#jake horror

[jayflrt]

the scientific findings of a madman

❝ y/n, please stop calling my clone the freakatron 3000. ❞

PAIRING ▸ jake sim x fem!reader

GENRES ▸ psychological horror, crack, sci-fi, angst, some fluff

WARNINGS ▸ profanity, implied sex but nothing explicit, murder, questionable ethics, jake cutely spirals into madness as he breaks every lab safety protocol ever, jayke's tom and jerry dynamic, depersonalization, everyone's a few shades darker than morally grey, jay on some doofenshmirtz ass villainry, ft. interns kim sunoo & jang wonyoung

SUMMARY ▸ world-renowned inventor jake sim creates the prometheus prototype, a machine that allows one to create copies of themselves. with his insatiable thirst for science overpowering all restraint, jake must hide his creation from his best friend (who's also—horrifyingly enough—his boss), jay park; his high-strung intern, kim sunoo; but not you, his enigmatic coworker he's had his eye on for years. jake is now somewhere between the flesh, the machine, and the divine, stuck in an endless cycle of succumbing to the rot by his own hands. he won't lose his mind trying to become something bigger than he is. he won't.

alternatively, once greatness abandons mortality, a new god is born.

WORD COUNT ▸ 23,400 words

PLAYLIST ▸ puddles by not for radio • pretty when you cry by lana del rey • i bet on losing dogs by mitski • to by yerin baek • calm myself by sunmi

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ this was inspired by mickey 17 (incredible movie btw) hope u enjoy reading!!

IMPORTANT please read!

i'm doing an event for this fic to donate to sudani women in refugee camps and women in congo! please check out the full details here

SO, ALL THINGS CONSIDERED IN THE MIDST OF HIS GENIUS, JAKE SIM HAD A MINOR PREDICAMENT.

Normally, these hiccups rarely phased him. He wasn’t one to brag about it—in fact, he despised those who peacocked about—but Jake was what people would consider a child prodigy. From the moment he was introduced to numbers, Jake could scramble those integers into something more complex, something real, and he saw patterns that none of his peers could identify. 

They called him a gift from God, but Jake wasn’t devout in the slightest; his God was nuclear, existing in the quantum vacuum between the nucleus and its electrons. His God didn't speak to him through a burning bush but through equations. Mathematics became his scripture. 

In a sense, his future was set from a young age. A stroke of luck led him to becoming close friends with Jay Park, the heir to Park Industries; his high school passion projects got him invitations to speak at conferences; and he managed to end up on Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list four years in a row. Sure, it was largely due to his connection to Jay that boosted his name in the tech industry, but Jake never took his opportunities for granted. He worked to the bone to make a name for himself and to put his inventions out there. 

Jake knew he could take the world far with creations birthed from his own two hands.

He, after all, was the star intern of Park Industries. Almost everyone working for the company knew of his story, how he interviewed for their summer program during his junior year of high school and hadn’t stopped working since. After assisting Dr. Oscar Diaz with his research on the use of CRISPR-Cas9 to repair human tissue, Jake was praised so highly for his help that he was offered a part-time position throughout his undergraduate degree. MIT hardly mattered now that Jake had a leg-up in the industry (although he still managed to make the President’s List consecutively with a 3.9 GPA and graduated summa cum laude). 

Years later, after Jay took over his father’s position at the company (at a shockingly young age, reporters noted), Jake was granted his own lab at the age of 25.

Some called it nepotism because of the strings Jake had to pull with Jay to obtain his own space, and some called it the well-deserved fruits of Jake’s labor. 

He liked the sound of the latter, but if he was going to be honest, Jake would have to agree with the former; no matter how shiny of a gem his brain was, there was no company executive on the planet that had the same streak of rash judgement that his dear friend did. Even Jay’s father didn’t exactly exude an air of responsibility with the way he retired early to play golf at overpriced country clubs. Several complaints came in about Jay’s unreasonable decisions, which the newly-minted CEO simply replied to with the link of the Forbes article that had Jake’s face plastered on the cover. Take it up with the 30 Under 30 list, was what his message for them seemed to be.

Jake wasn’t complaining, though. If he had to step over some heads to climb the ladder of success, so be it.

There were failures, of course, but his pushes forward were always bigger than any setback he ever encountered. Six years ago, his proposal to create synthetic bio-organs was nearly ripped to shreds, but Jake spent countless nights pushing for his work to be recognized, for someone to see potential in it. And, at the mere age of 26, his bio-organs became revolutionary in the medtech industry. Naturally, his minor predicaments paled in comparison to his glowing accomplishments. 

But what bothered him were the whispers. There was no doubt that Jake was smart, but for someone who conveniently landed all the right connections, it was easy to question his genius—whether he truly deserved to stand where he did. He had to pull off something huge.

The bar was set high, and he chucked it somewhere stratospheric. 

It took an elevator trip, three ID scans, and one fingerprint scan to get into Jake’s laboratory. The space was basically his second home. He had a kitchenette, a mattress on the floor, a company-issued Keurig, and every single tool at his disposal to craft wonders. What more could he ask for?

The reason why Jake requested a private laboratory was because he was working on something extraordinary. With all of the work he had done in bioengineering, Jake started secretly working on something that would elevate him to God status in the biotech world.

The Prometheus Prototype.

He knew that it was dangerous to play God, but who said he couldn’t try getting close? Icarus flew too close to the sun, but he still flew all the same, didn’t he? Jake could operate at a distance, and then he was sure he would be able to soar over the sun, over its blazing rays.

He had been working on the Prometheus Project for years until he finally got approved for the funding to go ahead with his invention. Of course, Jake had many, many meetings with several ethical review boards (all of whom he lied to) and had many NDAs signed, but he knew what he was getting himself into. 

He was creating a machine that could clone humans, after all. 

It was inside his mammoth of a laboratory—far past appropriate working hours for him to call his intern, Kim Sunoo, for help—where Jake was experiencing a slight inconvenience. 

At first he thought he was delirious from the lack of sleep, but no matter how long Jake gawked for, there was no doubt that the man standing across from him was… himself? 

Oh shit, was Jake’s first thought.

This is bad, was Jake’s second thought.

“You’re so fucked right now,” said the Jake duplicate, who vocalized what happened to also be the real Jake’s third thought. 

Earlier in the evening, Jake stayed back in the lab to test the Neural Entanglement component they had just developed. It was the final part for the Prometheus Prototype—not that it was ready for testing, but the machine was finally whole. The Neural Entanglement device was responsible for making a copy of Jake’s consciousness and memories to transfer into the new body. 

The process of uploading a copy of his brain scan took several hours, considering he had to remain perfectly still with several electrode sensors attached to him. Plus, Jake hadn’t gotten a full night’s sleep in weeks, so could he really be blamed for dozing off during the process?

What he could be blamed for, however, was accidentally triggering the machine to transfer his printed consciousness into a new body. And because the machine only had Jake’s genetic information stored, the assembled body was an identical copy of him.

Good news: it worked.

Bad news: it worked.

Jake wasn’t sure how long he was asleep for, but his doppelganger didn’t seem to be in a hostile or distressed state, much to his relief. Being the first subject from the Prometheus Prototype, things could’ve gone very wrong.

The clone did, however, come out completely naked. Jake had to sacrifice a lab coat so that his duplicate could maintain some decorum. 

But, once again—hiccups aside—Jake was a fucking genius. Yeah, they called him the Einstein of the 21st century for a reason, and perhaps this breakthrough would put him up there with the greats. 

“Okay,” Jake started shakily, fumbling for his glasses before placing them on the bridge of his nose. He reached for a pen and started scribbling on the first piece of paper within reach. “You can speak coherently, you can move around just fine, you seem to have the same proportions as me, and…”

“And my dick’s still the same size, yes,” the clone finished. 

Jake paused, then frowned. 

“How’d you know I was thinking about that?”

“I think you should be asking yourself why you were thinking about that,” his duplicate retaliated. Jake added the word smartass to the list of observations he was compiling. “We share the same brain with the same memories up until this moment. I know you better than anyone else does.”

“Fascinating,” Jake breathed out. “Let’s call you Jake-001—Jake One for short.” 

“Jake One? That’s kinda boring. Can’t I be, like, Alpha Jake?”

He made a noncommittal sound. “No—too omegaverse for me.”

PROMETHEUS PROJECT / JAKE-001 LOG: 04:12:45 // Basic biological functions stable  04:15:11 // Delayed motor functions 04:36:09 // Brain scans show abnormal activity in the amygdala and prefrontal cortex in the dorsolateral and ventromedial regions 04:42:55 // Impulsive speech and actions with little regard for consequences, likely due to the damage to the prefrontal cortex  04:43:08 // No clue how the amygdala is affected yet 04:43:12 // He’s almost perfect

It was nearing 5 a.m. by the time Jake started to feel anxious about the whole situation. In the next hour, Kim Sunoo would come bursting through the door with two coffees in hand and his ID card between his teeth. An hour after that, Jay would waltz in without a care in the world, complaining about some shareholder meeting he had later in the day. 

Jay was the one person who absolutely couldn’t see Jake One right now. His best friend would call for a press conference immediately for Jake to share his breakthrough with the world, for Park Industries to become a heavy-hitter in the field of artificial intelligence. By no means could Jake let anything about the Prometheus Project get out to the public. He didn’t even clue the CEO in on how much progress he made with Sunoo; his work always came first because Jake knew that, at the end of the day, everyone around him was frantically trying to get to the top. 

Moreover, if Jake was discovered, this would be a huge ethical problem. He was 100% not supposed to create a clone of himself already, and the fact that he tested on himself before using lab mice was a violation of dozens of ethical standards. 

There were three things Jake needed to do: give Sunoo the day off, convince the poor intern that he wasn’t getting fired, and figure out a way to get Jake One out of the high-security building. 

He knocked out the first two pretty easily. The easiest way to convince Sunoo not to come in for work without raising suspicion was by assigning him unrelated busy work. 

Jake: The Neural Entanglement device is still on standby so you don’t have to come in today

Sunoo: ??? whatttt Sunoo: but i’m on the subway rn :( 

Jake: I need you to run some errands instead. I’ve forwarded a list of things we need to order. Can you get that done?  Jake: Also if you can draft this week’s progress report that would be great

Jake: You can present at the stakeholder meeting next week

Sunoo: yes i can!! :D so excited yay!!! 

Kim Sunoo should’ve been grateful that he was incredibly brilliant and had a young innovator like Jake Sim as his boss. If he spoke to anyone else like that, he really would’ve been reprimanded or fired by now. 

Now that his nosy intern was out of the way, Jake had to get through a morning briefing while leaving Jake One unsupervised. He was unsure of whether his clone would be able to stay in place, but Jake One did have the same level of intelligence as the original Jake, so he had to be somewhat trustworthy. 

And Jake One was technically… him—at a genetic level, even. They must’ve shared the same interests and tastes, too. 

“You like ramen, don’t you?”

Jake One’s eyes lit up. “Ramen?”

“There’s a kitchenette through that door over there,” Jake said. “Knock yourself out if you get hungry. I’ll be back in an hour.”

Jake was confident in his ability to bullshit his way through life. 

It helped that most people deeply trusted him. He was a rising star among innovators across the world, so why would anyone doubt him in the first place? Thanks to his reputation, it was easy to get by with minimal effort. That was exactly how he got through his morning debrief without getting grilled for not having concrete results to show. 

But he knew he had results, and that was what mattered. In fact, the outcome of his results was currently making ramen in his laboratory. 

Now, he had to figure out a way to get his double out of the building without raising suspicion. Perhaps he could cover Jake One up and sneak him out, but the problem was security cameras were littered along the hallways of Park Industries. If the situation were to escalate, Jake wouldn’t have an answer for how one person entered his lab and two people left. 

On his way to the elevators, he heard two familiar voices down the hallway. 

“Jay, please,” you insisted, white-knuckled as you gripped your folder. Jake watched as you basically shoved the file into Jay’s hands. “My nanobots work. I just need the funding to develop them into something bigger.”

Ah, how pathetic. Jake couldn’t stop his heart from stuttering in his chest.

Over the years, Jake never really had the time to be in a relationship like most young adults his age would. Since he was flying out to conferences and symposiums every other week, he didn’t exactly have the time to start anything serious with someone. That was why all of his encounters with women never went past hooking up or a few dates.

He wished things would be different with you, but that wasn’t the case. Jake asked you out once—and he thought the date went rather well and you seemed to be enjoying yourself—but nothing happened after that. It was as if you two never kissed. You were too buried in your work, much like he was, and Jake was too much of an idiot to come clean about how badly he wanted a relationship to work out.

Jake Sim was suave, charming, confident—so the unsophisticated rush of emotions that flooded his chest was not at all representative of his character.

The CEO flipped through the papers as he answered, “It’s great stuff, Y/N, really—but it’s too ambitious. You’ve gotta narrow your scope a bit more.” He passed your work back to you before stepping into the elevator. “I’d love to stay and chat, but I’ve got a busy day ahead of me”—(Jake knew he was lying through his teeth; this was around the time when Jay scheduled his afternoon nap)—“and no time to look over this. Have your intern—what’s her name again? Won-something? Wonjung? Wonyoung, that’s right—have her hand it over to Jungwon and I’ll give it a read tonight.” 

You opened your mouth to protest, but the elevator doors closed before you could rip into Jay. Jake heard all about your rejected proposals over plenty of late-night beers with his coworkers. You often got emotional over drinks; Jake was the one who had to drag you back to your apartment and listen to you mope. This would be your third or fourth time passing your work to Jay’s personal assistant, Yang Jungwon, only to hear nothing back about it. 

From behind you, Jake plucked the folder right out of your hands to look over your abstract. “Nanobots, huh?”

“Oh, hey, Jake.” Even with all of your attention now on him, you still looked and sounded distracted. He was always desperately trying to pull you back down to the ground. “Sorry you had to witness my very embarrassing, very hopeless attempt at getting my funding approved.”

“You’re good. I’ve had people start coming to me about grants.”

“Lucky you.” You hummed with an inquisitive lilt at the end. “It’s rare I get to see you around here, by the way. You’re always locked up in that lab of yours.”

That last comment plucked him right out of the section on proteins. “Thought I’d at least show face. Why? Were you lonely without me?”

A bold move, for sure. Jake laughed it off as a lighthearted joke, except it wasn’t a joke for him. Whatever you followed up with was critical to his mental health. Your words would impact the next few weeks of his restless nights, weighing on his heart like a storm cloud. For a heart-fluttering, fleeting second, he almost thought you would flirt back.

“It’s pretty hard to feel lonely these days,” was your stone-cold response, lodging itself right into a lonely chamber of Jake’s pathetic heart. “I can’t catch a break on Heeseung’s team. I swear, the only reason he dumps all this work on me is so that I don’t have time for my own research.”

“Looks like you’re doing just fine, though.”

“Does it? I’ve been pushing for them to get approved for over a year now. I’m thinking I should just give up.”

“Why would you do that? This is incredible stuff.”

“You think so?”

“How biocompatible are these? Can they pass through the blood-brain barrier?”

“Ideally, yeah, but I haven’t been able to test them yet,” you answered. “Biodegradable polymer—so there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Very interesting. Finding human participants to test your nanobots would be difficult, but wouldn’t the Prometheus Prototype be the perfect solution for that? Not only would Jake be able to prove the usefulness of his invention but it would directly benefit your nanobots. There were definitely several ethics violations that he wasn’t considering at the moment, though. 

“Well, I don’t think you should narrow your scope,” he told you. “Nothing’s too ambitious, if you ask me.”

You scoffed. “Maybe that applies to you. I wish it were that easy, but Jay keeps blowing me off. I think my nanobots can be something big. I don’t feel like dumbing them down to get my funding approved.”

“Let me give it to him this time. That guy can be a douchebag.”

Only Jake, who had a long history with his closest friend, could get away with insulting the CEO like that, and that was probably why your expression dimmed. Anything and everything he wanted from Park Industries was well within his grasp while you had to work ten times harder than anyone else to be recognized. Jake knew it wasn’t fair, but he also didn’t know what he could do about it aside from offering his help. 

It became clear to him, though, that what he thought to be kind gestures were more of a slap in the face for you.

“I appreciate it, Jake,” you said, eyes flitting away momentarily when the next elevator door opened, “but I need to get my work out there on my own.”

Jake swallowed thickly.

“Makes sense.” He handed your folder back to you and stepped inside with you. “Which floor?”

“Eight.”

Just as he was about to press the button for you, though, a high-pitched alarm sounded from his phone. Jake normally kept all of his alarms the same, but this specific sound was distinct for a reason. The security alert for his laboratory was unmistakable, and since it hardly ever went off, Jake was frozen for several moments before he reacted. 

He pulled out his phone, checking the security app that he’d created himself. Perhaps it was an excessive layer of protection, but Jake didn’t trust footage of his laboratory being in the hands of anyone but him. 

To his horror, smoke was billowing in front of the lens. It was hard to tell what exactly was going on, but this was, no doubt, a fire. Jake had security measures in place, of course, but a fire in the same proximity as the Prometheus Prototype was making him anxious. 

His eyes were fixed to his screen as he punched the button to his floor instead. He was certain he heard you worrying in his ear—something along the lines of “Jake, is everything alright?”—but he couldn’t focus on anything else but getting to his lab. 

“Oh shit,” you breathed out after catching a glimpse of Jake’s screen.

“Y/N,” he ordered, grabbing ahold of your shoulders and looking you in the eye. There was unmistakable worry drawn across your face, but he was firm. “I need you to keep this between us. Don’t tell a soul.”

“Don’t tell? But—but, Jake, if there’s an emergency—”

“Thanks, I knew you’d understand,” he got out quickly before it even clicked that you had, in fact, not understood. 

Everything’s perfectly fine, he told himself, although he couldn’t calm his racing heart nor stop his anxious habit of tapping his foot. Jake One’s probably handling it right now. There’s a fire hydrant right by the door. Sprinklers should’ve activated. He’ll be fine. He can take care of it.

Jake sped down hallways and turned corners, tuning out the ringing in his ears and hoping his urgency didn’t alert anyone. He felt bad for leaving you so lost and confused, but you were definitely not supposed to see the clone of himself standing in his laboratory. He had a sinking feeling about the security camera footage, and the only thing on his mind was that he had to get to his laboratory as quickly as possible. He hardly even thought to look back as he scanned his ID through each locked door until he was pushing open the entrance to his workspace.

Instantly, he was hit with billowing clouds of smoke and the rotten smell of human flesh.

The fire burned from the kitchen, only suppressed by the sprinklers that stopped it from consuming the entire space. The flames weren’t anything he couldn’t tackle himself with the equipment in his lab, but there was something disturbing about the sight before him that made his stomach feel like a bottomless pit. The ground wobbled under him.

A pair of legs stuck out from the doorway. The upper half was engulfed in flames, but the body remained motionless aside from involuntary jerks. 

Strange. Jake always thought it would be the fumes that did him in, but it was rather the sight of watching someone with his face burn to death. Amidst the crackling and popping, a scream rose over the cacophonous flames that sounded eerily like his own. No, it was his own—Jake One’s voice—ringing in his ears louder than ever. 

Jake didn't realize he was shaking until he dropped his ID card. This laboratory was his dying body, a prison of his own flesh. 

And it was rotting before him.

He dropped to his knees, digging his palms into the crevices of his ears to block out the skull-splitting screams. He really should’ve been blocking his nose to keep himself from inhaling the fumes because his head was already starting to feel funny, but Jake’s judgement was already clouded by the death rattle that cried over the fire.

All at once, and then no more. 

Just when he thought that he, too, would pass out, a spray of cool, white powder swept the base of the flames, side to side until they started to die down. He looked up to see you holding a fire extinguisher, the collar of your shirt hiked up to cover your nose. 

The smoky heat must’ve been getting to his vision, too. Jake balled his fists to rub at his eyes, but they felt like they’d been peeled and rubbed raw. Despite that, you were still there. 

Ash and powder dusted the kitchen. The residue smelled like ammonia and stung his eyes. Jake wanted to scream and ask what the hell you were doing here, but when he caught sight of Jake One’s burning remains again, his mind was slipping away from him—fast. 

Right when he caught your words framing his name, the ground rushed up to meet him.

When Jake came to, he found himself in the makeshift bed he had set up next to the Prometheus Prototype. It was sort of an obsessive worry—wanting to be next to his invention at all times—but Jake had proper reasons for it. 

He opened the door to the containment enclosure that housed his machine and started examining its shell. When he looked at himself through his reflection in the smooth metal coating the exterior of his machine, Jake saw that he was sporting a nasty bruise on his jawline. There didn’t seem to be any external or internal damages, but while he tinkered around, a knock came at the glass, scaring him out of his wits.

It was you. 

“I didn’t realize you woke up already,” you said, holding out a cup of coffee to Jake as he shut the door behind him, ignoring the throbbing ache in his skull. This was bad, this was bad, this was bad, this was really fucking bad. “How’re you feeling? Can you breathe okay?”

That was when he noticed his lungs ached.

“You can’t be here, Y/N, it’s—”

Before he could get the words out, he was splashed with hot coffee. Thankfully, it wasn’t hot enough to scald him, but Jake winced and wiped the excess that dripped from his chin. What the hell? You just saved him from a fire and now you were trying to make him a burn victim? 

He started, “What the—”

“This isn’t the time to order me around. Do you even realize how many lives you’ve put at risk because of your… whatever that was?!”

Okay, given the situation you were in, perhaps he deserved the hot cup of coffee to his face. 

Jake swallowed thickly. “So, he’s…” Dead. He didn’t want to say the words himself, but that was the bitter reality he couldn’t quite bite down on.

You gave him an uneasy look. “I brought my nanobots. I don’t know if there’s much they can do at this point, and fourth-degree burns are a bitch to treat, but they’re trying to repair his lungs right now. It’ll take longer to rebuild his tissue, though.”

Patting his face and neck with a napkin, Jake circled around to walk over to the kitchen. There was still ash and soot staining the ground, but you seemed to have done your best to clean up the place. The air was breathable now, thanks to his state-of-the-art air purifiers, but the sight of Jake One’s charred body on the floor sucked all the air out of Jake’s lungs. 

“I didn’t want to move him,” you said. “He was barely breathing after I put out the flames.”

You put out the flames, brought your nanobots in an attempt to revive Jake One, and you even cleaned up the place. Somewhere between all of that, you even managed to drag Jake to his bed. All while he had been completely useless and immobile. How long had he been asleep for to miss all of that? 

“Thank you,” he said. “Seriously, Y/N, I don’t know what would’ve happened if you weren’t here.”

“Probably wouldn’t have ended well.” Then, hesitantly, you looked toward the body and asked, “That’s not your intern… right?”

“No,” he responded quickly, shaking his head, relieved that it wasn’t beloved-by-all Sunoo that was caught in the lab fire. “No, it’s…” But how the fuck was he supposed to explain that the body was him? Or, well, a duplicate of him. Jake was going to sound like a madman and risk being reported, but he figured an explanation was what he owed you after everything you had done. “What I’m about to tell you is highly classified information. I’m dead serious. You can’t tell a soul—not even Jay.”

Jake was probably the biggest idiot in the world for trusting you so wholeheartedly, but there was no way his Mensa-certified supercomputer of a brain could think of any other way to get out of this. Instead of the usual nervous tapping of his foot, Jake settled for fidgeting with his pen in his pocket, pressing his thumb into the metal nub until it hurt.

He broke everything down for you as gently as he could. He started from the Prometheus Project, earning a lot of oohs and ahhs that didn’t exactly feel appropriate for the situation at hand, but the amazed look in your eyes morphed into one of dread when you realized what he was getting at.

“So, you’re telling me that body over there is you?” Your mouth was agape as you looked from Jake to Jake One. “That’s a clone?”

“He has all of my DNA and memories up until last night,” he answered, “but we have separate consciences, I think. I’m still me and he’s… I don’t know.”

Anyone else would be downright horrified by the confession, but you, who shared the same thirst for science as Jake did, simply breathed out, “That’s incredible.”

“I know, right?” Except for, like, Jake One turning into a human blowtorch. “I might have a breakthrough on my hands.”

“But Jake… none of this has been approved of, has it?”

“Uh… it’s sort of been approved.”

“What does that even mean?”

So, yes, Jake might’ve lied a little when he was getting funding for this project… and for, like, all the required paperwork that he submitted—but he still got approved to create something regardless! Sure, it wasn't what he actually proposed, but that was something he could easily smooth over with a quick chat. He also had to keep Sunoo in the dark for some aspects of the Prometheus Project, but that was mostly to protect his intern in the event that they faced any repercussions. To Sunoo’s knowledge, the Prometheus Prototype wasn’t going to be in its testing stage for at least another two years.

“On a scale of one to ten, I’d say it’s around a four? In terms of approval.”

