Trance
Late entry for day two of @mmrarepairweek , some supernatural au zensung. time to get s p o o k y
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Yoosung knows he shouldn’t be here.
He knows, but it had been way too easy to snag Rika’s access card and hitch a ride down the elevator where all the confidential specimens are kept. He kind of feels like a super spy for pulling it off, but it’s probably more like Rika was tired and she never keeps a close eye on him anyway, like she does with all the other interns at the marine research institute. Usually he whines about the favoritism, but today…
Today he has to know where the singing is coming from.
He always hears it when he stays late, in that little room where he goes through the boxes and boxes of old hardcopy files, shoved slapdash in and forgotten about, left to rot. Yoosung organizes and sorts and puts them away in hardier, plastic containers, and then before he knows it he’s staring blankly at manila envelopes, absolutely arrested in place by the beautiful voice floating up through the air vents.
He figures it has to be someone who works down there. Right? And maybe they won’t be happy to see him and he’ll get in trouble, but it’s been a month since he’s started hearing this voice and he thinks he’s going to go crazy if he hears it one more time without seeing who it comes from.
When he exits the elevator he almost expects an alarm to go off, like the moment his foot hits the tile everyone’s going to know an intruder is here. But nothing happens, and Yoosung wanders the quiet halls with his spine straight up, doing his best to pretend like he belongs there. No one he passes even looks twice at him.
Yoosung, though, avidly inspects each face. Which one’s the singer? If they’re anything like their voice then they’ve got to be gorgeous. Maybe a woman with really long hair...or a guy with piercing eyes… Yoosung doesn’t really have a plan for how to identify them, other than that he has a vague idea of where the other side of the vent could lead to and...and he just feels like he’ll know.
Maybe it’s stupid. Actually now that he’s thinking about it it’s definitely stupid, but he can’t seem to convince the rest of him of that. His heart won’t stop pounding with excitement, like it’s saying almost there, almost there, almost there.
Yoosung turns a corner and almost smacks face-first into the double doors. Locked. But there’s a card-reader right next to them and he has a feeling… The door lock clicks open when he swipes Rika’s card. Yes! He nudges one of the doors open and slips inside, letting it close behind him softly. Once again he has to wonder how high up Rika is at this place. She’s never told him, but if this card can unlock any door…
It’s dark in here. The main lights are off, leaving just a couple tiny service ones scattered across the cavernous room. Which means Yoosung can see where he’s walking, but everything is draped in dark shadows and it’s really, really cree—
Water splashes softly.
Yoosung fumbles for a light switch. “H-Hello?”
“Hm? What, someone’s here again today? Don’t you jerks ever go to sleep?!” a voice echoes from the back.
Yoosung starts, not expecting anyone to actually answer let alone like that, but no, this is good! This could be the person! “Jerk?? I stay late sometimes to help out,” Yoosung explains, making himself relax. He’s still looking for the lights but less frantically now, hands running up and down along the walls. “What about you, huh?” Yoosung challenges. “You’re here after hours too. Don’t you sleep?”
“Huh??” A long, long moment of silence. “Mmmm~ Sure, but I think I need less of it than all of you.”
A man’s voice. Yoosung’s heart skips a beat. He hasn’t even seen his face yet, but the more the guy talks the more he’s sure. It has to be him. Yoosung redoubles his efforts to find the light switch. “You shouldn’t let yourself get sleep deprived though! It’s bad for you! I mean, I would know.” He laughs self-consciously.
“Yeah...? Haha, that’s not good. Maybe I should sing you a lullaby.” Yoosung hears another splash. “Ah, no. Nevermind. I probably shouldn’t.”
The chance to hear that singing from up close?! “W-Why not?” Yoosung blurts.
“I try not to when you guys are around. I really wanna get out of here, but not bad enough yet to…”
None of that sentence makes sense to Yoosung. “What are you talking about? What’s so bad about it?” His fingers finally find the plate on the wall. “And if you want to leave what’s stopping y—”
The switch flips and the lights blaze to life.
Yoosung screams.
“What the hell?!” The...the...the...monster that Yoosung’s been talking to this whole time covers where his ears should be. “Ow...You’re gonna hurt my feelings if you do that. I’m more beautiful than scary, right~?”
Yoosung shakes from his new home on the floor, speechless, but the worst thing about it is that the monster is right. Yoosung’s eyes should be lingering on the needle-like teeth, the spindly clawed hands, the blood-bright eyes. Instead they trace the curve of that shimmering white tail and the gossamer fins, the long silky hair sticking against a human-like chest.
The monster catches him staring and grins, muscled arms resting on the lip of the tank and tail twisting in a self-satisfied rhythm. Seeing all of those teeth at once should send Yoosung into cardiac arrest, but for some reason it...doesn’t. “Are you real?” Yoosung whispers.
The monster sputters and laughs. “Why are you asking me?!” He pinches his own perfectly pale skin. “Well, looks like I’m real. What about you?”
Yoosung pinches himself in turn. Holy shit. This isn’t a dream.
