The Awakening
Title: The Awakening
Pairing(s): QMi
Genre(s): Romance, psychological, angst, sci-fi, futuristic AU
Length: 3345 words
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Set in the grim future where technology is at the top of the food chain, Kyuhyun wakes up from his virtual stupor and undergoes a transformation that changes the rest of his life.
Inspiration(s): Ray Bradbury and his cynicism towards modern technology.
```
1.
Kyuhyun sat in front of his laptop, clicking away and destroying all of the Zergs on the screen, grinning with his cracked lips when a new high score came into view. ‘That deserves a treat,’ he decided. He typed in “fried squid tentacles” in the address bar and pressed ENTER. Almost immediately, a jumpy servant robot was by his side.
“You requested fried squid tentacles, sir?” it asked in its monotone mechanical voice, right arm twitching.
“Yes, I did,” Kyuhyun affirmed equally monotonously, eyes never leaving the screen. “Deep fried and covered with soy sauce.”
“Request is on its way, sir.”
A light on the robot’s stomach flashed green, and it hurried off into the kitchens, where more robots awaited instructions. Muffled hisses and sizzles of virtual frying pans were heard, and a couple minutes later, a medium sized plate of deep fried squid tentacles with a soy sauce topping was placed in front of Kyuhyun along with a perfectly folded napkin and a pair of chopsticks.
“Request completed.”
Without looking away from his computer, he picked up the metal chopsticks and stabbed at a tentacle, chewing it slowly before swallowing. His eyes drifted to the lower left corner of the pixel screen, where it read 5:38 a.m. Last time he had checked, it was 1:43 a.m. How long he had been sitting there, he knew not. Several hours? Several years? Anything was possible. He had not moved from his chair in, well, a long time. So long, in fact, that he had begun to lose feeling in the lower part of his body. His eyes had been fixed onto the laptop like superglue, and he realized that he had not looked away for quite a while either; come to think of it, he had entirely forgotten what his surroundings looked like.
Then with much difficulty, he tore his eyes away from the monitor. His eyes darted around, blinking frequently to adjust to the sudden change in lighting. Grey. A bed with clean grey sheets. A closet filled with greyish clothing diligently dry-cleaned every week by automatically activated cleaning robots. A grey desk where his laptop sat. He looked out the window. Grey. Grey buildings. Grey skyscrapers. Grey power lines. Grey, grey, grey.
He carefully pulled himself off of his grey cushioned chair that was indented so severely that the cushion refused to inflate, grimacing slightly when every single joint in his legs gave out a tired crack. Energy seemed to flow out of him the longer he remained upright, and after a few seconds on his feet, he plopped back down, drained.
At the time, Kyuhyun was completely oblivious to the fact that he was one of the remaining humans within a few miles who had broken free from the dangerously discreet shackles of manmade reality.
2.
It took exactly two days for Kyuhyun to regret it. Once he realized that there was more to life than StarCraft, he became more curious about, well, everything. Before, he had been content just clicking away on the virtual screen, but that was no longer. He knew the basics, of course. He knew that he was human, a biped, a heterotroph. He knew that there were other humans out there because he saw them meters away from his own window, grey silhouettes static in front of their monitors, ignorant to the outside world just as Kyuhyun had been. He knew that he was living on the first floor of something called an apartment that was regularly cleaned and arranged by his personal robots and other miscellaneous machinery. He knew that he was located somewhere in Seoul, a city in Korea, and that he was Korean and understood the Korean language. He knew that the sun rose and fell in more or less a twenty-four hour cycle. Oh, he knew some things, but it was just not enough.
Questions that he never thought of before suddenly flooded his mind like a monstrous tsunami after a Richter scale 9 earthquake, and it annoyed him to no end that he was unable to answer any of them. What was his purpose in life? Where in the world did he come from? Is there more to it than, well, this?
He spent the first week just sitting there, head bowed, eyebrows creased, vainly trying to find plausible solutions to the problems he singlehandedly conjured up for himself. The second week, he had enough with being a damned philosopher who sat around obsessing over ‘why’ questions and instead decided to give standing up another try. At the end of the third week, he was able to walk around albeit a bit slowly, still tripping although less often-like a wobbly calf. On the fourth week, the questions invaded his mind again, this time ten times in magnitude. By the fifth, he started wondering if he was becoming insane.
