✮⋆˙ 𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠
synopsis: choi soobin’s first secret is that he has been in love with you for approximately his entire fucking existence. his second is folded beneath his clothes in the backpack over his shoulder and unfortunately, seoul does not care that spider-man would like one night to have his heart broken in private.
✮⋆˙ pairing: spider-man!choi soobin x supervillain!reader
✮⋆˙ genre/warning: spider-man au, university au, childhood best friends to lovers, spider-man!soobin x alleged supervillain!reader, nerd!soobin, vigilante!reader, secret identities, jealous!soobin, idiots in love, crack treated seriously, romantic comedy, action & angst, bickering as flirting, terrible pick-up lines, miscommunication, alien organism, bank robbery & weapons, superhero violence, blood & graphic injury, electrocution, unconsciousness, near-death experience, major character injury, explicit language
✮⋆˙ word count: 14.1k
✮⋆˙ playlist | main masterlist | divider | taglist
Choi Soobin has built his life around things that can be proved.
He trusts numbers because they behave themselves; cells do not care whether he is having a difficult morning, and codes either run or spit an error into his face. Even the most infuriating experiment will usually explain what went wrong if he gives it enough time, enough attention and, on one memorable occasion, enough swearing that a doctoral student comes through the adjoining door to check whether somebody has severed a finger.
The red string theory is different. There is no paper he can cite for it, no controlled trial in which half the participants are tied to their soulmates and the other half receive a placebo. He believes in it anyway.
Specifically, he believes his string is tied to you.
“So the fluorescence drops after the second wash, but only in the edited cultures. I thought it was the buffer, except I made a fresh batch this morning and—are you listening to me?”
Soobin sighs through his nose.
You look lovely when you’re annoyed at him. Today, you are doing it in fogged safety goggles and a lab coat with something orange dried across one sleeve. Your hair has been shoved out of the way with a pencil, unsuccessfully, and there is a faint crease between your eyebrows from frowning at the same spreadsheet for twenty minutes.
If that is not destiny, he doesn’t know what is.
“Choi Soobin,” you call out, starting to get aggravated.
“I’m listening.”
You pick up a glass stirring rod.
Soobin looks at it, then at you. “I’m listening very carefully.”
“What did I just say?”
He glances at the laptop between you and rows of results stare back at him. He remembers you saying something about the edited cultures, the second wash, and Minjun being a useless bastard—although the last part might have been earlier.
“Your fluorescence drops after the second wash.”
“And?”
“You remade the buffer.”
“And?”
Soobin pushes his goggles up. They catch against his round black glasses and lift both far enough for him to see the laboratory as a bright, useless blur. He fixes them before answering. “I was distracted.”
“By what?”
You, mainly.
He doesn’t say that and instead, he bends over the laptop. His knees knock the cupboard beneath the bench because every stool in this university has been designed to punish him for being tall while every worktop forces his shoulders forward, the sleeves of his lab coat hugging somewhere above his wrists.
“Show me the controls.”
You keep the stirring rod in your hand while scrolling back through the results. The threat feels unwarranted since Soobin has only failed to listen once—or twice, perhaps, but one of those times you had taken your goggles off and rubbed a clean stripe through the powder on your cheek. He cannot reasonably be blamed for that.
Data has always been safer. It doesn’t make him wonder how someone can look good in fogged safety goggles and a lab coat that smells slightly of ethanol.
You are exactly one day older than Soobin, and that day matters. You use it to call yourself his elder whenever it benefits you, then deny its relevance whenever he suggests an elder should therefore pay for lunch.
Your mothers met before either of you existed. They were pregnant together, complained about their husbands together, and took photographs of their stomachs touching as though the two of you were already being introduced through several layers of skin and amniotic fluid.
You were placed in the same nursery and sent through the same elementary, middle and high schools. When university acceptance letters came, neither of you knew the other had listed biochemical engineering as a first choice until you called him screaming so loudly he had to move the phone away from his ear.
There are explanations for all of this, but Soobin finds them boring.
He prefers to imagine two unborn souls loitering somewhere in heaven, waiting for bodies. Yours sees his and says, I’m going to make that one’s life difficult, and his follows you down anyway.
"There." You tap the screen. “The control loses only six percent but the edited samples lose almost half the signal. I thought I'd wrecked them in the wash, so I did it again, and got the same result.”
Soobin studies the numbers properly this time. You lean over his shoulder, close enough that your sleeve brushes the side of his neck, causing him to read the same line three times.
“Calibrated the reader with what?
“The standard equipment for the cold room.”
“The one that’s open?”
“There was only one.
“Minjun left it on the bench Tuesday for four hours.”
You straighten. “He said that was saline.”
“He also says washing his cup of coffee with distilled water makes it sterile.”
The stirring rod lowers. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Get in line. His contamination ruined six of my samples last month.” Soobin opens a fresh spreadsheet and begins copying your readings across. “Use the unopened kit in Professor Lee’s cabinet. If the control stabilises, your cultures are probably fine.”
“Probably?”
“Do you want me to lie?”
"Yes, please. Comfort me.”
“Everything is just perfect,” Soobin says, voice full of sarcasm. “Your thesis is going to change gene-editing forever, and by morning, Minjun will have learned basic lab competence.”
You stare at him.
“Too far?” Soobin asks, a cheeky grin on his face.
“The Minjun part ruined it,” you say as you’re leaving to find the replacement kit.
Soobin watches you go and catches his reflection on the dark monitor—messy black fringe, glasses slightly crooked beneath his goggles, mouth relaxed into an expression nobody with dignity should make while looking at their best friend.
He clears his throat and turns back to the spreadsheet.
Soobin has loved you for so long that he cannot locate the beginning—there is no first moment to make sacred because you are simply present in every version of his life he can remember. Missing front teeth, school uniforms, exam results, your first attempt at cutting your own fringe— after which you refused to attend school unless he also cut his, and he obviously obliged, leading both of your mothers to cry for different reasons.
He has also done absolutely nothing about it.
The red string theory is useful that way. If the two of you are meant to find each other, he can wait, and he doesn’t have to risk the friendship he already has. He doesn’t have to imagine telling you the truth and watching your face rearrange itself around pity.
He can call his cowardice fate and make it sound almost beautiful.
You return with the kit held beneath one arm. “Move.”
“There’s another stool,” he nudges at it with his leg.
“That one wobbles.”
“Because you broke it.”
You raise a brow. “Prove it.”
Soobin admits defeat and stands. You take his seat before he has fully left it, then steal the coffee beside his laptop.
“Yours is there.” He points to the cup near your bag.
You take a long sip from his. “I don’t like mine.”
“So I have to drink it?”
“That’s what best friends are for.”
He rolls his eyes, but takes your coffee and hides a smile in the cup. The coffee contains enough sugar to preserve a small animal.
Soobin finds his strongest evidence for the red string in ordinary habits like these, or in the promise you made when you were six—best friends don’t have secrets.
This happened after he knocked one of his mother’s plant pots from the windowsill, swept the soil beneath a cabinet and blamed the cat. You discovered the truth before dinner because there were green ceramic fragments in his sock. Under interrogation, he confessed and let you establish the rules of lifelong friendship—no secrets, no stealing each other’s snacks without sharing, and no marrying anybody the other person hated.
The snack rule died within a week while the other two survived childhood.
Soobin currently has two secrets. Either one could fuck up the safest relationship in his life.
Soobin stares at the spreadsheet until the figures blur together when your hand appears in front of his face.
“Hello?” You wave twice. “Did you leave your body again?”
“I’m reading.”
“You’ve been looking at an empty cell.”
Soobin looks down, and the cursor flashes in a part of the spreadsheet where there is, indeed, nothing to read.
You pull the spare stool closer with your foot. “Sit.”
“You’re starting to sound like my mother.”
“Your mother likes me more than you, so listen.”
He sits because arguing would only delay the inevitable. There is not enough space between the benches for his legs, and one knee ends up against yours; you leave it there and peel off a glove before pressing your fingers to his forehead.
“I’m not sick.”
“You look weird.”
“I look normal,” Soobin meekly defends himself.
“Exactly, I’ve known you for twenty-two years. I know your normal weird.” Your hand moves into his hair, checking for something his forehead apparently failed to reveal. “This is different. What’s wrong?”
Soobin nearly tells you one of them. He could say, I love you. I have always loved you. I buy two coffees because you steal mine and I carry your favourite plasters in my bag and every time you touch me casually I have to pretend my body is not run by a fucking idiot.
Or he could tell you why he sometimes disappears halfway through dinner and returns the next morning with a cut lip.
Neither confession feels survivable beneath fluorescent lighting.
“My dissertation,” he says, instead. “I’m worried about the latest results.” He hates how easily the lie comes out.
Your concern deepens, and so you do the logical thing—you grab a fistful of his hair and shake his head.
“Ow.” Soobin catches your wrist. “Which med school taught you this?”
