can't seem to find it anywhere himself.
"A'ight, we shouldn't wait." Scarcely speaking, Osias murmurs as he pulls off his hat, then mimics Kijun by sinking into a relaxed crouch. "Gotta get what you need and get the fuck out posthaste. Surely they'll know somethin's wrong after an hour or two."
"Did'ya find anythin' in his stuff? Just to be sure. Still don't think we should kill him, 'least this— ain't the right place for that..."
"Yeah, yeah whatever y'say. Found these, though."
From Osias' jacket pocket to the center of a palm, then the next, appear a pocket knife and a burner phone. Kijun has to refrain from rolling his eyes and laughing too loud, but the approval is there, resonating in thick contorting eyebrows, his snickering and the soft popping of his knees as he stands again and casually cracks a slap across Namseong's right cheek, so unforgiving even the walls reflect the sound.
Kim Namseong jolts violently awake in the chair, his eyes falling wide as the moon upon a living nightmare he's probably had before. Once his gaze at last crosses Kijun, the air in his fury shifts to an alternative avenue; icy and tart with a fear he can't expunge quickly enough off his smooth face. The same reoccurring snake tattoo peeks at him from an inner left bicep, thus defining the other's ultimate stance. And that twists some ugly, raging, swelling thing inside Kijun as it clearly spells a dreaded mistake out for him: a massive oversight on his part, that'd almost costed him his life.
After laying out all the warnings and going through necessary intimidations, the captive emerges with dense pulps all over his body and two deep black eyes, sponsored by Osias' uncontrollable fists and Kijun's unrelenting refusal of wanting his partner to halt the pummeling. Until Namseong is choking on blood and air and begging through tears.
"Tell me what exactly you know now about the Green Gang's intentions with the ring and we'll leave it at this. Simple." Kijun attempts with a firm clap on Namseong's shoulder, "Why did you fuckin' traitors attack us?"
The next few minutes stretch for what feels like eons and naught, every second spent stalling another sentence of death upon the two who didn't at all belong in this space. Kim Namseong was a stubborn opponent, the type of gangster that rarely fought with his fists. He was slightly older and thus a handful wiser; better informed than most, and Kijun could tell. But Kijun has also learned over the years that to win against the odds, you must first take away their greatest asset. And we gotta do it quickly.
The idea emerges through the heat and pleasures of the moment like a fish out of water,and Kijun finds himself impulsively knocking Namseong out cold, for this final stretch. His fist flares bright red and purple with a fresh pair of reaped blotches, when he says, all wide-eyed and feral, "Hold his head back f'r me, O."
"What? The fuck're you doin'?"
"...Makin' sure he'll never snitch again."
Totally contrary to the wild, searing numbness overtaking his hands, the knife feels light and icy in Kijun's fist as he lifts his sweater and unsheathes it. So light it is that he feels he could toss it upwards and it would somersault on and on until it skewers the sun. But he grips it with a surgeon's precision, and sees only red.
"May God bless you."
The tongue is a soft collection of muscles and nerves that yield with mind-boggling ease to the blade. Such is the enormity of the cruelty behind survival.
TW: Mature themes, death, violence, blood, all that jazz. Read at your own discretion.
one | two | three | four | five | six | seven
[August 19, 2023, Gangnam-gu]
When you exist outside all boundaries of the Law's tapestry, life quickly becomes a comically long series of misfortunate events and unforeseen circumstances. Like carrying a bomb in your breast pocket, active and ticking down. Every minute spent alive starts to count, every hour suggesting egregious possibilities no one else could dare stomach as their reality. And that reality, being his, once again reinforces itself upon Kijun's shoulders tonight and reminds him that a minute off his guard could cost him nearly thirty years.
In one breath, his wristwatch reads one o'clock or so in the morning and then he finds himself ensnared in some suffocating minutes of it, facing abrupt assault in the building's parking lot floor. In the next instant, it's two, three people are dead, and he's battered and broken but still alive, and seated at the far end of the longest oblong table they have in the club upstairs. Unlike how it were just the hour upon the incident, the dance floor now lays barren in abandon, and the doors are closed. Only the moon dares to interrupt urgency, stepping in through curtains after bulletproof glass.