Kyuhyun had taken to a habit of pacing back and forth whenever the intellectual buzzing in his head ceased to die down to a tolerable level. So there he was, in front of his window, walking this way, spinning professionally on his heel, and then heading the other direction.
And then from the corner of his eyes he caught a man dressed in a yellow track suit.
Kyuhyun almost jumped in his surprise. A man. Outside. As in, not cooped up in an apartment.
Of all of the scenarios that he invoked in his brain, the thought of actually leaving the sanctuary of one’s own property to experience them never occurred to him. And my goodness, what a grandiose thought that was! His head turned towards his window once more, and he started when he saw that the man in the yellow track suit was staring straight at him. And smiling.
Without warning, Kyuhyun’s heart leapt to his throat and he smiled back, even giving a little wave of his pale frail hand. He did not even hesitate to climb out the window when the stranger beckoned him to go outside.
“H-Hello,” Kyuhyun stuttered lamely as he had very little social experience before. “My name is Kyuhyun.”
The man broke into a large grin. “Nice to meet you, Kui Xian.”
And so began the first day of young Kyuhyun’s transformation.
3.
Before long, Kyuhyun was led to a medium sized neon green tent pitched at the end of the street. He saw it a mile before he got there, and it brought a crooked grin onto his face. He was also offered a sandwich which was basically a slice of ham placed between two pieces of bread. Despite its rawness, Kyuhyun was surprised to find that it was better than any of the foods that his robots ever made. Authenticity, was it not?
Mr. Yellow Track Suit turned out to be quite a pleasant young fellow with very long features: long legs, long arms, long torso, and even a long nose. He had a talkative personality and smiled so much that Kyuhyun could only wonder in awe if he actually developed muscles from all that tension he putting on the ends of his mouth. However, it was his intelligence that Kyuhyun admired most about the man. He knew so much about the world around him-so much that it frightened the younger man.
For one, he knew how to read. Not the kind of mindless reading that Kyuhyun was familiar with, but actually reading, analyzing, and interpreting. He could read poetry and look beneath the literal context, fleshing meaning from every word in every line in every stanza. “A rose can mean many different things in different types of literature, Kui Xian,” he once said in his accented Korean. “It can mean love, blood, vulnerability, vanity, anything really! Literature is like that-you can put your own connotations into every word if you tried hard enough.” And Kyuhyun could only listen in awe, yearning to know more about this art of literary inference.
Another thing was his physical abilities: there was a reason why he wore that sunshine yellow track suit day after day. When he ran, he ran like a cheetah in full power. It took Kyuhyun’s breath away the first time he witnessed the spectacle-he had never seen another person walk let alone run before, and the speed was absolutely incredible. The man was literally a blur as he sprinted down the empty streets and back again. “It’s to keep me in shape,” he claimed proudly, subconsciously showing off his toned figure.
Furthermore, the man was good at (what was the word?) “inventing” things, and could literally make everything out of nothing. Give him a piece of wood and somehow a creation would form in the palm of his hands. When asked how he did it, he would only shrug and point to his temple: “Imagination is the key, young grasshopper.” Kyuhyun actually had the pleasure of watching as his idol rummaged through a stray dumpster for an empty tin can, found a sharp piece of broken glass to cut it with, and eventually mold that crummy shapeless can into a rough exterior of a humble tin sailboat.
On the third day of their first encounter, Kyuhyun could not take it any longer. “Teach me,” he pleaded, his eyes sparkling with curiosity and desperation. “Teach me everything you know!”
The man smiled fondly and ruffled Kyuhyun’s messy black locks. Without a word, he found two pebbles and placed one of them in the boy’s hand. On the ground, he scraped in the characters周覓 and told his companion to do the same. Kyuhyun all but leapt at the idea and did as he was told with avid concentration, and eventually, on the ground was a shaky but still proudly written duplicate. Wiping the sweat off of his forehead, Kyuhyun could not help but swell up with pride when he took in the sight of his masterpiece.
“What exactly is it?” he inquired.
