17; infinite; that ever i was born to set it right; part 2
part 1
that ever i was born to set it right
part 2
Students aren’t allowed into the greenhouse anymore.
Howon needs to get in again, though. A closer second look is always worth it.
He sits by the greenhouse’s darkened glass doors once classes have ended and waits for a staff member, or an investigator, for anyone to come out. To pass the time, he plays with a thermos he had brought along, tossing the water inside into the air and keeping the droplets suspended. After a few tries he manages to fully preserve the shape of the spray, but when he draws stars into the curtains of water, they just look misshapen and lonely.
Howon looks at his cellphone. It’s one in the morning. Just one day after the discovery of Sunggyu’s body, and it seems like no one’s investigating anymore.
There’s an enchantment on that door, he’s sure, and very likely an alarm to the school staff too. Getting in alone is impossible.
So he asks Woohyun about it over lunch the next day.
The cafeteria’s noise is subdued, today, more a low hum that the crowded buzz it was just the day before. Woohyun is the student council’s vice president now that Sunggyu is gone, but even then, Woohyun immediately refuses Howon’s request. “I don’t think I’m at the liberty to give you permission for that,” he answers, lips set in a thin line.
It’s true, Howon concedes. He lets the topic go.
But Woohyun’s and Sungyeol’s eyes look different-where Sungyeol is quiet and almost dazed, Woohyun is hushed and guarded.
Howon finds himself in Jungyeop’s office again the next day, this time entirely of his own volition.
He doesn’t even remember how their conversation got here, Howon nearly standing, gripping the armchair until his fingers are pressing into the cloth, and Jungyeop with a burning undercurrent in his voice, something like reassurance and justification and the thought that what he’s doing is right. But it’s not right, because-
“-then why did it look like you had already called the investigation off?”
“Why do you say that, Howon?”
The way he says Howon’s name, like he’s patiently trying to talk to a dog, sets on Howon’s nerves. “I didn’t see anyone investigating the greenhouse yesterday or today.”
“You went in?”
“I sat by the door the entire fucking afternoon twice. Please stop avoiding the question.”
Jungyeop exhales.
“Why isn’t the investigation being taken seriously,” Howon grits out, “sir?”
“It is,” Jungyeop answers, fiddling with a small, empty box on a corner of his desk; it’s the one that held his and Sunggyu’s earrings, Howon remembers. “The investigation’s already over. You have one last question, Howon. I have things to attend to.”
“Then what did you find out?”
“I can’t tel-”
“What did you find out?”
Jungyeop sighs again. “Think about this, Howon. Sunggyu is an extremely powerful mage. That he was killed in such a manner, with no traces of struggle in his surroundings or on his body, means that the killer used stealth, was much more powerful than he was, or could at least stand up to his magic.” His jaw tightens before he continues speaking. “And the only person we know to be able to put up a fight with him is-”
Howon frowns. “Are you suggesting that I-”
“When we tried to find out what medium his perpetrator used as well,” Jungyeop continues, voice firmer, “we couldn’t find a single trace. We can only conclude that he didn’t need a medium at all, and the only people with that ability-”
“No,” Howon begins, shaking his head, suddenly feeling lightheaded. He leans back against the armchair and forgets to breathe. “You can ask my classmates, or all the professors-”
“He’s been missing for more than two weeks, Howon, and we can’t determine the time of death. Tampered with by magic, most likely. Classes aren’t enough of an alibi. If it wasn’t you, then there’s someone powerful on the loose. Either way,” Jungyeop squarely meets his eyes, fingers laced on his desk, “we are all in danger.”
Howon finally inhales, swallowing a heavy mess of frustrated words and thoughts in his throat.
Then, impossibly, Jungyeop’s gaze softens, and Howon feels like a small child again, in front of a parent he can’t understand. “I’m sorry, Howon. I only want to keep my students safe, and you’re still one of them-but I can only protect them, and then protect you. Not together.”
There’s nothing Howon can say. Jungyeop points his wand at the door, and it swings open. “I think I’ve answered your last question enough. Goodbye, Howon.”
As Howon stands, mindlessly guiding himself out, Jungyeop speaks again. “I trust you to know not to tell anyone, Howon. I’m sorry.”
Sungyeol’s been given a room of his own in the dorms. He’s happy that the dorm managers have finally approved his request, but Howon has a feeling it’s an effort to keep Sungyeol as safe as possible. From him.
Howon lies awake on his bed. If he thinks hard enough, tries to reach for Sunggyu’s thoughts enough, his voice and that accompanying moment of warmth come back into Howon’s mind. He wonders if he’s going crazy, because sometimes he manages to convince himself that those words weren’t Sunggyu’s words at all, only his own mind speaking to him-but then a silhouette of Sunggyu suddenly shows up, on his seat in the lecture hall or perched on a branch, and Howon’s chest turns heavy again.
And there, Howon sees him, seated on the chair by his desk. Howon shuts his eyes and tells himself to sleep.
“Didn’t think you’d miss me that much,” comes Sunggyu’s voice.
Howon opens his eyes, and the tiny ones that look back at him are too familiar. Twice, he blinks slowly, and when the image persists he bolts up in his bed. Blades made of lightning unfold by his shoulders. “Who-”
“It’s really me!” Sunggyu responds, chair clattering to the floor as he jumps back. He summons his own spears of light soon enough, but raises his hands up in a gesture of peace. “Look, I came here through your window-you should really close that during the night-and I was actually hiding out all this time.”
Howon narrows his eyes.
Sunggyu keeps talking. “That guy in the greenhouse isn’t me, even if it looks like it, I swear. Watch this.” He begins searching around Howon’s room. When his eyes catch a glass of water, he throws it up into the air, and then he draws a phrase into the spray. ‘Howon jjang’.
It’s terribly juvenile, and when Sunggyu looks proud of his own work, Howon’s thoughts stir. But Howon’s done something nearly like it himself, before. “Not enough.”
Sunggyu doesn’t even hesitate. He tilts his head, exposing a glint on his ear. Then he smiles as he speaks into Howon’s mind. So how’s Inguk as a sparring partner?
Relief starts pouring into Howon’s heart unbidden. Sparks erupt from the lightning bolts by his side, stinging his cheeks like reminders. Not yet. “So let’s say you’re really Sunggyu.” He swallows. “Why would someone copy you? And why would someone want to kill you?”
“I don’t know about the second one,” Sunggyu admits. “But about the first, there’s a chance…” He clenches his fists. “Me, from another time.” He makes a strange, resigned laugh. “Maybe the future, since I haven’t disappeared from reality yet.”