Fury, smeared blue-black across Kijun's knuckles especially, waits with him here for the emergency meeting to start, a pack of frozen steak on his brow holding the rest at bay, for the safety of everyone else in the room. The cook had hesitated passing it on, the steak, maybe because he knew it wouldn't help much with saving anyone. Ire will bring man to places he would never go even in death.
As he shifts deeper into the shadows and his seat, the chair underneath him creaks feebly with the effort of supporting his size, crying out in tandem with the zippo he flicks as he lights his fifth smoke of the hour. This one in particular reminds him of how he may have more in common with the steadily burning anger in the embers than any of those slowly filtering into the room with him tonight, as the hour wanes. Each drag signifies a minute's passing, his patience cascading just as slowly. Until, finally, the table is full save for the seat his opposite, at the other end of the table. The largest chair available, perfectly suited for a king.
Finally, Lee Gun-pyo arrives five minutes late to the meeting he'd ordered himself, a bowing Yunho preceding him and a cane supporting half his weight. It would appear that he can no longer hide his limp anymore, another case of vulnerability or—another potential catalyst towards his downfall Kijun is certain he'd earned himself.
All present rise from their seats in favour of bowing to their king. All but Kijun, who merely rolls his eyes at the unfolding pageantry as he repositions the pack of thawing steak on his temple. As though he expected no less, Gun-pyo heeds no mind to blatant disrespect and sits on the opposite end at the table, thick wrinkled palms resting almost too gracefully for the occasion atop glossed black oak. If it weren't for the continuous rapping of his fingers Kijun knew he always did when he were nervous, he'd even take offence of the tardiness.
Gun-pyo's eyes though, are far more steady, and they scan the faces in the room with a fierce and starving tiger's gaze until they finally land straight upon the elephant in the room; onto a Kijun in tatters at his opposite, staring back from beneath the ugly veil of his shortcomings. And Kijun half-expects him to smile. To taunt him for this predicament because he'd been awfully uncooperative in the last year. But Gun-pyo visibly sighs and readjusts his suit with a scowl, and that's it.
"It's always you."
"Yeah, no. fuckin'. shit, boss."
Steel becomes Gun-pyo's impenetrable stare, but before either of them can open their mouths again, Yunho, standing at the precipice of eruption, interrupts by officially starting their meeting. He's succinct about it, formally introducing the happenings of the night—the five men; three of which are now dead, their findings so far, and much to Kijun's surprise, the Green Gang of Mapo-gu. The Green Gang leader has always been the closest with Gun-pyo at least from what Kijun could tell through all the years, of all the eleven leaders of the syndicate.
They would often collaborate within the scene, or sponsor each other's endeavors when when going got tough for one or the other. Most knew this to be true, and seemingly following Gun-pyo's grim expression in response to the implications of the Green Gang's betrayal, Yunho further backs his claims with certainty. He passes a phone around the table, on it photos of the gutted and dead with their arms intently laid out. The Green Gang had a signature unique only to them; a mandatory tattoo of a snake on each member's inner bicep, to communicate loyalty and fellowship of 'graduated' members. But after all, a tattoo couldn't stop a man from changing his mind—let alone from losing it entirely, alongside his promises.
Although already obvious, these problems and the incident are identified as reasons enough for the club had to shut down so suddenly, and why this meeting had to happen. At length, Yunho proceeds to demand from all present answers, if they have any that could help them reach a faster conclusion.
Kijun starts by pushing the phone away from his purchase and tossing the steak onto the table beside it, "Knew the Mapo guys tattooed their biceps already, but I didn't pay enough attention to see any matchin' tats on these guys before." Shrugs Kijun with great difficulty, the ire and residual adrenaline still boiling in his veins giving him restless legs, though not enough strength to prop himself up fast enough, "I was just fighting to stay alive. 'Bastards suddenly hopped outta' a car and hounded me down there, that's all I fuckin' know. But it makes sense now."
"What doesn't make sense's that if the Green Gang were really attacking us, they would've sent far more than five men to get the job done." Argues the cook on Kijun's left, "We've checked the perimeters and there was nothing else to be found. So is this really what it looks like?" He was five years Kijun's senior and a long time employee of Gun-pyo's. He was slight, but more versatile than he appeared. And he knew the business well. Kijun has seen him kill with a cleaver.