You didn’t look impressed in the slightest. “I don’t know if this counts as working with human subjects, but there’s no way the Board’s gonna be happy about this.”

Jake set his lips in a grim line. “I know. I shouldn’t have done it.”

“Then why did you? You had to hook yourself up to that thing, didn’t you?” Disbelief clouded your face as you questioned him. Jake couldn’t even understand it himself; it was as if he was addicted to the finish line. “And you’re telling me not even Jay knows?”

His face soured. “Why would I tell Jay?”

“Well, he’s kind of your boss—and your friend.”

“Yeah, but I know Jay. He’s gonna want publicity on this the second he finds out, and I just know he’s gonna try to profit off of it. I don’t want his hands on any of this yet. It’s way too risky. I kept all this under wraps for a reason.”

You raised an interesting point, though. Jay was his friend—his closest one, at that. It was a friendship that started off like any other, but relationships often got muddled in new environments. Perhaps becoming an employee under his childhood friend led Jake to build up a wall between them, but more than that, the greed that wound up consuming Jay was what forced some distance. 

They were still close, of course, but there were times when Jake felt like his words had to be carefully chosen. Always guarding something, even if there was nothing to shield.

“It’s getting late,” he said, although he was reluctant to let you go. It wasn’t a war with his heart, though; Jake was afraid that you would run off to report him the second you walked out the door. “You should go home. I’m gonna stay here with Jake One. I’ve gotta run some tests and—”

“Actually,” you cut him off, “there’s something else.”

“Oh? Go on.”

“Let me be part of this,” you blurted out, unyielding in the way you stared Jake down.

You must’ve been out of your mind, proposing such a thing after witnessing his lab nearly exploding and his clone’s scorched body on the ground. He couldn’t weave together a coherent thought as he gawked at you.

He was in a dither over how to respond. "I don't think you understand what you're getting yourself into."

“I know it’s reckless, but I… I need to do something.”

“You do—you do more than enough, Y/N.”

“I wish it was enough for me to hear that from you. It’s just…” Your eyes went unfocused for a brief second before you blinked again. “I love what I do, but I don’t have a place here if I’m not constantly proving myself—and if I don’t have this, I don’t have anything.”

“That’s not true. You have—”

“Nothing,” you finished for him. “If I take off my lab coat, I have nothing. I don't get things handed to me because I’m friends with the CEO, Jake. I have to work ten times harder on Heeseung’s team just to get some recognition, and even then it’s just a shout-out during a meeting.” The light in your eyes dimmed a little. “You don’t understand the lengths I’d go to just to be recognized.”

He understood you. Maybe it wasn’t exactly the same, but the sentiment was still there.

It was a thought Jake hardly ever voiced aloud, even to himself, because he knew how damaging of a mentality it came with. 

If he couldn’t be perfect, he truly believed that was as good as not existing at all.

Jake remained quiet as you went on, “You need my nanobots, Jake. If something like this happens again, what’s gonna happen to your clone?”

You had a point there. Your nanobots were far too convenient of an offer for him to pass up, but there were just too many technicalities and dangers that he couldn’t allow you to waltz right into.

Yet, Jake was insatiable in his thirst for science, in such a way that simply couldn't be reasoned with. It tore open his chest worse than any cleaver.

He needed you, and you needed him. It was almost too perfect of a deal. 

So when Jake answered in full agreement, it was with all caution thrown to the wind.

Jake enjoyed simple pursuits of knowledge, too, such as reading. When he was a kid, waiting for his library assistant mother to finish up work so they could stop for burritos on the way home, Jake would sit criss-cross in the aisles and read whichever book piqued his interest. By the time he stopped hanging around the library, he’d read almost every book on the shelves. He liked the way words functioned as tools, each one working within some larger apparatus of thought to shape meaning itself.

He read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, of course. As someone with an ambition that rivaled Victor Frankenstein’s, the classic resonated strongly with Jake.

Genius and madness were two sides of the same coin, was what Jake gathered. Genius without restraint, bleeding into obsession, was what led Dr. Frankenstein to believe he could play God. 

Jake wouldn't make those same mistakes, not even if hubris clung to him like morning dew on grass. He wouldn't isolate himself from the world the way Victor Frankenstein did. He was tethered to his humanity. After all, now he had you on his team. You could keep him grounded. Keep him from obsessing over every calculation and formula that could perfect his machine.

Ever since he agreed to work with you—a little over a month ago—Jake calculated that it would indeed be possible to recover Jake One with your nanobots. You were working tirelessly to make sure your nanobots were running 24/7 for the clone’s recovery. Jake was honestly awed by how you could juggle that and being on Heeseung’s team. 

“Dr. Sim,” Sunoo called out to him, a little wary, “has this closet always been locked?”

Not only did Jake have to keep Jake One’s existence a secret from Sunoo, but he also had to hide the fact that Jake One almost died and was currently laying on the floor of one of his storage closets until his health stabilized. 

“Uh, yeah,” Jake said, getting up from where was seated on the floor, counting the spare parts he had leftover. “I lost the key, so I’m getting the lock replaced this weekend. Did you need something?”

“The drills—aren’t they always here?”

“Oh, right, um… guess we can’t use them today. How about you take the rest of the day off, then? Clock out when you feel like it and start your weekend early.”

“Wait, what? But—”

“Don’t all the interns go out for dinner on Fridays or something? You’ll actually be able to make it this time.”

“Well, I guess, but—” Whatever Sunoo was going to say, however, died on his tongue. He looked deep in thought before suddenly saying, “Dr. Sim, can I ask you something?”

“Shoot.”

“There’s this intern named Wonyoung… she’s, like, always here. The other interns say she’s always buried in work, so she can’t even get lunch with them or anything. She hasn’t even been able to show face at socials.” He hesitated, then asked, “Why aren’t I always here?”

Jake raised a brow. “Sounds miserable. You’re telling me you want that kind of schedule?”

“No, it’s just that she—I don’t know… it sounds like she’s actually needed.”

His eyes softened. “You are needed, Sunoo.”

Needed to go home, but Sunoo didn’t need to know that part.

“But I’m telling you to go out so you can get on good terms with the other interns,” Jake went on to say, and seeing how stiff his intern’s shoulders were, decided to let slip the words that he knew would put Sunoo at ease, “and, who knows? Maybe some of them will be your future coworkers. Better to build your connections now.”

Jake thought his response sounded promising enough without giving too much away, but Sunoo’s unease didn’t seem to let up. He mumbled a couple of words of understanding, trying to sound enthusiastic but failing miserably. Even after Sunoo left, Jake was trying to rack his brain to grasp what was so difficult to understand about his words.

But this was for the best. Sunoo had to be kept in the dark for the time being. 

“Oh, right,” Sunoo started again, handing Jake a yellow post-it note and offering an awkward laugh. “Uh, I think this is from Dr. L/N. What does she mean, Freakatron?”

The note—very straight to the point—read: I’ll be over tonight for the Freakatron 3000.

Unable to find a way to explain any of that to Sunoo (which he really should've because it just sounded like workplace harassment), Jake could only manage an expression that bordered on concern. 

“I really don’t know,” he answered.

He really couldn’t explain it to Sunoo—not now, at least. There were far more pressing matters on his mind, and his intern wasn’t someone that was going to be around for the long run, anyway. Once he was off the clock, Jake would work nonstop until you joined him. He even pulled a few strings to get Heeseung to ease up on letting you off sooner. 

Unfortunately, you were still working overtime. It was less overtime, though. 

Later that evening, Jake was having a wonderful snack break as he watched you tinker with your nanobots in his lab. He took a bite out of his jelly-filled doughnut (one of their coworkers left a dozen of them in the break room), chewing away mindlessly as he stared at the loose strand of hair that kept falling in your face. For a handful of your questions and comments, he would have to mumble some sort of acknowledgement around the thick dough in his mouth.

“Y/N,” he called once he wasn’t occupied with a mouthful of doughnut, “please stop calling my clone the Freakatron 3000.”

He pulled the thin sheet of yellow paper out of his pocket, flicking it in your direction. You grinned at the message and leaned back on your hands. Of course, Jake’s serious front was doing little to hide the fact that your smile was making him melt like butter.

“My intern found it for me,” he elaborated. “I can tell he’s been getting anxious.”

Your smile didn’t let up, though there was an inflection of concern when you asked, “Anxious? About what?”

“I think it’s about your intern, actually. Apparently you’ve been overworking her, and now Sunoo’s gotten himself all worried because he thinks he’s supposed to be in here twenty-four-seven.”

This managed to pull you from your monitor, dropping the grape-sized nanobots that you were toying around with. “Overworking? Wonyoung chooses to stay back.”

“I guess that’s what Sunoo wants, too, but I can’t get him involved in this.”

You shrugged. “You got me involved.”

“That’s completely different. I need you for this. With Sunoo… I had no choice but to take an intern, and he was the most promising applicant.”

“Jake,” you called suddenly, expertly ignoring his muddled confession. Your eyes were trained on your screen. “Jake, come here.”

When he walked over to you, leaning over to see what was on your monitor, Jake grew incredibly flustered when he realized your eyes were on him instead of what you wanted to show him.

“Oh, sorry, you've got a little something right”—you reached up to swipe away the crumbs of powdered sugar at the corner of his lip—“there.”

“Ah.” Jake’s heart slammed into his ribcage. “Thanks.” It took a few more seconds for Jake to realize that you were already saying something when he asked, “Sorry, repeat that?”

“Right there,” you enunciated, pointing at your display, right where it said “nanobot_repair”: 0.02 in the output. “There’s only two percent left. Jake One should be fully recovered by morning.”

The delight that shot up his spine quickly dissipated. “Shoot. I’m leaving for Hong Kong tonight.”

“Hong Kong? Is this for the same conference Heeseung’s going to?”

“Yes. I’m one of the speakers this year. It’s just for the weekend, but…” Jake pressed his lips into a thin line before patting down his pockets, feeling for his phone. “Let’s get your fingerprint registered in my security system before I leave today.”

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, someone needs to be here when Jake One’s awake—if you can come in tomorrow, that is.”

“Y-yeah, I can. It’s not a problem at all.”

“Great.”

“But you’re really okay with registering my fingerprint? And me coming here by myself? I mean, you’ve secured this place pretty heavily.”

“Yeah? Why wouldn’t I?” Jake cocked his head to the side. “When I agreed to work with you, I was putting my full trust in you. Plus, someone has to be here when Jake One wakes up. If it can’t be me, I’d rather it be you.”

A smile tugged at your lips, until it reached your eyes. “Thanks for trusting me, Jake.”

He must’ve been mental. He must’ve been absolutely mad.

But Jake’s heart was beating faster than hummingbird wings.

PROMETHEUS PROJECT / JAKE-001 LOG: 19:28:02 // Vitals are stable 19:28:31 // If everything goes well, Jake One should be up by tomorrow

The high glass ribs of the exhibition center disappeared into the bank of clouds that were rolling in from the harbor. Jake watched the Hong Kong skyline glittering from a dining room that overlooked the City of Victoria. He looked down at the cars that zipped by in ribbons, sipping from his flute of champagne while the room of industry experts chatted away around him. Jake only got his two minutes of solitude before he was approached by another group of scientists that bombarded him with questions about his new projects.

He couldn’t be bothered to pretend he was half-interested in what the guy speaking to him had to say, however. It was the same tired inventions that they wanted to hear praise for. The same recycled ideas that didn’t have any significant purpose in the world.

His first year here, Jake was buzzing with so much excitement that he couldn’t see what became evident now. 

Everyone in that room wanted something. Money, fame, a chance to get in Jake’s pants—whatever it was, they were all bloodthirsty for it. 

Jake couldn’t deny that he didn’t have hidden intentions of his own, but he was certain that his plans were greater by incomprehensible magnitudes. He didn’t need to suck up to big shots like the rest of them. The Prometheus Prototype would be revolutionary, unlike anything anyone’s ever seen before.

“Excuse me. I need to take this,” he interjected during a very meaningless conversation about sustainable architecture, to which everyone turned to him and gave polite smiles. Your caller ID flashed across his screen, and oh, what he’d give to be with you instead of all those boring people. 

He picked up and asked, “Is everything okay?”

“Jake,” you started, breathless. He cupped his hand over his other ear to block out all the noise around him. “He’s awake. He’s okay.”

He felt as if a massive boulder had just been lifted off him. Jake felt tears prick his eyes. 

It worked.

It worked. Your invention worked—and that meant the Prometheus Prototype could be tested properly.

When Jake returned to his office after an awfully tiresome weekend, he was so scatterbrained that he jumped upon seeing you and Jake One in his laboratory. His flight landed at 4:00 a.m. and he booked it to Park Industries straight from the airport. He figured he wouldn’t run into anyone because of how early it was, but there you were, hunched over your laptop while Jake One was attempting a handstand on the other side of the workspace.

Jake spluttered something incomprehensible, dumbfounded. “You—!” That streamline of speech trickled into nothingness. 

Jake One’s kick-off was unsuccessful. He straightened up to turn to Jake, looking smug while the sound of the door slamming reverberated throughout the room, and then he looked in your direction. “Told you he’d be speechless.”

With your gaze now fixed on Jake, with zero consideration for how you made his heart leap to his throat, you hummed absently. “Well, I guess you know yourself best, don’t you?” 

Your mouth curved into a smile and you stood up to make your way over to him. Something went fuzzy in Jake’s ears. Incredible. You were incredible. Hearing it over the phone was one thing, but seeing it in the flesh? You actually pulled it off… and Jake thought he could lean over and kiss you on the spot. 

“You look good,” you mused, reaching forward to straighten his loosely-fixed tie. You were so close that he could smell the powdery, floral notes of your perfume. The compliment almost flew over Jake’s head because his breath caught when you tightened the knot with careful hands. “How was your trip?”

Completely distracted by the sight of your fingers on his chest, Jake wound up spluttering some unintelligent response that he didn’t give you time to respond to. He immediately turned the question back on you.

“I really wasn’t sure you were telling the truth about creating a clone at first, but he’s so much like you. All the same memories, too. You actually created a fully functional duplicate of yourself!” you gushed, your scheming fingers trailing down the length of his necktie, even as you kept your eyes on him. “He’s had to be on IV drips because the repair process must’ve been really hard on his body—actually, he isn’t supposed to be doing handstands over there—I’ll go tell him to rest later—but I seriously couldn’t—”

Somewhere amidst that spiel, Jake let his duffel bag fall to the ground.

He gripped your face with both hands and pressed his lips to yours in a rush. There was, to his pleasant surprise, no fight in you as your mouth sank deep against his. He kissed you before—just once—but this was different. There was no shyness, no first time nerves; it was so all-consuming and familiar. It was almost desperate in the way your fingernails dug into his shoulders and he breathed sharply around intervals of mindlessly chasing your lips, longing for lungfuls of your scent. 

Jake pulled away with a groan, looking down at the floor because he knew he would be a wreck if he caught sight of your flushed face. You were still so close, your breath hot against his neck, and he wanted nothing more than to keep you there with him. A dangerous thought crossed his mind; he would shut himself away from the world to be with you, if he could, but that was exactly the path he told himself he wouldn’t go down.

“This is amazing,” he was finally able to start, speaking through shallow breaths, all the while peppering kisses all over your face. “This is all so… you’ve really outdone yourself, Y/N.”

You let out a breathless sort of laugh, flustered. “Please, I was just nervous the first time we kissed. When was that, two years ago?”

“No—I mean, that applies, too—but I’m talking about your nanobots.” He pressed a kiss to your ear and ran his hands down to your hips. “We can really make this work.”

When he met your gaze, your eyes were filled with such sincerity that he nearly leaned closer and kissed you again. 

“I think so, too.”

And when Jake took you out to dinner that night, he reserved a private room for you two to celebrate the milestone. Unlike the usual company formalities, however, dinner ended with a lot more kissing and an invite back to Jake’s penthouse.

The next day, when his ceiling-high windows breathed in morning light, Jake’s eyes fluttered open to see your bare body bathed in the sunlit glow. 

Strange. Jake wasn’t one to believe that concepts like “true love” existed, but as he watched your chest rise and fall, he couldn’t help but wonder that maybe God didn’t play dice. Maybe you two were puzzle pieces born to fit each other. 

Maybe love was never something Jake needed to solve. 

It wasn’t the sort of equation he could piece together with integers and formulas. Rather, if he thought deeper about what an equation was in the first place, the obvious answer was: two mathematical expressions that were equal to each other. That would only mean that love wasn’t an equation; it was the solution—two expressions, possibly structured without much cohesiveness, finding a balance together.

He pulled the covers back over you and pressed a kiss to your hair, careful not to wake you because he felt bad keeping you up until dawn. Jake could’ve laid beside you forever, committing the fine details of your features to memory, but too soon did he feel the sharp sting of time that prompted him to get ready for work. 

PROMETHEUS PROJECT / JAKE-001 LOG: 07:19:33 // Jake One fucking died 

It happened like this: Jake walked into his laboratory, far too excited about his duplicate being successfully resuscitated; he found the space to be eerily quiet when he called out to the clone, so he went looking around the floor to see if Jake One had been sleeping; and there was his double, on the ground, right next to the prototype—lifeless. 

His limbs were all folded under him, stiff and cold, and his neck was bent at an awkward angle. It was almost as if he died… doing a handstand. Jake’s blood thrummed in his ears. Then it was all too much for him to think about, and with zero preamble, he burst into hysterical laughter. It was ridiculous—so ridiculous—to think that a fucking handstand was the reason his clone met a tragic ending. 

It was like Jake had been shot straight through the heart in a single blow, and his manic laughing died down when he realized tears were streaming down his face.

There was a dead body on the floor.

His dead body on the floor.

A prick of dread started at the base of his neck.

It crept across his skull. It trickled down his spine. It spread through each limb.

Feeling the world slide out from under his feet, Jake pressed his hand to his mouth, swallowing back a sickening wave of nausea. Not a single helpful thought ran through his head—just a mantra of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!—until his brain was about to explode from the stress. 

Fumbling for his phone, Jake found himself dialing your number with shaky hands. One hand came up to fist in his hair as he waited for you to pick up.

“Hey. What’s up?” you answered, and he could hear the wind whipping in the background. You must’ve been on your way to Park Industries.

Jake’s throat felt like sandpaper, but he swallowed, trying to dislodge his heart from his throat. “Y/N, you, uh…” He sucked in a shaky breath. “Your nanobots can’t bring people back from the dead, right?”

“No. They still have to be… um… sorry, there was someone walking by—they have to be alive.” There was another pause, then you ventured, “Why? Did something happen?” 

“I-it’s just—I don’t know how to—”

“Shit—sorry for cutting you off—Wonyoung’s already waiting for me. I’ll be there in ten minutes, Jake. I don’t know what’s going on, but if it’s serious, you should probably tell your intern to take the day off.”

And you hung up.

Okay.

Okay.

Jake could do that. It was a simple task, wasn’t it? Look away from the corpse, message Sunoo, wait for you. Look away from the corpse, message Sunoo, wait for you. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse.

Why couldn’t he simply look away?

His chest heaved against the weight of panic pushing down on him. Nothing dulled the horror that spread across his chest like a thick, murky fog. That was his face. His face that shouldn’t have been looking back at him, slack-jawed and empty. 

Jake stumbled backward, shaking all over, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off Jake One. He never thought about what it would be like to see his own dead body, and it made him feel like he was peeling away from reality, detaching himself layer-by-layer. 

That was when you burst into the lab.

“Jake?” you asked, frantic. He could hear your footsteps against the epoxy flooring. “Jake! What the hell hap—” You stopped short when you saw Jake One’s still body on the ground, crumpled into himself so helplessly. “Oh my god. Oh my god, he’s…”

“Dead,” Jake finished for you, his own voice sounding foreign and hollow in his ears. “Fuck.”

“Oh my god.”

“I know.”

“I think I’m gonna throw up.”

He inhaled sharply. “I called you here to help.”

“And I will,” you hissed, “but holy shit, Jake! What is this, manslaughter? Negligence? Is he… is he even considered one of us?”

“One of us?”

“You know—a human.”

“Of course he is!” Jake’s words ran like water, spilling out with any proper thought. “Look at him! That’s my face, Y/N!”

You looked uneasy. “Jake, but he’s not…” You stopped, re-evaluating your choice of words before you continued, “This is the first time someone’s replicated human life. We don’t have laws for this. If he’s considered a human, then fuck, we’re screwed. But if he’s not, then, well…” You didn’t finish that sentence, much to Jake’s relief because he was already sick to his stomach at the thought of dealing with a dead body. 

Jake felt torn. They were walking blind on a legal tightrope, but his whole goal was replicating human life, so why would he discredit himself by considering his creation as anything less than himself? On the other hand, to consider his clone as equal to him would mean that Jake had blood on his hands. Human blood on his hands. 

He didn’t want to keep thinking about it, though. Any moment spent thinking about Jake One only let that cold fear sink its jaws deeper.

“He’s human,” was the only stubborn conclusion Jake could come to. “He has my memories, my DNA, my fucking face—he’s human. He’s not some lab rat.”

A long-suffering sigh slipped from your lips. “Okay, sure, let’s say he is human. That means you and I are in a closed lab with a dead guy who doesn’t exist on any record, and we’re the only witnesses. No one else can even prove he was ever alive.”

“What are you saying?” Jake asked, but he already had an awful feeling he knew what you were getting at.

“We hide the body… and move on.”

He was shaking his head before you could even get through your words. “That’s psychotic, Y/N.”

“It’s the only option we’ve got! What, do you want us to lose our jobs and go to prison? And it’s not just that, Jake—they’re gonna shut down our projects. They’re gonna take away your prototype, and they’re gonna take away my nanobots—to take all the credit for themselves, probably! We’re getting locked up and left to rot while someone else’s name is all over our work.” Then, pointedly, you tacked on, “Probably Jay’s.”

“That’s quite the scenario you’ve created in your head.”

You gave him a grim look, steely-eyed. “Yeah? And how are you so sure that’s not exactly what’s gonna happen? Maybe it won’t be the case for you, but I haven’t even gotten my funding approved for years now, Jake! This company doesn't give a shit about me. You don’t get it. I've watched my female coworkers drop like flies here, while people like Heeseung get promoted doing half the work a woman does.” You jabbed a finger at his chest. “But you… you shouldn't get too comfortable, either. You think Jay’s gonna bail you out of this one?”

That was, in fact, exactly what Jake thought. He decided he wouldn’t vocalize it out of spite.

And since Jake's situation was such a laugh that the universe thought it would be hilarious to doom him even further, a knock came at his door seconds later—the distinct ‘shave and a haircut’ pattern that Jay always used.

Your eyes widened. “You didn’t send your intern home?”

“It’s not him,” Jake replied (admittedly, he also did forget to message Sunoo), “it’s just Jay. I’ll tell him right now’s not a good time.” He approached the door and pressed the intercom. “Fuck off for a bit, Jay. I’m busy.”

“Jake,” came Jay’s voice from the speaker, cold and stern, “let me in right now.”

Ignoring the bewildered look you were giving him, Jake scoffed. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“You want me to explain a two-letter word to you?”

“Go ahead, seeing as you’re struggling with ‘let me in,’ smartass.”

Before Jake could press the intercom button again to fire back another rebuttal, you grabbed his wrist to stop him. 

“You’re making yourself look even more suspicious,” you said through gritted teeth. “I’ll hide the body—just stall him ‘til then.”

The body—not Jake One, but the body. It sent a shiver down Jake’s spine.

“But the machine!” he protested weakly. You gave him a knowing look, as if to say it was about time Jay found out. Or maybe you were banking on Jake lying through his teeth for that, too. Whatever it was, he wasn’t sure he was ready. “Okay, fine, but be quick.”

“Jake, open this door right now,” Jay warned again, “or I’m using the master key.” 

That, of course, wasn’t going to happen. Jay entrusted the master key to Jungwon, who safeguarded it closely because the CEO had butterfingers. The idiot also kept forgetting that he left it with his personal assistant. Still, Jake pressed his body against the door in a completely unnecessary attempt to keep it shut. 

“Wait—please, just—just wait a moment. I’ll come outside myself.”

“Too late. I’m pulling out the key! Shit, this is my credit card… oh, wow, I thought I lost my Amex… receipts, receipts, license… oh, sweet, it’s my punch card for that frozen yogurt place! I’ve been looking for this everywhere! Phenomenal froyo, seriously. Hey, Jake, you remember that store with the really good froyo, right?”

Jake promptly decided to ignore him and asked, “Um, so did you find the key yet?”

“Oh, right.” He was able to count around a minute of silence until Jay confirmed, “No.”

“Well, have a good day.”