The older man smirked. “It’s my name. Zhou Mi. I figured that you needed to know how to address your teacher from now on.”
To put it simply, it was absolutely breathtaking. For the first time in Kyuhyun’s short life of sixteen years, he felt real, tangible and fathomable. He felt powerful, and much more in control of his life than when he was stuck in front of his computer with only his fingers moving.
And when he was beside his tall lanky hero named Zhou Mi, he felt whole.
4.
Kyuhyun started staying over at Zhou Mi’s tent whenever he just could not stand the greyness of his room (or anything else for that matter). This had several advantages: one, he could continue expanding his mind; two, he could watch Zhou Mi as he talked about beautiful and unfathomable things; and three, he could spend time with Zhou Mi himself.
“Mimi, why do you call me Kui Xian,” Kyuhyun asked idly one day with a poetry book in his thin hands, “when my name is really Kyuhyun?”
“It’s the Chinese version of your name.”
“Oh. Is it easier for you to pronounce or something?”
“It’s not exactly easier,” he explained. “It’s just more accommodating to my tongue. You see, I am not from around here.”
“Then where are you from?”
“Not too far,” he shrugged. “I came from China and had to be relocated to Japan, but the jet that I was on malfunctioned.”
“Why did you need to be relocated?” Needless to say, Kyuhyun had developed an affinity for asking questions.
“There were too many people in China. The population had to be distributed somehow.”
“Were there others like you on the jet, then?”
Zhou Mi nodded. “Hundreds, but only I survived.”
“Did they die during the accident?”
Kyuhyun’s teacher shook his head. “No. They died after.”
“Oh. Where do they go once they died?”
Zhou Mi shrugged. “Nobody knows. It’s a mystery to mankind.”
The Korean pupil pouted. He hated mysteries.
```
“Zhou Mi,” Kyuhyun asked lightly one day, fingers fiddling with the pages of a book about planes. “How come you were the only one that survived the plane crash? It says that the survival rate in an accident like that is highly unlikely.”
“It was not exactly a crash,” he answered. “The jet malfunctioned, but it was not physically lethal. The only problems were that it landed in the wrong place, and that the hydroelectricity was suddenly shut down. Most people died because they were not able to cope after having woken up.”
Kyuhyun started. “Woken up? What’s that?”
“It’s when somebody realizes what is happening around them.”
“Then,” Kyuhyun widened his eyes. “Does that mean that I woke up?”
Zhou Mi nodded. “You’re quick!”
“And those people in the apartments,” Kyuhyun pointed at the silhouettes at a nearby window, “are still asleep?”
Zhou Mi nodded again.
A flash of panic jolted through him, and the poetry book in his hand dropped to the ground. His eyes swerved this way and that, widening exponentially when all he saw was silhouettes, only static silhouettes in the confines of their apartments, all glued to their computer screens! “We have to wake them up, Zhou Mi! We have to!” He grabbed a stray pebble and threw it at a window with all his might, missing the transparent surface by an inch.
A pair of lean arms wrapped around his waist. “Stop it, Kui Xian!”
Kyuhyun paid no heed to his teacher’s words and struggled to grasp at another rock. “They have to wake up! They are all still asleep!”
“Kui Xian, listen to me! They will die if you wake them up!”
“I woke up and I did not die! You woke up and you did not die! How is this any different?!”
“They won’t be able to handle the truth!” Zhou Mi all but screeched. “You know how I told you that the jet malfunctioned because the hydroelectricity shut down? Well, everyone on the jet sat in their own booths with their own computer screens. Once the hydroelectricity was no more, the screens were no more either, and they realized that their existence involved more than just their computers. The ones who died were just too shocked about the discovery that their mental state of affairs just could not take it anymore.”
Kyuhyun stopped struggling, falling into Zhou Mi’s embrace like a puppet with loose strings. Hot tears poured out of his eyes as the weight of bitter reality crashed onto him. They were all alone in this world filled with mindless computer-controlled androids.