Yunho nods, "I've thought that as well. If the Green Gang really wanted to betray us, we would've been bombarded by now, so it's a bit strange. Three of the guys we could've interrogated have already been discarded on top of that. Of the other two, one ran while the other was knocked unconscious, scarcely avoiding Kijun's rampage. He's in our custody now and will be taken care of soon."
Should'a let me kill him too, thinks Kijun exhaustedly, now sitting with his head in both hands. The most he's been wanting was to go home, lay down next to the person he has killed for tonight and sleep off the bruises on his knuckles until morning.
But then the discourse for solutions unfolds further and further, dampening his spirits and participation almost thoroughly. A particularity mentioned just beyond his awareness, though is that they have reasons to believe that these five men had acted on their own volition rather than based off orders given by the Green Gang boss himself, considering their exceptionally poor numbers. That it could've also been a ploy or misdirection, Kijun being merely collateral. Though them recognizing him would mean that his face has now become known among the Green Gang members and possibly within other gang circles too, thus pinning him as a general target—another route that leads straight to Gun-pyo if that was their goal.
Lee Gun-pyo, who everyone's heard has become increasingly less untouchable with each passing day; a truth that cannot be lied about. One he sits quietly on his throne of bodies and riches, and refuses to acknowledge.
"What did you do with the guy we caught alive?" Asks Kijun after an entire hour of silence, his head lifting off his arms and throbbing so severely now, his vision blurs. A trail of blood down his chin confirms that his split lip is bleeding again.
"He's being brought to the basement as we speak." The basement. Kijun's spine straightens at this, skin crawling with a queasy discomfort he can't quite place. Or perhaps it's how his interest suddenly piques as he recalls what the basement has always been used for. Breaking.
Yunho pretends not to notice, as he always does and does not. "Don't know how long it'll take for him to talk, so we'll have to figure out some things on our own before then—"
The chair on the other side scarcely allows the end of that sentence, lingering echoes of Yunho's octaves forced to falter as the loud creak juxtaposes his softer, less jagged tones. The room falls still then, as if the walls suddenly hold their breaths alongside the people drowning within them.
When the silence breaks next, it's with Gun-pyo's voice, or rather—the increasing intensity of his large and imposing demeanour, and the sheer weight of the blatant accusation in his gaze. "But is that really all you have to say, Kijun?"
Picking up on this, all the sinews in Kijun's body grow stiff and taut with reanimated fury, and hostility. He all but spits, his ragtag appearance sapping away any care he can spare, "What the fuck are you implying, old man."
"Well, let's jump the gun and say we've been betrayed, for good measure. At the end of the day, there is no friendship in this sort of business after all," Gun-pyo's expression opens up momentarily, and shows to Kijun his disappointment in the most sardonic way possible, like it's all he can do for him now. "If we're dealing with betrayal, then it's highly likely they had an accomplice here, otherwise they wouldn't have known where you'd be, and when you'd be there."
"A staff member, maybe." the elder continues, hands now clasped tightly over the tabletop, "The one's most likely to be swayed by syndicate spies. Bought with money. The like."
Kijun would be dumbstruck if he were new here, if he knew less. By some sick miracle, the figure at the end of the table does not burst aflame from the throat underneath the pin of his cutting gaze.
"You sayin' there's a fuckin' rat and that I brought him in? You suspecting me or somethin'? Are you fuckin' joking?"
Yunho simply nods as he assumes his place back next to their patron. In silent solidarity, it seems. But that's no surprise, either. "We're simply laying out all the possibilities on the table, that's all. You know how it goes."
"Hyung, look at me."
"Think, Kijun."
"Holy shit— Okay, let's say due to some sort of oversight on my part, the rat really is one of my boys. What, then? Oh, let me guess, you're go'nna tell me to fix it again, right?" Scoffs Kijun, elongated arms splaying out on the table before him. And his features pull back and forth and linger somewhere dangerous, between amusement and ire. But his eyes spell daggers and arrows all across the room. To his left, the concerned cook visibly holds his tongue.
Gun-pyo merely sits back into his chair, taking a deep breath. Dogs can only bark, and never triumph over man, he said once. And that silence is all the answer Kijun needs to gather his bones and leap from his seat. Neither of the men across him flinch nor offer their comfort as he stomps past them and towards the door.