“Jake,” Jay started, sharper this time, “your intern brought something worrying to my attention, so I’d advise you to open up before we have to escalate this.” Jake’s blood went cold at his words, and he turned to you like a deer caught in headlights. Your eyes were saucer-wide just the same. “I didn’t bring Jungwon, just so you know. It’s just me.” 

This was it. Sunoo reported him, Jay was going to find out about Jake One, Jake was going to be kicked to the curb, and you—

But, oh, Jake’s brain supplied as he scanned the perimeter, you hid the body. 

He just had to get through this one conversation with Jay before his friend picked up on a faint whiff of rotting flesh. Jake would just have to shed his skin of shame and lie his way out of this mess—the same way he did for all those board meetings. 

He smoothed his sweaty palms down his pants before opening the door. Jay, wearing sunglasses indoors as one from his tax bracket would—a serious inconvenience, really, because Jake couldn't tell where he was looking—shook his head disapprovingly as he walked into the laboratory. You stood off to the side, wringing your wrists.

“Jake, I…” Jay sighed and tutted. “Jeez. I don’t even know where to start.”

“I don’t know what Sunoo told you, but—”

“You should’ve told me what was going on,” Jay cut him off. “I’m not just your boss. I’m your friend, too. I’m supposed to be here for you, man. You can push your intern away—who cares about that guy, y’know?—but you don’t have to push me away.” He gave Jake a calculating once-over before he continued, “I did wonder, why’s he spending more time with Dr. L/N than me? Why her? So inconspicuous, so unassuming”—(this was when your jaw dropped, almost comically, and Jake had to put a hand on your shoulder to keep you from lunging at Jay for his… cavalier choice of words)—“much like a shadow. Or maybe a cloud rolling by, blending in with all the other—”

“Alright, I think you’ve made yourself clear. Can you get to the point now?” you interrupted, scornful.

Jay wore an almost convincing look of shock. “See? I didn’t even notice she was here. Bless her, what an underwhelming presence.” He promptly ignored your offended gasp and continued, “Anyway, I went ahead and booked us a guy’s trip—one week in the Swiss Alps. You can make up for last year’s embarrassing ski trip. Oh, and actually, it’ll be four days, not a week. Jungwon nearly had a heart attack when I asked him to clear my schedule for five days, so I just settled for a Thursday and Friday sometime next month.”

Now Jake was sure they were on completely different pages. He knew his friend through and through, so it was clear as day that this show of faux concern was just a ploy for Jay to entertain himself.

“You threatened me and insulted Y/N,” started Jake, slowly, “because you want to do a guy’s trip?” 

“Hm, yes, exactly… I don’t like your phrasing, but that’s the gist of it, yeah.”

“You used my intern as leverage!” Jake exclaimed. Jay only snickered in response to that, which made Jake feel partly irritated and partly relieved that Sunoo hadn’t grown that tired of him. “So… he never said anything to you, then?”

“Not to me—or, well, at least not directly.”

Jake’s eyebrows furrowed. “Not directly? What do you mean?” 

You peered over Jake’s shoulder when Jay handed over his phone. 

r/antiwork • 2 hr. ago jack_of_some_trades

HELP! my boss HATES my guts and wants me to DIE

i (23 m, 5’10”) scored the craaaziest post-op so i thought i was pretty set for life ??? but now i think it’s time for me to start thinking about a career switch and maybe moving to a different country because it’s become quite obvious to me that my boss regrets taking me as an intern and is waiting to fire me :/ let me explain:

so, it all started when we were working on this super top secret thing together. can’t really explain what it is exactly but let’s just call it our prototype. at first everything was going good but now he’s been pushing me away and letting me take days off. isn’t that REALLY BAD like I’M GETTING BLACKLISTED FROM THE COMPANY level BAD???? i thought the prototype was like…… our thing :((( well it’s mostly his thing but i’m a big part of it too!!! i think?? i’m his only intern!!! (could he be seeing another intern behind my back...? can someone tell me if this is a thing that happens) my friends say it’s normal that an intern doesn’t have much to do but getting days off feels so weird…. i thought us interns weren’t supposed to be treated with kindness or given freedom so i don’t like this at all

also. he said something very concerning. i mentioned how i felt like i wasn’t being given enough work and he said he wants me to “get on good terms with the other interns” because “maybe some of them will be your future coworkers” …. ???? is he telling me to make connections to prepare for unemployment???

idk if i’m the problem but i want this to work out really bad. is our communication the problem here?? are we just growing distant because we don’t spend enough time together?? should i ask him to get dinner or something?? please give me advice or just let me know if i’m overreacting :( 

tldr: boss wants me to kill myself

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BigShotCEO55 • 1h ago Oh yeah he 100% hates your ass

jack_of_some_trades OP • 55m ago u think so ? :(( do u think it’s weird if i text him about it BigShotCEO55 • 47m ago Not at all. I think that’s very normal

BigShotCEO55 • 46m ago Also ngl I didn’t read any of that

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jake grumbled. “Can you please stop harassing my intern on your Reddit burner? This is so obviously you.”

“But he’s so fun to mess with,” Jay said, with clearly no intention of stopping. 

“How do you even know that’s Sunoo’s account?” you asked.

With a shrug, Jay answered, “I like doing wellness checks on my employees.” 

Translation: He was so curious about Jake taking in an intern that he found Sunoo’s Linktree through his Instagram. Apparently, along with the Reddit account discovery, Sunoo also streamed PUBG to his 15,000 Twitch subscribers when he wasn’t losing his mind over work. 

Just when Jake thought he successfully evaded all grounds of suspicion, Jay followed up by asking, “So, what’s this prototype he’s talking about, anyway?”

The prototype was, in fact, the massive hunk of metal that was right behind Jake.

“Just something we’ve, uh, been working on. Nothing crazy,” he answered, stiffening, “but, anyway, the Alps—sure, I’ll go.”

It was a promising attempt at changing the topic, but Jake almost winced from how horribly unconvincing his delivery was.

Jay seemed to mull this over, which was odd considering he was the one who proposed it. “Hm… okay then,” he replied, in a peculiar way that left Jake feeling uneasy. “I’ll have Jungwon send you the details later.” His hand froze over the door handle, just as he was about to open it. “Oh, you should really open up a window in here, by the way. It smells like something died in here.”

Jake could hear his thundering heart now. He managed a courteous smile.

“Mm. Will do.”

You and Jake remained perfectly still even after the door shut behind Jay. It took a few more moments for Jake to find his voice again. 

“That was close,” you breathed out. 

“Too close,” Jake said. He half sat, half wilted into a nearby chair. “He’s definitely suspicious of us, but I don’t think he’ll act on it.”

“We can’t bank on that. We need to get the body out of here before anyone else notices.” You started to pace now, walking back and forth from the prototype to Jake. “What do you think we should do? Stuff him in a bag or something?”

Jake winced at the very thought. “That’s vile.”

“Well, we have to do something.” 

You resumed your incessant pacing, and Jake could only bury his face in his hands. His brain was absolutely scrambled and the last thing he wanted to think about was hiding a body. 

“I do have an idea, actually,” you said after a while, and you were nervously biting at your fingernails when Jake looked up again, “but you’re gonna have to trust me on this. Like, really trust me on this.”

Wary, he asked, “Well, what is it?”

“Wonyoung—my intern—her dad owned a crematorium, and—”

“No.”

“Jake—”

“No! Y/N, come on… are you serious? We’re already in deep shit and you wanna get your intern involved in this? She’s a—she’s a kid.” 

“She's not a kid,” you said, “and I know she’d do anything for this.”

“That doesn’t mean we can just—” Jake tugged a hand through his unruly hair, frustrated. “Look, it’s already fucking me up that this even happened in the first place. It feels even worse that I had to involve you. Asking me to let an intern handle the dirty work? I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

“Jake.” You placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed—too firm to be comforting. “This isn’t about forgiving ourselves. It’s about cleaning up this mess before anyone else finds out—before it ruins us. This isn’t the time for your moral high ground.”

For the first time, Jake thought he was almost a little scared of you.

He could feel a pulse in his neck start to throb. Then it spread to his skull until it was pounding.

“This is—no, this is too much for me, Y/N.” His voice came out as a breath, and he felt like a bout of anxiety was oncoming. 

Your eyes softened as you bent down in front of him, placing your hands on his knees. “Jake, there’s nothing morally wrong about medical advancement. This—yes, this sucks, but think about how many more lives you can save with your prototype when it’s complete. You have to understand that there are gonna be… bumps in the road like this.”

Then, you took Jake’s face in your hands and pressed your lips to his—and although kissing you was everything he ever wanted, your touch suddenly felt colder. Instead of making his heart beat faster, his blood ran cold.

“Do you trust me?” you mumbled the words against his lips, and he gave a half-hearted nod, though his head was elsewhere. “Then stay put. Let me handle this.”

PROMETHEUS PROJECT / JAKE-001 LOG: 07:43:18 // We’re going to try again 07:43:23 // END

However Jang Wonyoung managed to dispose of the body undetected, Jake was left completely in the dark about it. He was sort of in a rut, with his head not exactly screwed tight on his shoulders, and he kept staring off blankly into space and losing sight of what he was supposed to be doing at work.

You were all go, go, go about the prototype and your nanobots, but he was still so shaken up about Jake One dying like that. How could he not be traumatized? It was like watching his own self die in such a lonely, horrific way. But even though you were right by his side, he felt like he couldn’t talk to anyone about it. He couldn’t even explain how he felt to himself.

Every time he looked in the mirror, it was like seeing that corpse staring blankly ahead. Jake couldn’t help it; his mind became a centrifuge, spinning the image of Jake One in his head until he couldn’t separate himself from his clone. 

He tried to anchor himself in the facts: I’m the original. (Or a fraud?) I’m the one who’s alive. (Was he?) I’m the real Jake Sim. (Prove it.)

He turned his personhood into a resource—something expendable, dilutable—and now he was paying the price.

Maybe all of this was a mistake.

Some days, looking at the Prometheus Prototype just made him feel sick. How was one supposed to preserve the very thing that was devouring them?

“I keep thinking,” he told you one day, flipping a wrench in his hand, “if I just… just calibrated the machine differently, maybe he wouldn’t have died like that.”

You two were holed up in his lab yet again, working into the late hours of the night. Jake was starting to feel time blur together at this point. The days were loose sand slipping through his fingers. It had only been a week since they cleaned up the incident with Jake One, but it felt like Jake lived through a lifetime.

You, on the other hand, held yourself together quite well. Maybe it was because someone had to, but Jake couldn’t help but feel uneasy about how calm you seemed on the surface. 

“You have to stop thinking about it. What’s done is done,” you replied before swiveling your chair around to face him. “Look at me, Jake. You didn’t die. Your clone did. And you aren’t a clone. You’re a real person—flesh and blood.”

“But it felt like seeing my own dead body.”

“That’s your problem, Jake. You not being able to separate your identity from your experiments is clouding your judgement. You don’t have to feel this way.”

Anger rose like bile in his throat. “And you wouldn’t feel that way at all? Watching a version of yourself die?”

“I’m not saying that,” you said, trying to conciliate by placing a hand over his. “I think it’d be horrifying, of course, but I’d remind myself of what’s real and what’s not.” Something about the way you classified Jake One made Jake feel rather uncomfortable, but he stayed quiet as you continued, “You can’t test something just once. We’re gonna have to do this again, and again, and again. I need you to be ready for that. If you let yourself get like this after every experiment, then you’re gonna break before your prototype does.”

“So, what—I’m just supposed to become numb to it?”

“I mean—”

He threw his wrench to the ground, and it resounded throughout the lab. Regret immediately washed over him when you flinched.

“That’s bullshit, Y/N.”

You gave him a hard look. “Understand what you saw wasn’t you. It wasn’t a person. Think of it as a lab mouse—a sophisticated one, sure, but a lab mouse nonetheless. Its only purpose is to be experimented and tested on. You don’t mourn a lab mouse, Jake.”

Jake—who had, in fact, mourned lab mice in the past—sat with your words for a moment. 

“And… if it bothers you so much,” you said, quieter now, “isn’t that more of an incentive to perfect your machine? Then you won’t have to watch any more of them die.”

He did want to perfect the prototype. It was more than just a moral crisis over seeing his own eyes with the light sucked out of them; if Jake’s machine was wired properly, then none of this would’ve happened. He simply wasn’t good enough. That scared him more than anything else.

“Watch them die… it’s like…” Jake trailed off, trying to find sense in his own words. “No, it was always when I wasn’t there… like I couldn’t be there to stop him. The fire, the stupid fucking handstand—his instincts were way off.” His eyes sharpened with clarity. “That’s why there was abnormal activity in his amygdala—his brain didn’t register danger properly! That’s why he was so… so…” He tried for a word that sounded humane enough, but nothing came to mind except: “So defective.”

He wondered if you would be satisfied with that verbiage. Him implied a person, but defective implied that Jake One wasn’t ever really a person. You made it very clear about what the clones were not, and judging by the look on your face, it seemed like you were finally satisfied that you and Jake seemed to be on the same page.

He still wasn’t sure that he was with you, but all that mattered was that you believed he was.

“Okay,” you said, a hint of encouragement pressing into those syllables. A smile was growing on your face. “Okay, so we can fix that, right?”

“I mean, we can try.”

“And you know that it might not be an immediate fix, right?” You paused, as if choosing your next words carefully. “It might take several attempts. You have to be ready for that.”

Meaning: Several failures. Several deaths.

Several bodies that Jake would have to grit his teeth through.

He swallowed thickly. “Right… I guess I’m just gonna have to push through.”

In the following three months, Jake only entered a depressive episode about five times. He puked his guts out double that amount, woke up in a cold sweat from bone-chilling nightmares almost every night, and was plagued with panic attacks about every other day.

Pushing through indeed proved difficult for him.

(He did begrudgingly go on that weekend retreat to the Alps. It was quite nice since Jay didn’t ask about the prototype once. Jake unfortunately ate shit on the slopes multiple times, which, according to Jay, didn’t make up for their last embarrassing ski trip.)

In other news, Jake-002 came to life.

Jake used the word “born” at first, but he could tell that it made you feel uncomfortable, like you thought he was going to get too deep in his head and spiral again. So, he settled for calling Jake Two sentient instead. It was disconnected enough of a word for your eyes to brighten at.

And he liked it when you looked at him like that. He liked a lot of things about you. Too much for him to dwell on how frustrated you made him that day—not that he would ever admit that. Maybe it was stupid and selfish, but Jake was okay with burying all those negative feelings so he could enjoy the bliss of your company. 

Then, two weeks later after he was formed from machine and flesh, Jake Two intelligently decided to get his bread out of the toaster with a fork, of all things. It was a bit disheartening that a clone with Jake’s brains would think that was a good idea, but Jake Two electrocuted himself (nearly taking the whole power unit out with him) and died tragically.

Jake tried very, very hard to pretend like it didn’t affect him. It did—deeply—but he swallowed down the nauseating bile that rose up his throat and let you deal with it. 

It was so wrong to leave something so sinful for a mere intern to clean up, but Jang Wonyoung never argued back. Every time Jake passed by her in the hallway, she put on a calm front, as if she were completely unbothered by what wicked deeds they were making her commit. He so badly wanted to ask her if she, too, felt like the guilt was eating her alive, but they always passed by each other without a word.

It went on like that. Jake Three, Jake Four, Jake Five—they were all getting themselves killed for ridiculous reasons. It then started to frustrate Jake that he simply couldn’t figure out how to fix the one thing that was screwing up all his clones. What did that say about him as a scientist? He was supposed to put an end to all these pointless deaths, but now it felt like all the corpses weighing down on him were getting heavier and heavier. 

By the time Jake-012 came out of the Prometheus Prototype, Jake was almost convinced that he, too, was one of his doppelgangers that somehow managed to outlive him, that he succumbed to all the pain in his heart along the way. 

At that point, he stopped hoping for them to stay alive. He knew their fate would catch up to them soon enough, and it was almost sadistic of him to keep the experiments going. Still, you were relentless with your pursuit of artificial life—more than he was.

Jake 12 had a much more innocent personality compared to the other Jakes—always smiling big and wide as you poked and prodded at him, always warming up to Jake despite being a shadow of the original. He stuck around a lot longer, too. That was why it broke Jake’s heart a little more when he walked into the lab one morning to see Jake 12 lying in a pool of his own vomit.

“Oh, man,” your voice sighed out from behind him. “I liked him a little more than the others, too.”

Jake just stared blankly ahead. “Yeah, same.”

“Well, I texted Wonyoung and she’ll… oh, Jake.” When Jake thought he simply just started tuning you out, your hands found his face and lifted his chin up. “Ah, you’re crying. Here, wait—” You pulled out a tissue from your front pocket and started dabbing at his wet cheeks. “You haven’t reacted like this in a while.”

Not in front of you, at least. He saved his breakdowns for the days he isolated himself.

“I’m fine,” he said, grabbing hold of your wrists and pushing them down. “Let’s just get him out of here before Sun—”

“What a mess.”

Jake jolted before he turned around, and you quickly stepped in line with him to hide the very obvious dead body behind you two. 

It wasn’t Sunoo, though. It was Wonyoung.

Jake’s mind was too preoccupied with Jake 12 to wonder how she could’ve possibly gotten inside.

Wonyoung always looked impassive and closed-off whenever Jake saw her, even though she had delicate features that could come off as alluring if only she smiled a little more. This was the first time he was seeing raw emotion on her face—one that was stripped of her usual feigned politeness—and there was resignation settling in her eyes, like this was simply an added weight to an already heavy ledger.

Both of them—you and Wonyoung—looked composed in the way seasoned criminals did when they’d crossed the line far too many times for the guilt to settle in. Why was it that Jake couldn’t manage to be the same?

Floundering for words, Jake started, “This… this isn’t—”

“You don’t have to be nervous. I called for her,” you assured, though Jake felt none of it. Your hand squeezed his shoulder hard. “We both have meetings throughout the morning. We can’t afford to call out, but Wonyoung can take care of it, okay?”

He didn’t know. He really didn’t. What was the right thing to do? He couldn’t tell anymore. How could he just keep going with his day? Maybe he could die? Would that be any different?

What if, came the horrifying thought in the midst of his brain fog, I’m not even the original Jake anymore?

No, he was. He knew he was. He had all his memories, but… they all technically had his memories, didn’t they? They all had memories of the hardships he overcame, the successes he worked for, the moments he cherished—everything that made him human.

At this point, did it even matter who the real Jake was?

Wonyoung dropped the duffel bag onto the floor as she stepped aside to tie her hair up. It seemed almost procedural for her, the way she headed straight to the closet for the cleaning supplies. So familiar with the space, despite Jake never having seen her in it. 

And then, a new voice cut through the air: “Jesus fucking Christ.”

Sunoo’s voice caught Jake completely off-guard. When did the door swing open? Had Jake just been completely out of it? That must’ve been the case, given the state he was in. The intern stood there, still as a statue, his very breath stolen from him. His eyes drifted from Jake, to you, to the corpse on the ground, and then to Wonyoung.

“You’re—you’re early,” Jake stammered out, sniffling sharply to get rid of the burn in his nose and throat.

“There’s a—that’s a—there’s… there’s… oh my fucking god, I’m gonna be sick.” Sunoo clamped a hand over his mouth, moaning feebly at the mere sight. He was pale as a sheet, and Jake was afraid that he’d collapse any second now. 

“Sunoo, this isn’t—”

“Oh my god, I’m going to prison. We’re all going to prison. I’m gonna be held responsible by association and no one’s ever going to hire me!” The intern started hyperventilating by now, pacing back and forth in unsteady strides.

This time, you tried, “Sunoo, please calm down and try to understand.”

“Understand? Dr. L/N, respectfully, don’t tell me to understand! How could I just—how could I ignore—”

Jake stepped forward and grabbed Sunoo’s shoulders, grimacing when the boy flinched and froze in place. “Sunoo, she’s right. You need to relax. None of us are going to prison. I’m not gonna let that happen to you.”

“I knew it all along,” Sunoo said, letting out a curt and brittle laugh. From this distance, it looked like his pupils were shaking as he tried to keep himself together. “I knew this was happening right under my nose. I respect you a lot, Dr. Sim, but I’m not stupid. I saw this coming ages ago.”

Eyebrows pulling into a frown, Jake pulled back. “You knew? Since when?”

“Ever since you started letting me take days off, or you just didn’t have me come into the lab.”

Jake sucked in a sharp breath.

Then, Sunoo said, “You want Wonyoung as your intern, don’t you? Not me.” As if that wasn’t bizarre enough of a conclusion, he appended that with, “That’s why you told me to get off early and meet the other interns after I told you about how I felt about her. You just wanted her for yourself.”

Okay, no.

Jake wanted Sunoo to shut up for two reasons: the first being that the intern was completely and utterly wrong, and the second being that Wonyoung now looked extremely put off because Sunoo just made Jake sound like a total creep.

Maybe something was wrong with Sunoo, too, because this was an extremely odd complaint considering there was the stench of death in the air and a rotting corpse before them. He supposed there was madness that came with a certain level of genius, but this was just strange. Why was everyone so seemingly unaffected aside from him?

“No… no-no-no-no-no-no-no.” Denial spilled from his tongue like a torrent. Jake shook his head vehemently and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders again, gripping firmly. “Look, Sunoo, it’s true I’ve been hiding a lot from you about this project, but that was only because I didn’t want to drag you into anything dangerous, or something that would mess up the future you want for yourself.”

“There’s a dead freaking body in the lab!” Sunoo spluttered out. “It sounds like it’s already pretty fucked up to me!” There was a glint of betrayal in his eyes that pierced right through Jake’s chest. “That body looks… it looks exactly like you. You tested the prototype yourself, didn’t you? You told me it wouldn’t be in the testing stage for years. You just sent me off on useless errands while you worked on the whole thing yourself. You had me thinking I was part of something big, but the whole time I was just the useless intern they send out for coffee runs.”

What was Jake supposed to do? What was he supposed to say? What would make this situation any better? His blood was rushing hot in his head now, like his ears had a pulse of their own. Everything Jake had said to Sunoo up until now, despite believing he chose the right words, had proven to not reassure his intern in the slightest. 

He was scared he was going to mess up again. He knew he wasn’t cut out for this. He never should’ve let Jay convince him to take in an intern, so why did he? Because he thought he could be a mentor of sorts? That was a laughable thought. Jake was sure he had a lot to offer in terms of knowledge, but he was never one to share it. Moreover, he didn’t exactly know how to share it.

His thoughts were thrown into a maddening spiraling. Getting out of hand. Like a void swallowing him whole. The kind of mentor Sunoo needed wasn’t him, was what Jake thought before he turned his head to glance in your direction, but you. 

What would you do in his shoes? That was simple. Even though Jake hadn’t seen your intern around as much, Wonyoung was practically ubiquitous. You made sure she was deeply involved—so much that it almost scared Jake that he might’ve been blind to what else Wonyoung knew—but there was a trust between you and your intern that he hadn’t seen with anyone else. That was perhaps why Wonyoung was so successful, so well-known among this year’s batch of interns.

It was probably why Sunoo was so insecure about her.

Maybe all Jake needed to do was be brave and trust his intern, whether that was blindly or confidently. Maybe that was what a true mentor was supposed to do.

“You wanna be part of something big?” Jake asked. “Then I need you to do exactly as I say.”

Sunoo supposed he asked for this—begged for it, even—but he was starting to really regret putting his foot down in front of his boss.

He was in the car with Wonyoung, sitting in the passenger’s seat and doing his best to ignore the stuffed duffel bag on the floor of the back seat. He kept glancing nervously back at it, as if the corpse would come back to life, pry the zipper open, and strangle Sunoo from behind. 

It wasn’t like he was in the right state of mind when he blew up in front of you and Dr. Sim. He just didn’t know how to react when he saw the dead clone and Wonyoung in the lab, and it felt like everything had come crashing down on him. If he knew that Jake was going to task him with getting rid of the evidence, he would’ve just resigned then and there.

Or, would he? He ultimately had the choice, right? It wasn’t like he was under the impression that Dr. Sim would try to silence him forever to take his secret to the grave. Sunoo wasn’t really thinking at all back then. He just went with it because he was so pathetically desperate to prove himself. 

Wonyoung was driving down a long stretch of deserted road, with nothing but trees around them for miles. It almost felt like they would reach a dead end eventually, or they’d have to drive into the thick of the woods to find a path that led elsewhere. Neither of them dared speak to each other—and Wonyoung, in true psychopath fashion, drove without any music. (On second thought, music probably wouldn't be appropriate for this situation.)

Finally, off to the side in a clearing, there was an abandoned crematorium that looked weathered down from years of age. Sunoo wasn’t enthusiastic about going inside, but Wonyoung didn’t look the least bit hesitant as she turned off-road and parked by a couple of trees. He had so many questions for her, but judging by the way she swiftly avoided interacting with him, her glossy hair bouncing as she got out of the car, Sunoo knew he wouldn’t be able to sate his curiosity.