Zhou Mi held the boy’s skinny figure close to his chest, arms protectively wrapped around his torso. “After my computer was turned off, I was on the verge of going insane as well,” Zhou Mi whispered into Kyuhyun’s ear as the younger one sobbed into his neck. “I started thinking too much. What did life mean? What was my purpose in this world? It was horrifying how many questions encircled my head, and I almost broke. I learned things to keep sane and to keep myself busy, but I just could not take it anymore. I had a piece of glass in my hand, ready to slice through my wrist and end the torture of loneliness. But then I saw somebody from the window with no computer in front of him. I realized that I was not alone.” He intertwined his hands with Kyuhyun’s. “Because I have you.”
That day, Kyuhyun ran back into his apartment, picked up his laptop, and smashed it to pieces on the ground, taking much pleasure in seeing the object of his imprisonment perish. He spun on his heel and sprinted back out like his life depended on leaving that wretched place, back to the neon green tent that he grew to love, back to his dearest Zhou Mi who was waiting for him when he arrived.
5.
That night, they lay together in a tangle of limbs beside a warm fire that Kyuhyun conjured up with two stones and several pieces of wood, staring up at the black sky that was too heavily polluted for any stars to shine.
“I can’t believe that I was asleep for so long,” Kyuhyun whispered into his beloved’s chest. “Sixteen years. Wow.”
“Hey, don’t make me feel old, I’m eighteen,” Zhou Mi joked. “That’s two more years on my part.”
“Still,” he protested. “It’s a long time.”
The older man scoffed. “Not compared to others, Kui Xian. Some people pass through their whole life while being asleep.”
“Well, that’s depressing.”
Zhou Mi agreed silently.
“I don’t even remember what I did during those sixteen years,” Kyuhyun continued. “I don’t remember if I had parents or siblings or cousins. I don’t remember how I learned Korean. I don’t even remember how I actually survived all these years. I just remember playing computer games all day. Sadly enough, StarCraft was my life.”
Zhou Mi shrugged. “Hey, better than me. All I did was stare at the screen and type in food when I got hungry. At least you had something to live for. Not a lot of people can say that.”
“But now it’s not enough. StarCraft is just not enough for my life anymore.”
“Then what do you want?” Zhou Mi asked with no hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Kyuhyun closed his eyes and sighed. “That’s the thing. I want so many things that I don’t know really know anymore. I want to learn about everything life has to offer. I want to know what it is like to live with no boundaries. I want freedom in every way possible. I want to be the captain of the ship sailing through the waters of my life.”
“You used a metaphor,” Zhou Mi complimented, a grin painting his lips.
Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. “What about you?”
Silence prevailed for several minutes before Zhou Mi shifted from underneath Kyuhyun to claim his lips with his own. It was a desperate kiss, one filled with nervousness and uncertainty, but it was nevertheless still a kiss. “I want a lot of things, too. But there is one thing that I want most and that is you, Kui Xian.”
The sixteen-year-old looked into those dark lustful eyes and realized that his biggest questions were answered.
What was his purpose in life? To love Zhou Mi
Why did he come into the world? For Zhou Mi
What was the meaning of his life? It did not matter what the meaning was, just as long as Zhou Mi was by his side.
Zhou Mi was his life, and that kiss was only a prelude to so much more.
They both woke up the next morning to the sound of their lover’s breathing, covered with nothing but their immaculate skin. Kyuhyun was sore for the rest of the week, but for the first time in his life he was truly happy.
6.
The lovers had no way of knowing about the massive hydrogen bomb that was planted in the United States several years prior. It was a simple error of the American government in the testing facilities and as a result the weapon exploded early, but nobody lived to know that. The world closed its eyes as every living creature took in its last breath before disappearing into the realm of the afterlife. The buildings remained upright and the robots continued running, but there was nobody to serve. Ultimately, the only source of movement came from the cockroaches.
Kyuhyun had been twenty when it happened; Zhou Mi had been twenty-two. They never did manage to learn everything-far from it, in fact!-but that was alright. They had lived their lives to the fullest, they had loved with every inch of their being, and they had found their personal freedom. Even as they disintegrated from sight, they were together, interconnected in both heart and soul.
Thus, it was no surprise that the grotesque shadow of two lovers embracing each other lay forever imprinted on a certain piece of neon green cloth in the middle of Seoul.