"Of fuckin' course and y'know what? Okay, sure. Let me know when the fucker y'all're keepin' talks, or doesn't. I'll come in and make 'em and get rid of the rat after that." And then he says—swears, while staring directly into Gun-pyo's flawless temple. "But then I'm done with you fuckin' people. I'm done."
On his way out he hears a muffled and stern get him home trailing behind him like the careful footsteps of a thief in the night. Like even the echoes of his own don't belong to him anymore.
But Kijun should know that once one gets comfortable with dancing with the devil, not even their heart will really belong to them anymore. And that kills.
Nether Spring, nature's Queen. My Artemis — Art by Jung Ephraem.
Artemis, lover of woods and the wild chase over the mountains. You'd sprung from seeds of cypress and fragments of flint with a bow and arrow at hand, the Lady of Wild Things, a sui generis born for hunt and chastity alone. You were the syntax polyvalent your father gifted the earth. You raised your quiver and then warriors of men, then killed the ignorant few for their gall towards your storm. You turned boys into girls because only in this way could you spare their innocence. A champion to the masses, Huntress factotum. Boring many a names, they would forever sit on your shoulders like a volley of silver arrows. They would be yours as much as they would not at all be, however merciful, because you would be slain by your own resolution.
Cynthia, Diana, and Selene. If Artemis be thy name, I pledge to you my loyalty. And then you were Hecate (the goddess with three forms), she who became you in the dark. You embraced her as she did you, a passing shadow on the Moon. On earth you were Artemis or Cynthia, in the skies La Luna. Hecate waited in the lower world, and she would wait in the world above when it is wrapped in darkness. An awful divinity, you would be and I would revere your putridity. No longer lovely, nor pressed warm under branches of cypress you considered most holy. Stags and humanity mattered none in the dark.
Hecate of Hell.
Mighty to shatter every stubborn thing.
Hark! Hark! her hounds are baying through the town.
Each territory in this world is gutted and rebuilt by the priorities of its leader. This colony on the outer rim is both cold and alive, like the humming motor tucked inside the heart of a machine. Technology runs its cities, builds its skyscrapers, and manufactures the oxygen Wenhan holds in burning lungs as he sneaks between shadows on a suspended launch platform. His steps are quiet and his hands are quick as he climbs up to eye level with a sleeping jaeger corralled by metal staircases and unattended balconies. Even if he was caught in the engineer sector after curfew, all it would earn is disapproval and a warning. They were running too low on pilots to follow protocols.
Wenhan glances at the bracer strapped to one wrist flashing silent and red.
10 minutes left before that curly haired scientist wandered back to check on his bot. His pilot wetsuit was starting to feel like a sweatlicked second skin.
From the outside, the angles and smooth shell of the jaeger is familiar. Sinew wires wrapped into steel joints as unassuming as every other bot he’s had to pilot. He scales the ladder into the pilot's cabin, hands hovering over a foreign control system that stays unlit even as he hits the usual sequence of switches. He tucks curses under his tongue and grinds his teeth. The neural connector panel is cold against his back and there’s no hum of a reaction underneath skillful hands.
Cold. Dead. Everything on this planet was so still. Suspended and waiting to borrow energy from something or someone warm and alive. He’s starting to forget how the touch of wind felt on his face from home. The way grass left skin itching for days if he fell asleep under the sun.
“You could’ve just asked if you wanted to see it.”
Wenhan looks up, and there’s a face so warm and alive peering down at him from the open hatch. Taeil’s eyes are bright and curtained by dark messy curls. He lazily tucks his chin over his arms and looks smug.
“You’re supposed to be in the bathroom for five more minutes.” Wenhan continues trying sequences of switches.
“I can finish in one.” Taeil drops into the cabin, peering over Wenhan’s shoulder, as if the other man’s failure was more interesting than reporting an unauthorized boarding to superiors.
“If you really want to brag about your foreplay…”
“I really admire your propensity for being a egocentric dick, Li, I really do– but it won’t work no matter which way you fondle it... I thought you weren’t supposed to leave the infirmary for another week.” As Taeil smooths fingertips over his unlined forehead and admires the bruised reflection of Wenhan’s concentrated face in the unresponsive control panel. “New wrinkle on stonehenge.”