“You rascal. If you’re worried about your dissertation, what are the rest of us supposed to do? Walk into the Han River?”
Soobin fixes his hair, though there wasn't much hope for it before you interfered. “Your confidence in me is touching.”
“Your project is disgusting. Professor Lee showed your preliminary results to the doctoral cohort.”
“He did?”
“Look at you.” You pinch his cheek. “Pretending not to know you’re clever so I’ll compliment you. Shameless.”
He bats your hand away, mostly because he can feel heat crawling up his face and his safety goggles are transparent. You turn back to the fresh standards, apparently satisfied with the diagnosis.
The conversation should be over, but your fingers keep worrying at the edge of a label. Your eyes move between the reader, your phone, then the laboratory door. Finally, you bite the inside of your cheek.
Soobin knows that habit—you are preparing to say something you dislike saying.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.” You adjust the pipette to a volume you have already set, then glance at him—colour has reached the tops of your cheeks.
Soobin sits straighter. “There’s something. What is it?”
“Stop looking at me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re about to crawl into my skull and read the meeting minutes.”
He waits because you have never tolerated silence well. When Soobin was ten, he discovered he could make you confess to almost anything by looking at you for long enough.
You put the pipette down. “I like—”
Soobin’s brain abandons laboratory safety, and he already imagines the rest of your sentence.
You like him—of course you do. The red string has finally grown tired of Soobin’s incompetence and taken matters into its own hands.
At last, he can work with that. He will tell you everything except the second secret, because one life-changing discussion at a time is reasonable.
Your mothers will start planning before either of you has agreed to a first date. His will cry, while yours will claim she predicted this in the maternity ward. He should speak to your father before proposing, although you may call the entire tradition sexist and propose to him out of spite. He can picture you at the wedding already, complaining about your shoes beneath the table while he tries to feed you without dropping sauce on anything expensive.
Children require more thought. Two is manageable while three might be irresponsible with your careers and his nightly obligations, but if the third has his dimples and your tendency towards violence—
“—a guy.”
The imaginary third child vanishes.
Soobin looks at you. “A guy?”
“Yes.”
“You like a guy?”
He needs a moment, but you don’t give him one.
“I haven’t told anyone else,” you continue, turning the unused pipette between your fingers. “So don’t make it weird.”
“I’m not making it weird. Who is he?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“That is weird.”
“It’s embarrassing.”
Soobin is offended by the suggestion that embarrassment still exists between you. “I held your hair while you vomited through your nose.”
Your eyes narrow. “Food poisoning is not a personality flaw. It could’ve happened to anyone.”
“I literally cleaned vomit from your shoes.”
“You swore to take that night to your grave.”
“My point is that we passed embarrassment before puberty. Do I know him?”
You hesitate. It lasts less than a second, but Soobin has spent his life studying your face.
“You know of him.”
That’s somehow worse because a person he knows can be assessed, questioned, and, if necessary, disliked with evidence. A person he knows of could be anybody—a senior in the theatre club, one of the athletes on campus, someone from the music department with excellent hair and no respect for academic schedules.
“Is he at this university?”
“Erm—I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t know? People either attend a university or they don’t.”
“I mean I—”
“Has he spoken to you?”
You become extremely interested in the pipette. “You’re being invasive.”
“That’s not a no.”
You reach for the stirring rod again, and Soobin slides it out of range.
“I’m going to speak to him,” you say. “Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Why did you say it as if somebody died?”
Because somebody has—Soobin has just watched himself become a guest at his own imaginary wedding. “I didn’t.”
“Your voice went all thin.”
He clears his throat. “Do you have a date?”
“Not yet.”
“Does he know you’re meeting him?”
“Not... specifically.”
“Does he know your name?”
You point at him. “That’s enough questions from you.”
“I’m trying to establish whether this is a confession or an ambush.”
“I have a plan.”
This does nothing to reassure him. Your plans usually begin with certainty and finish with Soobin holding a first-aid kit.
You push your shoulders back. “I’m going to confess. He’ll fall in love with me, I’ll make him mine, and you’ll admit I was right.”
After twenty-two years, Soobin learns that you approach romance the same way you approach a sparring match—choose a target, commit and assume the bruises can be dealt with later.
He loves that about you, but at the moment, he also finds it appalling.
Your confidence slips while he’s looking at you. “Do you think he could?”
“Could what?”
“Like me.” You pick at the torn corner of the label again. “I know I’m a lot.”
Soobin wants to say no.
It’s an ugly little impulse, but a powerful one. He could tell you this man is probably married, cruel, stupid or suffering from a rare condition that makes him unable to appreciate you. He could put doubt where your confidence is weakest and possibly keep you beside him for one more night.
Until you glance at him and the selfish answer becomes impossible to say because he has seen you walk into rings with black belts twice your size and far less reluctance.
Soobin hates the man already, but he cannot let that hatred make him unkind to you. “He’d be an idiot not to.”
Your mouth curves and relief passes so quickly across your face that somebody who loves you less might miss it. “Exactly,” you say. “And I’m very charming.”
“You just described an ambush as romantic.”
“Men like mystery.”
“Men also like warnings.”
“You don’t get to speak for all men.”
“For once, I’m trying to protect them.”
You laugh and throw the torn label at him. It catches in his hair, and Soobin leaves it there because removing it would require moving, and you have returned to the experiment as if you didn’t just destroy his entire insight into the universe between two sets of calibration standards.
The red string is supposed to stretch. It can tangle, cross oceans, survive years and still pull two people together.
Soobin has never considered that he might be the only one holding it.
The fresh control reads within range. You celebrate by grabbing both his shoulders and shaking him until his glasses slide down his nose. He complains, and you ignore him. For a few minutes, the samples that need relabeling, the data that has to be saved, and enough ordinary work help him pretend that his life is ordinary too.
It’s dark by the time you clean the bench. You pack your laptop, two small circuit boards Soobin is fairly certain belong to the university, and something wrapped in a towel into the black sports bag.
“Those aren’t yours,” he says.
You zip it shut. “I have no idea what you mean.”
“I can see the inventory stickers.”
“Then stop looking.” Your phone lights with the time; you grab it so quickly that the bag nearly slides from your shoulder. “I have to go.”
“You’re going to confess?”
You grin. The nervousness has not disappeared, but you have simply decided to outrun it. “Wish me luck.”
Soobin would rather swallow the stirring rod. “Good luck.”
“Try to sound less bereaved.”
“I’m tired.”
“Go home, then. And don’t spend all night staring at your results, you freak.” You bump your shoulder into his as you pass.
Soobin watches you disappear through the eastern door with the bag held against your side. He should wonder why you need electronics for a confession and ask where you expect to find a man who doesn’t attend university and may not know your name.
But jealousy has taken up most of the available space in his brain.
Soobin waits until the door shuts before going the other way.
Choi Soobin’s first secret is that he has been in love with you for approximately his entire fucking existence; his second is folded beneath his clothes in the backpack over his shoulder, and Seoul, regrettably, does not care that Spider-Man would like one night to have his heart broken in private.
The second bank robbery of the week begins thirty-seven minutes after you leave the laboratory to confess your love to somebody else, and Soobin finds this quite inconsiderate.
The alert reaches him halfway home. He looks at the police notification, looks at the convenience store where he intended to purchase an irresponsible amount of instant noodles, and considers ignoring it for nearly two full seconds.
Then the report updates—armed suspects, civilians trapped inside, possible enhanced weapons.
“It’s always where is Spider-Man,” he tells his phone, “but never how is Spider-Man.”
He changes on the roof of an office building because there’s no time to reach home. His glasses go into their hard case, and his clothes go into the backpack. The suit hugs his body, red mesh crossed with raised black webbing and darker panels running along his sides and legs. The mask seals at his neck, amber lenses flickering as the display wakes, and his intonation comes back through the filter lower than the one you have known since childhood.
Spider-Man sounds put together while Choi Soobin has spent the last thirty-seven minutes wondering whether the man you like has better hair than him.
The first web catches the next building, and Soobin jumps.
Usually, swinging clears his head. It’s difficult to obsess over unanswered questions and his GPA while dropping twenty storeys above moving traffic. Tonight, somehow, he manages both.
You know of him.
What does that mean? A celebrity? Somebody from TikTok? One of those men who posts photos of himself reading books he has very clearly never opened?
The questions keep flooding while he misses the edge of a rooftop by half a metre.
The bank alarm is already ringing when he reaches Yeouido.
Glass covers the pavement outside the Mirae Union branch and five masked men are loading money into an armoured van while a sixth guards the entrance. Their weapons would be ordinary if not for the black substance moving over the metal.
Soobin saw it during the robbery earlier that week. It moves against gravity, gathers around the barrels when the weapons fire and gives cheap firearms enough force to tear through strengthened concrete. The sample he recovered dissolved before he could identify it, so he needs another one.
Later, he tells himself. First, he needs to stop six armed men from killing somebody.
He lands between them and the van, but his foot catches the kerb.