Howon tries to think of an answer, but struggles for words.
“Anyway,” Sunggyu quickly continues. “I know I said it, but I change my mind. You should probably stop investigating.” He lowers his eyes, hair fanning out over his face. “It’s too dangerous, now.”
“I can’t.”
Sunggyu blinks.
Howon does too, surprised at his own voice, trembling like it’s falling apart. “I can’t,” he repeats, fingers clenching his sheets. The eerie light from the bolts by his side disappears, and Sunggyu’s spears follow, casting them both in shadow. “If it’s for you-”
There’s a beat of silence. Howon feels his bed dip, and looks to find Sunggyu sitting on the edge of the mattress. “I’m the real deal, alright?” He raises his hand, hesitating in the air for a moment, before placing a hand on Howon’s shoulder. “How else do you think would I remember each of our stupid arguments?” He rolls his eyes, but smiles. “The worst one was during Brewing, after you set my hair on fire, and then there was the one we had during Defense class-”
Howon surges forward and kisses him.
Sunggyu’s grip falls, tightens around Howon’s arm as he kisses back, and maybe Howon would have spared a moment to wonder-is this how much they’ve waited? Is this how desperately Howon’s been searching for answers? But Sunggyu pushes him down onto the bed, settling over his hips, and suddenly they stop, only staring at each other and greedily breathing in, like they’re never going to taste the air again.
Then when Sunggyu finally leans in, face buried in Howon’s neck, he breathes a slow, cracking sigh. “Hopeless,” Sunggyu mouths onto Howon’s throat, over and over and over. “Hopeless, look at you without me.”
“Yeah,” Howon answers, wrapping his arms around Sunggyu and pulling him in. He fights against the tightness in his throat. “I know.”
He closes his eyes and sinks.
It’s still dark when Howon wakes up, and when he looks at his clock, it says that he’s only slept for an hour. Howon can still see the moon from his window. He feels exhausted all over again, straight to his marrow, not like the mind-numbing tiredness from just moments before.
Sunggyu. He’s lying by Howon’s side, eyes closed and still. Howon listens to him breathe and feels the relief take over in time with the rise and fall of Sunggyu’s chest.
Then Howon feels a wildfire spark in his bones, the beginning of a dark, threatening pulse. Someday, Sunggyu will be murdered.
It’s with this thought that Howon dresses again and leaves. Someone will try to kill Sunggyu. All Howon has to do is kill them first.
The enchantment on the greenhouse’s door has been broken through. Howon pauses when he sees that it’s ajar. Then, without hesitation, he enters, footsteps and breaths hushed.
The greenhouse seems like a different place from when he had first seen it, now that Howon is carefully looking. There aren’t any frantic thoughts to fill the silence, only leaves rustling in cascade. Each shimmer Howon sees from the corner of his eye is one reflected from dew, light cast by the ball of light trailing in the air after him.
In the quiet, his thoughts start to wander. What was it that Sunggyu came here for? If he had been fetching ingredients for their Brewing class, then surely their instructor would have known. Surely, Sunggyu’s absence would have warranted someone coming over to find him, someone who could have saved him from becoming this outline of chalk and this persistent stain of blood.
Glad as he is that it wasn’t his Sunggyu who laid there, Howon still mourns.
At least until an odd glint shines from between the trees-the barrel of a gun.
“It’s you, isn’t it?!” Howon yells through the burst of gunfire, a wall of gusts forming before him and scattering the bullets in every direction. He sees it now; Sunggyu’s killer didn’t need a medium. He had physical, tangible weapons.
The wall of wind kicks up a cloud of dust as it parts, gunfire over. Howon doesn’t expect a reply, but he gets one, and he doesn’t expect his opponent to already be crouched in front of him, a rifle pointed right at Howon’s head. “You don’t get it, do you?”
Howon sends up a gust as he jerks his head away, and several bullets graze his cheek as he falls. He kicks the gun on the way down, and when it flies out of the other man’s grip, Howon aims projectiles of his own, made of lightning and fire. He shoots.
His opponent crouches beneath the spray and suddenly there’s a handgun beneath Howon’s chin-he glances down the barrel, down the line of an arm, and sees the hard glint in his opponent’s eyes, the rage twisting his face to such a degree that Howon wonders why this anger is for Sunggyu, for himself.
But it’s someone he’s seen before. He’s sure of it.
Rock splinters the paving beneath their feet, rising to block the bullets and knocking his opponent off-balance. A chance-spears of ice unfold above Howon’s fingertips.
With the butt of his gun, his opponent shatters each spear with a single sweep of his arm. He aims at Howon’s chest.
Howon twists the arm away, surviving the bullet scraping by his side. The gun drops to the floor, then lightning bolts are tearing across the air, and Howon’s sure that at least one of them met its mark-
A shotgun blast sounds, and Howon feels his foreleg shatter.
He bites his lip to keep himself from crying out, and he lands on his side, hands scrambling to clutch at his leg-there’s more than one bullet lodged in it, more than one tearing pain, all condensing into a single sensation that has Howon deliriously looking up. A sudden, quiet thought comes to him then, of staring into the same moon Sunggyu had been looking into before he breathed his last.
He finds the barrel of another gun instead, then the familiar face standing behind it, now recognizable out of motion.
Howon’s eyes widen.
“You want to know why the teachers look at you like that?” his assailant says, gun unwavering. “Want to know why you don’t need a medium?”
This man before Howon-
“You and Sunggyu have been stuck in this time loop for so long that your existences need magic to sustain themselves, and there’s no medium you need when you’re already magic, no medium you can use for a spell like that.” His grip around the gun tightens. “Just by existing, you guys are screwing up the balance, and each spell you cast makes it worse.”
-looks just like him.
“And when you live like this forever, with him,” the other Howon breathes, “one day, the two of you will exist, and everything else no longer will.”
Through the haze of pain, Howon steels himself and struggles to gather his voice. It can’t be true. It can’t be him. Maybe an impostor-“Is t-that why you killed Sunggyu?”
“No!” the other Howon hisses. He adjusts the grip he has around the gun, hand trembling minutely, like his voice. “It’s because he died,” he continues, glaring harder, “that I’m doing this in the first place.”
“Then-” Howon screws an eye shut and shrinks from the barrel, which looks like it’s going closer and farther, closer and farther. “-what are you d-doing?”
“I’m going to destroy magic,” is the reply, “starting with this campus.” The other Howon steps back, gun still pointed at Howon’s prone figure. “If we never learned to control magic, or never understood it, they would have never trapped us in here and he would’ve never…”
“I d-don’t get it,” Howon blurts out.