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping so you can fail basic training again?” Wenhan leans back into the pilot seat, exhaling through his nose. “Nepotism can’t save your ass forever.”
Taeil flips a switch above them both, and the cabin lights up with a soft white glow. The controls remain dark.
“It won’t work because it’s not finished, idiot.” As he mutters almost inaudibly. “Like I’d make it respond to your biometrics on purpose... Now get out of my fucking robot.”
Wenhan rams shoulders with Taeil on his way out. He lets his legs dangle over the hatch, watching the other check over the jaeger’s insides. For as long as he’s been here, all his relationships have been shallow. It was easier to detach himself when multiple pilots were dispatched and few made it safely back into the station after a fight. Some part of him hoped Taeil failed training on purpose so the mouthy engineer would never have to pilot. It would be so much more boring around here without a thorn in his side.
What would he do without a challenge.
The sector's dimmed lights flash a bright white and then darken to red, followed by an alarm that shatters comfortable silence. Wenhan immediately drops from the unresponsive bot and moves to board another, but his feet stumble into empty air as ears are blown out from an eruption of shattered metal walls and heat.
The suspended balcony creating a pathway between jaegers had snapped in half from the explosion, sending wenhan sliding forward into a death drop to the ground floor. The momentum is enough that he swings into the railing and grips hot metal to delay the fall, but his descent had already stopped. The jaeger that had been dead on its feet moments before now had metal arms extended, catching wenhan in the palm of its hand. Wenhan stares up at the glassy visor, unable to see Taeil’s form tucked inside its shell.
He hadn't been the only one lying from the beginning.
her request to take him out comes from being worried about him after telling him she would go spend some days at her grandma house, and even it was her decision she can’t see him “not okay”. and so they go for a few drinks.
while he tells her about the place he wants to go and drink as much as he could, all she does is to give a few nods without being able to hide a worried look that sneaks out from her. how much he would need to drink so he could stop the feeling for a few hours and how much he wanted that. it wasn’t about drinking to have fun, she knew that. when they arrive at their destination and with the car already parked, she tries to follow him at her best, feeling too little in the packed area, falling a bit behind before she could catch up with him. both hands inside her jacket pockets with the warm pads keeping her fingers from feeling frozen, jacket zipped up until it covers her neck with only her ears and nose, both sensitive to the cold, exposed. especially her ears from having her hair tied up, enhancing her face features. she isn’t much about looking around when they arrive at the spot he mentioned, perhaps not until she could sit and warm up for a few minutes. while she looks down to the people outside it’s already being ordered some entries, the cheese table being prettily decorated enough for her to take a picture and at the mention of stale, she turns her head to look at him, cheeks already rosy from the cold but now as well with the warmth in the mix. “steak?” she answers with wide eyes looking at him, and then nods. “yes” she saves her phone and lets him do the order while she does the honor to try the cheese adding a bit of jam on top of it. “i don’t think i would need a lot of drinks, you can order for yourself meanwhile. or i can serve you.” she says taking another bite from her cheese, taking a moment to savor it, as her expression is brighter as she eats.
they agreed to share a stake, even though she did say yes, her appetite wasn’t still the best to have a whole mean but perhaps sharing with him could just mean sera giving most of her part to him. she would drink and rather just eat from the cheese table they had to their disposition. “did you eat before leaving?” she asks, more like trying to make conversation even knowing she won’t get much from him. she shrugs a little from the cold, supporting her head with one of her hands as she just casually keeps looking outside.
he answers her with his tone still neutral. she is no in place to say anything how she feels about it— like she deserved it for asking too much of him, she didn’t know it was troublesome of her to want to do things with him, to go to places and do things that she wanted to do and from what she understood her act and make an effort to be in her expectations— why would someone do that if they didn’t want to in the first place? why does wanting to share the same experience a burden? she can’t understand that even with good intentions it may seem like she’s been forcing him into being this one person he doesn’t wants to and that’s nothing that she wanted from him. she’s the first to blame herself about everything he may be going through, and doesn’t know if things will be different between them, she believes that it will. that he will not be able to approach her like he used to, nor come to her or share his affection, and even less to talk about the things that matters to him, it’s a door that it’s closing right in front of her and there’s nothing much she can do to keep it open other than keep her walls down for him. and just like now, she’s no one to bring comfort to him, only alcohol.