Soobin pitches forward, windmills one arm and saves himself at the last moment by planting a hand on the bonnet. It would look intentional if he hadn’t made a small, deeply unheroic noise inside the mask.
Nobody moves for a second, until one robber snorts.
“Something funny?” he asks, though he gives him no time to respond. Soobin webs him across the mouth. “You try crossing half of Seoul without public transport.”
The man claws at the webbing while his friend raises a gun. Soobin catches his wrist with another web and yanks him face-first into a sack bag, causing money to burst across the road.
Other than his terrible landing, things go fairly well.
Soobin kicks one robber into the side of the van, webs two together and uses the open rear door to knock a fourth off his feet. A bullet passes close enough to warm his shoulder; he twists, fires at the infected weapon and seals the muzzle.
The black substance swarms over the web, causing the white fibres to turn grey and fall apart. The weapon fires through them, blasting a crater where Soobin stood a moment earlier.
Soobin tilts his head—the information is useful, but the circumstances are terrible.
He pulls a street sign out of the pavement and sweeps the gunman's legs with it. Two of the suspects have gone down; the other two are falling back through the shattered entrance. Soobin is far enough to web one to a pillar.
He’s winning—badly dressed and emotionally devastated, perhaps, but winning.
Until something explodes inside the bank.
Smoke rolls through the entrance. Soobin shields his lenses with one arm and steps back as a figure walks out carrying one of the black-covered guns.
Brown armour covers the newcomer from helmet to boots, plates overlapping across the chest and stomach in glossy bands, darkening to near-black at the joints. Two antennae rise from the helmet. Folded sections sit along the back, shaped like blunt wings. The armour is tall, heavy and unmistakably insect-like.
The two remaining robbers stumble through the smoke behind it, and Soobin understands the situation immediately.
Their leader has arrived.
The armoured figure raises a hand, and the helmet turns a woman’s voice into an electronic rasp. “Wait. This is not what it looks like—I have a speech.”
One of the robbers charges.
Soobin shoots a web past the woman, catches the man around the chest and yanks. The robber leaves the ground and crashes into the brown armour, sending both back into the smoke with a metallic bang.
Soobin winces.
The robber slides out first, unconscious. The armoured woman follows, stepping over him, with one antenna bent.
She straightens it with two fingers. “That was rude.”
“You and your men are robbing a bank with alien weapons. Don’t talk to me about rude.”
“These are not my men; I’m not with them.” She returns to the exact spot where she had been standing. “Can we just—can I start again?”
“No.”
“For centuries, one creature has survived humanity’s every attempt to destroy it—”
“Please don’t.”
“—feared, misunderstood and almost impossible to kill.”
Soobin looks at the antennae. “Oh God, you’re dressed as a cockroach,” he facepalms.
The helmet lifts. “I have embodied its fortitude to protect the people of Seoul as Roach Queen.”
“Roach Queen?”
“Yes, Roach Queen.”
“So you built a mechanical suit of armor and decided to call yourself Roach Queen? Were all the good names taken or something?”
“What? No, the name sounds powerful.”
“More like the name of a roach repellent.”
She points the infected gun at him. Soobin raises both wrists.
“I’m trying to hand this over,” she says.
“If you were trying to hand it over, you could’ve just put it down.”
“It’s covered in moving black shit. I don’t want to put it down.”
The warning at the base of Soobin’s skull flares.
Behind him, the substance contracts around a robber’s arm and launches the man forwards with enough force to split the pavement beneath his feet.
Roach Queen reaches her hip and throws a small disc between them.
“Wait,” Soobin says. “Oh for fuck’s—”
He doesn’t have the time to finish his sentence as the blast stops the robber in mid-air, while also sending Soobin through the windscreen of a parked Hyundai.
He lands across the dashboard with glass in his suit and the horn honking beneath his elbow. For several seconds, all he can see are the feet of a tiny religious figurine swinging from the rear-view mirror.
Brown armour appears on the other side of the broken windscreen. “Are you alive?”
Soobin pulls himself out. “No thanks to you. You’ve just put me through a car.”
“I stopped someone from putting you through the bank.”
“That doesn’t make the car disappear.”
“You’re welcome?”
He brushes safety glass from his shoulders. The day has contained an academic crisis, romantic devastation and now a woman dressed as an insect expecting gratitude for rearranging his spine.
“Take your gang and leave,” he says. “Before I make you.”
“They’re not my gang.” Roach Queen lowers the gun to the pavement. “I came here to help you.”
“Don’t make things worse for yourself. Drop your weapon and get on your knees now.”
Her helmet tilts. “You’re very forward.”
“Arms behind your back… so I can arrest you.”
“Less exciting.”
Soobin fires at her wrists.
She moves before the web reaches her—for somebody wearing that much metal, she’s quick. The strand catches the gun instead and tears it from her hand. Soobin pulls it towards himself, but ebony tendrils crawl along the web and begin eating through it.
Roach Queen lunges for the weapon. Soobin intercepts her, his shoulder striking the breastplate of her armour, her arm locking around his waist as he uses his momentum to throw her over one hip.
He hits the road.
“Sorry, I was trying to stop the gun from fal—” she says.
Soobin groans. “Stop apologising after doing things.”
“You attacked me—it was self-defence.”
“You’re committing a robbery.”
“I’m really not.” She steps back when he sweeps for her ankles. “Also, you’re taller in person.”
Soobin falters for half a second. “What?”
“I panicked.”
He webs her shoulder to the van, but that just causes the armour to tear the rear door off when she moves.
Soobin stares at the door hanging from her back.
“I wanted this meeting to go differently,” she says.
“You planned this?”
“Obviously,” she says with a giggle, proud of herself.
Soobin is dumbfounded at the confession. “You planned the robbery, great. Make sure you confess to every single detail in prison.”
“What? No, I planned meeting—”
Soobin kicks the infected gun away and goes for her legs. Roach Queen jumps, catches his shoulders and flips over him. One metal heel clips his chest on the way past.
Pain shoots across his ribs.
“Sorry!”
“Oh, you—”
They collide again, and Soobin manages to catch one wrist despite the pain. Roach Queen twists out, drives an elbow towards his stomach and tries to stop halfway. The hesitation makes the blow worse, since it catches him beneath the ribs and folds him over her arm.
She lowers him to the ground instead of dropping him. “So,” she says while he is trying to convince his lungs to work, “do you come here often?”
Soobin looks up at the black visor. “To the bank?”
“I knew it sounded stupid as soon as I said it.”
He webs both her ankles together, causing Roach Queen to fall on top of him. The helmet stops a centimetre from his mask, and he can see his own amber lenses reflected in the visor.
“This feels promising,” she says.
“Get off me.”
“You could say please. I’m starting to think you don’t like me.”
“You’re remarkably perceptive for a cockroach.”
She plants both palms beside his head and pushes herself up. Soobin rolls, catches the back of her knee and brings her down again. Her armour strikes the road hard enough to crack it.
In the background, something hisses.
The black substance has reached the webbing around the captured robbers. It spreads through the fibres, greying them from the centre out and allowing one man to tear his arm free while another grabs the infected gun from the road.
Roach Queen sees them when she turns her head. “They’re escaping.”
“I’m not falling for that.”
“Your actual criminals are escaping.”
Soobin looks just as the last money bag disappears into the van, its tyres screaming against the road. “Fuck.”
“I told you.”
“Stay here, don’t move.”
“That seems unlikely.”
Soobin fires a web at the nearest building and swings after the van.
Roach Queen follows with the panels on her back unfolding into four brown wings. They snap open with a burst of compressed air and carry her onto the roof above him.
What did Soobin expect? Of course she’d be following; her gang is leaving with the money.
Soobin swings higher and lands in front of her. “I’m not letting you get away!” he yells.
“They’re getting away!” she yells back.
“I know, because you helped them.”
“I didn’t—why are we still having this conversation?” She tries to pass.
Soobin webs one wing to an air-conditioning unit. Roach Queen turns, the line pulls tight and the unit tears from its bolts. She catches it before it can fall into the street and throws it back onto the roof.
The delay costs them. Below, the armoured van is turning through an intersection.
Soobin fires at Roach Queen again. She blocks his wrist and shoves.
His heels leave the edge.
For one second he sees the blank visor leaning over the roof, then the building races upwards and Soobin drops.
Roach Queen dives after him. Apparently, throwing him off the roof wasn’t enough.
Soobin fires at a balcony, lets the line catch and swings below her falling body. Roach Queen reaches for him. He twists away, shoots three webs and uses her own momentum to drag her towards the street.
She hits a lamppost back-first.
Soobin adds webbing around her wrists, ankles and waist until brown armour is pinned against the metal.
The helmet lifts as he lands. “If you wanted to tie me up,” she says, “you could’ve just asked.”
“You’re under arrest, you don’t have to say anything, but anything you do say may be given in as evidence.”
“So that’s a no to dinner?”
“It’s a no to everything.”
Police sirens fill the street before she can answer.