“You will,” comes the harsh reply. “Someday. You will.”
After a few more steps back, gun trained at Howon the entire time, the other Howon disappears into the leaves’ shadows.
Howon lets himself lie there for a long time, staring up at the moon, unseeing and exhausted from pain. He tries to send Sunggyu a message, and he does, but he can’t get a coherent thought in and lets the mess in his mind speak instead. Everything’s a mess. Everything hurts.
Howon has one last thought, one he doesn’t share with Sunggyu, right before his vision fades.
Why did I become someone like that?
Howon wakes in his room the next morning.
Sunggyu is lying on the other side of the bed, eyes open but looking as tired as Howon feels right now. “Took the bullets out and sped up some processes in your leg to accelerate healing,” he says. “Pulling shit like that right after I tell you to drop it-honestly.” He curls a hand in Howon’s shirt. “You really hate listening to me, huh.”
When Howon only stares back, mind too fogged to respond, Sunggyu scoots closer until their legs are tangled. Howon can’t feel a trace of the bullet wounds on his leg at all and nearly wonders if everything was a dream, but when Sunggyu whispers, “I guess he dropped by you, too,” Howon knows that something has changed forever.
Howon’s in the middle of classes the next day when the earth shakes with a great, heaving roar, like a dying man coughing out his last breaths.
Everyone bursts from the rooms, moving down the hallways and to the field in one great crowd. It’s not the calm walk the drills tell them to practice but even the teachers are yelling, ushering all the students out.
“Dongwoo,” Howon begins, the moment they step out the lecture hall, “Go ahead. I’m gonna get something from my dorm room first.”
Dongwoo’s brows furrow. “I don’t think you’re supposed to…” Howon spins on his heel and turns away. “Howon?”
The smell of smoke greets him the moment he steps out the building. Sunggyu’s voice comes. What happened? Are you alright?
I’m fine. You? Howon’s gaze follows the trail of smoke. There’s a building at its end, burning and completely in pieces. The magic faculty unit blew up.
Where are you? I’m locking your room right now-heading out.
I’m going there. Howon hesitates before making a turn. The dormitories come into view. I’m sure they’ll understand if you tell them why you were hiding. You have to evacuate to the field.
Howon, don’t-
A hand grabs onto Howon’s shoulder and shoves.
Howon crouches before he can be pushed into the wall and elbows the man behind him. There’s a choked gasp, and Howon spins around in a kick, but he sees Woohyun and then Woohyun’s grabbing his ankle, pulling Howon forward into a ball of razor-sharp gusts.
He shoots icicles into Woohyun’s arm right before impact, and then they’re both flying back, covered in scratches.
“What happened to the singing?” Howon says, gaze flickering to Woohyun’s hands and back. No medium?
“Turns out it works as long as I hum in my head,” Woohyun answers. His stance is low. There’s a wire peeking out by the side of his head, probably an earphone hidden by his hair. “Get to the evacuation site, okay?”
Howon tries to grin. “Imagining epic music?”
A hot gust of wind grazes his arm in response. Woohyun’s eyes are wild. “Get back to the field!”
You should go, Sunggyu says.
Spears of fire unfold above Howon’s head. He thins his lips. Are you sure?
Woohyun stays silent, completely tense. He shifts once, and a circle of magic ripples outward from his feet, licking warmth across Howon’s sole when it passes.
He already distrusts you as it is, Sunggyu answers, and there’s a pang somewhere in Howon’s chest. So he really lost a friend.
Sunggyu continues. If you don’t go back now, you’ll be under suspicion forever.
After a tense moment, Howon lets the spears of fire disappear into motes. “I’m going, I’m going,” Howon says with a sigh. He doesn’t approach Woohyun until his posture has relaxed, and Howon scans one look across the dorm’s façade before turning away.
Meet me here at your room, Sunggyu murmurs, before the connection closes. Leave the other you to me.
Howon inhales.
The other faculty units burst into flames a bit later, the observatory on the top floor, the potions inventory, the library. Howon can hear people crying somewhere behind him, but the air is filled with the sound of collapse and the crackling of embers.
It’s three long days before they let the students enter the dorms again, but not many people return from their homes. Even then, a fair number of them only come to pack up and leave. Sungyeol and Howon both opt to stay, but the rumors have reached Sungyeol by now; when Howon heads for his room, he is alone.
He unlocks his door, shuts it behind him, and finds Sunggyu standing by the entranceway waiting for him. His jacket is tattered, and there are stains of blood next to the tears in the cloth. His gaze looks like it’s been hollowed out.
“You’re,” Sunggyu begins, arms limp and voice barely managing to steady itself, “my Howon, right?” His face cracks with a broken smile. “Not a ghost?”
So the other Howon’s dead.
And it’s strange how he’s saying this to the man who disappeared for more than a week, but Howon’s nodding and giving a weak, joking punch to Sunggyu’s shoulder. “Of course I’m not a ghost.”
Sunggyu gives him a small, sad smile.
Slowly, the campus begins to rebuild itself.
Howon wonders if he’s the only one who can feel the heavy disquiet in the air, a layer of dust just waiting to be stirred. Maybe this feeling is uniquely his, in uncertain anticipation of Sunggyu deciding to leave him behind, and Howon can never keep it from his mind completely.
He sneaks out every so often, dropping by the greenhouse when he wants the quiet to fill him to the brim again. The outline of Sunggyu’s body has been washed away from the pavement. It’s not the issue anymore, for Howon or for the rest of the campus. It’s over.
Sunggyu catches him this particular night, as Howon prepares to sneak out. They walk to the greenhouse together.
“Look,” Sunggyu begins. He’s using that quiet voice again, even with preparation, and Howon feels his gut sink. “We have to talk about this.”
Tucking his fists into his pockets, Howon doesn’t reply.
“Oh, come on. Howon.”
“What?” Howon snaps. When Sunggyu doesn’t immediately reply, he blunts his voice and repeats, soft and tired. “What?”
“We’re not good for this world,” Sunggyu murmurs.
Howon can’t think of an answer. He lets Sunggyu enter the greenhouse first, then follows soon after.
“But I talked to Jungyeop recently,” Sunggyu says. He continues speaking before Howon can get a single outburst in. “He only wants the best for everyone, he’s not a terrible person. Don’t make that face.” He chuckles but his smile doesn’t stay. “He said that world’s magic will still be unbalanced if only,” he swallows, “if only one of us dies, but it probably won’t be as bad anymore.”