Pairing(s): QMi
Genre(s): Romance, psychological, angst, sci-fi, futuristic AU
Length: 3345 words
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Set in the grim future where technology is at the top of the food chain, Kyuhyun wakes up from his virtual stupor and undergoes a transformation that changes the rest of his life.
Inspiration(s): Ray Bradbury and his cynicism towards modern technology.
```
1.
Kyuhyun sat in front of his laptop, clicking away and destroying all of the Zergs on the screen, grinning with his cracked lips when a new high score came into view. ‘That deserves a treat,’ he decided. He typed in “fried squid tentacles” in the address bar and pressed ENTER. Almost immediately, a jumpy servant robot was by his side.
“You requested fried squid tentacles, sir?” it asked in its monotone mechanical voice, right arm twitching.
“Yes, I did,” Kyuhyun affirmed equally monotonously, eyes never leaving the screen. “Deep fried and covered with soy sauce.”
“Request is on its way, sir.”
A light on the robot’s stomach flashed green, and it hurried off into the kitchens, where more robots awaited instructions. Muffled hisses and sizzles of virtual frying pans were heard, and a couple minutes later, a medium sized plate of deep fried squid tentacles with a soy sauce topping was placed in front of Kyuhyun along with a perfectly folded napkin and a pair of chopsticks.
“Request completed.”
Without looking away from his computer, he picked up the metal chopsticks and stabbed at a tentacle, chewing it slowly before swallowing. His eyes drifted to the lower left corner of the pixel screen, where it read 5:38 a.m. Last time he had checked, it was 1:43 a.m. How long he had been sitting there, he knew not. Several hours? Several years? Anything was possible. He had not moved from his chair in, well, a long time. So long, in fact, that he had begun to lose feeling in the lower part of his body. His eyes had been fixed onto the laptop like superglue, and he realized that he had not looked away for quite a while either; come to think of it, he had entirely forgotten what his surroundings looked like.
Then with much difficulty, he tore his eyes away from the monitor. His eyes darted around, blinking frequently to adjust to the sudden change in lighting. Grey. A bed with clean grey sheets. A closet filled with greyish clothing diligently dry-cleaned every week by automatically activated cleaning robots. A grey desk where his laptop sat. He looked out the window. Grey. Grey buildings. Grey skyscrapers. Grey power lines. Grey, grey, grey.
He carefully pulled himself off of his grey cushioned chair that was indented so severely that the cushion refused to inflate, grimacing slightly when every single joint in his legs gave out a tired crack. Energy seemed to flow out of him the longer he remained upright, and after a few seconds on his feet, he plopped back down, drained.
At the time, Kyuhyun was completely oblivious to the fact that he was one of the remaining humans within a few miles who had broken free from the dangerously discreet shackles of manmade reality.
2.
It took exactly two days for Kyuhyun to regret it. Once he realized that there was more to life than StarCraft, he became more curious about, well, everything. Before, he had been content just clicking away on the virtual screen, but that was no longer. He knew the basics, of course. He knew that he was human, a biped, a heterotroph. He knew that there were other humans out there because he saw them meters away from his own window, grey silhouettes static in front of their monitors, ignorant to the outside world just as Kyuhyun had been. He knew that he was living on the first floor of something called an apartment that was regularly cleaned and arranged by his personal robots and other miscellaneous machinery. He knew that he was located somewhere in Seoul, a city in Korea, and that he was Korean and understood the Korean language. He knew that the sun rose and fell in more or less a twenty-four hour cycle. Oh, he knew some things, but it was just not enough.
Questions that he never thought of before suddenly flooded his mind like a monstrous tsunami after a Richter scale 9 earthquake, and it annoyed him to no end that he was unable to answer any of them. What was his purpose in life? Where in the world did he come from? Is there more to it than, well, this?
He spent the first week just sitting there, head bowed, eyebrows creased, vainly trying to find plausible solutions to the problems he singlehandedly conjured up for himself. The second week, he had enough with being a damned philosopher who sat around obsessing over ‘why’ questions and instead decided to give standing up another try. At the end of the third week, he was able to walk around albeit a bit slowly, still tripping although less often-like a wobbly calf. On the fourth week, the questions invaded his mind again, this time ten times in magnitude. By the fifth, he started wondering if he was becoming insane.