He braces a hand against the wall and slowly rises from the floor. His feet start shuffling forward like they have a mind of their own. Wow… The closer he gets the bigger the monster looks. The human-ish half seems like a regular size give or take, but the tail is huge, much longer than any legs would be.
“Getting closer already?” The monster says, amused. “I haven’t even done anything. Are you that enchanted by my good looks?”
“Sh-shut up,” Yoosung grumbles weakly, pink-cheeked. “What do you mean, do something?”
“Sing,” the monster answers with a wink. “You could say it’s what I was born to do~”
Even just the mention of it has Yoosung’s heart galloping again. “Yeah. Yeah I heard you.”
“You...you have?!”
“From upstairs. I could just barely hear it, but…”
Yoosung’s finally close enough to touch the glass. It’s cold against his palm. The tail is right in front of his face; he can see each individual scale catch the light. When he cranes his neck up, the monster is looking down at him with a melancholy expression. He wants to ask what’s wrong, but instead he asks, “What’s your name?”
“M-My name??” Now the monster looks baffled. Has no one ever asked before? “Uh…” He scratches at the back of his head. “Hm. I dunno. How about Zen? That’s close enough.”
“Zen,” Yoosung repeats. He finds himself smiling up at wide, red eyes. “I really want to hear you sing again.”
The monster, Zen, stares at him for a long second before burying his face in his arms, tail curling upwards. “You don’t want that. If I knew you could hear me I wouldn’t of done it.”
“Why?” The thought of never having heard that singing suddenly seems like the worst thing in the world. Yoosung cranes up on his tiptoes, like he can close the distance between them that way. “Come on...please…?”
One red eye peeks at him.
Sensing an opening, Yoosung keeps pushing it. “Please? I’ll do anything.”
“Anything…” Zen’s head lifts and he quirks a rueful smile. “Are you sure? What if my song’s the last thing you ever hear, huh?”
A prickle of fear finally finds him, but it does nothing to dislodge the yearning in Yoosung’s heart. “I’d rather hear it forever.”
Zen turns his head and laughs, a little shakily. “That’s not fair. Well. Maybe you won’t be able to make it up here,” he murmurs, only barely audible.
Then he takes a breath. Another. And then…
He sings.
It’s like a fist around his heart. Yoosung staggers, only the glass holding him up. He wants to cry, but he’s so happy. Is he crying? He knows he’s shaking, but power is surging through his every limb. He feels like he can do anything. Anything at all as long as it’s...it’s… Yoosung looks back up, at Zen, at the singer of a song so beautiful it hurts. He needs...he needs him. He needs to get closer. He’ll do anything, he’ll do anything!
Time stretches and skips. He’s clawing at the glass, he’s reaching upwards, he’s running to a control panel and frantically pushing buttons. Something, something, something has to get him up there. Please, please, please, plea—
One last button press and the entire tank hisses, spins, lowers, sinking into the floor. Yoosung watches, panting with happiness, and runs back over the instant it’s done. This time when he reaches up, his hands catch a ledge and he pulls himself up, hooks a knee over, stands on it.
The song stops. Suddenly Yoosung’s unmoored, wavering unbalanced on a ledge too small for him. What’s happening? How did he get here?
“Hey, you weren’t supposed to know how to do that,” The monster says quietly, sadly. He’s pushed himself away from the ledge and treads water in the middle of the tank. “You don’t even work down here. Guess you’re a smart one, huh….haha…”
“Zen…” Yoosung’s voice wobbles. He’s scared.
“Go. Get out of here.”
Yoosung doesn’t want to.
“What are you doing?! Go!”
Zen’s yell is the most terrifying thing he’s ever seen, but still Yoosung’s feet won’t move. “I c-can’t…” Instead Yoosung can feel himself gradually tilting forward. Like the lure never stopped, just faded, just sunk under his skin until it got wound up in all his insides and became a part of him.
A wet hand presses up against his stomach and keeps him upright, claws catching into fabric. Despite himself, Yoosung touches it, touches down the length of that forearm. It’s cold like ice, almost slimy. Yoosung starts shivering and can’t stop. “P-Please…” He doesn’t even know what he’s begging for anymore. He loses his balance, but finds himself sitting on the ledge instead of tipping over it. Another wet hand cards through his hair, petting him.
Yoosung’s eyes are closed now, but he can feel breath against his shoulder. He pictures those big teeth piercing right through an artery.
“You’re a good one,” Zen says, voice tight. “You’re not supposed to be down here, are you? I really don’t want…”
A frigid tongue licks up his neck and Yoosung whines.
“I really don’t want to…”
“Zen,” Yoosung pleads, desperate.
He feels the sting of claws against his stomach, his scalp, and then suddenly he’s falling. He hits the ground outside the tank with a hard slap.
“Go!” The voice edges up into a scream.
Yoosung scrambles back, kicking his feet, and then finally gets the strength to get up and run. He runs, and runs, and runs, out of the room, down the halls, into the elevator. He can’t stop crying. His heart hurts. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts.
It isn’t until he’s curled up in the passenger seat of his car that he realizes something.
Rika’s keycard.
It’s gone.