“Get the bag,” she ordered. That was the first thing to come from her mouth since they left Park Industries.

A dead body, with its limbs broken and crammed into a duffel bag, proved difficult to carry. Sunoo ended up dragging it by its handles, although he had to pause every several feet when the load inside shifted, forcing him to readjust his grip. It was bad enough that he had to haul it along grass and dirt, but once he got to the steps, Sunoo tried to block out the dense thuds as nylon dragged against the stone. 

This all seemed routine for Wonyoung with how she unlocked the door and led Sunoo inside, down the hallways and past several doors. How many clones had they gone through by now? Why was this what they had to resort to? 

It was only when Sunoo saw the cremator that there was some acknowledgement for the person that once inhabited the weight he had dragged this far. Was he considered a person? If he was living—flesh and blood—he had to be one, right? 

It would be a much more comfortable thought if the clone wasn’t deemed a real human. Then, this would just be a simple cleanup. It would be like disposing of roadkill. Sunoo wouldn’t have to deal with that pit of anxiety in his stomach, or his shaking hands as he unzipped the bag (with great effort, as it kept getting caught on the corpse’s flesh), and he wouldn’t have to feel sick as he looked into the faraway eyes of someone who looked exactly like his boss.

To his surprise, Wonyoung helped him heave the body onto the cremation tray. She opened the loading door, and Sunoo pushed the tray inside until the chamber swallowed the corpse whole. 

After Wonyoung turned on the machine, she said, “Now we wait.”

That queasy feeling returned. He supposed flesh and bone behaved the same no matter how it came into being.

“How long?” Sunoo asked.

“A couple hours.”

“A couple hours?” 

She raised a perfectly threaded eyebrow. “How long did you think it took to incinerate a corpse?”

“Gee, I don’t know. This isn’t exactly a regular Tuesday for me.”

“We still have to burn its bone fragments after this, too.”

“And how long does that take?”

“Shouldn’t be too long. Depends on what’s left in the ash.”

“Great.” Sunoo sighed. He didn’t want to admit that the unsettling building was already doing a number on him. They lapsed back into silence until he bit the bullet and asked, “Can I ask you a question?”

She sounded more irritated than anything when she said, “What?”

“Why’d you agree to doing all this, anyway?” Sunoo asked, then proceeded to scoff when Wonyoung simply turned her back to him with her arms folded across her chest. “Or—whatever—don’t tell me.”

It was only after a stretch of long silence between them, filled only by the sounds of the blower and burner running, that Wonyoung asked him, “Do you know the story of Adam and Eve?”

“Uh… the gist of it, yeah.”

“A lot of people misunderstand the serpent,” she said, eyes downcast. “The serpent never tempted Eve with sin; the Forbidden Fruit was from the Tree of Knowledge. If you had to choose between gaining knowledge that could shatter everything you thought you were, or ignorance that would cost you everything you could ever become, which one would you choose?”

When Sunoo didn’t respond, only being able to stare at her with his brows drawn, Wonyoung answered for herself, “I’d choose eating the fruit every single time, because if I can’t amount to anything, then I might as well be nothing at all.”

What terrified Sunoo most was that he thought he’d do the same.

But that didn't mean he thought this was right.

After receiving word from Sunoo that he and Wonyoung took care of his mess, Jake went straight home after work and laid in bed with you until he had the strength to face reality again. He had more to say to Sunoo, of course. Their last conversation left him restless—so anxious to the point where he wound up crumbling in your hold after the interns left.

He quite enjoyed being with you, though. You were over at his place most nights now, and watching you pour wine and bring him dinner in bed was a feeling like no other. Jake was certain he wouldn’t even feel this blissful in Heaven. 

You smiled when you caught him staring, setting the glasses of wine on the nightstand before you cozied back up to him. “What’s on your mind?”

Jake shrugged, idly dragging his finger along the curve of your shoulder, playing with the strap of your nightgown. “Just thinking about how pretty you are.”

“And nothing else? You sure?”

His full lips peppered kisses on the side of your mouth, along your jawline, and down your neck. “You don’t believe me?”

“Not”—you reached under the sheets and grabbed his knee, squeezing firmly to stop his nervous tic of repeatedly shaking his leg—“when you keep doing that.”

“I’m sorry.” He shuddered out a sigh.

You shook your head. “I just hate seeing you so stressed.” With a featherlight touch, you brushed his mussed hair off his forehead before he grabbed your hand and pressed more kisses to your knuckles. “Can I ask you something?”

“Always.”

“What do you think about…” you trailed off, biting your lip, then finished, “putting an end to all this?”

Jake let go of your hand and sat up. “What?”

“I don’t mean us,” you clarified. “I meant the prototype. I think we should stop all these experiments before it becomes a point of no return.” Jake thought they’d crossed the Rubicon ever since Jake One died, but then you tacked on, “And I’m worried about you, Jake.”

“But, Y/N, I spent years—”

“Trust me, I know,” you cut in. “I considered everything before I decided to ask. I’d rather keep it going, too, but seeing you like this isn’t worth it. You’re hurting. It’s like you’re losing more of yourself every time we bury another clone. We can put a stop to all of this now… before we end up in deep shit.”

“I told you how I felt the first time, but I can handle it now—really.”

“I know you want to.”

“If I can just figure out how to fix what’s screwing up their heads, then we can—”

“Jake, please.” You reached over to place a cold hand on his cheek, making him shiver. “Just think about it. Promise me you’ll at least think about it.”

He sighed, resigned. “Sure, yeah. I will.”

You gave him a small smile and turned to grab the glasses of red wine. “Cheers to our partnership, then?”

Jake took the one you handed to him and clinked his glass with yours. “And our future.”

And as Jake downed the drink in one go, a warm feeling in his chest suddenly erupted—delightful, dizzying, and hazy. He wasn’t sure if he dropped the glass or set it down properly, but he focused on the way your lips framed his name, and he tried to lean closer to profess his love for you in a drunken whisper.

His tongue, however, was heavier than stone when he tried to speak. Somewhere between wondering if he delivered the message and trying to pull the sheets back over him, Jake’s body felt like lead and his head spun until nothing felt real anymore. He was falling through the sky, hurtling through clouds, and the world shifted violently under him. 

Jake felt as if he were slipping into a void of darkness, and then there was nothing at all.

After Jake came to, he felt his heart plunge into the depths of his stomach. 

The flesh putrefies.

The Prometheus Prototype was alive and buzzing.

The machine rusts.

A dozen electrode sensors were attached to his body.

The divine corrupts.

Another Jake was sitting in the chair right beside him.

And so the rot remains supreme.

Before, all Jake had to do was press a button that generated another clone that would be ready to go within a few hours. He initiated that process with the full body scan of himself that produced a clone with his genetic data and his memories up until that scan. As a result, every clone had his memories from before he started duplicating his body.

The Jake before him—Jake 13, if he were to be specific—now possessed the memories of all his clones’ deaths. More specifically, how far Jake went to cover it all up.

Danger flickered in his eyes.

“You’re awake,” Jake 13 lilted, reaching over to curl a strand of his creator’s hair around his finger. There was a lazy smirk growing on his face. “Came here behind Y/N’s back, did you?”

“I didn’t—” Jake stopped himself short and looked down to see that he was wearing the same clothes that he wore to bed. His shoes were mismatched. His hair was scruffy. It was the middle of the night and he had no idea how he’d gotten to Park Industries. “I have to get back home. You have to go… you can’t…”

Jake 13 flashed a wicked grin. “Trying to dispose of me already?”

“No! No, that’s not it. I never wanted any of them to die, I just—”

“You just what? Felt bad before you started treating us like reusable waste?”

Jake didn’t respond. He let the words fester.

“You might’ve gotten rid of the other Jakes, but you’re not getting rid of me,” Jake 13 continued, sneering. “You know why? Because getting rid of me means perfecting the machine, and once the company gets their hands on our prototype, they’re gonna clone copy after copy after copy of you—endlessly. We’re the brightest minds they’ve got. Why wouldn’t they want more of us, huh?”

Jake still wouldn’t answer him.

“Admit it, Dr. Sim,” Jake 13 muttered darkly, “you’re completely replaceable, just like the rest of us.”

His chest constricted like a snake, boiling with anger, ready to strike.

“I’m born of flesh and blood—from my parents. The only reason you’re here is because I existed. I’ve never been replaceable.”

“Is that what you think?”

Jake just scowled at him.

Jake 13 then jutted his chin toward Jake’s chest. “We use that pen every single day, don't we? When’d we get it? Four or five years ago, if I remember correctly? Anyways, it's a good pen. Always running smooth and never bleeding through the page. But one day, if we lose that pen, what’re we gonna do? Maybe we’ll spend a few days poking around for it, but after it’s gone for good, we’ll just replace it, right? We’re gonna replace it with a random pen that might not be as good, but we’ll make do with it ‘cause it gets the job done.” He plucked the sharp-tipped pen right from the breast pocket of Jake’s lab coat. “Even if it’s the best pen in the world, it doesn't really matter because, at the end of the day, we just need a pen that works.”

“Well,” Jake started with an uncharacteristic venom coating his words, snatching the pen back, “you’ll be shocked to find out that I’m not a pen. People will notice if I’m gone.”

“But they won't.” 

“They will.”

“They won’t,” he repeated, flatly this time. Jake 13’s smile was mocking and Jake so badly wanted to hit him. “Because you'll perfect the machine, Jake—we’ll perfect the machine. It’s just in our nature. We don’t leave projects unfinished, and we certainly don’t back down from what we started.” Jake swallowed thickly as Jake 13 leaned in closer to mutter, “And once the prototype’s perfect, it won’t matter if you’re the original or a clone.”

He was right, as much as Jake hated to admit it. Edgar Allen Poe said something about true geniuses shuddering at incompleteness—imperfection, and yeah, there was nothing Jake despised more than an unsolved problem. An itch that wouldn’t go away.

“You chose this,” Jake 13 said. “You made yourself replaceable.”

Jake didn’t go back home to you that night. He was too afraid of leaving the lab, of leaving Jake 13 alone with anything in there.

PROMETHEUS PROJECT / JAKE-013 LOG: 04:03:37 // Something’s very wrong with him 04:03:52 // I have to get rid of him 04:42:08 // I think I’m about to do something I might regret 05:01:22 // I can’t do it 05:03:13 // I won’t

Understandably so, you were outraged when you finally managed to reach Jake the next morning.

He had his head buried in papers up until you walked through the door. Jake didn’t even notice that he missed twenty calls from you because he was so consumed in doing exactly what Jake 13 predicted he would.

Finally, he cracked the code. After hours of recalibrating and tweaking the neural lattice, Jake managed to figure out why the Prometheus Prototype wasn’t giving him perfect clones. He spent all morning fixing the machine itself, and when you walked in, it looked like you were caught between anger and concern.

“You left in the middle of the night to come here?” Your expression was grim. “You said you’d at least think about putting an end to this.”

“I know, I know. I’m an idiot, and you can yell at me all you want after this.” He stood up, grabbing a cloth to wipe off the grime caked in his palms. “But I finally did it, Y/N. I fixed the prototype for good this time. No more cleaning up my messes.”

This, of course, immediately swayed you. Prodigious minds were fools to brilliance, after all.

“Seriously?” Your eyes darted to the messy scratchwork on his desk, and your brows furrowed as you looked over the pages. “How’d you do it?”

“Well, I…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I made another clone.”

“You what?”

“I don’t know how it happened. I think I just found my way here when I was blacked out. After I woke up, he was just there.”

A deep crease formed between your eyebrows. “Jake…”

“I know it sounds crazy.”

“Where is he?” you asked, looking around the lab whilst growing visibly anxious. “I don’t see anyone else here.”

That managed to snap Jake out of whatever science-induced trance he was in. He dropped his pen and jumped to his feet, following your gaze around the room. Shit. To be frank, he hadn’t thought of Jake 13 until he was prompted to tell you about him, and now that the clone was on his mind, Jake realized that he hadn’t kept track of his whereabouts for hours. 

He raked his fingers through his hair, agitated. “This is bad.”

“I’ll go look for him,” you said. “You stay here. People are gonna freak out if they see two Jakes running around the place.”

His heart felt heavy. You were always cleaning up after his mess and taking responsibility, even when you had your own work to take care of. Jake just felt like a burden to you.

Still, there was nothing he could do but say, “Okay. Thank you.”

Just as you were turning around, though, the front door swung open. Jake froze up, but his blood turned cold when he heard familiar chatter—more specifically, Jay’s voice. 

Even worse, Jake 13 was beside him. Jake wasn’t sure how horrified he looked, but the subtle smirk from his clone had him seeing red.

“—so early, I thought you’d…” Jay trailed off when he saw Jake’s face across the room—the real Jake, not the poser beside him—and started spluttering, looking between Jake and Jake 13 over and over again. Jake 13 simply looked pleased with himself. “Wait, but you’re—I thought—how did you—huh?” He blinked several times before admitting, “Look, I did do a bump of coke this morning, but I don’t think coke usually has me seeing more than one Jake. A bit too many Jakes than I’m used to, if I’m gonna be honest.”

Jake stood up, one hand still on the head of his chair, and glared at the clone. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he hissed. “Are you insane?”

Jay looked a bit taken aback. “It was just a teensy, tiny pinch of coke—”

“No, not you—him!”

Jake 13 pointed at himself. “Me?”

“Yes! Obviously! Why’re you both so confused?”

“Well, I did snort some—”

“Enough with the cocaine! We get it!” Jake snapped. 

Jay rolled his eyes and placed his hands on his hips. “Okay, can someone start explaining why I’m seeing two of the same annoying fucker?”

All the words were tangled and knotted in Jake’s throat. He played out this kind of situation in his head before, and he always knew exactly what to say, but now his mind was blank. The curve of Jake 13’s smile only made it harder for him to concentrate, for he was too caught up with thinking about how to choke the daylights out of him.

“It’s… complicated,” Jake finally said.

“I think I’ve gathered that by now. Thanks for nothing.” Jay scoffed before turning to you. “You—tell me what’s going on.”

Jaw tense, you huffed out a laugh. “I’m good.”

The door swung open again, and Sunoo’s voice came rambling through the opening before anyone could even see him walk in. 

“Dr. Sim, I’ve been thinking about it, and I really don’t think it’s right to be using the prototype like this. I mean, getting rid of the bodies is just—” He abruptly fell silent when he saw that Jake wasn’t alone in the lab. The door slammed shut behind him. “Oh.”

Jake exhaled slowly before groaning into his palm.

Jay jerked his thumb in Sunoo’s direction. “Jake… what’s Anxiety talking about?”

(“Anxiety?” Sunoo mouthed, making a face.)

Jake sighed. “Nothing important. He’s just—”

“No, I want you to tell me now.”

The corner of Jake’s mouth twitched, but before he could blather out some pathetic excuse, Sunoo spoke up, “With all due respect, sir, Dr. Sim isn’t obligated to share any details of his project at this point in time.” His eyes were wide and frightful, but he maintained direct eye contact with Jay.

Jake blinked, surprised, swallowing past the tightness in his throat. Warmth spread through him despite the tension in the room. Maybe he hadn’t completely driven Sunoo away from him.

“With all due respect, soon-to-be-unemployed intern,” Jay started, smiling all good-natured, “you’re gonna tell me what’s going on here, or you’re getting fired. Choose wisely.”

“He made a cloning machine,” Sunoo answered quickly.

Well, there went the warmth.

“A cloning machine?”

Sunoo shot Jake an apologetic look. “Um, yeah… for humans.”

It took the CEO a moment to collect himself. He looked around the laboratory, staring at the machine in a new light, ogling at Jake and Jake 13 with a strange look on his face. Jake wasn’t sure if he was revolted or amazed by the clone.

“This is your clone, then,” Jay said, his voice sounding strangely distant. “It must be. It hasn’t opened its mouth to piss me off yet... and the real Jake would never invite me to his lab out of nowhere.”

“It?” Jake 13 scowled. “I’m a he.”

Jake felt an odd satisfaction in knowing that Jay could tell the real him apart, but he had to shake that off to appease his friend first.

“I was gonna tell you, really,” he tried. “I just—I just needed more time.”

“You’re telling me,” Jay thundered, his chest swelling with indignation, “all of this was going on without my knowledge?”

“No, no,” Jake placated. “I was just, uh… surprising you?”

His friend’s anger seemed to melt away almost instantaneously. “Really? You mean it?” Before Jake could take his words back, Jay’s face broke into a smile and he clasped his hands together. “What a nice surprise. This really made my day, man.”

Jake couldn’t believe he fell for that so easily.

“You know, this is great!” Jay continued enthusiastically. “Think about all the possibilities! All the money we could make! We could clone to harvest organs!”

You and Jake shared a horrified look. Even Jake 13 looked rather put off. Sunoo returned Jay’s zealous punch to the shoulder with a weak smile, rubbing the sore spot afterward. The depths of Jay’s imagination was truly fascinating.

“Oh, no, that’s… that’s pretty dark,” Jake replied, disturbed.

Awfully pleased, Jay ignored him and said, “I need to make a call.”

Like it was instinctual, Jake bounded forward as soon as Jay reached to pull out his phone. He grabbed it right out of his hand, just before his friend was about to unlock it. Jay returned a confused look, rolling his shoulders before he tried snatching it back, but Jake kept it out of his reach.

“What the hell’s up with you?”

“Jay, I don’t know what you’re trying to do right now, but it is absolutely paramount you don’t let anything about the prototype get out to the public,” Jake urged, stressing each syllable for good measure.

“Paramount? I don’t even have a Paramount subscription.”

“Not the—how does that even—” Jake bit back the rest of his sentence and groaned. “Paramount means important, you idiot.”

With an ill-concealed wrinkle of his nose, Jay scoffed before asking, “Well, why didn’t you just say that to begin with? Paramount—get a load of you, William Wordsworth.”

“It’s not my fault you have the vocabulary of a five-year-old.”

“I can tell you right now that no normal person uses paramount in their daily vocabu—”

“Will you two quit arguing?!” you yelled over them. All the while, Sunoo was quietly observing, as if he were watching a tennis match, though he looked a bit frightened. “My god, how do you guys ever get along with each other?”

Jay’s face curdled. “Why’s the situationship talking? We get along perfectly fine.”

“You have the self-awareness of a sponge,” you deadpanned, “but I guess that’s what happens when our CEO’s a personality hire.”

“Personality hire? You’re calling me a personality hire?” 

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to side with Jay on this one,” Jake chimed in. “He has such an unemployable personality. Nepotism was his only chance.” 

“Yeah!” Jay then thought on his friend’s words for a moment longer. “Wait, what?”

“Mm. Must be why you need Jake to keep this company afloat,” you said to Jay, disdain weighing heavy in your eyes. “Without him, Park Industries would’ve tanked years ago.”

The CEO shrugged. “Every team has its star player.”

“This isn’t a team if you only support one person.”

“This is starting to sound like a deeply rooted insecurity, Y/N. Park Industries offers free employee counseling services.”

You sneered. “How generous of you.”

“Okay, we’re seriously getting off topic here,” Jake cut in, then handed Jay’s phone back to him. “Jay, what’s important is you don’t leak anything about the prototype—not yet, at least. It could be dangerous if it falls in the wrong hands.”

“Then let it fall in my hands.”

“No! You’re the dangerous one I’m talking about, by the way.”

“Just let me borrow it,” Jay pleaded.

“No.”

“Forever.”

“I said, no! Why would you think that’s any better!”

Jay let out a drawn-out sigh and let his shoulders slump, flipping his phone horizontally, as if he were watching a video. “Please? Can I please have your cloning machine? I promise I won’t do anything evil with it. Not even a little evil. It'll be the least evil use of a cloning machine you've ever seen.”

“I can’t really trust that you won’t when you’re… wait—are you seriously playing Clash of Clans right now?”

“Yeah? Is there a problem?” His eyes were glued to the screen without a care in the world. “I’m an absolute legend in this game, by the way. They say no one upgrades a Town Hall like I do.”

(“Who’s they?” Sunoo muttered from beside Jake, but he gave up on trying to find reason in Jay’s words and simply shook his head.)

“Jay, we’re having a serious discussion here.”

“And I’m having a serious clan war.” He raised a brow. “I can’t multitask now?”

“He’s hopeless, Jake,” you said, sighing heavily. “Just let it go. There’s no getting through to him.”

“Ooh, giving up already? That’s rich, coming from you.” The corner of Jay’s mouth lifted slightly, but his eyes were still trained on his phone. “Maybe she doesn’t actually care about you that much, Jake. She certainly didn’t back down when it came to her own project.”

You fixed him with a hard look. “My project? The one you never funded?”

“Budget cuts, sweetheart. Nothing I can do about it.”

Jake, accredited with years of charity work that involved being Jay Park’s friend, knew when that moron was lying.

This was one of those times.

“Uh-huh,” you remarked brusquely. “You probably blew all the money to get a bowling alley installed in your office, anyway.”

“Funny.” He barked out a curt, suppressed laugh. Then, he exited the game. “Very funny, Y/N, but—for your information—I don’t have a bowling alley,” Jay snapped, sneering at you before turning around sharply. Holding his phone up to his ear, Jay lowered his voice to order, “Jungwon, I want a bowling alley in my office—as soon as you can get it done—yes, it’s urgent—yeah, yeah, whatever, we can just say we have budget cuts coming up.”

It happened all too fast. One second, Jay was walking back over to them, pocketing his phone; the next, a wrench came swinging down on Jay’s head. Jake, still saddled with the annoyance bubbling inside him, didn’t even have time to scream as Jay crumpled to the ground immediately, his limbs going slack. The culprit, Jake 13, stood over Jay’s limp body and looked from you, to Sunoo, then to Jake.

“Well,” the clone said, “that’s taken care of.”

“Y-you attacked the CEO!” Sunoo cried. 

Jake let out a shaky breath and dropped to his knees, haphazardly searching for a pulse point to make sure Jay was still breathing. “Why the fuck did you do that?” he asked, voice strangled.

“Just so he’d shut up for a minute.” Jake 13 dropped the wrench and met Sunoo’s eyes. “Get me some rope, kid—or duct tape, whatever.”

“Jake, stop it,” you warned, gesturing for Sunoo to stay put.

When Jake looked up, only to see that you were looking at Jake 13, he shouted, “Y/N!” Your gaze flicked to his, and he frowned at you. “How could you call him that?”

You gave him an exasperated look. “That’s your name! What, you want me to use his number with it?”

Jake 13 only simpered. “I know exactly what he’s thinking. Y/N, the language you use is very important, you know? People don’t realize how much language shapes our reality, how it influences our own beliefs. Today I’m Jake 13, but keep calling me that, and one day I’ll just be Jake—and no one’ll question whether I’m a clone or not.” He stepped over Jay’s legs and circled around you. When he was right behind you, one hand trailed down your arm. “What really sets us apart is that number; otherwise, how are you gonna be able to differentiate us?” He dipped his head so that his lips were at the shell of your ear, his breath fanning your jaw. “Then who’s to say I’m not the original Jake?”

“I know you aren’t, and that’s enough for me,” you said stiffly. “What’s your goal here?”

“The same as his—mostly,” Jake 13 said. “But maybe I have goals of my own, too, and they don’t include Jay selling the machine under that Jake… and I guess they don’t include Sunoo being here, either.” His eyes fell on the intern now. “Why are you here, anyway?”

Sunoo gulped. “Um… I was… I was gonna tell Dr. Sim… making us hide his dead bodies is, uh… not great.”

“Dead bodies?” came Jay’s voice, and the other four whipped around to see him reclined on the floor, propping his head up on an elbow. “What the fuck were you even doing in here, man?”

“You’re awake!” Jake wasn’t sure if what he was feeling was relief that Jay was alright or sheer terror that he heard, but his emotions were rampant all the same.

“What am I supposed to do, lay here and get brain damage? None of you humanitarians seem to be in any rush to call an ambulance.”

You raised a brow. “How long have you been awake for?”

“Since that corny little speech,” Jay said. “By the way, you’re getting fired for that, Evil Jake. I seriously hope I’m concussed so I forget about it.” He turned to Jake with ostentatious worry drawn all over his face. “Can we circle back to the dead bodies now? Considering your Freakatron 3000 over there looks like he’s considering making me one!”

Freakatron 3000 rang a bell. Jake could see that you looked mortified upon the realization that you and Jay had a similar sense of humor.

“He calls me Jake 13,” the clone answered through gritted teeth. “That means there were twelve before me—twelve who were killed by him.”

“I never killed them! They just died!” Jake protested. “Jay, you gotta believe me. I was doing everything I possibly could to keep them alive.”

“You knew the chance of them dying was high, and you still experimented on them like lab rats!” 