Kyuhyun had taken to a habit of pacing back and forth whenever the intellectual buzzing in his head ceased to die down to a tolerable level. So there he was, in front of his window, walking this way, spinning professionally on his heel, and then heading the other direction.
And then from the corner of his eyes he caught a man dressed in a yellow track suit.
Kyuhyun almost jumped in his surprise. A man. Outside. As in, not cooped up in an apartment.
Of all of the scenarios that he invoked in his brain, the thought of actually leaving the sanctuary of one’s own property to experience them never occurred to him. And my goodness, what a grandiose thought that was! His head turned towards his window once more, and he started when he saw that the man in the yellow track suit was staring straight at him. And smiling.
Without warning, Kyuhyun’s heart leapt to his throat and he smiled back, even giving a little wave of his pale frail hand. He did not even hesitate to climb out the window when the stranger beckoned him to go outside.
“H-Hello,” Kyuhyun stuttered lamely as he had very little social experience before. “My name is Kyuhyun.”
The man broke into a large grin. “Nice to meet you, Kui Xian.”
And so began the first day of young Kyuhyun’s transformation.
3.
Before long, Kyuhyun was led to a medium sized neon green tent pitched at the end of the street. He saw it a mile before he got there, and it brought a crooked grin onto his face. He was also offered a sandwich which was basically a slice of ham placed between two pieces of bread. Despite its rawness, Kyuhyun was surprised to find that it was better than any of the foods that his robots ever made. Authenticity, was it not?
Mr. Yellow Track Suit turned out to be quite a pleasant young fellow with very long features: long legs, long arms, long torso, and even a long nose. He had a talkative personality and smiled so much that Kyuhyun could only wonder in awe if he actually developed muscles from all that tension he putting on the ends of his mouth. However, it was his intelligence that Kyuhyun admired most about the man. He knew so much about the world around him-so much that it frightened the younger man.
For one, he knew how to read. Not the kind of mindless reading that Kyuhyun was familiar with, but actually reading, analyzing, and interpreting. He could read poetry and look beneath the literal context, fleshing meaning from every word in every line in every stanza. “A rose can mean many different things in different types of literature, Kui Xian,” he once said in his accented Korean. “It can mean love, blood, vulnerability, vanity, anything really! Literature is like that-you can put your own connotations into every word if you tried hard enough.” And Kyuhyun could only listen in awe, yearning to know more about this art of literary inference.
Another thing was his physical abilities: there was a reason why he wore that sunshine yellow track suit day after day. When he ran, he ran like a cheetah in full power. It took Kyuhyun’s breath away the first time he witnessed the spectacle-he had never seen another person walk let alone run before, and the speed was absolutely incredible. The man was literally a blur as he sprinted down the empty streets and back again. “It’s to keep me in shape,” he claimed proudly, subconsciously showing off his toned figure.
Furthermore, the man was good at (what was the word?) “inventing” things, and could literally make everything out of nothing. Give him a piece of wood and somehow a creation would form in the palm of his hands. When asked how he did it, he would only shrug and point to his temple: “Imagination is the key, young grasshopper.” Kyuhyun actually had the pleasure of watching as his idol rummaged through a stray dumpster for an empty tin can, found a sharp piece of broken glass to cut it with, and eventually mold that crummy shapeless can into a rough exterior of a humble tin sailboat.
On the third day of their first encounter, Kyuhyun could not take it any longer. “Teach me,” he pleaded, his eyes sparkling with curiosity and desperation. “Teach me everything you know!”
The man smiled fondly and ruffled Kyuhyun’s messy black locks. Without a word, he found two pebbles and placed one of them in the boy’s hand. On the ground, he scraped in the characters周覓 and told his companion to do the same. Kyuhyun all but leapt at the idea and did as he was told with avid concentration, and eventually, on the ground was a shaky but still proudly written duplicate. Wiping the sweat off of his forehead, Kyuhyun could not help but swell up with pride when he took in the sight of his masterpiece.
“What exactly is it?” he inquired.