and today she is in a position that’s pretty weird to her, she doesn’t knows for sure but she has never done this for anyone, she never felt like she had to put all of what she was feeling to a side for the sake of someone else— even when her thoughts were running it was nothing like before because in the end they really didn’t mattered. maybe she had done something similar for her puppy, but this has been the only time for another human being.
she realises that all her life she always had this one way of living for her and never for someone else. it’s a funny thought because some may say she’s living for him but it’s more tricky than she thought. she’s living for him so she can stay alive, someone before has said that living for someone isn’t such a bad thing because at least they are living. however, living for him in her own terms has not been how she thought, and that’s the difference.
today she was living for him on his terms and why that oddly satisfying? was it because it was a selfless act without the expectations of receiving something back from him? if she were honest, she felt like one of the characters in her books, all her life she read books to escape from reality but even more to experience things that she never did.
“weird”
she says removing her eyes from the street to then look at him, she has no answers for her questions at the moment, she’s just holding some cheese to him in the hope to reconcile “here, try this one and tell me what you think”
It’s become increasingly interesting to me lately, the obscurity of life’s ever evolving nature. How, no matter what or who we think we might be in the present moment, or what joy or agony we’re going through as that version of ourselves for that matter, it just keeps... going. Like a raging bullet train without destinations or the lack thereof, speeding across bumps and corners and turns and hitting speed limits that’re sometimes the most incomprehensibly torturous shit we’ve ever experienced. It just... goes on, and we have no choice but to follow.
Whatever matters to me now, whatever is happening in this very moment, the feelings I feel and the most important things in sight, won’t be so relevant just a year from now, if at all. Most of the people in my life then had been different before, and they’ll be different next year as well, like an empire rebuilding its walls through the cycling through many fickle hands. That’s just how it all is, a ceaseless and usually unforgiving series of escalations measured strictly by the decisions we make, however righteous or otherwise. In addition to that I don’t know if there’s any suboptimal celestial jurisdiction in our choosings to begin with, something like the divine ass fucking force of nature we tend to call fate. Is there? Fuck if I know. All I know is that life bangs sometimes, and then it goes to complete shit. But it could never be good, ecstatic even, not without the opposing drolls which give the good moments a shiny glaze in the name of hope.
Anyway, shall I reflect? Last year, around this time, I was working corporate. It was a job my father had gotten me, so I had to be grateful to him and in turn, graceful about my discontent with the way things were going. In hindsight it wasn’t so different than what I’m doing now, schedule wise. I’d go to work, do my job, come home and spend the rest of my night gaming or reviewing my day’s work. Sometimes I’d go drinking or sleep over wherever the night’s current drifts my towards. And I do genuinely love engineering on its own, even if I were to strip it of its academic value and the lot. That’s why I’d tried my best to appreciate my corporate job–even went to Japan for it, which was ambitious, to say the least. But I’m glad I’d done it, otherwise life would be different now. See? Escalating consequences of my ludicrous actions. Funny, in desperate moments, how putty and willing we become to the profound absurdity of self discovery and preservation.
I love teaching more, though a year ago I would’ve hesitated to make this change I wanted. I’m clueless now, but I’d been worse counting twelve months backwards. I know nothing now, but I knew less. But you know what I say to that, honestly? Ignorance is bliss. It truly, seriously is and it’s something I think this hill is the one I will die on. Ignorance is bliss. Wisdom and experience in a way turn joy into a sacrificial lamb. For one, you chip away a bit of the other because life as it is, can be a horrible, beautiful place. I hate this feeling of my tweaked atoms compared to where they’d been before. I hate to acknowledge that I’d changed, maybe I’d grown or shrunk. But I also hate this feeling of not being able to move forward without the acceptance. I hate remaining stagnant in this... weird, dismal mood. If not return to the past, I just want to move forward. Not to return but to evolve, pokemon style.
But no matter what I choose to do next, I know for sure that life will always move forward whether or not I want to follow along. There will always be something, someone, some people. There will always be happiness and the lack thereof. Hurtled spatial debris in my orbit, seeking to kill me. And as such, there ain’t jackshit I can do about that. So, be it. We ball.
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