“The shittiest principal eve-“
“Don’t.” Sunggyu continues once Howon’s mouth shuts in a thin line. “Okay, fine, he said that was the last resort, but his first two options-” Suddenly, Sunggyu laughs, wiping a hand down his face. “Fuck, sorry-first two options were the two of us going in for experimentation and the killing only happening once it gets really bad, or using my powers to replicate our… condition in someone else, which I obviously won’t agree to.”
“Why should anyone else matter?”
Sunggyu’s brows furrow. “Hey.”
“If the world won’t let us live in peace, then why should it matter?”
“Listen to yourself.” Sunggyu exhales. “If it wasn’t for the world, then we wouldn’t even exist.”
Suddenly, Howon hears his own voice, speaking into his mind. If we never learned to control magic…
“If we never had magic,” Howon says, fists balling, “then we won’t even need to-”
“Howon!” Sunggyu places his palms on the sides of Howon’s face, forcing their eyes to meet. “We don’t have a choice, okay?” His gaze is clear as he speaks, resolute, like his voice. “There’s only one person in this world who can kill me.”
Howon jerks back.
Suddenly he realizes they’re in the center of the greenhouse, moon high in the sky above them and shining past glass walls. The trees have been long left to grow, but the canopies don’t reach where Sunggyu stands, casting him in a sort of spotlight. Howon can’t think of anything to say. Sunggyu doesn’t look hesitant at all.
But when Sunggyu speaks again, his voice is soft. “I don’t want to kill you.” He takes Howon’s wrist and guides his palm to his chest. Sunggyu’s heart isn’t madly beating, like Howon’s is. It’s almost like it’s slowing down instead.
Sunggyu exhales, then meets Howon’s eyes once more. “You kill me, or I kill myself.”
A hysterical laugh immediately bubbles from Howon’s throat. This, all of this, is what he’s feared all this time, and now it’s unfolding right before him. “You wouldn’t do that,” he says, pulling Sunggyu forward by the grip he has on Howon’s wrist and wrapping his arms around him. “This is a really sick joke, you know.”
The leaves all fall into a hushed silence.
Then a sharp gale of wind rises between them, starting at their feet and ending with a boom that shatters every pane of glass around them. Something splatters.
Sunggyu tips forward, pressing his face into Howon’s shoulder. “Forget me, okay?” He chokes out a laugh, running his knuckles over Howon’s cheek, fingers wet with something bright against his pale skin, like the color of his hair. “Or else the world’s never gonna get us right, and we’re gonna keep doing this forever.”
Then he holds his breath, and for a moment, the world freezes around them-
Howon looks at the man in his arms, still warm, eyes shut. Howon lowers Sunggyu to the ground on his back so that he’s facing the sky. Sunggyu always comes from the sky, neatly landing on his feet next to Howon with a smile. He was never from this world.
He was always better than this world.
Howon is all alone.
He tears his earring off and throws it into a tree, presses his face into the heels of his palms, hands struggling to keep himself grounded but fingers only landing in a puddle of deep, deep red. Sunggyu doesn’t smell like melon anymore, only rust, and his earring-
His earring is still intact.
Howon takes it, rises to his feet, drops it to the floor. Then he steps on it and grinds it into the pavement.
There’s no point in magic, he sees now. They study it but they never needed it before, and though they learn how to use it for good they also learn how to weaponize it-such a powerful thing, in the hands of beings that don’t deserve it. Why would the world need something like this? No one needs it. Howon doesn’t need it. It destroyed them.
Howon looks up. The moon is shining past unbroken glass panes. They’re in the past, now, and Howon doesn’t know how far back they’ve gone.
But it doesn’t matter. No matter where he is, Howon will destroy magic at any cost.
Another Sunggyu is sleeping in this other Howon’s room. Howon easily enters through the open window.
He can almost pretend that Sunggyu’s alive, and that he can kiss him again and breathe his breaths, or laugh in the same air. This Sunggyu, however, only looks at the bag of explosive charges by Howon’s feet with resignation. This isn’t his Sunggyu. His Sunggyu will never be back.
“So I was right,” this Sunggyu says, sighing into the sheets. He sits up and stares forlornly at Howon’s face, like Sunggyu has somehow failed him. “We’re stuck in a stable time loop.”
But if anyone has failed anyone else, it’s Howon, failing him. “But we can get out!”
Sunggyu blinks at Howon’s outburst. He doesn’t scoot back even an inch when Howon approaches, looming over him.
“All we need to do is forget the rest of the world,” Howon says, trying to breathe. He smells Sunggyu’s melon shampoo and feels dizzy all over again. “We can even make a new world if we wanted to, so please-”
Sunggyu’s gaze is firm, as it’s always been. “We can’t. I’m sorry.”
The first time Sunggyu’s apologized for anything.
When Howon reaches forward, Sunggyu’s shoulders jolt. They don’t relax no matter how gently Howon tries to touch. “Someday,” Howon begins, cradling Sunggyu’s cheek, running a hand through his hair, “we’ll be enemies.” Rivals, right to the end.
Howon smiles bitterly and turns away.
In the midst of all the smoke and chaos, they find each other again, in the observatory on the main building’s top floor. Sunggyu’s face is solemn but firm, and Howon knows that he won’t be able to convince him, not now, not ever.
“Want to spar?” Howon says, lightning pulsing outwards from his feet.
Sunggyu’s eyes flash, and then he’s charging, spears of light fanning out behind him like a halo.
It’s difficult now that Howon’s sworn off magic, and Sunggyu is relentless with his attacks, following a stab with a lightning bolt with fire suddenly erupting from the ground. Howon avoids those, and multiple times he’s had the opportunity to shoot, but his finger on the trigger never pulls, and Sunggyu is always, already someplace else before Howon can think to do it again.
Three minutes. Nothing has changed.
He’s lying by Sunggyu’s folded knees at the end of it, staring up at the other man’s face, then further up at the moon shining past the observatory’s glass ceiling. His Sunggyu, he knows, in some foregone timeline, is looking up at this same moon too. It’s beautiful. It’s something they can agree on for once, Howon is sure.
“Are you going to kill me?” Howon asks the man by his side.
“No,” this Sunggyu answers, after a moment. “But you don’t need to di-”
Then Howon calls his magic for one last time, and blood splatters on Sunggyu’s face. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is frozen in a silent gasp. He screams.
“I’m sorry,” Howon croaks, through the gaping cut running from his side to his throat. He feels like he’s drowning and burning at the same time, and each breath hurts, but with every word he speaks the world turns brighter, and brighter. “I’m a coward. But living without you…”
“Honestly,” Sunggyu murmurs.