The older man smirked. “It’s my name. Zhou Mi. I figured that you needed to know how to address your teacher from now on.”
To put it simply, it was absolutely breathtaking. For the first time in Kyuhyun’s short life of sixteen years, he felt real, tangible and fathomable. He felt powerful, and much more in control of his life than when he was stuck in front of his computer with only his fingers moving.
And when he was beside his tall lanky hero named Zhou Mi, he felt whole.
4.
Kyuhyun started staying over at Zhou Mi’s tent whenever he just could not stand the greyness of his room (or anything else for that matter). This had several advantages: one, he could continue expanding his mind; two, he could watch Zhou Mi as he talked about beautiful and unfathomable things; and three, he could spend time with Zhou Mi himself.
“Mimi, why do you call me Kui Xian,” Kyuhyun asked idly one day with a poetry book in his thin hands, “when my name is really Kyuhyun?”
“It’s the Chinese version of your name.”
“Oh. Is it easier for you to pronounce or something?”
“It’s not exactly easier,” he explained. “It’s just more accommodating to my tongue. You see, I am not from around here.”
“Then where are you from?”
“Not too far,” he shrugged. “I came from China and had to be relocated to Japan, but the jet that I was on malfunctioned.”
“Why did you need to be relocated?” Needless to say, Kyuhyun had developed an affinity for asking questions.
“There were too many people in China. The population had to be distributed somehow.”
“Were there others like you on the jet, then?”
Zhou Mi nodded. “Hundreds, but only I survived.”
“Did they die during the accident?”
Kyuhyun’s teacher shook his head. “No. They died after.”
“Oh. Where do they go once they died?”
Zhou Mi shrugged. “Nobody knows. It’s a mystery to mankind.”
The Korean pupil pouted. He hated mysteries.
```
“Zhou Mi,” Kyuhyun asked lightly one day, fingers fiddling with the pages of a book about planes. “How come you were the only one that survived the plane crash? It says that the survival rate in an accident like that is highly unlikely.”
“It was not exactly a crash,” he answered. “The jet malfunctioned, but it was not physically lethal. The only problems were that it landed in the wrong place, and that the hydroelectricity was suddenly shut down. Most people died because they were not able to cope after having woken up.”
Kyuhyun started. “Woken up? What’s that?”
“It’s when somebody realizes what is happening around them.”
“Then,” Kyuhyun widened his eyes. “Does that mean that I woke up?”
Zhou Mi nodded. “You’re quick!”
“And those people in the apartments,” Kyuhyun pointed at the silhouettes at a nearby window, “are still asleep?”
Zhou Mi nodded again.
A flash of panic jolted through him, and the poetry book in his hand dropped to the ground. His eyes swerved this way and that, widening exponentially when all he saw was silhouettes, only static silhouettes in the confines of their apartments, all glued to their computer screens! “We have to wake them up, Zhou Mi! We have to!” He grabbed a stray pebble and threw it at a window with all his might, missing the transparent surface by an inch.
A pair of lean arms wrapped around his waist. “Stop it, Kui Xian!”
Kyuhyun paid no heed to his teacher’s words and struggled to grasp at another rock. “They have to wake up! They are all still asleep!”
“Kui Xian, listen to me! They will die if you wake them up!”
“I woke up and I did not die! You woke up and you did not die! How is this any different?!”
“They won’t be able to handle the truth!” Zhou Mi all but screeched. “You know how I told you that the jet malfunctioned because the hydroelectricity shut down? Well, everyone on the jet sat in their own booths with their own computer screens. Once the hydroelectricity was no more, the screens were no more either, and they realized that their existence involved more than just their computers. The ones who died were just too shocked about the discovery that their mental state of affairs just could not take it anymore.”
Kyuhyun stopped struggling, falling into Zhou Mi’s embrace like a puppet with loose strings. Hot tears poured out of his eyes as the weight of bitter reality crashed onto him. They were all alone in this world filled with mindless computer-controlled androids.