Soobin looks towards the intersection. The van is gone—no money, no robbers, no intact weapon for him to examine. A smear of black residue remains across one glove where the web dissolved, which is more evidence than he collected last time and considerably less than he wanted.
Officer Han gets out of the first police car with one hand near her holster. Her eyes travel over Soobin’s torn suit, the blood at the edge of his mask and the bent lamppost behind him.
“What happened?”
“The same group as Monday. Six suspects. Modified weapons covered in an unidentified material. It dissolves my webbing and appears to reinforce whatever it attaches to.”
“Where are they?”
Soobin points towards the traffic. “Escaped in an armoured van after an accomplice interfered.”
Han follows his finger. “The accomplice?”
“Behind me. Brown armour, calls herself Roach Queen.”
Officer Han looks past him and her eyes narrow.
Soobin turns.
The webbing covering the lamppost is empty. An empty section of brown armour hangs inside it, split neatly along the side. One bent antenna swings from a strand.
Officer Han looks at Soobin again.
Soobin sighs and shakes his head. “It’s been a long day.”
He retrieves the residue from his glove before leaving. It’s already starting to lose its shape inside the sample tube.
By two in the morning, Soobin is sitting at his desk in an old university sweatshirt. His black hair is shower-wet, his glasses keep sliding down his nose, and a bruise has spread under his ribs where Roach Queen apologised to him with an elbow.
Three monitors show the black substance from different angles. Soobin has run it through every database he can access, and still nothing matches. The goo behaves more like a living organism than a manufactured polymer, but every time he separates a piece, it breaks down into grey sludge.
The alien material refuses to identify itself.
Soobin understands the impulse. Apparently, everybody in Seoul has decided to keep secrets from him tonight.
CCTV footage from the bank begins circulating before the analysis finishes. One camera captures Roach Queen emerging through the smoke with a weapon. A second shows the explosion and most of their fight. None shows her arguing that she came to help, although Soobin doubts that would improve matters. She still entered an active robbery in insect armour, attacked Spider-Man and helped six armed men escape.
News sites settle on supervillain before midnight.
By morning, ROACH QUEEN TERRORISES SEOUL appears beneath the brown helmet on all screens in the city.
Soobin reads the headline while another sample collapses into sludge.
Roach Queen is now the second-worst person in Seoul. The mystery man you have a crush on remains undefeated at the top of Soobin’s list.
At nine fourteen the next morning, you take one look at Soobin and say, “You look like shit.”
Soobin stops beside the seat you saved for him. His backpack hangs from one shoulder, his grey jumper is doing a reasonable job of hiding the bruises across his ribs, and his black hair has dried in whichever direction it pleased after his six-minute shower. The round frames of his glasses only make the dark circles beneath his eyes more obvious; he discovered this in the bathroom mirror and still chose denial.
“Good morning to you too.”
“No, seriously.” You move your coat off the chair. “You look dead.”
“You don’t get to talk when you have blood on your mouth.”
Your tongue touches the split in your lower lip. “Well, that’s different, because I still look good.”
Soobin drops into the seat. Pain catches beneath his jumper, and he disguises it by taking much longer than necessary to arrange his laptop, notebook and three pens in a row. “Debatable.”
You kick his ankle beneath the desk.
The movement makes the cut across your cheek pull when you smile. There is another scrape near your jaw, partly hidden by your hair, and the knuckles of your right hand are swollen.
You collect injuries the way Soobin collects unfinished projects—frequently, carelessly and with no intention of learning from the available evidence. Boxing gave you the first cut lip he remembers. Judo gave you a dislocated finger at sixteen. Taekwondo once gave him a two-hour wait in the emergency department because you refused to admit your ankle had become the size of a grapefruit until you could no longer fit it inside your shoe.
This, however, is more damage than you have brought into a lecture hall for months.
“Who did you fight?” he asks.
You open your tablet. “Nobody.”
“Seems like Nobody has excellent aim.”
“Training got rough last night.”
“I thought training was on Fridays, not Thursdays.”
Your hand stops above the screen. “Are you tracking me now?”
“I know your schedule.”
“Which is a normal thing to say, and not creepy at all.”
“Did you go after...” Soobin lowers his voice as students fill the row in front of them. “After you met him?”
You tap your password incorrectly, erase it and start again. “Can we not do this at nine in the morning?”
Your irritation answers enough to properly wake up his jealousy.
Professor Lee enters before Soobin can ask another question. The lecture theatre settles—chairs scrape, somebody drops a metal bottle and a conversation near the back continues until Lee looks over his glasses. Today’s slides concern delivery vectors for gene-editing therapies.
Ordinarily, Soobin would enjoy this. Ordinarily, he would have slept.
Instead, the unidentified residue sits in a sealed tube beneath the false bottom of his desk drawer at home. At four that morning it had still been breaking itself down faster than his equipment could record it. At five, he had given up on analysis and spent forty minutes searching every public profile belonging to men in your extended social circle.
That investigation produced fourteen possible suspects, three private accounts and a photograph of Minjun wearing a fedora in 2019.
Soobin wishes he knew less.
Beside him, you have written the date at the top of a blank page and nothing else.
He nudges your elbow. “So?”
“So what?”
“Last night.”
Your pen presses down hard enough to leave a dot of ink. “It went badly.”
The relief is immediate and horrible. Soobin hates himself for it, yet feels no less relieved. “How badly?”
“He...” You abandon the sentence and scribble over the ink dot until it becomes a dark, ugly square. “He got the wrong idea.”
“About you?”
“About what I was trying to do.”
Soobin did warn you about warnings and ambushes, though he knows now is not the time for an I told you so—unless he wants to get kicked in the shin. And Roach Queen has already done enough bodily damage for him to want to avoid yours.
Instead, he glances at your mouth again. “Did he hurt you?”
Your head turns so quickly that you nearly lose the pencil behind your ear. “What? No.”
“You came in looking like this after meeting him.”
“I told you, it was training.” You pull your hair over the cut near your jaw. “He didn’t touch me.”
Soobin believes that part. He has known every version of your lying face, and this one contains irritation instead of fright. The mystery man is allowed to keep breathing for the moment—unfortunately.
“Did he reject you?”
“Choi Soobin.”
“What?”
“If you ask me one more question, I’m going to eject you from this row.”
Professor Lee stops speaking.
Soobin looks towards the front. Half the room follows Professor Lee’s attention back to him.
“Since your conversation is more compelling than mine, Mr Choi, perhaps you can explain the main limitation of viral vectors in repeated-dose therapies.”
You sink lower in your chair and cover your mouth with one hand.
Soobin answers. He gives Lee the immune-response problem, the risk of neutralising antibodies and two possible workarounds before remembering he hasn’t been invited to deliver the rest of the lecture.
Professor Lee watches him for a moment. “Correct. Try listening with your eyes open next time.”
The class turns around again.
You write insufferable nerd across the top of his notebook. Soobin adds still correct beneath it. Your pen moves towards his ribs when he underlines still, but he catches your wrist before you can jab him.
“Don’t do that,” he whispers.
Something in his face gives him away, and you look down at the hand covering his side. “Are you hurt?”
“I slept badly.”
Your eyes narrow. Soobin releases your wrist and turns to the slides with great academic interest.
For the remainder of the lecture, neither of you writes anything useful.
When Professor Lee dismisses the class, you attempt to leave with everybody else. Soobin catches the strap of your bag.
“Sit.”
You tug once, but he keeps hold of it.
“I have another lecture.”
“In forty minutes.”
“Again with the schedule. Disturbing.”
“Your face is leaking blood.”
“That sounds much worse than it is.”
The last students file towards the doors, stepping around the two of you. You stare at Soobin. Soobin stares back. He has more patience, and your bag, so you eventually sit with an offended collapse.
“Bossy prick.”
“Bleeding nuisance.” He takes the first-aid pouch from the front pocket of his backpack.
“You still carry that?”
“Do I have a choice? I still know you.”
The pouch began as a handful of plasters in his schoolbag after you split your chin open on a climbing frame at eight. Over the years it acquired gauze, antiseptic, tape, painkillers and the butterfly strips you insist are unnecessary right until you need one. Soobin replaces whatever you use while you continue pretending this is excessive despite being the sole reason it exists.
He turns in his chair to face you. “Hair.”
You gather it away from your cheek without being asked twice because this part is familiar. Your arguments about needing help usually end once the disinfectant comes out.
Soobin tears open a wipe and leans closer. The scrape along your cheek is shallow, but grit remains near the edge. “This is going to sting,” he says
“I’m not five.”
“You cried more when you were twenty than when you were five.”
“That nurse had cold hands.” When the wipe touches your skin, you hiss and grab his knee.
“Very grown-up,” he says.
“Shut up.”
He cleans the cut while you complain about his technique, the smell of the antiseptic and the fact that he is blocking the aisle with his legs. Soobin lets you, because complaining means you are comfortable. Silence from you generally means unconsciousness, fury or a plan being formed, and he has suffered enough of all three.