They’re standing behind a desk. Sunggyu is guiding one of Howon’s hands to a glass funnel, and the other one to a bowl of featherdust. “You’re hopeless without me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Howon says back, rolling his eyes as they pour the featherdust into the flask. Then as Sunggyu moves away, Howon pulls him back, cradling Sunggyu's hand to his face. "I know." He hides his eyes behind Sunggyu's fingers and breathes, mouths into his palm, “I know,” and Sunggyu laughs at the brush of Howon's lips. Howon smiles.
Light shines from inside the flask, and then the two of them are flying.
fin.
- masterlist + requests - watch - join - ao3 -
there are really only three ways this will end for the world: either howon gives in and lives, he never does and fails, or he never does and succeeds. well.
explores similar themes in an older exo work of mine (“i’ll give it all to you, someday”, which i hope to very heavily revise someday otl), but hopefully in a more complete manner. if you need an ear or a shoulder, feel free to message me, or anyone else you feel you can talk to. there is always someone who will listen :)
this is the… second… time i have killed sunggyu lol. darling, never doubt that ilu. ;w;
any comments are appreciated <3
that ever i was born to set it right
part 2
Students aren’t allowed into the greenhouse anymore.
Howon needs to get in again, though. A closer second look is always worth it.
He sits by the greenhouse’s darkened glass doors once classes have ended and waits for a staff member, or an investigator, for anyone to come out. To pass the time, he plays with a thermos he had brought along, tossing the water inside into the air and keeping the droplets suspended. After a few tries he manages to fully preserve the shape of the spray, but when he draws stars into the curtains of water, they just look misshapen and lonely.
Howon looks at his cellphone. It’s one in the morning. Just one day after the discovery of Sunggyu’s body, and it seems like no one’s investigating anymore.
There’s an enchantment on that door, he’s sure, and very likely an alarm to the school staff too. Getting in alone is impossible.
So he asks Woohyun about it over lunch the next day.
The cafeteria’s noise is subdued, today, more a low hum that the crowded buzz it was just the day before. Woohyun is the student council’s vice president now that Sunggyu is gone, but even then, Woohyun immediately refuses Howon’s request. “I don’t think I’m at the liberty to give you permission for that,” he answers, lips set in a thin line.
It’s true, Howon concedes. He lets the topic go.
But Woohyun’s and Sungyeol’s eyes look different-where Sungyeol is quiet and almost dazed, Woohyun is hushed and guarded.
Howon finds himself in Jungyeop’s office again the next day, this time entirely of his own volition.
He doesn’t even remember how their conversation got here, Howon nearly standing, gripping the armchair until his fingers are pressing into the cloth, and Jungyeop with a burning undercurrent in his voice, something like reassurance and justification and the thought that what he’s doing is right. But it’s not right, because-
“-then why did it look like you had already called the investigation off?”
“Why do you say that, Howon?”
The way he says Howon’s name, like he’s patiently trying to talk to a dog, sets on Howon’s nerves. “I didn’t see anyone investigating the greenhouse yesterday or today.”
“You went in?”
“I sat by the door the entire fucking afternoon twice. Please stop avoiding the question.”
Jungyeop exhales.
“Why isn’t the investigation being taken seriously,” Howon grits out, “sir?”
“It is,” Jungyeop answers, fiddling with a small, empty box on a corner of his desk; it’s the one that held his and Sunggyu’s earrings, Howon remembers. “The investigation’s already over. You have one last question, Howon. I have things to attend to.”
“Then what did you find out?”
“I can’t tel-”
“What did you find out?”
Jungyeop sighs again. “Think about this, Howon. Sunggyu is an extremely powerful mage. That he was killed in such a manner, with no traces of struggle in his surroundings or on his body, means that the killer used stealth, was much more powerful than he was, or could at least stand up to his magic.” His jaw tightens before he continues speaking. “And the only person we know to be able to put up a fight with him is-”
Howon frowns. “Are you suggesting that I-”
“When we tried to find out what medium his perpetrator used as well,” Jungyeop continues, voice firmer, “we couldn’t find a single trace. We can only conclude that he didn’t need a medium at all, and the only people with that ability-”
“No,” Howon begins, shaking his head, suddenly feeling lightheaded. He leans back against the armchair and forgets to breathe. “You can ask my classmates, or all the professors-”
“He’s been missing for more than two weeks, Howon, and we can’t determine the time of death. Tampered with by magic, most likely. Classes aren’t enough of an alibi. If it wasn’t you, then there’s someone powerful on the loose. Either way,” Jungyeop squarely meets his eyes, fingers laced on his desk, “we are all in danger.”
Howon finally inhales, swallowing a heavy mess of frustrated words and thoughts in his throat.
Then, impossibly, Jungyeop’s gaze softens, and Howon feels like a small child again, in front of a parent he can’t understand. “I’m sorry, Howon. I only want to keep my students safe, and you’re still one of them-but I can only protect them, and then protect you. Not together.”
There’s nothing Howon can say. Jungyeop points his wand at the door, and it swings open. “I think I’ve answered your last question enough. Goodbye, Howon.”
As Howon stands, mindlessly guiding himself out, Jungyeop speaks again. “I trust you to know not to tell anyone, Howon. I’m sorry.”
Sungyeol’s been given a room of his own in the dorms. He’s happy that the dorm managers have finally approved his request, but Howon has a feeling it’s an effort to keep Sungyeol as safe as possible. From him.
Howon lies awake on his bed. If he thinks hard enough, tries to reach for Sunggyu’s thoughts enough, his voice and that accompanying moment of warmth come back into Howon’s mind. He wonders if he’s going crazy, because sometimes he manages to convince himself that those words weren’t Sunggyu’s words at all, only his own mind speaking to him-but then a silhouette of Sunggyu suddenly shows up, on his seat in the lecture hall or perched on a branch, and Howon’s chest turns heavy again.
And there, Howon sees him, seated on the chair by his desk. Howon shuts his eyes and tells himself to sleep.
“Didn’t think you’d miss me that much,” comes Sunggyu’s voice.
Howon opens his eyes, and the tiny ones that look back at him are too familiar. Twice, he blinks slowly, and when the image persists he bolts up in his bed. Blades made of lightning unfold by his shoulders. “Who-”
“It’s really me!” Sunggyu responds, chair clattering to the floor as he jumps back. He summons his own spears of light soon enough, but raises his hands up in a gesture of peace. “Look, I came here through your window-you should really close that during the night-and I was actually hiding out all this time.”