This was it. This was when Jay abandoned him for good. His heart was already sinking, preparing itself for his best friend of years to finally turn his back on him. Jake was a fool for thinking he could keep getting away with this; his invincibility complex had seen to that, and he truly hadn’t planned for what he’d do if it ever came to this.

Albeit visibly concerned, Jay reached over and squeezed Jake’s shoulder. Jake was almost to the point of quivering, so he remained stiff as he reluctantly made eye contact with him.

Jay leaned in, his mouth close to Jake’s ear so no one could see the words taking shape on his lips, and he muttered, “Get rid of this one, too, and I’ll pretend I never heard that.”

Oh, fuck. He really was going to get away with this once again.

As much as Jake tried to feel disgusted with himself, a sick smile threatened the corners of his lips.

Jay grunted as he got upright again. He patted down his slacks and inhaled deeply, his chest swelling for long enough to make it known that he was unnerved. That was right. Jay had his back. He’d always had his back, no matter the cost.

“It was nice, uh… nice—” The CEO cut himself off with a yawn, which he lazily attempted to hide in his fist. “—nice talking to everyone. Pleasant chat. Do fill me in on Jake’s murderous tendencies next time, or make it an email maybe. I’d really love to stay longer, but it’s time for my afternoon nap.”

You looked utterly baffled. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I seriously need a nap right now,” Jay said matter-of-factly. “What? Still worried about me keeping my mouth shut? I’ll stay quiet for now, but I’m giving you until tomorrow to set up a meeting with me. Otherwise, my hand might just slip.”

He swiftly made his way out of the lab. Jake was only relieved that Jake 13 didn’t seem to have any intention of stopping Jay on the way out. After all, Jake 13 still had the same emotions and memories that he possessed; he wouldn’t want to hurt Jay any further—at least Jake hoped not.

Jake turned on his clone, his eyes cold. “Why’d you bring him here in the first place? You know how Jay’s like. You know he’d want to get his hands on the machine.”

“Well, I thought that’d go a bit differently,” Jake 13 admitted, “but this is fine, too. Him finding out means you’ve already crossed that hurdle for me.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“I’m gonna be the only Jake by the end of this. I’m gonna be the Jake behind the Prometheus Prototype.” He stepped closer. “You can’t give me the same ambitions and take away my dreams—and I know I can be so much better than you.” Jake 13’s eyes darkened as hot anger roiled in Jake’s gut. “I’m you without all the cowardice. Took twelve of you to get that out of your system, huh?”

So it wasn’t just him that was planning to get his hands dirty again; Jake 13 was also planning on killing Jake, laying his plans out in the open like a fool. Sure, he might’ve been braver than the others, but he was still a defective copy. He couldn’t discern what to keep to himself and what to share, but that was to Jake’s advantage now.

Jake 13 turned to you now. “Think about it, Y/N: My name on the prototype and yours over those nanobots.” He spoke with wonderment, moving to grip your shoulders firmly. You couldn’t say anything at first, as if you were struck by the fantasy that the clone was painting for you. “It’ll be both of us under the spotlight, for our own work.”

“And, Sunoo,” he continued, pressing on even as the intern flinched, “I’ll draft up that offer letter for you immediately. We get rid of him, and you’ll never have to question your place in this company again.”

Jake’s fingers twitched. He needed something sharp—anything. There was a crowbar in the closet and a couple utility knives laying on a table somewhere, but there was no time for Jake to get to any of them without raising suspicion. 

And then it hit him.

His pen.

Certainly unassuming, but with enough force, Jake was sure he could ram the sharp tip into the side of Jake 13’s neck or something. He’d at least buy himself enough time to finish the clone off with something more effective. 

Jake Sim would never be replaced.

Sunoo looked sullen. “I don’t know… I don’t think any of this is right—please stop, please.”

“You’re right, Sunoo,” Jake spoke up, placing a hand on his shoulder to force him to turn around, “so look away.”

Glowering, Jake 13 started, “What are you—”

In a flash, Jake’s body moved on its own. With one hand, he grabbed a fistful of Jake 13’s hair and yanked his head to the side; with the other, he drove the pen right into his jugular. He could hear yours and Sunoo’s gasps from behind him, but he was relentless. Where the sharp point pierced tender skin and spilled blood, Jake twisted the pen deeper into the doppelgänger’s neck. 

“Jake!” you cried out, distraught.

They found themselves on the floor now, with Jake straddling the clone’s waist to hold him down. There was the terrible, eerie sound of squelching coupled with the blood Jake 13 was gurgling. The side of his neck and chest were drenched in crimson now. 

And then Jake’s hands were trembling. He was sure it wasn’t fear this time. Rather, excitement pulsed through his body, but it also made him want to keel over and throw up all the bile in his stomach. He pulled the pen out, breathing ragged and heavy as he watched blood drop from the nib.

Jake 13’s hand flew to clamp over the wound, gripping tightly in an attempt to staunch the bleeding. It would be of no use, though. Without immediate attention, he’d bleed out to death on the ground, and Jake would ensure that no one would come to help him. Then, Jake 13 used his free hand to grab Jake’s throat, holding it like a vice. He squeezed around the one spot responsible for his airflow, and then Jake seriously thought he’d pass out if Jake 13 held on any longer. Without thinking, he slashed the pen around wildly, managing to nick his carotid artery. 

The clone choked on his scream as blood splattered out. Sunoo let out a miserable, whimpering sound before he started to cry. Judging by the direction of the spray, he must’ve gotten Jake 13’s blood all over him. Jake couldn’t look behind him. Not now. He had to finish the job, and that meant holding Jake 13 down until he bled out for good.

“Fuck.” Your voice came out feeble and wavering. “Sunoo, go to the supply closet. Lock it from the inside and don’t come out until I come get you.”

Sunoo must’ve hesitated for a moment longer because it took a few more seconds for Jake to hear his footsteps trail off. The closet door slammed shut seconds later, and then the click of the lock echoed in his ears.

Helplessly, all you could do was retrieve one of the utility knives while Jake kept Jake 13 in a death grip. He watched the light leave his fearful eyes—slowly, dripping like molasses—and there was some sort of sick fascination in watching the clone draw in an unsteady, final breath.

Jake just stared at his own face for a few moments longer. His own face with the light in his eyes dimmed.

He didn’t realize he was crying until he noticed it wasn’t blood dripping onto Jake 13, but his own tears.

“Oh, Jake,” came that sweet, honeyed voice of yours, and despite everything, it was enough to pull him out of this moment.

“Y/N, I don’t know anymore,” he sobbed. “This is all so fucked up. Can I… is there even a chance for me to go back from this?”

He’d been staring at the pen for so long that he could make out his hazy reflection in the metal, though it was all distorted and stretched.

He couldn’t even tell if the person staring back at him was really his own reflection.

He couldn’t even tell if he was Jake anymore.

“It’s okay,” you whispered, kneeling down to embrace him—blood-soaked clothes and all. “He attacked you first, okay? That should be believable enough for the cops. You just acted out of self-defense.”

He buried his face into your shoulder and nodded. A few more tears slipped out. Jake thought that if he was shattered beyond repair, he knew that at least you would take care of his broken pieces and make him feel whole again. 

This felt right. Being with you always felt right.

Then he felt a raw, searing pain at the base of his spine, and heat unfurled through his back. 

Jake’s breath left him like a startled gasp. He realized dimly he’d been stabbed, but his body felt locked in shock. 

“And then you stabbed him,” you murmured, seemingly ignorant of how Jake was gagging on the blood that was rising up his throat. “That’s our story, my love. You were wonderful till the very end.”

It couldn’t be. No, no, no, no, no, no, no—not you. He didn’t want to believe it, but he knew how your hand felt against his back. Anger flared up in him, hot and vengeful, before it collapsed into grief that struck him like a tempest. It was never supposed to be you. The wound hurt, but what hollowed him out was knowing whose hand clutched the blade.

He wondered when you stopped being on his side—and whether you ever truly were.

He gurgled, then coughed until blood splattered down your back. “B-but why—”

“Shh, it’s okay,” you cooed, keeping your voice low. “I’m right here.”

His vision was blurry, fading in and out. You pulled the cool blade out, bringing about a strange combination of relief and white hot agony, but Jake’s body sagged forward. You couldn’t support his weight anymore, so you gently pushed him off you, laying him down on the floor. 

Pathetically, even though he was dying at your hands, mercilessly betrayed, Jake couldn’t help but think about how pretty you still looked. How funny. Perhaps you’d been shifty this whole time, and he was simply too blinded by love to notice it. 

Weakly, he got out, “Y/N, p-please don’t…”

You tutted lightly. “Jake, I thought you knew.”

He garbled out a confused sound.

“I told you from the very beginning,” you explained, “you don’t understand the lengths I’d go to. I work ten times harder than anyone here, and it’s always a man getting the promotion I deserved. Always a man getting the funding I’ve been waiting for.”A tear slipped down his cheek. I know, he wanted to say. I know, and I hate them for it. You pulled back to look him in the eye, surprisingly gentle in the way you smiled at him. "But now? I'm taking it all for myself."

How could he say anything to you when he’d done nothing about it? How could he reason with you without sounding like he was just trying to save his own skin?

But, if he was going to be honest with himself, he was trying to save his skin.

He didn’t want to die.

He wanted more time for his grand legacy, to show the world how incredible he was. He wanted more time for the mundane parts of life—everything he’d been putting off until after he achieved greatness. He wanted more time for the mornings with you, the kisses before bed, and the blissful future he’d dream of.

Jake Sim didn’t want to die.

The thought floated by with less conviction this time, fraying at the edges. The world felt farther away now. He tried to anchor himself to your face and your voice, but he couldn’t hear the words your mouth was framing anymore.

He wasn’t ready for this. Jake always wanted to be the kind of person who would die ready, content after a long, fulfilling life; instead, the last, dismal thought he had was how badly he wished he could stay.

EPILOGUE TWO WEEKS LATER

“You did a good job.” You placed a hand on Wonyoung’s shoulder while you circled around her to sit at the other end of the table—Jake’s table at his penthouse. Playing the mourning ex-girlfriend was the perfect cover for you to stay at his place for now. “I know this one was a hassle to clean up, but it’s all finally over.”

The intern set down her wine glass. There was a pinkish glow in her cheeks from the alcohol—or it might’ve been from your praise. 

“It was really no problem,” she said, then hesitated. “Don’t you think pinning it on Sunoo was a bit much, though? I thought our target was Jay.”

You hummed, remorseful. “I was hoping we could just use Jay, but Sunoo being there sort of… complicated matters. When he got that clone’s blood all over him and hid in the supply closet, I knew it’d be much easier to convince the police he was behind everything.” The red wine swirled around in the glass you cradled. If you looked at it any longer, it would remind you of that day, with Jake’s blood all over you. “It worked out better this way, too. If we took Jay out, they’d just appoint another CEO that’s just as bad as him.”

"Don't you think he's still dangerous, though? He knows about the prototype."

You waved her off. "Even if he does, he won't say anything. He still blames himself for Jake dying. He thinks none of this would've happened if he didn't tell Jake to take care of Jake 13."

Before the cops received word of the incident, Wonyoung cleaned up and dealt with all the security cameras, all according to plan. Months prior, you registered Wonyoung’s fingerprint into Jake’s security system without his discretion. There were a few close calls, but he never seemed to catch on—and he never would.

You were left to deal with the contents in Jake’s phone; whereas Wonyoung took Jake 13’s body to the crematorium, burned him to nothingness, and then drove two hours to dispose of the knife you used to stab Jake. She dropped it off the edge of a bridge, watching it plunge into the sea and sink into the deep blue.

You, on the other hand, played the damsel in distress, holding Jake’s lifeless body and sobbing all the way until law enforcement arrived. With Sunoo locked in the closet, covered in Jake’s blood, it was almost hopeless for him to plead that he didn’t do anything—not that he even tried proving his innocence. Sunoo looked so traumatized that he trudged over to the police car without a single word, a faraway look haunting his eyes.

“Do you really think you’ll be able to take the position from him, though? I thought you and Jay were on bad terms.”

“We’ve been… consoling each other,” you said with a snort, “through our grief. Honestly, tolerating him is more painful—but after seeing Jake dead, his mental state was so shattered that he’s considering retiring early just to focus on recovering. If I play my cards right, his position goes to me.”

Wonyoung threw her head back to let out a delightful laugh. “You really thought this through.”

“I couldn’t have done it without you. Your idea to drug his drink and bring him to the lab? Genius. He fully thought he was the one who hooked himself up to the prototype.”

As for the machine, it was far too impressive of an invention to let go of. After you rolled out your nanobots, you were going to introduce the Prometheus Prototype to the world the right way, with proper approval and the testing stages that Jake completely ignored. (Yes, it was blatant theft, but you never said you were going to be a saint.)

Wonyoung flushed under the dim light. “Oh, please. It was nothing.”

“It was more than I could’ve asked for. I have something for you, by the way, but it’s not enough for everything you’ve done for me.”

She perked up when you pushed a piece of paper in her direction. She stared at it for a moment before snatching it to hold it against the light, as if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

“Seriously?” she asked, perfect lips curving into a rare smile as she examined the offer letter. “That’s a six figure salary.”

“You deserve it. Congratulations.” You raised your glass as a toast, and she eagerly followed. “It’ll be hard filling Jake’s shoes, but once I figure out how to rewrite his memories, maybe we can bring him back one day.”

She shrugged. “That’s probably the best way to persuade the Board to approve funding for the Prometheus Project.”

“And convince the public we weren’t involved in his death.”

“He brought that upon himself, Dr. L/N,” Wonyoung said lightly. “Whether you had a hand in it or not, he was becoming a madman.”

“I guess you’re right.” You then noticed Wonyoung shifting uncomfortably and raised a brow in question. “Everything okay?”

“I’m just worried,” she said. “What if they end up tracing it back to us?”

You simply smiled. “Then I’ll have a plan to get us out of the mess. You trust me, right?”

“Of course.”

“Perfect. They’ll never suspect us, anyway, and even if they do, men are too easy to deceive. You let them think they’re in control, and they’ll never notice the leash.”

AUTHOR'S NOTE ▸ thank you for reading if you made it all the way to the end !! support women's rights and wrongs amirite 💞 can you tell i had sooo much fun writing jay (the bias shows through and through) but wonyoung i really enjoyed too despite her shorter screentime !! cast her in yuri when🧎‍♀️ also please do check out the donation links at the top of this post and share awareness posts you come across when you get the chance 💗 have a wonderful 2026 everyone! i can't wait to work on more fics this year and share them with everyone !!

TAG LIST ▸ @fancypeacepersona @filmnings @jongseongbutt @doraemon02 @simpikeu @heejamas @prettygirlthings-world @amajinu

[hazelira]

h o r r o r m.list

comment '🕯️' if you want to be in the horror taglist

2026

future fics:

the echo room 🐹 oct 3

static between heartbeats 🐹 oct 7

ghosts in the crowd 🐹 oct 9

the breathing wall 🐹 oct 12

the cake that breathes 🐹 oct 15

the recording that shouldn't exist 🐹 oct 22

the last light stays on 🐹 oct 31

Copyright 2026 - present © hazelira all rights reserved. All writing here is fiction & not in any association with characters mentioned.

[jayflrt]

the scientific findings of a madman (preview)

PAIRING ▸ jake sim x fem!reader

GENRES ▸ psychological horror, sci-fi, crack, fluff

WARNINGS ▸ profanity, implied sex but nothing explicit, murder, questionable ethics, jake cutely spirals into madness as he breaks every lab safety protocol ever, jayke's tom and jerry dynamic, depersonalization, everyone's a few shades darker than morally grey, jay on some doofenshmirtz ass villainry, ft. interns kim sunoo & jang wonyoung

SUMMARY ▸ world-renowned inventor jake sim creates the prometheus prototype, a machine that allows one to create copies of themselves. with his insatiable thirst for science overpowering all restraint, jake must hide his creation from his best friend (who's also—horrifyingly enough—his boss), jay park; his high-strung intern, kim sunoo; but not you, his enigmatic coworker he's had his eye on for years. jake is now somewhere between the flesh, the machine, and the divine, stuck in an endless cycle of succumbing to the rot by his own hands. he won't lose his mind trying to become something bigger than he is. he won't.

alternatively, once greatness abandons mortality, a new god is born.

ESTIMATED WORD COUNT ▸ around 20k

RELEASE DATE ▸ out now!

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ this will be posted in a few weeks <3 also i'm realizing this kinda sounds like it's inspired by frankenstein but it's really inspired by mickey 17. please send an ask or comment if you'd like to be on the tag list!

IMPORTANT please read!

i'm doing an event for this fic to donate to sudani women in refugee camps and women in congo! please check out the full details here

THERE WAS A DEAD BODY ON THE FLOOR.

His dead body on the floor.

A prick of dread started at the base of his neck.

It crept across his skull. It trickled down his spine. It spread through each limb.

Feeling the world slide out from under his feet, Jake pressed his hand to his mouth, swallowing back a sickening wave of nausea. Not a single helpful thought ran through his head—just a mantra of fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!—until his brain was about to explode from the stress. 

Fumbling for his phone, Jake found himself dialing your number with shaky hands. One hand came up to fist in his hair as he waited for you to pick up.

“Hey. What’s up?” you answered, and he could hear the wind whipping in the background. You must’ve been on your way to Park Industries.

Jake’s throat felt like sandpaper but he swallowed, trying to relocate his heart from his throat. “Y/N, you, uh…” He sucked in a shaky breath. “Your nanobots can’t bring people back from the dead, right?”

“No. They still have to be… um… sorry, there was someone walking by—they have to be alive.” There was another pause, then you ventured, “Why? Did something happen?” 

“I-it’s just—I don’t know how to—”

“Shit—sorry for cutting you off—Wonyoung’s already waiting for me. I’ll be there in ten minutes, Jake. I don’t know what’s going on, but if it’s serious, you should probably tell your intern to take the day off.”

And you hung up.

Okay.

Okay.

Jake could do that. It was a simple task, wasn’t it? Look away from the corpse, message Sunoo, wait for you. Look away from the corpse, message Sunoo, wait for you. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse. Look away from the corpse.

Why couldn’t he simply look away?

His chest heaved against the weight of panic pushing down on him. Nothing dulled the horror that spread across his chest like a thick, murky fog. That was his face. His face that shouldn’t have been looking back at him, slack-jawed and empty. 

Jake stumbled backward, shaking all over, but he couldn’t keep his eyes off Jake One. He never thought about what it would be like to see his own dead body, and it made him feel like he was peeling away from reality, detaching himself layer-by-layer. 

That was when you burst into the lab.

“Jake?” you asked, frantic. He could hear your footsteps against the epoxy flooring. “Jake! What the hell hap—” You stopped short when you saw Jake One’s still body on the ground, crumpled into himself so helplessly. “Oh my god. Oh my god, he’s…”

“Dead,” Jake finished for you, his own voice sounding foreign and hollow in his ears. “Fuck.”

“Oh my god.”

“I know.”

“I think I’m gonna throw up.”

He inhaled sharply. “I called you here to help.”

“And I will,” you hissed, “but holy shit, Jake! What is this, manslaughter? Negligence? Is he... is he even considered one of us?”

“One of us?”

“You know—a human.”

“Of course he is!” Jake’s words ran like water, spilling out with any proper thought. “Look at him! That’s my face, Y/N!”

You looked uneasy. “Jake, but he’s not…” You stopped, re-evaluating your choice of words before you continued, “This is the first time someone’s replicated human life. We don’t have laws for this. If he’s considered a human, then fuck, we’re screwed. But if he’s not, then, well…” You didn’t finish that sentence, much to Jake’s relief because he was already sick to his stomach at the thought of dealing with a dead body. 

Jake felt torn. They were walking blind on a legal tightrope, but his whole goal was replicating human life, so why would he discredit himself by considering his creation as anything less than himself? On the other hand, to consider his clone as equal to him would mean that Jake had blood on his hands. Human blood on his hands. 

He didn’t want to keep thinking about it, though. Any moment spent thinking about Jake One only let that cold fear sink its jaws deeper.

“He’s human,” was the only stubborn conclusion Jake could come to. “He has my memories, my DNA, my fucking face—he’s human. He’s not some lab rat.”

A long-suffering sigh slipped from your lips. “Okay, sure, let’s say he is human. That means you and I are in a closed lab with a dead guy who doesn’t exist on any record, and we’re the only witnesses. No one else can even prove he was ever alive.”

“What are you saying?” Jake asked, but he already had an awful feeling he knew what you were getting at.

“We hide the body… and move on.”

He was shaking his head before you could even get through your words. “That’s psychotic, Y/N.”

“It’s the only option we’ve got! What, do you want us to lose our jobs and go to prison? And it’s not just that, Jake—they’re gonna shut down our projects. They’re gonna take away your prototype, and they’re gonna take away my nanobots—to take all the credit for themselves, probably! We’re getting locked up and left to rot while someone else’s name is all over our work.” Then, pointedly, you tacked on, “Probably Jay’s.”

“That’s quite the scenario you've created in your head.”

You gave him a grim look, steely-eyed. “Yeah? And how are you so sure that’s not exactly what’s gonna happen? Maybe it won’t be the case for you, but I haven’t even gotten my funding approved for years now, Jake! This company doesn't give a shit about me. You don’t get it. I've watched my female coworkers drop like flies here, while people like Heeseung get promoted doing half the work a woman does.” You jabbed a finger at his chest. “But you… you shouldn't get too comfortable, either. You think Jay’s gonna bail you out of this one?”

That was, in fact, exactly what Jake thought. He decided he wouldn’t vocalize it out of spite.

And since Jake's situation was such a laugh that the universe thought it would be hilarious to doom him even further, a knock came at his door seconds later—the distinct ‘shave and a haircut’ pattern that Jay always used.

Your eyes widened. “You didn’t send your intern home?”

“It’s not him,” Jake replied (admittedly, he also did forget to message Sunoo), “it’s just Jay. I’ll tell him right now’s not a good time.” He approached the door and pressed the intercom. “Fuck off for a bit, Jay. I’m busy.”

“Jake,” came Jay’s voice from the speaker, cold and stern, “let me in right now.”

Ignoring the bewildered look you were giving him, Jake scoffed. “No.”

“What do you mean, no?”

“You want me to explain a two-letter word to you?”

“Go ahead, seeing as you’re struggling with ‘let me in,’ smartass.”

Before Jake could press the intercom button again to fire back another rebuttal, you grabbed his wrist to stop him. 

“You’re making yourself look even more suspicious,” you said through gritted teeth. “I’ll hide the body—just stall him ‘til then.”

The body—not Jake One, but the body. It sent a shiver down Jake’s spine.

“But the machine!” he protested weakly. You gave him a knowing look, as if to say it was about time Jay found out. Or maybe you were banking on Jake lying through his teeth for that, too. Whatever it was, he wasn’t sure he was ready. “Okay, fine, but be quick.”

“Jake, open this door right now,” Jay warned again, “or I’m using the master key.” 

That, of course, wasn’t going to happen. Jay entrusted the master key to Jungwon, who safeguarded it closely because the CEO had butterfingers. The idiot also kept forgetting that he left it with his personal assistant. Still, Jake pressed his body against the door in a completely unnecessary attempt to keep it shut. 

“Wait—please, just—just wait a moment. I’ll come outside myself.”

“Too late. I’m pulling out the key! Shit, this is my credit card… oh, wow, I thought I lost my Amex… receipts, receipts, license… oh, sweet, it’s my punch card for that frozen yogurt place! I’ve been looking for this everywhere! Phenomenal froyo, seriously. Hey, Jake, you remember that store with the really good froyo, right?”

Jake promptly decided to ignore him and asked, “Um, so did you find the key yet?”

“Oh, right.” He was able to count around a minute of silence until Jay confirmed, “No.”

“Well, have a good day.”

“Jake,” Jay started, sharper this time, “your intern brought something worrying to my attention, so I'd advise you to open up before we have to escalate this.” Jake’s blood went cold at his words, and he turned to you like a deer caught in headlights. Your eyes were saucer-wide just the same. “I didn’t bring Jungwon, just so you know. It’s just me.” 

This was it. Sunoo reported him, Jay was going to find out about Jake One, Jake was going to be kicked to the curb, and you—

But, oh, Jake’s brain supplied as he scanned the perimeter, you hid the body. 

He just had to get through this one conversation with Jay before his friend picked up on a faint whiff of rotting flesh. Jake would just have to shed his skin of shame and lie his way out of this mess—the same way he did for all those board meetings. 

He smoothed his sweaty palms down his pants before opening the door. Jay, wearing sunglasses indoors as one from his tax bracket would—a serious inconvenience, really, because Jake couldn't tell where he was looking—shook his head disapprovingly as he walked into the laboratory. You stood off to the side, wringing your wrists.