“What happened to your knuckles?”
You glance down at your hands. “Bag work.”
“Without wraps?” Soobin questions with a raised brow.
“The circumstances didn’t allow for straps.”
“Right.” He drops the used wipe into its wrapper. “Does whoever you fought have a name?”
“So you can do what? Challenge them?”
“I can write a very unpleasant email.”
You laugh, although you stop when it pulls at your lip.
“Don’t laugh.” Soobin takes your chin between his fingers. “You’ll open it again.”
“I can’t even laugh now, huh?”
“Not at anything funnier than mildly amusing.”
“I’m safe with you, then.”
He presses folded gauze to your lower lip with more force than necessary. You make an offended noise through your nose but close your eyes and let him work.
The trust you have in him with your wounds is unfair; you hand it over without thought while guarding everything he actually wants to know.
Your lip is swollen around the split, the blood dried dark at the centre. Soobin wipes it away carefully while his thumb rests beneath your chin. You are close enough for him to see the slight smudge of yesterday’s eyeliner beneath your lashes, and close enough that his exhausted brain decides to become disgusting.
He imagines replacing the gauze with his mouth.
The cut would sting. You would probably swear against his lips before kissing him back—in this fantasy, at least, Soobin has already survived the difficult part and earned cooperation. He wonders whether he would taste blood, whether your fingers would close around the front of his jumper and pull him closer—
His hand stops.
What the fuck is wrong with him?
“Are you done?” you ask, your eyes remaining closed.
“Nearly.” His speech comes out normal, which feels undeserved.
Soobin applies a thin layer of ointment and moves away before his imagination can make the situation worse.
You immediately lick your lip.
“Don’t do that,” he says.
Your face twists. “That tastes horrible.”
“It isn’t food. Just because I put it on your mouth, it doesn’t make it lunch.”
You wipe your tongue against your teeth and reach for your phone. The screen lights with the same brown helmet Soobin has been avoiding since dawn, with a news report sitting beneath it.
POLICE SEARCH FOR ‘ROACH QUEEN’ AFTER MIRAE UNION ROBBERY.
Your thumb lingers over the headline. “Have you heard about Roach Queen?”
Soobin seals the ointment. “Who hasn’t heard about that criminal?”
Your eyes narrow. “You mean alleged criminal.”
“She came out of a bank carrying a weapon.”
“The footage starts after she went inside. Nobody knows why she was holding it.”
Soobin does—she claimed she had taken it from the robbers, shortly before blasting him through a Hyundai and trying to rejoin the same men on their escape route.
He puts the wipes back into the pouch. “The police seem to have formed an opinion.”
“The police form opinions about Spider-Man every other week.” You sit up, following him when he tries to close the conversation with the zip. “That doesn’t make them right.”
“Spider-Man doesn’t walk out of active crime scenes carrying the criminals’ guns.”
“No, he just attacks people before letting them explain.”
Soobin’s fingers pause on the zipper. “He was dealing with an armed suspect.”
“He decided she was a suspect because of how she looked.”
“She looked like an insect leading six bank robbers.”
“They were behind her.”
“Yes, that tends to be where followers stand.”
You take your bag back and place it on your lap. “Maybe he could have listened for ten seconds.”
“Maybe she could have chosen a better moment for a speech.”
“He threw a man at her!”
The detail makes Soobin look at you. It was visible in one of the street recordings, though barely, he remembers. Until somebody online slowed it down, added romantic music, and posted it on TikTok with the caption ‘New ship, Spider-Man x Roach Queen’.
“You’ve watched a lot of footage.”
You turn the phone face-down. “It keeps appearing on my feed.”
“Your feed is usually people kicking each other.”
“She kicks people.”
Fair enough, he can’t argue against that. Soobin folds his arms and immediately regrets it when pressure settles across his ribs. “She also detonated something at him.”
“He survived,” you say, before pulling the pencil from your hair and clicking it—once, twice, and again. “Do you think Spider-Man hates her?”
The question sounds different from everything before it. Smaller, although you are still glaring at the desk.
Soobin suddenly remembers Roach Queen asking him to dinner while attached to a lamppost and grimaces. “I’d be surprised if he sends her flowers.”
The pencil stops.
He cannot understand why the answer bothers you. You were annoyed on behalf of misunderstood film villains, unpopular athletes and one laboratory mouse you insisted had been unfairly labelled as aggressive. Roach Queen must have joined that list sometime before breakfast.
“You don’t know what he thinks,” you say.
“Neither do you.”
“I know she was trying to help him.”
“You don’t know her either.”
Your head lifts. “Neither do you.”
Soobin does, unfortunately. He knows Roach Queen apologises after causing bodily harm, has enough strength in her armour to rip apart a vehicle and flirts when nervous, violent or both. None of that can leave his mouth.
“I know what the videos show.”
“Yes, exactly. You only know what thirty seconds show, you don’t know everything that happened.”
Soobin scoffs. “Then how did the actual robbers get away?”
“Because Spider-Man kept attacking the wrong person! He decided what she was before she finished one sentence and then refused to change his mind.”
It’s an aggravating description of what happened, stripped of the gun, the smoke and every other detail that makes Soobin right.
Soobin begins packing his laptop. “Did your mystery man put you onto this?”
“What?”
“You said last night went badly. Now you’re furious because everybody thinks some woman is something she isn’t.” He slides the charger into his bag. “It feels connected.”
Too connected, perhaps.
Your grip shifts on the pencil. “Not everything is about him.”
“You won’t tell me anything about him, so how would I know?”
“He hates Roach Queen too, actually.”
Soobin looks up. “First sensible thing I’ve heard about him.”
You throw the pencil at his chest. “You’re such an arsehole when you’re tired.”
He catches it before it lands. “I’m trying to understand you.”
“No, you’re trying to prove you’re right.”
“Why would I want to prove that I’m right about a wanted criminal?”
“You want to be right about everyone.” You snatch the pencil back and shove it into your bag. “You’ve decided Roach Queen is guilty, you’ve decided my confession was an ambush, and you’ve decided the person I like is a prick before you even know who he is.”
“He rejected you.”
“That doesn’t make him a prick.”
Soobin hates that you defend the bastard too. “Fine. What does?”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe people get things wrong.” You stand, wincing when the movement pulls somewhere under your coat. “Maybe they panic. Maybe they make a bad first impression and deserve another chance.” You pick up the first-aid pouch and begin forcing its contents inside without any regard for where they belong. “Why are you so angry on Spider-Man’s behalf?”
Because Soobin can still feel the Hyundai’s windscreen in his back and Roach Queen’s elbow below his ribs. Because six armed men escaped while she was distracting him. Because she is now loose somewhere in Seoul with armour strong enough to tear a van apart.
He cannot say any of that. “People could have died,” he says, instead.
“But they didn’t.” You shove the disinfectant inside and fail to zip it up. “You watched the same footage as everyone else and decided you know exactly what happened.”
“There were six camera angles.”
“None from inside the bank.”
“Why are you taking this so personally?”
Your hands stop. “I’m not.”
“You’ve reconstructed the entire robbery from social-media clips.”
“And you spent all night doing what?” Your eyes move over his face, then down to the arm he has kept close to his ribs since sitting. “You lied about being worried over your dissertation. You haven’t slept, you’re hurt, and you think putting on a jumper means I can’t see it.”
Soobin says nothing because every possible answer creates a larger problem.
“Yeah,” you say. “That’s what I thought.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not changing it. You’ve spent all morning asking where I went, who I met, and who hit me, but I ask what happened to you and suddenly there’s nothing to discuss.”
“I’m your best friend. I’m allowed to worry.”
“Then act like my best friend and tell me the truth.”
He looks at you. You wait. There is no version of the truth he can offer without revealing the mask, so the silence extends until your face closes off.
“Exactly,” you say.
“You lied about training.”
“I never said I didn’t lie. I said you’re a hypocrite.”
“That’s different.”
“Of course it is when you’re doing it.” You finally wrench the zip around the disinfectant. “You don’t get to keep half your life locked away and then interrogate me because I like somebody.”
Soobin always thought the red string was a direct route back to you. This morning, every question gets snagged in the middle, knotted with the answers neither of you is willing to give.
“You used to tell me everything,” he says.
Your hand tightens around the pouch. “So did you.”
The answer leaves him with nowhere to go.
“This is about Roach Queen,” he says, although it stopped being about her several minutes ago.
“No, it’s about you thinking you’re entitled to every part of my life while I’m supposed to accept whatever bits you give me.”
“I’m trying to understand why you’re defending a dangerous woman.”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“Then tell me.”
“Why? So you can explain why I’m wrong again?” You stand and shove the first-aid pouch against his chest. “Fuck you, Soobin.”
The lecture-theatre door slams behind you.
Soobin remains in the aisle with his half-packed bag, your blood drying on a piece of gauze and no idea how an argument about a cockroach became an argument about the two of you.