Howon narrows his eyes.
Sunggyu keeps talking. “That guy in the greenhouse isn’t me, even if it looks like it, I swear. Watch this.” He begins searching around Howon’s room. When his eyes catch a glass of water, he throws it up into the air, and then he draws a phrase into the spray. ‘Howon jjang’.
It’s terribly juvenile, and when Sunggyu looks proud of his own work, Howon’s thoughts stir. But Howon’s done something nearly like it himself, before. “Not enough.”
Sunggyu doesn’t even hesitate. He tilts his head, exposing a glint on his ear. Then he smiles as he speaks into Howon’s mind. So how’s Inguk as a sparring partner?
Relief starts pouring into Howon’s heart unbidden. Sparks erupt from the lightning bolts by his side, stinging his cheeks like reminders. Not yet. “So let’s say you’re really Sunggyu.” He swallows. “Why would someone copy you? And why would someone want to kill you?”
“I don’t know about the second one,” Sunggyu admits. “But about the first, there’s a chance…” He clenches his fists. “Me, from another time.” He makes a strange, resigned laugh. “Maybe the future, since I haven’t disappeared from reality yet.”
Howon tries to think of an answer, but struggles for words.
“Anyway,” Sunggyu quickly continues. “I know I said it, but I change my mind. You should probably stop investigating.” He lowers his eyes, hair fanning out over his face. “It’s too dangerous, now.”
“I can’t.”
Sunggyu blinks.
Howon does too, surprised at his own voice, trembling like it’s falling apart. “I can’t,” he repeats, fingers clenching his sheets. The eerie light from the bolts by his side disappears, and Sunggyu’s spears follow, casting them both in shadow. “If it’s for you-”
There’s a beat of silence. Howon feels his bed dip, and looks to find Sunggyu sitting on the edge of the mattress. “I’m the real deal, alright?” He raises his hand, hesitating in the air for a moment, before placing a hand on Howon’s shoulder. “How else do you think would I remember each of our stupid arguments?” He rolls his eyes, but smiles. “The worst one was during Brewing, after you set my hair on fire, and then there was the one we had during Defense class-”
Howon surges forward and kisses him.
Sunggyu’s grip falls, tightens around Howon’s arm as he kisses back, and maybe Howon would have spared a moment to wonder-is this how much they’ve waited? Is this how desperately Howon’s been searching for answers? But Sunggyu pushes him down onto the bed, settling over his hips, and suddenly they stop, only staring at each other and greedily breathing in, like they’re never going to taste the air again.
Then when Sunggyu finally leans in, face buried in Howon’s neck, he breathes a slow, cracking sigh. “Hopeless,” Sunggyu mouths onto Howon’s throat, over and over and over. “Hopeless, look at you without me.”
“Yeah,” Howon answers, wrapping his arms around Sunggyu and pulling him in. He fights against the tightness in his throat. “I know.”
He closes his eyes and sinks.
It’s still dark when Howon wakes up, and when he looks at his clock, it says that he’s only slept for an hour. Howon can still see the moon from his window. He feels exhausted all over again, straight to his marrow, not like the mind-numbing tiredness from just moments before.
Sunggyu. He’s lying by Howon’s side, eyes closed and still. Howon listens to him breathe and feels the relief take over in time with the rise and fall of Sunggyu’s chest.
Then Howon feels a wildfire spark in his bones, the beginning of a dark, threatening pulse. Someday, Sunggyu will be murdered.
It’s with this thought that Howon dresses again and leaves. Someone will try to kill Sunggyu. All Howon has to do is kill them first.
The enchantment on the greenhouse’s door has been broken through. Howon pauses when he sees that it’s ajar. Then, without hesitation, he enters, footsteps and breaths hushed.
The greenhouse seems like a different place from when he had first seen it, now that Howon is carefully looking. There aren’t any frantic thoughts to fill the silence, only leaves rustling in cascade. Each shimmer Howon sees from the corner of his eye is one reflected from dew, light cast by the ball of light trailing in the air after him.
In the quiet, his thoughts start to wander. What was it that Sunggyu came here for? If he had been fetching ingredients for their Brewing class, then surely their instructor would have known. Surely, Sunggyu’s absence would have warranted someone coming over to find him, someone who could have saved him from becoming this outline of chalk and this persistent stain of blood.
Glad as he is that it wasn’t his Sunggyu who laid there, Howon still mourns.
At least until an odd glint shines from between the trees-the barrel of a gun.
“It’s you, isn’t it?!” Howon yells through the burst of gunfire, a wall of gusts forming before him and scattering the bullets in every direction. He sees it now; Sunggyu’s killer didn’t need a medium. He had physical, tangible weapons.
The wall of wind kicks up a cloud of dust as it parts, gunfire over. Howon doesn’t expect a reply, but he gets one, and he doesn’t expect his opponent to already be crouched in front of him, a rifle pointed right at Howon’s head. “You don’t get it, do you?”
Howon sends up a gust as he jerks his head away, and several bullets graze his cheek as he falls. He kicks the gun on the way down, and when it flies out of the other man’s grip, Howon aims projectiles of his own, made of lightning and fire. He shoots.
His opponent crouches beneath the spray and suddenly there’s a handgun beneath Howon’s chin-he glances down the barrel, down the line of an arm, and sees the hard glint in his opponent’s eyes, the rage twisting his face to such a degree that Howon wonders why this anger is for Sunggyu, for himself.
But it’s someone he’s seen before. He’s sure of it.
Rock splinters the paving beneath their feet, rising to block the bullets and knocking his opponent off-balance. A chance-spears of ice unfold above Howon’s fingertips.
With the butt of his gun, his opponent shatters each spear with a single sweep of his arm. He aims at Howon’s chest.
Howon twists the arm away, surviving the bullet scraping by his side. The gun drops to the floor, then lightning bolts are tearing across the air, and Howon’s sure that at least one of them met its mark-
A shotgun blast sounds, and Howon feels his foreleg shatter.
He bites his lip to keep himself from crying out, and he lands on his side, hands scrambling to clutch at his leg-there’s more than one bullet lodged in it, more than one tearing pain, all condensing into a single sensation that has Howon deliriously looking up. A sudden, quiet thought comes to him then, of staring into the same moon Sunggyu had been looking into before he breathed his last.
He finds the barrel of another gun instead, then the familiar face standing behind it, now recognizable out of motion.
Howon’s eyes widen.
“You want to know why the teachers look at you like that?” his assailant says, gun unwavering. “Want to know why you don’t need a medium?”