“Jake, I…” Jay sighed and tutted. “Jeez. I don’t even know where to start.”

“I don’t know what Sunoo told you, but—”

“You should’ve told me what was going on,” Jay cut him off. “I’m not just your boss. I’m your friend, too. I’m supposed to be here for you, man. You can push your intern away—who cares about that guy, y’know?—but you don’t have to push me away.” He gave Jake a calculating once-over before he continued, “I did wonder, why’s he spending more time with Dr. L/N than me? Why her? So inconspicuous, so unassuming”—(this was when your jaw dropped, almost comically, and Jake had to put a hand on your shoulder to keep you from lunging at Jay for his… cavalier choice of words)—“much like a shadow. Or maybe a cloud rolling by, blending in with all the other—”

“Alright, I think you’ve made yourself clear. Can you get to the point now?” you interrupted, scornful.

Jay wore an almost convincing look of shock. “See? I didn’t even notice she was here. Bless her, what an underwhelming presence.” He promptly ignored your offended gasp and continued, “Anyway, I went ahead and booked us a guy’s trip—one week in the Swiss Alps. You can make up for last year’s embarrassing ski trip. Oh, and actually, it’ll be four days, not a week. Jungwon nearly had a heart attack when I asked him to clear my schedule for five days, so I just settled for a Thursday and Friday sometime next month.”

Now Jake was sure they were on completely different pages. He knew his friend through and through, so it was clear as day that this show of faux concern was just a ploy for Jay to entertain himself.

“You threatened me and insulted Y/N,” started Jake, slowly, “because you want to do a guy’s trip?” 

“Hm, yes, exactly… I don’t like your phrasing, but that’s the gist of it, yeah.”

“You used my intern as leverage!” Jake exclaimed. Jay only snickered in response to that, which made Jake feel partly irritated and partly relieved that Sunoo hadn’t grown that tired of him. “So… he never said anything to you, then?”

“Not to me—or, well, at least not directly.”

Jake’s eyebrows furrowed. “Not directly? What do you mean?” 

You peered over Jake’s shoulder when Jay handed over his phone. 

r/antiwork • 2 hr. ago jack_of_some_trades

HELP! my boss HATES my guts and wants me to DIE

i (23 m, 5’10”) scored the craaaziest internship so i thought i was pretty set for life ??? but now i think it’s time for me to start thinking about a career switch and maybe moving to a different country because it’s become quite obvious to me that my boss regrets taking me as an intern and is waiting to fire me :/ let me explain:

so, it all started when we were working on this super top secret thing together. can’t really explain what it is exactly but let’s just call it our prototype. at first everything was going good but now he’s been pushing me away and letting me take days off. isn’t that REALLY BAD like I’M GETTING BLACKLISTED FROM THE COMPANY level BAD???? i thought the prototype was like…… our thing :((( well it’s mostly his thing but i’m a big part of it too!!! i think?? i’m his only intern!!! (could he be seeing another intern behind my back...? can someone tell me if this is a thing that happens) my friends say it’s normal that an intern doesn’t have much to do but getting days off feels so weird…. i thought us interns weren’t supposed to be treated with kindness or given freedom so i don’t like this at all

also. he said something very concerning. i mentioned how i felt like i wasn’t being given enough work and he said he wants me to “get on good terms with the other interns” because “maybe some of them will be your future coworkers” …. ???? is he telling me to make connections to prepare for unemployment???

idk if i’m the problem but i want this to work out really bad. is our communication the problem here?? are we just growing distant because we don’t spend enough time together?? should i ask him to get dinner or something?? please give me advice or just let me know if i’m overreacting :( 

tldr: boss wants me to kill myself

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BigShotCEO55 • 1h ago Oh yeah he 100% hates your ass

jack_of_some_trades OP • 55m ago u think so ? :(( do u think it’s weird if i text him about it BigShotCEO55 • 47m ago Not at all. I think that’s very normal

BigShotCEO55 • 46m ago Also ngl I didn’t read any of that

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Jake grumbled. “Can you please stop harassing my intern on your Reddit burner? This is so obviously you.”

“But he’s so fun to mess with,” Jay said, with clearly no intention of stopping. 

“How do you even know that’s Sunoo’s account?” you asked.

With a shrug, Jay answered, “I like doing wellness checks on my employees.”

Translation: He was so curious about Jake taking in an intern that he found Sunoo’s Linktree through his Instagram. Apparently, along with the Reddit account discovery, Sunoo also streamed PUBG to his 15,000 Twitch subscribers when he wasn’t losing his mind over work.

Just when Jake thought he successfully evaded all grounds of suspicion, Jay followed up by asking, “So, what’s this prototype he’s talking about, anyway?”

The prototype was, in fact, the massive hunk of metal that was right behind Jake.

“Just something we’ve, uh, been working on. Nothing crazy,” he answered, stiffening, “but, anyway, the Alps—sure, I’ll go.”

It was a promising attempt at changing the topic, but Jake almost winced from how horribly unconvincing his delivery was.

Jay seemed to mull this over, which was odd considering he was the one who proposed it. “Hm… okay then,” he replied, in a peculiar way that left Jake feeling uneasy. “I’ll have Jungwon send you the details later.” His hand froze over the door handle, just as he was about to open it. “Oh, you should really open up a window in here, by the way. It smells like something died in here.”

Jake could hear his thundering heart now. He managed a courteous smile.

“Mm. Will do.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ i can't wait to share this fic with you guys!! i hope you liked the teaser :') this was honestly pretty long (2k words) compared to my usual teasers (like 100 words 😭) but i hope you guys love morally grey mc (and bickering old married couple jayke) here just as much as i do <3 support women's wrongs am i right

me: i wanna write about the psychological descent of a man as he grapples with his own humanity and the morality of using his own clones as test subjects in the name of science

the wolf inside me: I WANNA WRITE JAKE GETTING FREAKY WITH HIS CLONE 🤤

the other morally righteous wolf: ok girl let's relax this is sfw

[jayflrt]

against the world

PAIRING ▸ park sunghoon x fem!reader x sim jaeyun (ft. park jongseong)

GENRES ▸ fluff, angst, psychological, horror, thriller

WARNINGS ▸ profanity, murder, descriptions of gore, unrequited love, found family, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, mc is an unreliable narrator

SUMMARY ▸ if you could change anything about your life, it would be meeting park sunghoon.

WORD COUNT ▸ 14,064 words

PLAYLIST ▸ back to black by amy winehouse • the french library by franz gordon • perfectly splendid by the newton brothers

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ hello !! this fic is a rewrite of one of my first horror fics that i’ve written :') it badly needed reworking and i completely changed the ending. i hope you guys enjoy my spooky szn contribution ♡

THE TRUTH WAS, YOUR LIFE BEGAN TO FALL APART EVEN BEFORE YOU MET SIM JAEYUN. 

You realized this as you woke up, face pressed against the ice-cold, concrete floor of a holding cell; when the guards dragged your uncooperative, limp body into an interrogation room; when you were face-to-face with Detective Lee Heeseung and handcuffed to a cold, metal table as he read your Miranda Rights. The handcuffs dug into the flesh of your wrists, but you only fought against them once and gave up as soon as you realized they wouldn’t give in. You just wanted to thumb away the crusted blood staining your hands and pick out the flakes under your nails.

The room was foreign to you. It was something you’d seen in movies and read in books, but you never fathomed the idea of being in an interrogation room yourself. There was a two-way glass that you aimlessly stared at, wondering who was listening in on the other end. 

You couldn’t figure out just how you ended up in this situation. Everything was smooth in your memory up until your supposed arrest—a tear in the fabric of your recollection. You hardly remembered what happened on the way to the police station or when you were getting booked in. You dug your palms into your temples and then pressed against the soft flesh under your eyes, frustrated by the stunted gears in your head. As much as you begged than to click and start spinning, they remained stuck and rusted in place. 

But you couldn’t ask the brooding man standing over you. You couldn’t look up into his cold, unforgiving eyes. After all, he knew you were a murderer. 

“There’s no use in lying to me, Y/N,” Detective Lee said gruffly with a gaze like steel, “the prints match.”

You drummed your fingers against the table—a habit that was rooted in your anxiety. Your fingers were stained and pruned like roses, and as hard as you tried to paint the table red, it only flaked off. You were sure your heartbeat was faster than the tapping of your fingers, your mind perhaps speeding off twice as fast.

Your stomach twisted. If Jaeyun was going to prison, too, then you could no longer protect him.

There was a limit to how much he could take; you knew that being thrown in the slammer would be intolerable for him. You knew you needed to get to him immediately because Jaeyun was the guy who felt too little and too much at the same time—the guy who looked for the part of him that ran away, who self-destructed when he felt the world closing in on him.

After all, Jaeyun was a stick of trinitrotoluene lit at both ends. 

You worked up the courage to look Detective Lee in the eye, which made him stiffen up, biceps flexing under his white button-up. 

“Where’s Jaeyun?” you asked. 

Detective Lee’s lips pressed into a thin, grim line. Cutting into his pale cheeks. You decided that couldn’t be a good reaction. 

You continued, “He didn’t do anything, I swear. He was just there. He didn’t do anything.”

“If you cooperate with us, then you can see Jaeyun again,” the detective answered in a clipped tone. “I can sit here all day and wait.”

Cooperate. You hated that word.

You knew Detective Lee was just trying to sugarcoat your betrayal. You knew he was looking down on you, ready to push you to your limit. 

But there was nothing you could do in this room. There was no way for you to escape or talk your way out of it to see Jaeyun. You knew quite well that staying silent would only prevent you from making sure your boyfriend was okay. 

You had no other choice but to work with Detective Lee. 

“Will you at least make sure he’s not hurt?” you inquired, to which Detective Lee agreed with a nod.

“I’ll ask again: Will you cooperate?”

You stayed silent. You despised your old habit of shutting down like this, but you couldn’t help it.

Detective Lee sighed and sat in the chair across from you so that you both were eye-level with each other. “Listen, Y/N, you’re young. This murder investigation—this is serious stuff, okay? We just need to know the full story before we jump to any conclusions and make a false arrest. Can we start from last night?”

Deep down, you understood. But it’s all too fresh—too soon. The grief had yet to settle. The recollections of blood and lifeless eyes poisoned your head; it was all you could see when you closed your eyes.

You sounded hollow when you said, “It didn’t… start from last night.”

Detective Lee acknowledged this and leaned forward, hands clasped in front of him. “Then let’s hear it from the beginning.”

If you could change anything about your life, it would be meeting Park Sunghoon.

Your first meeting was at the age of fourteen. Moving schools was an unexpected shift in your life, and you didn't expect to find many friends at your new school. Starting new in the beginning of the year was one thing, but entering unknown territory with people already acclimated in their respective groups was another. 

People flocked to comfort, and you were sure that no one would want to step out of their comfort zone to bring a stranger into their friend group.

And then Sunghoon swooped in, like an angel sent from the heavens.

Initially, he was awkward. You were both fourteen-years-old and going through the initial stages of puberty—all voice cracks and awkward intervals of growth stunts. Sunghoon was soft-spoken and didn’t have many friends when he approached and befriended you. 

It started when you both found out you shared a love for novels. You spent hours talking about your favorite books, and Sunghoon shared his dream of wanting to craft the perfect story. Oftentimes, Sunghoon would share some of his writing with you, and then his eyes would sparkle upon hearing your feedback. 

You two were classmates, sitting right next to each other in the back of the classroom, conveniently right next to the door. You got to know Sunghoon slowly—the same gradual feeling of starting to care for someone. You knew his boundaries, though, because you were aware that you could never be the closest to Sunghoon. He and Park Jongseong were attached at the hip, and you couldn’t lie to yourself; you felt like a third wheel in the beginning.

But there was some comfort in the security of your friendship.

“It’s you and me,” Sunghoon would tell you, “the two of us against the world.”

You knew you should have been grateful to have made friends in the first place, but you didn’t exactly know if you belonged with them. As comfortable as you felt, there was always a whisper in the back of your head, telling you that you would never be their number one.

You would never be anyone’s number one.

“I don’t understand girls,” Jongseong said one day, hands tucked behind his head as the three of you were hanging out in Sunghoon’s room. You were flipping through some comic book that Sunghoon had laying around, and you shifted uncomfortably upon hearing the question. 

“You don’t have to.” Sunghoon’s eyes flitted from you, and then back to his phone. He swiped through some apps, but you could tell he wasn’t really paying attention judging by the glazed-over look in his eyes. “Girls make no sense at this age.”

Jongseong nudged you. “You have anything to say about that, Y/N?”

To be honest, you didn’t understand yourself much either. You were just starting to go through puberty, and it wasn’t ideal for a teenager as young as you to only have guy friends. You couldn’t relate to any of the girls your age, nor could you ask them if they were going through the same changes you were. 

You were acquainted with several girls, of course, but you never got close enough to ask what feelings and experiences they had. You wanted to know if they were becoming as conscious of themselves and others like you were, but you kept those questions bottled up since you only had Sunghoon and Jongseong.

“Nope,” you replied. “I couldn’t tell you.”

You supposed Jongseong was having girl problems again, and it all clicked because lately, he had been hanging around a pretty girl in their class. They were cute together and clearly into each other, but you could pick up on the issue: Jongseong was on the down-low about their relationship. More importantly, he had been on the down-low about it around Sunghoon, which had to have been breaking some sort of best friend code.

Jongseong asked, “You like anyone, Hoon?”

Hoon, your brain echoed, and you imagined yourself using the name as casually as Jongseong did. It sounded awkward coming from you, though. Friends gave each other nicknames, right? What if you gave Sunghoon a nickname? How would he react?

Sunghoon flushed behind his phone screen. You could tell he wanted it to go undetected, but you caught a glimpse of his flustered expression before he was able to compose himself.

“Oh, not really,” he replied with an air of indifference. “I dunno. I guess I haven’t really been looking.”

“How about you, Y/N?”

You faltered for a moment before you realized you had been addressed. It was a normal question; you should have expected it, but it hit you like a tornado and your mind was swirling. Dating had crossed your mind a few times, sure, you had never prepared an answer because you thought it was going to be straightforward—a simple “yeah, there’s a few cute guys in class.” But that wasn’t the case this time, and you were wondering why there wasn’t any clarity in your head.

Come on, Y/N, you urged yourself, as if you were complaining to multiple, uncooperating attendants working in your brain. Just say something—anything. 

Your mind was blanking, though, and you were scared. You couldn’t quite grasp why your stomach felt like a never-ending pit, but it only worsened when you couldn’t spit some guy’s name out. You wanted to open up your skull, thoroughly examine your head, poke at the areas refusing to work, and figure out who you couldn’t just list some attractive guy in class; on top of that, you wondered why you couldn’t just flat-out refuse the statement and claim that there was no one you were interested in.

You were struck with a painful realization that there was only one person you could think of.

Sunghoon.

No, no, no, your brain and your heart screamed at each other. Get ahold of yourself.

You quickly decided that it was just a passing feeling that you needed to suppress until it went away. It was just stupid teenage hormones and puberty making you feel this way and starving you of affection that you didn’t actually need in the first place. If you didn’t get a hold over yourself, you were going to crumble and ruin the good things you had going.

You internally convinced yourself that everything was fine. There were plenty of teenagers your age who had moments of weakness like this with their guy friends. You just needed to branch out more, that was all. 

Sheepishly, you replied before the boys could chew you out, “There’s no one I’m interested in right now.” 

You weren’t a very good liar, but as long as Sunghoon and Jongseong were sold, you were content with how things were. 

Your group expanded when you turned fifteen, and you and Sunghoon grew closer—maybe even closer than Sunghoon and Jongseong were. 

You were laying down in your bed one night, breaking into sobs when you realized that you needed more than one hand to count the number of friends you had now. Your shell was broken and your world was bigger. You normally lived like your uphills were mountains and your downhills were cliffs, but, lately, the mountains were getting easier to climb and the downhills weren’t that big of a drop. You didn’t need to stop and catch your breath or worry about hurting yourself on the way down.

You never felt lonely anymore. If Sunghoon or Jongseong weren’t free, you would call Nishimura Riki to catch grasshoppers in the creek with you, or you’d go play video games with Yang Jungwon. Kim Sunoo called you nearly every night to bother you, but you didn’t mind. You liked them; they made you feel important, like you were wanted.

“Come on,” Sunghoon teased Jungwon one day as he was blushing over some girl. “What are you being so shy about?”

“It’s embarrassing!” Jungwon complained, and you giggled over how a flush of red started creeping from his ears to his cheeks. “I’m not a smooth-talker like you are, Hoon.” 

Sunghoon snorted. “I’m not a smooth-talker.”

“He’s practically, like, bulletproof,” Jongseong chimed in. “We can’t tease him about anyone. He just brushes it off.”

“I’m not bulletproof,” Sunghoon argued, but anyone could see the pride behind his expression. “I’m just not interested in anyone right now.”

You thought you had finally squashed the weird, gooey feeling that arose in your chest every now and then whenever Sunghoon came close. It was primarily due to the fact that Sunghoon was a respectful individual who didn’t try to weasel his way into your personal bubble as he pleased. That was probably for the best because you were sure your brain would go haywire if Sunghoon was too close for comfort.

And then there was Sim Jaeyun. 

Jaeyun entered your circle pretty easily. With his radiant personality and warm presence, it was no shocker that he was accepted by the group instantly. He possessed some odd charm that drew people to him, and you couldn’t seem to figure just how that worked. You were almost jealous of him, honestly, with how much of a social butterfly he was.

Out of all of them, Jaeyun seemed to take a particular interest in you. It drove you crazy, though, and you couldn’t figure out how to get the guy to stop teasing and messing around with you. The others couldn’t figure it out either; you just weren’t as bright and bubbly as Jaeyun was, so it was odd that he kept nagging the one person whose wavelength wasn’t on par with his. 

Sometimes it was cute—endearing even—but sometimes it was just flat-out irritating.

“Hey, Y/N.” Jake grinned, and his voice was all light and airy as he approached you. “What’re you doing for the summer break?”

“Probably sleeping in, hanging out with the others, and some more sleeping,” you replied, hardly sparing him a single glance. 

You were too focused on clearing out your locker of all the books and papers you had tossed in during the year. Gotta keep this, gotta throw this away, gotta return this one, you rattled off in your head, mentally preserving a reminder of your various items. But Jaeyun knew how to push your buttons and grab your attention. He never took your deflection without retaliating back. That was one of the many reasons why you found it so difficult to be around him.

“And hanging out with Sunghoon, huh? Have you realized it yet, or are you still pretending it’s not there?”

You closed your locker with a swift swipe of your hand, revealing Jaeyun’s smug expression. Your eyes were practically bugging out of your sockets as you stared him down. Somehow, you knew exactly what he was hinting at, but you refused to spell it out for him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” you questioned, but Jaeyun was already walking away from you. He was turned away, but you could visualize that stupid smirk of his like it was carved into your memory.

Jaeyun was smart. Too smart.

Your summer was filled with laughter, beach trips, and shy glances at Sunghoon. He drove you around places and you sat in the passenger’s seat next to him, toes curled in your shoes because you were so overjoyed. The car was always loud with music and laughter, and whenever it was silent, it was because everyone else was sleeping on each other after a long day of being outside.

You still masqueraded around, playing the role of Sunghoon’s best friend who definitely had zero romantic feelings toward him. It was quite hard when you had to pretend like your heart didn’t flutter whenever Sunghoon’s fingers brushed against yours.

“Sunghoon,” Jaeyun would complain, rousing laughter from everyone at how impatient he was, “are we there yet?”

“You’re so annoying,” Sunghoon retorted, clearly as a joke. You couldn’t help but laugh at his outburst, but it quickly died on your lips once you caught a glimpse of Jaeyun winking at you in the side mirror.

Jaeyun had a mischievous glint in his eyes when he said, “But you still love me, Hoon.”

Oh. 

He was trying to make you jealous. 

You fought down the urge to laugh at him. You might have been harboring a small crush, but you were never the jealous type, especially not over petty things like this. There was one little thing, however, that you couldn’t seem to shake.

For some reason, the anticipation to call Sunghoon by a nickname made you anxious. You never tested it on your tongue; it just floated around in your head. However, when you addressed him as Hoon one day, your heart skipped a beat when Sunghoon responded with a smile that rivaled the brightness of the sun.

You grew closer to Jongseong, too. You didn’t feel like the third wheel with him and Sunghoon anymore; you felt like you were all at the same level of closeness. You and Jongseong hung out sometimes without Sunghoon, and despite a few awkward pauses in your interactions, you two warmed up quickly and you learned how to joke around with him easily. 

Jongseong wasn’t all stiff and dry like you were initially afraid of; rather, he was surprisingly fun, and every time you learned something new about him, like how he adored cats but was allergic to them, you were even more amazed. 

It wasn’t just Jongseong, though. You and Sunghoon grew far closer than ever before, whether that was for the better or worse. 

Sunghoon only lived a street away, so it was convenient to hang out, and when you didn’t hang out with him, you two called each other. You could see him unravel in front of your eyes; he became visibly more comfortable when it was just the two of you—smiling, laughing, and bursting into laughter with tears of unrestrained happiness. 

It wasn’t just the jubilant memories that tugged you two closer, though. It was also the despair.

In the first place, it was an accident that you even happened to break down in front of Sunghoon.

You two were in his room when it happened, and things were as they always had been before you sensed the calm before the storm. You joked around as usual and passed the time by playing video games. Sunghoon was perched on his usual spot in the corner of the bed. You looked over at him and realized how close you two had become as friends.

Friends. Just friends.

It was right at that moment when you realized that this wasn’t what you wanted. You didn’t want to just be Sunghoon’s best friend. You wanted to be the reason why he smiled, the one to make him blush, and the one he could share his pain and happiness with. 

But your feelings were the scariest thing you’ve ever had to face, and you felt ashamed for even wanting to cross the line drawn between you and Sunghoon.

You couldn’t dare bring yourself to confess. You were almost positive that Sunghoon didn’t feel the same way, and you would be risking a fall-out in your current relationship if you admitted anything. What if Sunghoon ended up hating you? What if you lost him and all of your other friends? What if you weren’t the closest person to him anymore?

That was why you felt like Sunghoon was in another dimension, always a layer away. Always.

This was your own fault. You were the one who fell for your best friend. You were the one who did this to yourself. You broke your own heart.

You couldn’t help it when you started falling apart in front of him. It started with a broken cough that was supposed to cover up a sniffle. You were thankful for the loud battle sounds in the game that drowned out your quiet sobbing. But the video game didn’t stop Sunghoon from noticing your shaking hands gripping the controller.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” 

“Don’t worry about it. I’m okay.”

Your voice is so shaky, so broken. Sunghoon knew you were crying before he could see or hear it.

He paused the game and put the controller down, but your eyes were still trained on the screen, hands shaking as you clutched the controller until you were white-knuckled. Sunghoon was on edge—panicked. Although, it was a different kind of panic from all the times you would be stressing over an assignment and Sunghoon would offer some lame piece of advice in return.

“What happened? What’s wrong?” His tone was frantic now as he searched your face for an answer.

You smiled, although faint melancholy was tucked away in the curl of your lip. “Nothing. I’m fine.”

“Now, I know that’s not true.”

Your smile broke. It was so unfortunate that Park Sunghoon had to have a heart so big.

You could almost hear Jaeyun in the back of your head: Have you realized it yet, or are you still pretending it isn’t there? 

You started crying, and it wasn’t something soft with a gradual crescendo. It was loud and all at once, like a wounded animal. Your hands shook more, and you finally dropped your controller, burying your fingers into your roots, as if tugging your hair hard enough would make it all stop, as if it would hurt more than the ache in your chest.

Sunghoon was quick to get off his bed and slide to the ground, right next to you. He wrapped an arm around your shoulder and it only made you feel ashamed. You stiffened up and shrunk back, hoping he wouldn’t notice how you tensed up at his touch. You could hear your own heartbeat, but you were pretty sure you were hyperventilating at a faster pace than the pounding in your chest. The world under you moved, bounced, so you decided to lean into Sunghoon.

The logical half of your brain informed you in a calm, clipped manner that you were having a panic attack. The other half meanwhile was screaming and shutting itself down. 

Five things you can see, four things you can touch, three things you can hear, two things you can smell, and one thing you can taste, you tried telling yourself, but your senses overwhelmed you completely. Your tears were blurring your vision, you couldn’t hear anything but your sobs, and your lungs felt as if they were on fire. 

“Y/N, talk to me,” came the softest voice that eased the painful ringing in your ears. 

“I can’t,” you stuttered out. “Not right now.”

You wish you hadn’t let it get to this point. You were completely humiliating yourself in front of Sunghoon right now. This was the one thing you couldn’t let him find out about. 