For twenty-two years, every single secret you kept eventually found its way to him. Now there is a man you will not name, a night you will not explain and an anger Soobin cannot reach without making it worse.
The red string Soobin has been holding onto to stay connected to you has caught around somebody else, and the harder Soobin tries to pull you back, the further you seem to go.
The bastard isn't even in the room, and Soobin already feels replaced.
By lunchtime, Soobin has texted you four apologies and made the situation worse in three separate ways.
soobin: i’m sorry.
soobin: i still think you’re wrong about roach queen, but i shouldn’t have said the other things.
soobin: that wasn’t a very good apology.
soobin: could we talk?
The tiny check remains grey beside every message. He sends a fifth during bioprocess design.
soobin: at least tell me your lip hasn’t opened again.
Soobin looks at it for several seconds, decides it sounds less like concern and more like surveillance, and deletes it. KakaoTalk replaces the message with a notice announcing that he deleted something, which is much less suspicious.
Brilliant.
The lecture continues without him. Equations appear, disappear and return wearing different letters while Soobin checks his phone beneath the desk often enough that the screen begins opening to your chat automatically.
Years of photographs, missed calls and arguments about where to eat sit above five yellow bubbles you refuse to read. If the red string theory has a customer-service department, he would like to file a complaint.
“Mr Choi.”
Soobin looks up.
Professor Kwon has stopped beside his row. The rest of the room is looking at him too, which usually means somebody has asked him a question and he has been publicly failing to exist.
“Sorry. Could you repeat that?”
“I asked whether you intended to join us today.”
A few people laugh. Soobin pushes his glasses back up his nose and looks towards the projector, where an entire worked example waits to accuse him. “Eventually,” he says.
Professor Kwon stares at him before returning to the front. “Please make it before the examination.”
Soobin tries. He writes the title of the next slide, underlines it, then checks his phone again.
Still unread.
The day drags on. He misses lunch because he spends it walking past the rooms where you usually hide between lectures. You aren’t in the library, the boxing gym or the laboratory.
One of your classmates says you attended the first half of a seminar and left early. Soobin pretends he asked for academic reasons and receives a look suggesting he’s not as convincing as he thinks.
He sends another message anyway.
soobin: i was an arsehole.
That one, at least, is entirely true.
By the time his final lecture ends, the sky outside has gone dark and the muscles around his eyes hurt from trying to stay open. He has retained nothing from the past eight hours except that you are very good at ignoring him and Professor Kwon can make disappointment feel like a real object.
His ribs hurt, his head hurts, his dissertation may be developing problems while unattended and somewhere in Seoul, Roach Queen remains free to ruin another crime scene.
Soobin wants to go home, shower and fall face-first onto his bed. He might even remove his glasses first if he has any survival instinct left.
Instead, he takes the stairs down to the laboratory.
He only needs to check his cultures. Five minutes, perhaps ten if the readings need transferring. After that, he will go home and stop looking at his phone until you answer—or until thirty seconds have passed, whichever comes first.
The main laboratory is empty. Half the ceiling lights have switched off for the evening, leaving alternating benches under strips of white light and shade. Soobin signs himself in, pulls a lab coat over his jumper and pushes his fringe away from his glasses, just for it to fall back before he reaches the incubator.
His samples occupy the second shelf in two neat rows—well, they were neat when he left them.
Now the front flask sits crooked, its label lifting at one corner, and the liquid inside has turned cloudy. Soobin takes it out, checks the cap and finds the tamper strip broken.
“You have got to be fucking joking.”
The flask behind it is the same, and so is the next one.
Six samples last month and three tonight. At this rate, Minjun is going to complete Soobin’s dissertation by destroying every possible result and leaving him with an excellent case study on homicide.
He reaches for the fourth flask and stops.
Something black marks the glass around its neck.
It would be easy to mistake for grease from the incubator hinge—a thin, oily crescent caught below the cap. Soobin has spent most of the previous night staring at the same colour through three different cameras.
He puts the flask beneath the bench light and turns it.
The mark stays where it is for a moment, then one edge draws inwards, and Soobin goes still.
He touches a sterile swab to the glass. The substance clings, extending into a narrow strand before snapping free. By the time he seals the swab inside a tube, the black has already begun fading at the edges.
It’s the same material from the bank.
For several seconds, Soobin can only stare at his own deformed reflection in the incubator door. His fringe has separated into untidy pieces over the thick rims of his glasses, and the lab coat makes his grey jumper look even more crumpled. He looks tired enough to be hallucinating. Unfortunately, the black strand also appears in the photograph he takes.
There shouldn’t be alien material on his cultures.
He checks the electronic access log. Four people have entered the room since he left yesterday—Professor Lee, a postgraduate researcher, you, and Minjun.
Minjun also signed in at six-twelve that evening, and out again fourteen minutes later.
Soobin reads the name twice. He doesn’t need to, but anger enjoys confirmation.
Minjun has blamed old gloves, badly cleaned pipettes, faulty seals and, once, the weather for his laboratory mistakes. Soobin has tolerated all of it because apparently he is patient, civilised and reluctant to strangle somebody in front of security cameras.
But the black trace changes things.
He takes photos of the flasks, stores the compromised cultures in the isolation cabinet and leaves the laboratory before good sense can suggest waiting until morning.
Minjun uses a student project room at the far end of the engineering building. The biochemical research society claimed it years ago and gradually filled it with donated equipment, broken chairs and enough instant-coffee sachets to survive a war. Minjun works there because the faculty laboratory has rules about eating near samples and registering equipment—he regards both as a personal attack.
The corridor outside is empty when Soobin arrives, a laminated sign hanging crooked on the project-room door and light showing beneath it.
Soobin knocks once. “Minjun?”
Nobody answers.
He tries the handle, and the door opens.
Every nerve along the back of his neck fires at once.
Soobin jerks away so quickly that his shoulder hits the opposite wall. Pain cuts through his ribs, his backpack slides down one arm, and the open doorway continues doing absolutely nothing.
He stares into the room.
Two computers, three desks, an office chair turning slightly under the air vent. Nobody is hiding behind the door, nobody is above him, and no weapon is aimed through the dark.
His spider-sense does not settle.
It crawls below his skin without giving a direction, warning him about the walls, the floor and the stale cup of coffee beside Minjun’s laptop. The whole room feels wrong.
Soobin pulls the door shut behind him. “Minjun?”
The only response is a short electronic chirp from somewhere at the back.
He moves between the desks, stepping over a power cable and a box of plastic tubes. Minjun’s backpack is gone, but his coat hangs from the chair, and a partly eaten triangle kimbap sits beside an open notebook. Whatever made him leave, he expected to return before the rice became dangerous.
The chirp sounds again.
A frosted door separates the project room from a small cell-culture room. Somebody has wedged an access card into the frame to prevent it from locking.
Soobin removes the card and reads the name. Kim Minjun.
“Subtle, isn’t he?” he mutters.
The moment he touches the handle, the warning inside his skull becomes so violent that his vision sparks and he nearly lets go.
Instead, Soobin pulls one sleeve over his hand and opens the door.
Warm air rolls across his face. The room is narrow, most of its space taken by a biosafety cabinet, a sink and two stacked incubators. Only one light is on, shining through the glass door of the lower incubator.
Black fills the shelves inside, though not entirely.
Soobin can still make out culture flasks, sealed dishes and several glass vials arranged in racks. The substance coats their inner surfaces in thick, shining layers. Some of it has collected at the bottom while some climbs the walls of the containers despite the direction of gravity.
One flask holds nothing except grey liquid.
Another has a date from that morning written across its label. The material inside contracts when Soobin steps closer, pulling itself into a dense knot against the side nearest him.
His hand moves towards the incubator latch, and everything in his body tells him not to open it.
For once, he listens.
An oily print stains the handle. The same black residue circles the cap of an empty culture flask on the counter, and beside it lies a foam case cut to hold twelve small vials. Four spaces are empty.
Soobin photographs everything.
He doesn’t know what Minjun is growing or where he obtained it. He doesn’t know why separated samples collapse into grey waste while these remain active. He does, however, know what happens when the material is placed on a weapon.
His spider-sense is still screaming by the time he backs out and closes the frosted door.
Minjun’s laptop sits open on the nearest desk. The screen has dimmed, but a touch of the trackpad brings up an encrypted message window.
Of course, Minjun leaves his private correspondence open in an unlocked room. His approach to cybersecurity is consistent with his approach to sterile technique.
Soobin should call Professor Lee or campus security or the police or any person whose official job description includes entering suspicious rooms and touching suspected alien organisms.
Instead, he sits at the laptop.
There is a photograph in the open conversation. Four compact firearms lie across a sheet of plastic, black substance wrapped around their barrels and magazines. Soobin recognises the model from the bank.
Beneath it, Minjun has sent one line. Eight ready. Remaining four after payment clears.
The reply contains a transfer receipt large enough to cover several years of tuition.
Soobin scrolls.