Zhou Mi held the boy’s skinny figure close to his chest, arms protectively wrapped around his torso. “After my computer was turned off, I was on the verge of going insane as well,” Zhou Mi whispered into Kyuhyun’s ear as the younger one sobbed into his neck. “I started thinking too much. What did life mean? What was my purpose in this world? It was horrifying how many questions encircled my head, and I almost broke. I learned things to keep sane and to keep myself busy, but I just could not take it anymore. I had a piece of glass in my hand, ready to slice through my wrist and end the torture of loneliness. But then I saw somebody from the window with no computer in front of him. I realized that I was not alone.” He intertwined his hands with Kyuhyun’s. “Because I have you.”
That day, Kyuhyun ran back into his apartment, picked up his laptop, and smashed it to pieces on the ground, taking much pleasure in seeing the object of his imprisonment perish. He spun on his heel and sprinted back out like his life depended on leaving that wretched place, back to the neon green tent that he grew to love, back to his dearest Zhou Mi who was waiting for him when he arrived.
5.
That night, they lay together in a tangle of limbs beside a warm fire that Kyuhyun conjured up with two stones and several pieces of wood, staring up at the black sky that was too heavily polluted for any stars to shine.
“I can’t believe that I was asleep for so long,” Kyuhyun whispered into his beloved’s chest. “Sixteen years. Wow.”
“Hey, don’t make me feel old, I’m eighteen,” Zhou Mi joked. “That’s two more years on my part.”
“Still,” he protested. “It’s a long time.”
The older man scoffed. “Not compared to others, Kui Xian. Some people pass through their whole life while being asleep.”
“Well, that’s depressing.”
Zhou Mi agreed silently.
“I don’t even remember what I did during those sixteen years,” Kyuhyun continued. “I don’t remember if I had parents or siblings or cousins. I don’t remember how I learned Korean. I don’t even remember how I actually survived all these years. I just remember playing computer games all day. Sadly enough, StarCraft was my life.”
Zhou Mi shrugged. “Hey, better than me. All I did was stare at the screen and type in food when I got hungry. At least you had something to live for. Not a lot of people can say that.”
“But now it’s not enough. StarCraft is just not enough for my life anymore.”
“Then what do you want?” Zhou Mi asked with no hint of sarcasm in his voice.
Kyuhyun closed his eyes and sighed. “That’s the thing. I want so many things that I don’t know really know anymore. I want to learn about everything life has to offer. I want to know what it is like to live with no boundaries. I want freedom in every way possible. I want to be the captain of the ship sailing through the waters of my life.”
“You used a metaphor,” Zhou Mi complimented, a grin painting his lips.
Kyuhyun rolled his eyes. “What about you?”
Silence prevailed for several minutes before Zhou Mi shifted from underneath Kyuhyun to claim his lips with his own. It was a desperate kiss, one filled with nervousness and uncertainty, but it was nevertheless still a kiss. “I want a lot of things, too. But there is one thing that I want most and that is you, Kui Xian.”
The sixteen-year-old looked into those dark lustful eyes and realized that his biggest questions were answered.
What was his purpose in life? To love Zhou Mi
Why did he come into the world? For Zhou Mi
What was the meaning of his life? It did not matter what the meaning was, just as long as Zhou Mi was by his side.
Zhou Mi was his life, and that kiss was only a prelude to so much more.
They both woke up the next morning to the sound of their lover’s breathing, covered with nothing but their immaculate skin. Kyuhyun was sore for the rest of the week, but for the first time in his life he was truly happy.
6.
The lovers had no way of knowing about the massive hydrogen bomb that was planted in the United States several years prior. It was a simple error of the American government in the testing facilities and as a result the weapon exploded early, but nobody lived to know that. The world closed its eyes as every living creature took in its last breath before disappearing into the realm of the afterlife. The buildings remained upright and the robots continued running, but there was nobody to serve. Ultimately, the only source of movement came from the cockroaches.
Kyuhyun had been twenty when it happened; Zhou Mi had been twenty-two. They never did manage to learn everything-far from it, in fact!-but that was alright. They had lived their lives to the fullest, they had loved with every inch of their being, and they had found their personal freedom. Even as they disintegrated from sight, they were together, interconnected in both heart and soul.
Thus, it was no surprise that the grotesque shadow of two lovers embracing each other lay forever imprinted on a certain piece of neon green cloth in the middle of Seoul.