Your heavy gasps grew more labored. You then curled into yourself, sweaty hands tugging and knotting at your hair. And, shit, you couldn’t breathe. 

“I can’t, I can’t,” you repeated again and again, like a broken record. The desperation in your voice was so ugly.

There was something fierce in Sunghoon’s eyes, like he was ready to protect you from anything or anyone that tried to hurt you, but there was also softness in his voice. “You know, you can tell me anything. Whatever it is, I’ll hear you out. I don’t want you to suffer alone, Y/N.”

With a small smile, he added, “It’s just you and me, right? The two of us against the world.”

That only made you cry even more. You just replayed Sunghoon’s words in your head, like it was your favorite song.

“Alright.” You breathed in real deep, through the aching chest and everything. “It’s really stupid.”

“If it makes you cry this hard, it can’t be stupid.”

You bit your lip, embarrassed. “I think I like someone—someone I can’t have.”

Sunghoon didn’t respond for a moment, and it rattled your brain. He probably was wondering this underwhelming confession warranted a breakdown from you, and you couldn’t blame him. However, it was the only way you could avoid lying to your best friend without giving him the whole truth. 

For a split second, you wondered if Sunghoon simply just didn’t hear you. But you didn’t want to repeat yourself; you didn’t like repeating yourself. 

To your surprise, Sunghoon just smiled. “Do I know them?”

You opened your mouth to speak, but no words were stringing together in your head to form a coherent sentence.

“Uh, well, you don’t have to tell me if you’re not ready,” Sunghoon continued. He flushed and flicked his thumb under his nose—an awkward mannerism of his that you grew to love over the years. “Actually, I think we’re in the same boat. There’s someone I like, too. Someone I can’t have.” 

His words bounced in your skull. Settled. Bounced again.

“Really?” you spluttered out, and it took you a moment to recuperate from the heavy sadness that was filling your chest. You brought yourself to ask, “I mean, you’re so popular, so why don’t you just ask them out?”

“Can’t.”

“Why not? Are they dating someone else?”

There was a sad smile on Sunghoon’s lips when he answered, “No, Jongseong likes her, too.”

At the age of sixteen, you realized that you couldn’t get over Sunghoon, but you could suppress your heartbreak and lingering feelings. 

It physically hurt to think about how deeply ingrained your concept of friendship was with him, and the possibility that Park Sunghoon would never think of you as more than a friend. You two had shared too many experiences—worn each other’s shoes and walked miles—to ever become more than what you were.

Nothing would ever change.

You were hanging out by a creek near Jongseong’s house. It was just the two of you—no Jaeyun to poke fun at you, and no Sunghoon to distract you. It was just the two of you, and it was somehow so easy to be with Jongseong like this. You could laugh with your stomach and smile with your eyes without feeling the need to close up or shut down. 

“It’s getting annoying, isn’t it?” Jongseong asked under his breath at one point. When you shot him a puzzled look, he clarified, “Sunghoon.”

You picked up on Jongseong’s annoyance toward Sunghoon over the past few weeks, but his words confirmed your suspicions now. You wondered if it was geared toward the girl they both liked—whoever she was. 

You never thought to ask, mainly because you didn’t want to know. Either way, if Sunghoon wanted to share, he would’ve done so already. 

You swallowed down the lump in your throat, trying to grab at words and shove them together, but you genuinely didn’t know what to say. 

It had always been you, Sunghoon, and Jongseong. You never thought about them turning on each other. The very idea made you feel sick to your stomach. 

Over the past week, you had seen Sunghoon’s indifference toward Jongseong, but you were too afraid to ask about it. Your friend group was slow to pick up on it, but you noticed the way Sunghoon would purposely avoid conversing with Jongseong, or the way Jongseong would walk quickly past him if they crossed paths. It was odd, though, because everyone knew that Sunghoon and Jongseong were the best of friends—inseparable. How could you hold onto someone for so long and just let go of them like that?

You recalled that Jongseong and Jungwon went over to talk to Sunghoon about his moody behavior, but Jongseong never told you whether the talk went well or not. You figured it just never happened because Jungwon called in sick the very next day. 

You prayed that he would hurry up and get over his cold. He had been out sick all week, which checked out since everyone was getting sick around this time of the year. Jungwon would know how to get Sunghoon and Jongseong to reconcile. He was always the friend that helped everyone patch things up. 

“You guys are best friends,” was all you could say. “You’ll make up in a few days, right?”

Jongseong clicked his tongue loud enough to make your skin crawl. 

But you didn’t want to drop it this time, you asked, “Seriously, what happened between you guys?” 

For a moment, you wondered if you should’ve brought up what Sunghoon confessed to you—about him and Jongseong liking the same girl. But this couldn’t have been about that; Sunghoon would never let a girl get between his friendships. 

“Sunghoon’s hiding something dark,” Jongseong blurted out. “I don’t think I can get him out of this one.”

“Something dark? What is it?”

“I don’t really know—”

“Jongseong,” you cut in. “If you know something, then just say it. He’s my best friend, too.”

Jongseong shifted uncomfortably, restless. He was silent for a long period of time, so you just waited for him to collect his thoughts. Uneasiness bursted from the tips of your fingers and crawled under your skin. You felt the heat of the sun against your face, so you looked up and covered your eyes with a hand, blinking back red. 

“If Sunghoon did something unforgivable,” he started in a murmur, “would you forgive him?”

“I don’t know,” was all you could say.

“Yeah,” Jongseong replied, his terse words nearly making you flinch. “I don’t know, either.”

The sun grew hotter against your face, and all you could see was blood red behind your eyes. 

You didn’t know how exactly it started, but you slowly started to find solace in Jaeyun.

You didn’t want to admit it, but you were starting to care for him a little more than the people around you. You were starting to get swayed by him—the things he said, the way he looked at you—and it scared you a little.

But Jaeyun felt safe. He felt like home.

You two called at night, sometimes. You weren’t normally one to be vulnerable in front of others, but you shed some tears in front of Jaeyun a couple of times.

The only other person you had cried in front of was Sunghoon.

“It’s kinda sad,” Jaeyun told you one day. You two were spending the afternoon studying together at his place, and you were feeling self-conscious because you were starting to regret not dressing a little cuter. “I’ve known you for a year, but we’ve only gotten close now.”

“I don’t think either of us cared about deepening our friendship back then.”

He narrowed his eyes at you. “You think I didn’t want to be closer? How do you think I picked up on you liking Sunghoon?”

“Because I was obvious about it?”

“No, idiot, because I like you.”

You blinked a few times until you fully processed his words. I like you, your brain repeated, and then you reprocessed the information. 

No, there was an ‘idiot’ before that. Not only were you liked, but he thought you were stupid, as well. 

You became painfully aware of your knees touching Jaeyun’s, but you still couldn’t wrap your head around the idea of him liking you romantically. You had never been in this position. Since your crush on Sunghoon had been one-sided for the past few years, you never expected to be on the receiving end. 

“You…” you trailed off, floundering to find something to say—something that wouldn’t make you sound stupid or mean. You settled with, “You, too?”

His eyes beamed with hope. “For a year now.”

Your world was so small before. It was just you, Sunghoon, and Jongseong. 

Before you could even wonder if there was space in your heart for Jaeyun, you realized that you had already let him burrow his way in there.

“Can I kiss you?” Jaeyun asked. 

You couldn’t help but breathe out a laugh, and every once of nervousness slipped away. You always thought you could attain this level of closeness with Sunghoon, but maybe your relationship with him was just that fragile—where you could just grab the string binding you two together and snip it completely. 

But it was different with Jaeyun. 

“Yeah,” you answered, smiling, “you can.”

And then, with Jaeyun’s breath fanning your lips, you felt Sunghoon completely dissolve from the impounding thoughts racking your brain. Right now, it was Jaeyun and only Jaeyun. 

You leaned in first, cupping his cheek and pressing your lips against Jaeyun’s soft ones. It was weird, kissing for the first time, but he leaned into it instantly so that your movements were less awkward and more guided. 

A fire blazed inside of you, burning hotter than imaginable. You didn’t expect Jaeyun to drive you this crazy—to crave more, to want more. You drew back before you slid your hand into his hair, although you were tempted to go further when his pillowy lips peppered soft kisses along your jawline. 

But you didn’t want to go overboard or ruin anything by going too fast. You settled for leaving another chaste kiss against his lips before pulling back, and you were delighted when you saw how pleased Jaeyun was. He was practically glowing. 

From then on, you and Jaeyun had a relationship that extended past something platonic, but it wasn’t like you two were official. Naturally, you ended up confiding in him over everything. 

While Sunghoon still held a place in your heart as your first love, you grew to care for Jaeyun, who kindled a gentler fire in you. Sunghoon, on the other hand, left you burned and scarred. 

You didn’t want to rush into a relationship, mainly because you didn’t want Jaeyun to think he was a rebound, and he respected that. So he waited for you to figure out your feelings and let your heart choose who was right for you. 

You weren’t stupid, though; you knew that chasing after Sunghoon was a hopeless cause.

You and Jaeyun drifted about in a limbo-state of your relationship. You two went on a couple of dates, got to know each other at a deeper level, and spent a lot of time together. He became the person you thought about when you were falling asleep and when you woke up in the morning. 

You two got along surprisingly well, and you wondered why you ever had doubts about him in the beginning. Sure, Jaeyun still got on your nerves at times, but you just found it funny after the wave of annoyance passed. 

Your friends started to talk about how close you two were and frequently brought up the idea of you two dating. Of course, you always denied it, enjoying the privacy you and Jaeyun had. 

But as your relationship blossomed into something more serious, you decided that you didn’t want things to stay casual any longer. So, you asked him out, and Jaeyun, being the lovesick puppy he was, accepted without a second thought. 

You thought about how much had changed in your life. Sunghoon stopped hanging out with you completely, resorting to being alone most of the time. Everyone was concerned about his behavior, but after several attempts of failed confrontation, they all collectively gave up. You and Jongseong still kept an eye on him, using roundabout ways to find out how he was doing; it was the most you two could do given how little opportunity you had to talk to him. 

You didn’t share many classes with Jongseong anymore, but you two were still close, even after your “two of us against the world” friendship with Sunghoon had gone to shit. 

Jongseong was kind, though, and despite how he was rough around the edges, he was gentle enough. 

But he knew that Sunghoon was hiding something dark, and that alone made you somewhat nervous around him. 

You felt unsettled the entire day, but when your group chat started flooding with texts about Jungwon in the middle of the night, you felt an icy chill travel down your spine. 

It was all over the news. The whole story about him being down with the flu was just a cover-up while authorities were looking for him.

You felt nauseous. 

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT FOUND DEAD NEAR WOODS. FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED.

The 16-year-old boy was found dead at the scene. The parents of the deceased student have identified him as Yang Jungwon. As of now, there are no leads, but authorities have ruled the case as a homicide. 

Police have asked anyone with information to contact their local police department.

You read the headline again. Over and over again until your vision was blurry and the words were convoluted. Your fingers were raw and bitten down to the nail bed by the time you were able to put your phone down so that you could just cry into your hands. 

By the time you got around to reading the details, grimacing at the descriptions of mutilation done to Jungwon’s body and how his body had been decomposing for weeks now, you had to run to your toilet and dry heave everything out. 

You weren’t the closest to Jungwon or anything, but imagining such a bright person meet such a horrific end wasn’t easy to process. For hours, you ignored all of the calls and texts and attempts to comfort from your parents. You stared straight at your wall—so terrified that your chest hurt and your breathing was ragged. 

Later that night, when the world was quiet and dreaming, you received a text from Sunghoon. 

sunghoon: Hey sunghoon: I’ve been thinking about you. Are you doing okay? sunghoon: I haven’t been a good friend lately, I’m sorry sunghoon: It’s still the two of us against the world

There was a time when those words made you feel like you were on top of the world, soaring high over the clouds. 

Now, though, all you could feel was a horrible sensation of dread.

It had been months since Sunghoon and Jongseong’s falling out. 

You were seventeen now, but you felt hollower as you aged. Sunghoon showed up to school and lingered within your group silently, only contributing when spoken to directly. He didn’t approach you anymore or ask to hang out after school. Actually, no one knew what he did after school. He would head straight home and then go completely off the radar. 

Gone off the rails, as Sunoo called it. 

You cried several nights over it. You felt like not only was your best friend slipping away from you, but Sunghoon’s disconnect from the group would soon make you pull away, too. You had Jaeyun, of course, but nothing felt the same anymore. With Jungwon dead, the group felt tense and gloomy. You all started hanging out with other people and slowly stopped responding in the group chat. 

Part of you realized that Sunghoon’s detachment was because you didn’t reply to him the night Jungwon’s murder was publicized. Back then, you suspected that Sunghoon could have been behind it, judging by your conversation with Jongseong earlier. It all added up in your head, but the only thing that was stopping you from believing it fully was that you couldn’t fathom Sunghoon ever doing something so evil. 

“I don’t know what’s going on with him,” you whispered into the phone, even though there wasn’t anyone around that you were worried about listening in. “He’s shutting me out now. Something must’ve happened to him.” 

You heard Jaeyun hum and contemplate for a moment before he replied, “Maybe he just needs space.” 

“I think something happened between him and Jongseong,” you admitted, “but I can’t imagine Jongseong saying anything that would make Sunghoon ignore him for this long.”

“It must’ve been serious, then.” 

“But… but it’s Sunghoon; he’s”—you paused as you recalled what Jongseong once called him—“bulletproof.”

There was a pause.

“I guess that’s the problem with being bulletproof,” Jaeyun spoke gravely. “People think they can just keep shooting.”

What Jaeyun told you that night kept replaying in your head over the next week—over and over again. It hit you a little too hard, and you waited to confront Sunghoon about it. You wanted him to know that he could be vulnerable, too. But you couldn’t even speak to your best friend these days. He had been avoiding everyone like the plague.

You assumed it had something to do with Jongseong, but when you talked to him about it, he was hesitant to get into it.

“You’re the closest person to him,” you told him. Today was colder, and you rubbed your hands together for warmth as you and Jongseong stood by the gates after school. “I think if you guys sit down and talk things out, then he’ll start being himself again.”

“I was the closest person to him,” Jongseong corrected with a scoff. “Plus, there’s nothing to talk about.”

“Nothing to talk about? What about your friendship?”

You couldn’t stop the words from leaving your mouth. Anger roiled deep in your chest, and you were too furious to realize that Jongseong only looked dejected in response. If he wasn’t going to explain what happened, then you couldn’t understand what was eating away at their relationship. 

“There is no friendship, Y/N,” he said slowly, in a voice so low that it sounded like the calm before the storm. His words made everything come to a halt, and you felt like time itself had frozen. “I suggest you let go of Sunghoon, too. You’re hanging onto someone who’s beyond help.”

“But I don’t know what you know!” you exclaimed. “I can’t let go of someone just like that, Jongseong. I need answers.”

He was quiet before he asked, “Do you remember when Sunghoon stayed over at your house once when we were fourteen?”

“When his house caught on fire?” you recalled, but the memory was sort of hazy for you. All you remembered was how you were in complete awe that Sunghoon was unscathed and unbothered by the incident. 

“Yeah,” Jongseong’s voice was grim as he said, “and I bet he never told you that he was the one who started that fire on purpose.”

It was like a punch to the gut. You could only shake your head blankly, lips parted in disbelief. 

He continued, “When we were fifteen, he thought it would be fun to plan out a murder without getting caught—”

No.

“—and, at sixteen, he actually did it.”

No. No. 

“Jongseong,” you whispered, your voice smaller than you intended, “was it…” 

“Jungwon?” He said the name so carefully, as if the world would explode into nothingness if he did. You had been gnawing at your lip so hard that you drew blood, yet that couldn’t distract you from the haunted look in Jongseong’s eyes. “Yeah, he killed Jungwon.”

You felt like you had just been doused with ice-cold water. 

“I shouldn’t have brought Jungwon with me. I knew Sunghoon was gonna do it to someone, but I didn’t know…” He sucked in a deep, shuddering breath that racked his entire body. “I didn’t think it would be him. I brought Jungwon to talk him out of whatever was going on, not to…” Jongseong stopped himself again, covering his face with his hands to wipe away the tears that had started to fall. 

It’s you and me, Sunghoon’s voice chimed in your head. The two of us against the world.

You thought your world had been shattered, but then you realized that it had actually been broken for a long time.

That night, you asked Jaeyun to come over, and he arrived at your door in record speed.

You two were sitting on your bed, controllers in hand, but the screen was off and neither of you were even in the mood to play. You must have trusted him more than anyone by now because the words started spilling with no preamble. You ended up explaining most of your conversation with Jongseong after you had Jaeyun swear on his life that he wouldn’t tell a soul.

Of course, you didn’t expect any normal person to compliantly come to terms with the fact that their friend murdered their other friend, but Jaeyun was a bit different when it came to you. Instead of accusing you of lying or denying the truth, he believed you wholeheartedly. You couldn’t tell if he was patient with you, or if he was just horrified by everything you had told him. 

It had been an entire year since Jungwon had been found dead and the case closed as an unsolved murder, but your words sucker punched Jaeyun like it had just happened yesterday. 

Jaeyun’s tone was urgent when he said, “We have to tell someone.” When he noticed your hesitation, he shook his head at you with a disapproving frown. “Y/N, this is serious. This is Jungwon, my best friend.” 

Your mouth went dry. “I-I know, it’s just—”

Jaeyun didn’t have to cut you off. You froze right when you saw tears welling up in his eyes.

“Y/N.” He said your name gently, but you still flinched. You had never heard your name being called with so much despair. “If Sunghoon really murdered Jungwon, then I can’t keep this a secret.”

“Give me a few days,” you pleaded. “I just want to hear Sunghoon out. No matter what he says, I’ll come with you to testify.” 

He shook his head immediately, eyes fierce. “You are not going anywhere near Sunghoon—not after what he did to Jungwon.”

“Then let me ask Jong—”

“Y/N,” Jaeyun interrupted, letting his hand slide over yours. His eyes were full of concern when he asked, “How do you know you can trust Jongseong?” 

Your hands started to shake.

“Y/N,” he said again, “if Jongseong took Jungwon to see Sunghoon, what do you think he did after Sunghoon killed him?”

Your pulse raced.

“If Jongseong knew about Sunghoon’s behavior for this long, why hasn’t he ever done anything?” 

All this time, you thought your world had grown a little bigger ever since you met Sunghoon and Jongseong. 

But you were living in a fantasy by yourself. 

Not so long after your talk with Jaeyun, your phone rang. You were in the middle of finishing up your history paper when you saw the caller ID flash across your screen.

It was Sunghoon.

You didn’t even give yourself time to think about it first. You just picked up the phone immediately. It was an old habit; you saw Sunghoon and accepted the call without a second thought. You never expected Sunghoon to ever call you again, so you didn’t exactly have any practice in rejecting his calls.

“Y/N?” came the familiar voice of Park Sunghoon—gentle, but almost like he was a caged animal.

“Sunghoon?” You swallowed hard. “Uh, how are you? It’s been a while since we’ve talked.”

“I’m so sorry,” he apologized, but you weren’t sure what he was apologizing for. “It was supposed to be the two of us against the world.”

You frowned. “Sunghoon, what’s going on?”

Instead of answering your question, Sunghoon hesitated before saying, “We should catch up sometime. You can read part of the story I’m writing.”

You paused, and before he could ask if you were still there, you replied, “Yeah, sure.”

“Right.” Sunghoon sounded like he had more to say. You almost didn’t catch it because he was so quiet, and the last thing you heard before he hung up was a quiet, “Bye, then.”

Your deepest regret was answering your phone later that night.

It was hours after Sunghoon called you. Jongseong was more of a texter, so you were surprised when his caller ID flashed across your screen. It was definitely not a reasonable hour for a high school student to be out and about, but nothing could have prepared you for what you heard on the other side of the line.

Jongseong was sobbing. 

The sound chilled you to the bone. You never heard Jongseong cry, but this didn’t feel normal; this cry was frantic and mangled, like he was spiraling out of control. 

“Y/N, you have to come over quickly,” Jongseong begged through broken sobs and heavy breaths. “Please, Y/N, I don’t want him to hurt anyone else.”

“Jongseong, calm down. Tell me what’s happening.”

“You have my location, right? Just hurry. Please.” And he hung up. 

In a daze, you called Jaeyun and asked him to pick you up. 

“I really think we should just call the cops,” Jaeyun offered, almost pleading. “I don’t know what’s going on with Jongseong, but this sounds sketchy, Y/N.”

Pitted fear festered in your throat. You knew something was off, but you weren’t sure if you could handle losing Jongseong, too. You had gotten so used to not being alone that you were paranoid of returning to having no one. 

“Call them as soon as we get there,” you said. “I just need to make sure Jongseong’s okay.” 

Jaeyun pressed his lips into a thin, grim line, but he kept driving. 

It was a port that Jongseong’s location directed you to, and discomfort crept into your limbs as soon as Jaeyun pulled into the area. Maybe you should’ve stayed back where it was safer and let the police handle everything, but you must have been a fool. It was just that Jongseong’s cries echoed in your head whenever you started having second thoughts.

You could hear him before you saw him.

Jongseong’s soft sobs could be heard from behind a metal storage unit, and you and Jaeyun inched closer carefully after getting out of the car. Your heart dropped to your stomach; you were dreading the worst, and when you turned the corner into the closed area Jongseong was in, you realized that the sight before you was the worst it could get. 

Sunghoon’s body.

You waited for his chest to rise, but not even a shallow breath escaped his blue-tinged lips.

It took you a moment to reorient yourself and realize that Sunghoon wasn’t just passed out, he was dead. 

You saw the blood pooling around him and the wounds piercing his torso, staining his white shirt, but you wanted to believe your mind was playing tricks on you. You convinced yourself that Sunghoon was going to get up any second now and start laughing, and then Jongseong would join in and tell you it was all a joke. 

But that wasn’t the case.

It wasn’t fear that overtook you—not an overwhelm of emotion—it was numbness. You stared at Sunghoon’s body as he bled out onto the concrete, blood pooling into the cracks in the ground. You felt an odd sort of disconnect. 

You tilted your head to see Sunghoon’s face turned to the side against the concrete. His blank eyes just stared into nothingness, and you realized that you would never get to see Sunghoon’s warm, sincere gaze ever again. You were never going to see his bright smile. You were never going to hear his contagious laugh. You were never going to read the wonderful stories he wrote. 

You supposed your life was always meant to be a tragedy. 

“H-Hoon?” Jaeyun choked up behind you. He was staring down at Sunghoon’s lifeless body in horror before his expression was slowly replaced with anger. “Jongseong, what the hell did you do?!”

“It was self-defense, man,” Jongseong whimpered out before his body was racked with sobs again. “He pulled a knife on me out of nowhere. I tried to stop him, but he was trying to kill me. I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t—” He exhaled shakily. “I couldn’t do anything else.”

You didn’t say anything. You just stared at Sunghoon.

“Come on, guys,” Jongseong pleaded. “I can’t go to fucking prison. I’m eighteen now; it’s not juvie, it’s a life sentence.” You didn’t know what he was getting at until he requested the unthinkable, “Help me get rid of the body.”

You wanted to puke. You eyed the shiny metal soaked in blood that Jongseong was clutching. You were never going to see Sunghoon again. You were never going to hang out with him over the weekend. You were never going to hear his voice again. 

“Get rid of the body?” Jaeyun raised his voice, exasperated. “What the fuck are you gonna do when they realize he’s gone missing? You just killed someone! This is on you, Jongseong, not us!”

“Are you going to help me get rid of it or not?!” Jongseong tugged at his hair. “Just help me throw him off the dock, and we can all walk away from this.”

You watched helplessly, horror-stricken. “I… I can’t.”

“The body’s gonna float and show up somewhere,” Jaeyun countered with stony eyes. “They’re gonna catch you.”

Jongseong looked terrifyingly pale. You wondered if it was just the glow of the moon, or if he was also holding in his urge to puke. “I’ll just cut his stomach so he sinks.”

Disgusted, Jaeyun scowled. “You’re a monster.”

You watched as Jongseong tried hauling Sunghoon’s body before giving up and dragging him by the legs. You shot Jaeyun a warning look, mouthing for him to call the police before Jongseong noticed. He lingered back to do so while you followed Jongseong to plead him to stop. His arms gave out as soon as he stepped onto the planks, and he let Sunghoon’s lower half collapse onto the solid wood. 

“Y/N, help me cut open his stomach,” he ordered, hardly sparing you a glance. If he did, he would have seen how horrified you were.

“Oh,” you said, voice wavering, “that’s… that—that’s his…” 

“Y/N, help me.”

“Jongseong,” you begged, “please… please stop.”