There are photos of damaged concrete. A video of the substance dissolving synthetic fibres. Short messages about stability, storage temperature and how long each application survives away from its source. Most of the conversation uses initials and numbers, but the last message makes no attempt to hide anything.
21:00. Incheon Port, Gate 3. Come alone with the eight units.
Soobin checks the corner of the screen.
20:17.
“Shit.”
He takes photos of the conversation with his phone. He can alert the police once he reaches the roof, but there isn’t time to wait for them. Depending on traffic, there may not be time for anybody travelling by road.
Fortunately, Soobin has never needed roads.
The suit is folded beneath his textbooks inside his backpack. He can change on the roof, cross the river and reach the port before nine if nothing else goes wrong.
A metallic object scrapes behind him and his spider-sense changes. The warning is no longer coming from everywhere.
It’s directly behind him.
Soobin turns, and Roach Queen stands inside the doorway.
Brown plates cover her from throat to boots. One panel along her side is a lighter shade than the rest, newly replaced after she left part of the armour trapped on a lamppost. Her wings are folded flat, and one antenna still has a slight bend.
Soobin looks from her to the culture-room door. Of course she was part of this—she interfered at the bank so the robbers could escape, shed her armour before the police arrived and has now come back to collect the next shipment.
Every excuse she gave him returns sounding even more ridiculous inside Minjun’s room.
Soobin reaches slowly towards his backpack.
Roach Queen raises one gauntlet. “I don’t want to do this,” she says. “I’m really sorry, Soobin.”
His hand stops—she knows his name.
The half-second it takes him to understand that is enough.
Roach Queen swings. Soobin throws up an arm, but her metal knuckles stop short of his face and blue-white current leaps through his jumper instead. Every muscle in his body locks. His glasses fly from his face, and the floor tilts up with a cloud of brown armour.
Then there is nothing.
The stairwell is smaller than Soobin remembers.
Its yellow walls are scuffed by schoolbags, and rain has blown through the window that never closed properly. Two children occupy the second-floor landing—one of them is a younger version of you, sitting on the radiator with one leg swinging while a boy kneels between your trainers, struggling to tear open a packet of gauze.
It takes Soobin a moment to recognise his own twelve-year-old face.
His younger self has a wet fringe, enormous black glasses and the blotchy nose he gets from crying. You look worse. Blood has dried beneath your nostrils; your knuckles are split; one side of your uniform shirt hangs loose, and the swelling beneath your left eye will be purple by morning.
“You’re crying on me,” you say.
The boy wipes his cheek with his shoulder. “It’s antiseptic.”
You look at the unopened packet in his hand, but spare him the embarrassment of pointing it out.
Soobin remembers this afternoon now. Three older boys emptied his schoolbag into a puddle because he corrected one of them during class. You hit the tallest with Soobin’s lunchbox before anybody could stop you. His mother never managed to hammer the dent out.
His younger self presses gauze to your cheek. His hands quiver so badly that the first plaster catches in your hair. “You can’t keep doing this,” he says. “There were three of them.”
You peel the plaster free and hand it back. “Only one knew how to throw a punch.”
The boy gives you a wounded look through his oversized frames, although he’s not the one bleeding. He tapes a square of gauze over your knuckles; it covers three fingers and will fall off before either of you reaches home.
Soobin descends one step, and neither child notices him.
“You keep getting hurt because of me,” the boy says.
Your swinging foot stops. “No. I’m getting better because of you.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m getting better at taekwondo. I’ll start boxing, and I will become good at maybe both.” You catch his wrist when he reaches for another plaster. “You’ll keep correcting people because your mouth is faulty, and I’ll make sure you survive it.”
“I can stop correcting them.”
“I don’t want you to.” Your fingers close around his. “You shouldn’t have to act stupid so idiots leave you alone.”
He looks down at your joined hands. “You can’t protect me forever.”
“Someone has to. You’re a wimp.”
“I am not.”
“You cried when we dissected a frog.”
“The frog was hurting.”
Your cut lip lifts before the pain ruins the smile.
Soobin reaches the landing, and he wants to touch your bruised cheek, although he doesn’t know why—perhaps to check that you are still warm or perhaps to stop you from making a promise neither of you understands yet.
Your mouth moves again, but nothing comes out.
The boy answers, and Soobin cannot hear him either. He leans between you, close enough to read your lips, but the words refuse to form into anything he recognises.
“What are you saying?” Soobin asks.
Both children turn towards him.
Your bruised face and his tear-streaked one stare directly into Soobin’s. When your mouths move again, Roach Queen’s altered voice comes from both. “I’m really sorry, Soobin.”
Choi Soobin wakes up panting for air.
His cheek is against the project-room floor, and one arm has gone numb beneath him. The fluorescent bulbs stab through his vision. He pushes himself upright too quickly, loses the room and catches the edge of Minjun’s desk before he falls again.
“Fuck.”
His glasses lie beneath the chair. One arm has bent outwards, but the lenses remain intact. Soobin puts them on, and the blur resolves into Minjun’s abandoned coffee, the closed laptop and an empty doorway.
Roach Queen is gone.
His backpack remains where he dropped it. She didn’t take his phone or the suit folded beneath his textbooks. She knocked him unconscious, somehow knew his name and left him with every piece of evidence.
Soobin has no time to decide why.
His phone reads 20:50. He has ten minutes.
He sends the photos he took, Minjun’s name and the port location through Spider-Man’s emergency channel while pulling off his lab coat. His fingers miss the zip of his backpack twice because the electrical stun has left his muscles slow with the taste of metal at the back of his tongue.
He removes his grey jumper while catching his reflection in the dark window as he drags the suit over his shoulders—black fringe stuck across his forehead, glasses crooked and his face washed pale beneath the laboratory lights. He looks much younger without the jumper and much more frightened than Spider-Man is allowed to look.
His glasses go into their case, the mask comes down, and amber lenses replace his eyes.
When he speaks again, the filter removes Choi Soobin from his speech. “Gate Three,” he tells the suit.
The route estimate appears across his display. Thirty-eight minutes.
“That’s quite pessimistic.”
He opens the window and jumps.
Soobin reaches Incheon Port at nine minutes past nine and nearly dislocates his shoulder on the final swing.
Gate Three serves an older loading yard separated from the main terminal past stacks of freight containers and several hundred metres of locked fencing. At this hour, the security booth is dark. No dockworkers cross the tarmac, no lorries wait beneath the cranes, and the only civilian vehicle is an empty hatchback parked outside the gate.
Excellent—fewer people to accidentally kill.
The meeting has already begun beside an open shipping container.
Minjun stands near the armoured van from the bank in his shirtsleeves despite the cold. Five masked men surround him, two of them carrying the modified guns with the black material moving over their barrels beneath the orange port lights.
Roach Queen is in the middle of them with the foam case in her hands.
Soobin lands on the container above and fires before anybody looks up. His web catches the case and tears it from her hold, sending it sailing toward him.
Roach Queen launches after it, brown wings snapping open, and catches the handle before it can reach his hand. “You’re late,” she says.
Soobin pulls harder. “Apparently not late enough to stop you from making illegal purchases.”
“I took it from the bad guys. I’m stopping the deal.”
“You must really enjoy re-using your explanations. You said the same thing at the bank.”
“Because it was true at the bank!”
One of the masked men fires.
The shot catches the web between them, black residue chewing through it before the blast continues into the container, metal folding inwards behind Soobin’s head. He jumps as Roach Queen drops with the case, hits the ground and rolls behind the van.
“Your men appear upset with you,” Soobin calls after her.
“They are not my fucking men!”
He swings down, kicks one gunman into the open container and lands in front of her. Roach Queen shoves the case beneath the van and raises both hands.
“Can we please do the intelligent thing for once?”
A gunman comes charging towards them and makes the conversation irrelevant.
Roach Queen catches the man’s wrist, turns beneath his arm and throws him across her hip, causing his weapon to skid under the van. She looks back at Spider-Man. “See? Bad guy. I’m fighting him.”
Soobin webs her ankles together.
“Oh, come on!”
She fires the jets below her wings and drags him along the tarmac instead of falling. Soobin keeps hold of the line, his heels cutting two pale tracks across the ground until Roach Queen swings around the van and he collides shoulder-first with its rear door.
“Sorry!” she shouts.
“You’re making the word meaningless!” he shouts back.
“Again, you started it!”
Gunfire tears through the space they occupied. Soobin pulls himself onto the roof of the van while Roach Queen uses one wing to shield her helmet. The black-coated bullets strike hard enough to dent the armour.
The gunman adjusts his aim towards Soobin.
Roach Queen could take the case and fly. Instead, she releases one boot from the webbing, launches herself across the tarmac and drives both feet into the shooter’s chest. He hits the ground. She tears the weapon from his hands and folds the barrel against her knee.
Soobin watches her fling the ruined gun away.
Another man grabs the foam case from beneath the van and runs towards the shipping container.