This man before Howon-
“You and Sunggyu have been stuck in this time loop for so long that your existences need magic to sustain themselves, and there’s no medium you need when you’re already magic, no medium you can use for a spell like that.” His grip around the gun tightens. “Just by existing, you guys are screwing up the balance, and each spell you cast makes it worse.”
-looks just like him.
“And when you live like this forever, with him,” the other Howon breathes, “one day, the two of you will exist, and everything else no longer will.”
Through the haze of pain, Howon steels himself and struggles to gather his voice. It can’t be true. It can’t be him. Maybe an impostor-“Is t-that why you killed Sunggyu?”
“No!” the other Howon hisses. He adjusts the grip he has around the gun, hand trembling minutely, like his voice. “It’s because he died,” he continues, glaring harder, “that I’m doing this in the first place.”
“Then-” Howon screws an eye shut and shrinks from the barrel, which looks like it’s going closer and farther, closer and farther. “-what are you d-doing?”
“I’m going to destroy magic,” is the reply, “starting with this campus.” The other Howon steps back, gun still pointed at Howon’s prone figure. “If we never learned to control magic, or never understood it, they would have never trapped us in here and he would’ve never…”
“I d-don’t get it,” Howon blurts out.
“You will,” comes the harsh reply. “Someday. You will.”
After a few more steps back, gun trained at Howon the entire time, the other Howon disappears into the leaves’ shadows.
Howon lets himself lie there for a long time, staring up at the moon, unseeing and exhausted from pain. He tries to send Sunggyu a message, and he does, but he can’t get a coherent thought in and lets the mess in his mind speak instead. Everything’s a mess. Everything hurts.
Howon has one last thought, one he doesn’t share with Sunggyu, right before his vision fades.
Why did I become someone like that?
Howon wakes in his room the next morning.
Sunggyu is lying on the other side of the bed, eyes open but looking as tired as Howon feels right now. “Took the bullets out and sped up some processes in your leg to accelerate healing,” he says. “Pulling shit like that right after I tell you to drop it-honestly.” He curls a hand in Howon’s shirt. “You really hate listening to me, huh.”
When Howon only stares back, mind too fogged to respond, Sunggyu scoots closer until their legs are tangled. Howon can’t feel a trace of the bullet wounds on his leg at all and nearly wonders if everything was a dream, but when Sunggyu whispers, “I guess he dropped by you, too,” Howon knows that something has changed forever.
Howon’s in the middle of classes the next day when the earth shakes with a great, heaving roar, like a dying man coughing out his last breaths.
Everyone bursts from the rooms, moving down the hallways and to the field in one great crowd. It’s not the calm walk the drills tell them to practice but even the teachers are yelling, ushering all the students out.
“Dongwoo,” Howon begins, the moment they step out the lecture hall, “Go ahead. I’m gonna get something from my dorm room first.”
Dongwoo’s brows furrow. “I don’t think you’re supposed to…” Howon spins on his heel and turns away. “Howon?”
The smell of smoke greets him the moment he steps out the building. Sunggyu’s voice comes. What happened? Are you alright?
I’m fine. You? Howon’s gaze follows the trail of smoke. There’s a building at its end, burning and completely in pieces. The magic faculty unit blew up.
Where are you? I’m locking your room right now-heading out.
I’m going there. Howon hesitates before making a turn. The dormitories come into view. I’m sure they’ll understand if you tell them why you were hiding. You have to evacuate to the field.
Howon, don’t-
A hand grabs onto Howon’s shoulder and shoves.
Howon crouches before he can be pushed into the wall and elbows the man behind him. There’s a choked gasp, and Howon spins around in a kick, but he sees Woohyun and then Woohyun’s grabbing his ankle, pulling Howon forward into a ball of razor-sharp gusts.
He shoots icicles into Woohyun’s arm right before impact, and then they’re both flying back, covered in scratches.
“What happened to the singing?” Howon says, gaze flickering to Woohyun’s hands and back. No medium?
“Turns out it works as long as I hum in my head,” Woohyun answers. His stance is low. There’s a wire peeking out by the side of his head, probably an earphone hidden by his hair. “Get to the evacuation site, okay?”
Howon tries to grin. “Imagining epic music?”
A hot gust of wind grazes his arm in response. Woohyun’s eyes are wild. “Get back to the field!”
You should go, Sunggyu says.
Spears of fire unfold above Howon’s head. He thins his lips. Are you sure?
Woohyun stays silent, completely tense. He shifts once, and a circle of magic ripples outward from his feet, licking warmth across Howon’s sole when it passes.
He already distrusts you as it is, Sunggyu answers, and there’s a pang somewhere in Howon’s chest. So he really lost a friend.
Sunggyu continues. If you don’t go back now, you’ll be under suspicion forever.
After a tense moment, Howon lets the spears of fire disappear into motes. “I’m going, I’m going,” Howon says with a sigh. He doesn’t approach Woohyun until his posture has relaxed, and Howon scans one look across the dorm’s façade before turning away.
Meet me here at your room, Sunggyu murmurs, before the connection closes. Leave the other you to me.
Howon inhales.
The other faculty units burst into flames a bit later, the observatory on the top floor, the potions inventory, the library. Howon can hear people crying somewhere behind him, but the air is filled with the sound of collapse and the crackling of embers.
It’s three long days before they let the students enter the dorms again, but not many people return from their homes. Even then, a fair number of them only come to pack up and leave. Sungyeol and Howon both opt to stay, but the rumors have reached Sungyeol by now; when Howon heads for his room, he is alone.
He unlocks his door, shuts it behind him, and finds Sunggyu standing by the entranceway waiting for him. His jacket is tattered, and there are stains of blood next to the tears in the cloth. His gaze looks like it’s been hollowed out.
“You’re,” Sunggyu begins, arms limp and voice barely managing to steady itself, “my Howon, right?” His face cracks with a broken smile. “Not a ghost?”
So the other Howon’s dead.
And it’s strange how he’s saying this to the man who disappeared for more than a week, but Howon’s nodding and giving a weak, joking punch to Sunggyu’s shoulder. “Of course I’m not a ghost.”
Sunggyu gives him a small, sad smile.
Slowly, the campus begins to rebuild itself.
Howon wonders if he’s the only one who can feel the heavy disquiet in the air, a layer of dust just waiting to be stirred. Maybe this feeling is uniquely his, in uncertain anticipation of Sunggyu deciding to leave him behind, and Howon can never keep it from his mind completely.