He paid you no attention, though. You felt ghastly as Jongseong used a paring knife to make an incision on Sunghoon’s stomach. The smell was putrid. You screwed your eyes shut as the metallic smell of blood invaded your nostrils. Your nausea plunged into your gut, and you had to fight the pervasive urge to hurl.

A stream of Sunghoon’s blood made its way to your shoes, staining the soles. 

Jongseong was cutting your old best friend open. 

The dread had kept you numb for this long, but it was when reality settled in that you finally lost it. You couldn’t handle it anymore and pitched forward over the edge of the dock, throwing up until you were heaving up bile. You sobbed through it all, mournful and low, and your friend paid you no attention while he was cutting through flesh. 

When Jongseong was done, he wiped at his cheek, leaving behind a smear of blood. Sunghoon’s blood. You stared at him, and you had never been more terrified of him in your life. 

And then you really noticed Jongseong. You noticed how Sunghoon’s blood was coated all over his hands, how he hardly had any scratches or bruises on his body, how merciless his eyes were as he stared down at his old best friend. 

The realization that washed over you was frightening. 

“Sunghoon didn’t actually try to kill you, did he?” you managed to warble out. “You killed him yourself.”

A deep silence from him followed—heavy and wretched. Sunghoon’s blood was so dark that it nearly looked black under the dim light, and you could only stare helplessly until Jaeyun made his way to the dock, placing his hands firmly on your shoulders. 

Jongseong turned to you and Jaeyun, clutching his knife tightly. You could hardly recognize the boy in front of you. You never truly understood the term “paralyzed by fear” until you saw the crazed look in Jongseong’s eyes—cold and haunting. 

Jaeyun’s eyes glistened with tears and his throat was thick with emotion when he said, “Jongseong, please—just hang on and… and we can talk this out.” 

The hand gripping his knife started shaking. “You won’t tell anyone, right? You guys won’t snitch on me, right?” When there was no response from you or Jaeyun, Jongseong’s desperation grew stronger. He turned to you with his eyes big and terrified. “Y/N, come on, we’ve known each other for years. You know I—”

“Shut up!” Jaeyun yelled. His protective grip on you tightened. “Cut the bullshit, Jongseong. The police are gonna be here soon, and they’re gonna take you straight to prison once they see what you did to Hoon.”

It was like a switch flipped in him. A distant part of your mind wondered if you could get everyone out of this—somehow bring Sunghoon back and go back to your normal life—but you immediately shut down that fantasy as soon as Jongseong’s eyes darkened. 

In the darkness, you could make out an amused expression on his face. His smile took on a cold edge. 

“Fine,” he bit out. “I’ll just have to get rid of you two before the police get here, then.”

You felt like your world slowed. Your eyes burned with the threat of tears. You could tell Jongseong was walking closer to you while Jaeyun was desperately trying to tug you and get you to run, but you were frozen in place. You wanted to believe that your old friend wouldn’t actually hurt you, but then you didn’t know what to think when he raised his knife. 

It had all happened so fast. Too fast. 

In your brief struggle as Jongseong tried to stab you, you heard a sharp gasp that tore you from your haze, like you had just been drenched in cold water. Brutally sober. You tried to push Jongseong off of you, but he was too heavy, too limp. Jaeyun shouldered his way between you two and shoved Jongseong back, grimacing when his skull hit the wood with a thud. 

You heard one last, strangled gasp from Jongseong before he stopped breathing. The last star in his eyes twinkled until it dimmed for good. 

Jongseong laid flat on the dock with his knife piercing his chest.

As you heard police sirens go off in the distance, Jaeyun wrapped his arms around you before you finally broke down into his chest. 

Your best friends were dead and your world was broken beyond repair. 

“So, it was self-defense?” Detective Lee asked, his piercing eyes boring right into yours. “Purely accidental? You had no intention of harming Park Jongseong?”

You shook your head. “I still couldn’t process the fact that he killed Sunghoon, so I didn’t think he’d actually try to hurt me.”

You wanted to cry. You bit your chapped lip, but all you could taste was blood that you doubted was even there. You couldn’t even say Sunghoon’s name without seeing that radiant smile of his stained with deep red. 

You sucked in a shaky breath. “I’ve told you everything I know. Can I see Jaeyun now?”

Detective Lee eyed you for a moment. Finally, you saw some sort of sympathy in his gaze, although you felt sort of repulsed that you were being pitied in this state. The detective muttered something about him being back later, and he left the interrogation room, leaving you handcuffed to the table. 

A minute passed by. Another. Several more. 

You were pretty sure it had been at least an hour or two of staring at the wall, but the passage of time felt meaningless now. You could wait hours, even days, but you didn’t think you would ever be ready to confront what cruel reality awaited you. 

You were so tired of everything, so exhausted that you didn’t even think about your parents until now. Were they here? Were they informed about your arrest? They must have been worried sick all night. 

When the door opened, your head shot up. 

“You’re free to go, Y/N,” Detective Lee said, pulling out a key to uncuff you from the table. 

You were frozen. You just stared up at Detective Lee with your jaw hung open. 

“I know this took awhile, but there was no security footage at the scene to confirm your story,” he elaborated. “But your stories matched up, and we found more evidence in the trunk of Jongseong’s car that he had been planning this murder.” 

He helped you to your feet and escorted you out of the room. You were able to pick up everything they took from you before you were locked up in the holding cell—your keys, wallet, and your phone. Then, you were taken to the waiting room where your parents were seated at the far end. 

At the sight of you, they all but leapt from their seats to rush over, hands cupping your face and arms embracing your weak, battered figure. There was so much love in their eyes, and their fear over possibly losing their daughter replaced any anger they had toward the situation. However, you wouldn’t have been surprised if you ended up getting an earful the next day. 

“Mom, Dad,” you whimpered out, suddenly overcome with emotion. You were immediately aware of how weak and pathetic you felt. “I’m sorry, I—”

“Shh, it’s okay,” your father silenced you by rubbing your back in soothing circles. “Jaeyun’s family wanted us to let you know that he’s okay, too. They just took him home about ten minutes ago.”

You were slightly disappointed. Part of you was hoping that he would wait for you, but you figured Jaeyun’s family would have wanted to go home right away. You definitely would have felt better if you got to see your boyfriend in the flesh to make sure he was alive and well, but you weren’t going to complain now. 

There was still a ghost of a smile on your lips as your parents walked you to their car. They gushed and gushed about how glad they were about you being safe and sound, and about how they never would’ve expected Jongseong of all people to end up being a murderer.

You were happy to be alive, of course, but you felt so empty. 

You pulled out your phone to try and text Jaeyun, but, as you thought, it was dead. 

“Mom, can I use your phone?” you asked, and you dialed Jaeyun’s number immediately as soon as she handed it to you. You had it memorized because it was a combination of numbers that was fairly easy to remember. 

It rang four times, and by the fifth ring, you were scared that he wouldn’t pick up. But then, it beeped.

“Hello?” Jaeyun answered. “Who is this?”

It was like a huge weight was lifted off of your shoulders once you heard his voice. Despite Detective Lee informing you that Jaeyun was, indeed, alive, you felt more reassured hearing it from your boyfriend himself. You wanted to cry then and there, but you didn’t want to make your parents worry unnecessarily. 

You forgot you were even supposed to respond when Jaeyun spoke again, “Is anyone there?”

“Jaeyun, it’s me,” you mumbled softly. “Y/N.”

You heard him suck in a sharp breath. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“I’m perfectly fine.”

Jaeyun gave you the breakdown of how his experience went, which took a completely different turn than yours. After receiving medical attention, they brought him back to his holding cell to sleep for hardly a few hours. The detective interrogating Jaeyun tried to build trust with him, telling him they wanted to help and just needed his confession. They lied about already having evidence that he killed Jongseong, but Jaeyun denied it and told them the whole story. He was only free to leave after they cross-examined his story with yours. 

“Jesus,” you whispered into the phone, breathing out a small laugh. By now, you were already parked at your house and walking to your front door. “This is so fucked up.”

“Yeah,” he mumbled, “but we’ll get through it.”

“Yeah, Jae. Us against the world.”

Sim Jaeyun spent nine hours being questioned by authorities. 

He knew the nature of the crime that occurred was complex, and he was still reeling from the loss and betrayal that left a deep wound in his chest, but there was something that terrified him still. 

It wasn’t the murderous look in Park Jongseong’s eyes, or the blood completely drained from Park Sunghoon’s face. 

Rather, what scared Jaeyun the most was that he spent so long pining after you and getting to know you at a deeper level. He genuinely fell hard for you, even though you had monsters in the closet. He thought he knew almost everything about you, like how you were a terrible liar. 

Yet, you had just lied about everything that went down last night for nine hours straight. 

What scared Jaeyun the most was how clueless he had been about who you really were.

Truthfully, he was also in the wrong for going along with your lie. It was definitely going to bite him back one day. In the moment, though, he was far too much of a coward to go against you. Although he was able to get Jungwon the justice he deserved and allowed his family to finally be at peace with answers, Jaeyun still felt horrible. He just remembered the desperate look in your eyes as your face and hands were stained with blood, begging him to protect you. 

Jaeyun’s downfall must have been that he liked you too much to say no.

It was true that Jongseong called you in a panic, begging you to show up at the port as quickly as possible, and it was true that you wanted Jaeyun to drive you there instead of calling the cops first. 

Jaeyun knew deep down that you were making the wrong choice, but he had hope that you knew what you were doing. Truthfully, although he liked you a lot, he was still wary about how you felt toward Sunghoon. He just couldn’t understand how you were still unconsciously protecting him after hearing what happened to Jungwon. He knew that you wanted answers, but Jaeyun was worried about how you’d react once you got them. 

The real story—the one neither of you told the detectives—never started with Park Jongseong killing Park Sunghoon.

It really started when you and Jaeyun arrived at the port to see that no one was around. It was eerily quiet, and Jaeyun was starting to regret not turning around and heading straight for the police station. When you two got out of the car, you walked several feet down the line of shipping containers before returning to Jaeyun with a confused look on your face.

“I don’t see either of them,” you said, but then your eyes grew unfocused as you stared at something—or, rather, someone—behind Jaeyun. 

He turned around to see Jongseong walking over to the two of you in a calm fashion, as if he had no other care in the world. The port was relatively an open space, so he had no idea where Jongseong could have emerged from. Jaeyun rolled his neck, more frustrated than anything. 

“Jongseong!” you called out. 

When he neared you two, Jongseong shoved his hands into his pockets. “Oh, you brought your boyfriend.”

“What’s going on?” you urged. “Is it Sunghoon? Did something happen to him?”

“Wow, that hurts, Y/N.” Jongseong barked out a laugh, but nothing about his tone sounded sincere. “I call you in the middle of the night and all you can think about is Hoon? Wow. How do you feel about that, Jaeyun?”

Jaeyun didn’t respond. He just glowered. 

Nothing about this felt right. 

You stammered, “I-I just assumed—”

“Put yourself in my shoes,” Jongseong cut you off with little regard for your excuses. “Sorry to say this in front of your boyfriend, but imagine how I feel when the girl I’ve liked for years only cares about my best friend.” 

The air went still.

Your voice was barely a whisper when you asked, “Excuse me?” 

Jaeyun pursed his lips together, and, for a moment, he thought his tongue would start bleeding if he bit it any harder. Sunghoon liked the girl that Jongseong liked, and if that girl was you, then Jaeyun was worried that he already lost you. He knew for months that he would never truly have you the way he wanted. Your feelings for Sunghoon were stronger, and although Jaeyun was able to pack his insecurities into a tiny ball and shove it down his throat, it was all coming out now. 

His uneasy heart shattered into a million pieces once he caught a glimpse of your expression—hopeful and longing. And it wasn’t for Jongseong; it was for Sunghoon. 

“Now that’s a great expression,” came an overly-enthusiastic voice from Jaeyun’s right.

Park Sunghoon was leaning against one of the shipping containers, arms folded across his chest before he uncrossed them and made his way toward the three of you. He must have been hiding behind the containers this whole time because Jaeyun hadn’t seen him at all before. 

The situation was getting increasingly uncomfortable. Jaeyun wanted to shrink back when Sunghoon suddenly took great interest in him, keeping his eyes fixed on him instead of you or Jongseong. He used to have such bright and happy smiles, but, this time, Jaeyun almost thought his grin had been sliced into his face with a blade.

Sunghoon slung an arm over Jongseong’s shoulder. “Wow, Jae, now I really wanna see the look on your face when you’re in total despair,” he crooned, almost mocking. Jaeyun’s blood rushed in his ears when Sunghoon’s tongue swiped across one of his fangs. “You should’ve seen the look on Jungwon’s face.”

Jaeyun lunged before he could even think, but he stopped himself as soon as you held onto him, stopping him from hitting Sunghoon. 

And that was when he knew he already lost you. 

“Don’t,” you insisted.

“Are you serious?” he breathed out, brows knitting into a frown as he looked down at you. 

Shame clung to your throat, keeping your mouth shut, but Jaeyun was more concerned now about the sharp blade pointed at his throat.

His Adam’s apple bobbed.

Jongseong had a paring knife pointed straight at him, and Sunghoon’s smile never faltered. They were clearly on the same side. There was a reason why Jeongseong never did anything about Sunghoon after killing Jungwon. 

Jaeyun felt stupid for not putting it together earlier.

“I’d listen to your girlfriend,” Jongseong warned. His voice crawled all over him, freezing Jaeyun cold to the bone. “You might as well hear us out before you die here tonight.”

“Can’t exactly let you two run off now that you know what happened to Jungwon,” Sunghoon added.

“Jungwon was our friend,” Jaeyun hissed. “He was my best friend, you sick freak! What did you do to him? Why? He’s never… he never did anything wrong!”

“You’re right. He didn’t do anything wrong,” Sunghoon confirmed, surprisingly calm and collected. “In fact, he exceeded my expectations. It was a great performance, actually.” Jaeyun clenched his fist tight—so tight that his nails dug into his palms and drew blood—and Sunghoon took notice of this with a delighted hum. “You should’ve heard him scream, Jae. I had my doubts about him at first, but when he was begging me for his life, I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

You were distraught. “Sunghoon, you—”

It all happened in seconds, like a rubber band finally snapping after being stretched too thin. Jaeyun used his elbow to knock Jongseong’s arm out of the way, and he shoved Sunghoon as soon as he found an opening, driving his hands into his ribs. He heard you cry out, but Jaeyun could only see red until he was dragged back up by Jongseong, the sharp blade of the knife being pressed to his throat. 

“Stop!” you cried. “Leave Jaeyun out of this! You wanted me, right? Just let him go. Please.” 

“I don’t think so.” Sunghoon wrapped an arm around you. “You two already know too much, and Jongseong and I have been waiting for this finale for years.”

Your eyes had a faraway look in them for a moment before you turned your attention back to Jongseong. “You told me…”

“I told you that when we were fifteen, Sunghoon thought it would be fun to plan out a murder without getting caught,” Jongseong filled in the blanks for you, a haunting smile playing on his lips, “and I was in on it.”

Sunghoon tutted. “But you got it all wrong, Y/N. It wasn’t Jungwon’s murder that we were planning; it was yours.”

You looked up at him in horror.

Jaeyun struggled against Jongseong for a moment, face taut with unbridled anger. He just wanted to get to you. Get Sunghoon’s filthy hands off of you. 

“I’m a writer. I write stories,” Sunghoon continued. “Isn’t it a great twist? Convincing my childhood best friend that I loved her all this time, only to reveal that she’s gonna die at my hands.” He scoffed. “Jungwon was just at the wrong place at the wrong time, but he was good practice. I was too careless back then. I shouldn’t have left all those drawings and papers out like that when he came over, but now I’m gonna finish the job properly.” 

Your breathing was shallow. Jaeyun could see the flood of despair racking your body with soft sobs and quick pants. Your gaze fell to the ground, and Sunghoon peered to catch a better look at you. 

“Good,” he praised. “That’s what I wanna see. Wow, that’s great, Y/N. I can’t wait to see more when—”

“Get the fuck away from her!” Jaeyun yelled, grunting when Jongseong pressed the knife harder against his supple skin. 

With an exaggerated flourish of his hands, Sunghoon raised both arms and backed up as if he was a deer caught in headlights. He wore an easygoing smile, yet something sinister was tucked behind the curve of his lips. Your inconsolable self stayed fixed in place, staring helplessly at your shoes.

“For the past two years, I’ve been isolating myself from the friend group for the sake of this story and its ending,” Sunghoon said. “I think I deserve a little fun right now, Jae.”

“Fuck you,” Jaeyun spat. “You deserve to go to Hell.”

Sunghoon took a step closer to Jaeyun, ducking his head so that they were at eye-level with each other. Jaeyun tried to struggle against Jongseong once more, but he froze when the knife pierced his skin. He felt something trickle down the column of his neck, and he soon realized it was his own blood. 

“It’s hard, isn’t it?” Sunghoon mocked a pout. He lowered his voice by an octave, only for Jaeyun to hear. “Competing with a childhood friend is brave, I’ll tell you that.” 

Jaeyun’s blood boiled. To his surprise, Sunghoon gestured for Jongseong to let go of him. He took the paring knife from his friend and handed it to Jaeyun. 

“Take it,” Sunghoon said. “Why don’t you try killing me? You wanna get back at me, right? I killed your best friend, after all.”

Owlish, he blinked back at Sunghoon, almost absently. Jaeyun really considered it for a moment—like, really considered it. Some part of him wanted to senselessly beat Sunghoon up until he was unrecognizable, but the morally righteous side of him knew that he could never stoop to Jongseong or Sunghoon’s level. 

Jaeyun took the knife by the handle, weighing it in his palm experimentally before chucking it away—far from both Sunghoon and Jongseong. Jaeyun was pretty sure he could overtake Jongseong if Sunghoon turned his back, but he wasn’t sure if Jongseong had another weapon up his sleeve. He heard the blade skid and scrape against the concrete, and he could only hope that Sunghoon and Jongseong being distracted by him would give you time to escape. 

But Jeongseong immediately stopped you as soon as he saw you picking up the knife, and he let go of Jaeyun to grab ahold of you. Jaeyun tried to yank Jongseong back by the back of his shirt, but Sunghoon grabbed a fistful of his hair and slammed his head against the metal of one of the shipping containers.

Jaeyun’s world was thrown off-balance. The ground bounced, tilted, swayed. He was so dizzy and disoriented that he couldn’t tell if his head was spinning or if he was collapsing. 

The corners of his vision grew hazy with white splotches dancing around. Jaeyun tried hard to focus, making out some of the yelling that was going back and forth, but he couldn’t think at all when a newly-formed cut on his forehead was getting blood all over his face and hands. 

He doubled forward, falling onto his knees. Jaeyun had to stay there for a while and ride out the intense waves of vertigo until he was stable again. When the world finally returned to its normal axis and stopped bouncing under him, Jaeyun lifted his head to see you and Jongseong screaming at each other.

And Sunghoon was on the ground.

He stumbled over, and it was as if the white noise in Jaeyun’s ears had drowned out everything in the background. He couldn’t see or focus on anything except the pained look on Sunghoon’s face as the color drained from his neck. Blood was gushing from his jugular vein, and he was digging his palm into his neck to put pressure on the wound. 

“—you stabbed him!” you screamed at Jongseong. Your voice was hysterical; Jaeyun had never heard you sound so desperate, not even when he was being held at knifepoint. 

“Fuck, Y/N, I wouldn’t have hurt him if you didn’t pull on my arm!” Jongseong yelled back. He sank to the ground, simultaneously dropping the knife and dropping his head between his knees. 

The sight was miserable to watch. Jongseong wailed loud and mournful until he couldn’t take it anymore, doubling over so that he could throw up until nothing but bile was coming out. When it seemed as though he had nothing else to heave out of his stomach, Jongseong sat up for a brief moment. You and Jaeyun watched as his eyes rolled back almost instantly, falling onto his back and hitting his skull against the concrete. The exhaustion must have finally caught up to him, and you two didn’t have long until he was conscious again.

Jaeyun turned his attention back to Sunghoon, watching his life bleed out of his body slowly. For some reason, an odd disconnect came over Jaeyun, and he bent down to help apply pressure over Sunghoon’s wound. At first, Sunghoon gritted his teeth, but even he knew when to accept help when it was needed. 

Sim Jaeyun was pretty sure he was broken beyond belief by now, but it was impossible for him to ignore someone who was dying right before him. 

Even if he murdered Jungwon. 

“Y/N, we need to get him to a—” 

Jaeyun cut himself off when he looked up at you to see that your expression had changed. Something was different. You looked like numbness had seeped into your body, coiling around your heart until you couldn’t feel anything. The way you looked down at Jongseong, clutching his knife tightly, made Jaeyun worry.

“Y/N,” Jaeyun said again—slower, “whatever you’re thinking… please put it down.”

It didn’t seem like you were listening, though. Almost as if your body and brain were at two different places. 

“Y/N—” Jaeyun shuddered when you brought the knife down, driving it straight into Jongseong’s chest. 

Jaeyun’s stomach lurched. He watched as Jongseong struggled for his life, hardly conscious as you repeatedly stabbed him over and over again until Jaeyun was yelling at you to stop. He was sure he would never be able to close his eyes again without hearing Jongesong’s blood-curdling screams and seeing Sunghoon’s face drained of color. 

“Wow,” Sunghoon choked out. One last amused look crossed his face before it fell apart painfully. “I told you, Jae, there’s no competing with a childhood best friend.” Jaeyun flushed with anger, but it dissolved quickly when he realized Sunghoon’s breathing got slower, shallower. The look on his face was one of someone accepting their untimely death. “Thanks for the show, though.”

In his arms, Sunghoon took his last breath and went still.

It wasn’t grief that Jaeyun felt. It was something far greater.

“Jaeyun, I—I didn’t mean to,” you sobbed out, shakily holding up your bloodstained hands. “It was self-defense! I tried to stop him, but he was trying to kill me, and then he… he killed Sunghoon. I couldn’t do anything else. I couldn’t run, I couldn’t—” You exhaled shakily. “I couldn’t do anything else.”

Jaeyun didn’t respond. He just stared at you in disbelief. 

“Come on, Jae,” you pleaded. Oh, so it was Jae now. “You have to help me get rid of their bodies. I can’t go to prison!”

“Get rid of the body?” Jaeyun raised his voice, exasperated. “Y/N, they’re dead! We have to tell the police everything. I mean, what are you gonna do when your prints match?”

Your lips pressed together in a grim line. “Your prints are on the knife, too.”

Were you blackmailing him? Jaeyun couldn’t believe what he was hearing from you. He never expected you, of all people, to be the one to throw him under the bus like this. He had trusted you with his life before, and you threw it all away in seconds. 

“Are you going to help me or not?” You looked toward the dock over the water. It was a good enough distance for you to drag Sunghoon and Jongseong’s bodies over to, but Jaeyun sure as hell didn’t want to get involved. “Just help me throw them in the water, and we can both walk away from this, Jae. We can go back to our lives, okay?”

He shook his head sadly. You just sounded like a stranger to him. 

“Please, Y/N,” he pleaded, tears stinging his eyes, “please stop this. You have to turn yourself in.”

But his resolve was shaky. Jaeyun knew that he would still be booked once they found his prints at the scene, and there was no telling what you would do to protect yourself. By now, Jaeyun wouldn’t have been surprised if you somehow pushed the crime onto him. 

“Jae, listen to me,” you insisted. Your eyes were wide and brimming with tears, and Jaeyun couldn’t help but think you looked a little crazed. “We can both get out of this, but you have to help me out here. We’re gonna tell them that Jongseong killed Sunghoon before we got here, and then he chased us until we ended up stabbing him out of self-defense. I mean, that’s all this was, anyway! It was self-defense!”

A distant part of Jaeyun’s mind wondered what happened to you. He wondered if you had always been this way, perhaps keeping it tucked away. In the end, you were still trying to protect Sunghoon in your own way. You were still trying to protect some fragment of his golden image.

“It’s you and me,” you whispered, kneeling down by your boyfriend’s side until you were cupping his face with your hands, staining his cheeks with Jongseong’s blood, “the two of us against the world.”

Just hours ago, Sim Jaeyun looked at you like you were his entire world.

And now, with your bloodstained hands holding his face, there was unmistakable fear behind his eyes as he looked up at you.

AUTHOR’S NOTE ▸ thank you so so much for reading if you made it all the way to the end !! i would lovee for you to guys to share what you thought, but just to point a few things out, jake's pov was the unfiltered version of what went down that night. the dialogue from mc is similar to jongseong's because while she painted him out to be the villain in the end to protect sunghoon, it was really her who said those things. originally this had a happier ending but i'm a lot more satisifed with this one actually. i hope you guys liked it !! <3 also i am deciding against using my permanent tag list this time because i haven't used it in a year and don't know if anyone exactly signed up to read horror 🧎‍♀️