Roach Queen shoots after him without looking back. “Are you going to help or continue admiring me?”
Soobin fires a web past her and catches the runner around the waist. “I wasn’t admiring you.”
“You were looking at me for quite a long time.”
He yanks the man backwards, the case flies free, and Roach Queen catches it against her chest.
This time, she throws it to Soobin, and he catches it.
She had a clear route out—twice. She abandoned it twice to stop the men Soobin keeps calling hers.
Soobin looks at the sealed case in his hands, then at Roach Queen as she ducks beneath a punch and headbutts the attacker hard enough to crack her helmet visor. “Huh. You’re not with them,” he says.
She stops with one fist up. “I have been saying that since the bank.”
The remaining gunmen regroup beside the container.
Soobin webs the case to the underside of the van and moves next to her. “Temporary truce.”
Roach Queen lowers into a fighting stance. “Does this count as our second date?”
Before Soobin can respond, the men open fire.
Soobin catches Roach Queen around the waist and pulls both of them behind the container while the rounds tear craters through the tarmac. She uses the movement to run three steps along its wall, kicks off and lands on the nearest shooter. Soobin webs another weapon upwards before it fires, dragging the man’s arm with it, while Roach Queen sweeps his legs from beneath him.
They are considerably better at fighting when they are attacking the same people.
Roach Queen’s armour takes the force Soobin usually has to avoid. Soobin reaches the angles her heavier body cannot. He webs a man’s knees while she sends him into the side of the van. She throws another over her shoulder while Soobin catches him before his skull meets the road and sticks him to a tyre.
“Show-off,” she says.
Soobin looks at the man stuck sideways to the tyre. “You threw him at the concrete; his head could’ve cracked.”
“I knew you’d catch him.” Roach Queen drives her elbow into the next attacker’s throat. “Well, probably.”
A modified weapon fires behind her.
Soobin shoots a web around Roach Queen’s waist and pulls. The blast misses her back by centimetres. She flies towards him, collides with his chest and takes both of them onto the ground.
“This again,” she says from on top of him.
“Move.”
“I quite like this position, actually.”
The gunman advances. Roach Queen rolls aside while Soobin catches the weapon with both webs. The black substance begins dissolving them immediately.
“Now would be useful,” he says.
Roach Queen comes up behind the man, hooks an arm around his neck and drives one metal knee into the back of his legs. The gun points towards the sky as it discharges. Soobin releases the failing webs, lands beside them and tears the magazine free.
Roach Queen crushes the barrel underneath her boot. The black coating slips from the broken metal in wet strands and begins turning grey across the ground.
The last masked man takes one look at them and runs. Soobin webs him to the open doors of the shipping container.
Roach Queen puts both hands on her hips. “That was attractive.”
“Where’s Minjun?”
Her helmet turns towards the van.
The foam case is gone, and Soobin’s spider-sense erupts.
It has been warning him since he reached the port, confused by the black residue on the weapons, in the container and across the tarmac. Now the sensation becomes unbearable without giving him a direction, and every object around him registers as a threat.
Minjun steps from behind the shipping container.
He has the case beneath one arm and an industrial incendiary launcher braced against his shoulder. Sweat shines across his face. Something black circles the wrist holding the trigger, emerging from beneath his sleeve and spreading onto the weapon.
Soobin moves in front of Roach Queen. “Put it down, Minjun.”
Minjun’s eyes widen. “How do you know my name?”
“You left your laptop open.”
“Seriously?” Roach Queen glances at the men webbed across the van. “All this equipment and you got caught by an unlocked laptop?”
“Shut up.” Minjun’s grip slips and the black material corrects it, tightening over his fingers. “Do you know how much this is worth? One delivery and I never have to worry about money again.”
Minjun looks towards the defeated men, and the launcher trembles against his shoulder.
Soobin advances. “It’s over, Minjun. The deal isn’t happening. Don’t make things worse for yourself.”
“Stay back.”
Soobin fires at the launcher.
The web catches the barrel. Black material races through the fibres and Minjun pulls the trigger.
Soobin’s body warns him about everything—the case, the residue, Minjun, the ruined guns. He sees the launcher ignite before he understands which danger matters.
Roach Queen slams into his side, and he leaves the ground.
The blast passes through where his chest had been and strikes the lighter replacement plate along her torso.
White fire swallows the brown armour.
The launcher ruptures in Minjun’s hands. The recoil throws him into the shipping container and the foam case skids across the tarmac, but Soobin barely sees it. Roach Queen remains upright inside the flames for one impossible second.
Then her wings fold, and she drops.
“No!”
Soobin catches her before her helmet strikes the ground. Momentum takes them down together, his knees hitting first, smoke rising from her armour across his arms.
The replacement plate has split open. Heat has warped the edges inwards, and blood pumps through the blackened gap beneath it. Soobin presses both hands over the wound.
Roach Queen makes a broken noise inside the helmet.
“Stay still.” Spider-Man’s voice filter mangles the panic into something lower and harsher. “Emergency services are coming. Don’t move.”
“So,” she says, the electronic distortion cutting in and out, “this is what it takes to catch Spider-Man’s attention, huh?”
“Roach Queen, you idiot.”
Her damaged visor turns towards him. “My name isn’t Roach Queen.”
One gauntlet rises towards the release underneath her jaw and falls before reaching it.
Soobin keeps his left hand against the wound and reaches for the catch with his right. Blood coats the red glove. When his fingers separate, it stretches between them in thin, sticky red strings before snapping across the side of her helmet.
The lock has twisted in the heat, and he tears it open.
The helmet comes away.
Soobin recognises the split in your lower lip before his mind accepts the rest of your face.
The scrape he cleaned that morning cuts across your cheek. Your hair is damp and flattened around your forehead. Blood has collected at the corner of your mouth, much darker than the thin smear he wiped away in the lecture theatre.
You look up at Spider-Man.
Every answer Soobin failed to find rearranges itself—the circuit boards in your bag, the injuries, your disastrous confession and the fight you started to defend a woman you claimed not to know. There was never another man standing between you. Soobin managed to become jealous of himself and still lose.
“You,” he says.
Your mouth attempts a smile. “Hi.”
The voice is yours—no filter, no electronic rasp. The exact voice that has called him a rascal, a coward and an arsehole within the past twenty-four hours.
“Hey, Spider-Man.” Your eyes struggle to remain focused on his mask. “I’m sorry for making a mess. I just—” You cough and red runs over your chin. “I really like you.”
Soobin cannot answer. His hands push harder against the wound, and more blood escapes between his fingers. “D-don’t talk.”
“If I don’t make it—”
“You’re going to.”
“Can you look after Soobin?” Your hand finds his wrist and holds with almost no strength. “Choi Soobin. He’s my best friend. Bit of an idiot. Huge scaredy-cat.”
Soobin’s vision blurs behind the lenses.
“I knocked him out earlier,” you continue. “So you should probably check he isn’t dead.” A strangled laugh turns into another cough. “I used the lowest setting.”
“I know.”
Your eyes narrow weakly. “How?”
Soobin reaches for the edge of his mask.
“Wait.” Your fingers tighten by a fraction. “If I make it out, will you go on a date with me?”
“Y-yes.” The answer comes through Spider-Man’s voice.
Soobin pulls the mask over his head before fear can stop him again. Cool air hits his wet face, his black fringe falls across his eyes, and your blood smears from his glove over his cheek. Without the amber lenses between you, he can see the moment recognition reaches you.
“Soobin?”
“H-hi.” Soobin’s voice breaks without the filter. “I’m sorry. I should’ve told you—I should’ve told you months ago.”
You stare at him. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
Under any other circumstances, Soobin might laugh, but what comes out is closer to a sob.
Your eyes close for a second before opening again. “I knocked out Spider-Man. That’s embarrassing.”
“You—you can apologise on our date.”
The corner of your bloodied mouth moves. “So that’s definitely a yes?”
“It’s a yes. You can choose where we go, what we eat, everything—j-just stay awake long enough to argue with me about it.”
Your grip slips from his wrist.
“Hey.” Soobin catches your hand. “No, no. Please—please look at me.”
You don’t.
Sirens sound someplace beyond the containers, still distant. Soobin calls your name and presses harder against the wound. He cannot tell whether the small movement beneath his hands belongs to you or to his own shaking.
He has spent his whole life trusting something invisible to keep you tied to him. The only thread he can see now is your blood, tacky between his fingers, breaking whenever his hands move and forming again when he presses down.
Soobin locks both hands over the wound and for once, he doesn’t leave the rest to fate.
(the end)
✮⋆˙ main masterlist
a/n: hii friends! hope you enjoyed reading. massive thanks to @dearly-somber , @fairfootedflekk and @metalcreatorhologram for beta reading for me. the banner was such a pain to make, please only say nice things about it or i'll cry lmao. be sure to let me know your thoughts on red string in the comments or in my inbox! love you guys <3
if you made it this far, thank you for reading my friends, and i’ll see you in the next one!
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