He sneaks out every so often, dropping by the greenhouse when he wants the quiet to fill him to the brim again. The outline of Sunggyu’s body has been washed away from the pavement. It’s not the issue anymore, for Howon or for the rest of the campus. It’s over.
Sunggyu catches him this particular night, as Howon prepares to sneak out. They walk to the greenhouse together.
“Look,” Sunggyu begins. He’s using that quiet voice again, even with preparation, and Howon feels his gut sink. “We have to talk about this.”
Tucking his fists into his pockets, Howon doesn’t reply.
“Oh, come on. Howon.”
“What?” Howon snaps. When Sunggyu doesn’t immediately reply, he blunts his voice and repeats, soft and tired. “What?”
“We’re not good for this world,” Sunggyu murmurs.
Howon can’t think of an answer. He lets Sunggyu enter the greenhouse first, then follows soon after.
“But I talked to Jungyeop recently,” Sunggyu says. He continues speaking before Howon can get a single outburst in. “He only wants the best for everyone, he’s not a terrible person. Don’t make that face.” He chuckles but his smile doesn’t stay. “He said that world’s magic will still be unbalanced if only,” he swallows, “if only one of us dies, but it probably won’t be as bad anymore.”
“The shittiest principal eve-“
“Don’t.” Sunggyu continues once Howon’s mouth shuts in a thin line. “Okay, fine, he said that was the last resort, but his first two options-” Suddenly, Sunggyu laughs, wiping a hand down his face. “Fuck, sorry-first two options were the two of us going in for experimentation and the killing only happening once it gets really bad, or using my powers to replicate our… condition in someone else, which I obviously won’t agree to.”
“Why should anyone else matter?”
Sunggyu’s brows furrow. “Hey.”
“If the world won’t let us live in peace, then why should it matter?”
“Listen to yourself.” Sunggyu exhales. “If it wasn’t for the world, then we wouldn’t even exist.”
Suddenly, Howon hears his own voice, speaking into his mind. If we never learned to control magic…
“If we never had magic,” Howon says, fists balling, “then we won’t even need to-”
“Howon!” Sunggyu places his palms on the sides of Howon’s face, forcing their eyes to meet. “We don’t have a choice, okay?” His gaze is clear as he speaks, resolute, like his voice. “There’s only one person in this world who can kill me.”
Howon jerks back.
Suddenly he realizes they’re in the center of the greenhouse, moon high in the sky above them and shining past glass walls. The trees have been long left to grow, but the canopies don’t reach where Sunggyu stands, casting him in a sort of spotlight. Howon can’t think of anything to say. Sunggyu doesn’t look hesitant at all.
But when Sunggyu speaks again, his voice is soft. “I don’t want to kill you.” He takes Howon’s wrist and guides his palm to his chest. Sunggyu’s heart isn’t madly beating, like Howon’s is. It’s almost like it’s slowing down instead.
Sunggyu exhales, then meets Howon’s eyes once more. “You kill me, or I kill myself.”
A hysterical laugh immediately bubbles from Howon’s throat. This, all of this, is what he’s feared all this time, and now it’s unfolding right before him. “You wouldn’t do that,” he says, pulling Sunggyu forward by the grip he has on Howon’s wrist and wrapping his arms around him. “This is a really sick joke, you know.”
The leaves all fall into a hushed silence.
Then a sharp gale of wind rises between them, starting at their feet and ending with a boom that shatters every pane of glass around them. Something splatters.
Sunggyu tips forward, pressing his face into Howon’s shoulder. “Forget me, okay?” He chokes out a laugh, running his knuckles over Howon’s cheek, fingers wet with something bright against his pale skin, like the color of his hair. “Or else the world’s never gonna get us right, and we’re gonna keep doing this forever.”
Then he holds his breath, and for a moment, the world freezes around them-
Howon looks at the man in his arms, still warm, eyes shut. Howon lowers Sunggyu to the ground on his back so that he’s facing the sky. Sunggyu always comes from the sky, neatly landing on his feet next to Howon with a smile. He was never from this world.
He was always better than this world.
Howon is all alone.
He tears his earring off and throws it into a tree, presses his face into the heels of his palms, hands struggling to keep himself grounded but fingers only landing in a puddle of deep, deep red. Sunggyu doesn’t smell like melon anymore, only rust, and his earring-
His earring is still intact.
Howon takes it, rises to his feet, drops it to the floor. Then he steps on it and grinds it into the pavement.
There’s no point in magic, he sees now. They study it but they never needed it before, and though they learn how to use it for good they also learn how to weaponize it-such a powerful thing, in the hands of beings that don’t deserve it. Why would the world need something like this? No one needs it. Howon doesn’t need it. It destroyed them.
Howon looks up. The moon is shining past unbroken glass panes. They’re in the past, now, and Howon doesn’t know how far back they’ve gone.
But it doesn’t matter. No matter where he is, Howon will destroy magic at any cost.
Another Sunggyu is sleeping in this other Howon’s room. Howon easily enters through the open window.
He can almost pretend that Sunggyu’s alive, and that he can kiss him again and breathe his breaths, or laugh in the same air. This Sunggyu, however, only looks at the bag of explosive charges by Howon’s feet with resignation. This isn’t his Sunggyu. His Sunggyu will never be back.
“So I was right,” this Sunggyu says, sighing into the sheets. He sits up and stares forlornly at Howon’s face, like Sunggyu has somehow failed him. “We’re stuck in a stable time loop.”
But if anyone has failed anyone else, it’s Howon, failing him. “But we can get out!”
Sunggyu blinks at Howon’s outburst. He doesn’t scoot back even an inch when Howon approaches, looming over him.
“All we need to do is forget the rest of the world,” Howon says, trying to breathe. He smells Sunggyu’s melon shampoo and feels dizzy all over again. “We can even make a new world if we wanted to, so please-”
Sunggyu’s gaze is firm, as it’s always been. “We can’t. I’m sorry.”
The first time Sunggyu’s apologized for anything.
When Howon reaches forward, Sunggyu’s shoulders jolt. They don’t relax no matter how gently Howon tries to touch. “Someday,” Howon begins, cradling Sunggyu’s cheek, running a hand through his hair, “we’ll be enemies.” Rivals, right to the end.
Howon smiles bitterly and turns away.
In the midst of all the smoke and chaos, they find each other again, in the observatory on the main building’s top floor. Sunggyu’s face is solemn but firm, and Howon knows that he won’t be able to convince him, not now, not ever.
“Want to spar?” Howon says, lightning pulsing outwards from his feet.
Sunggyu’s eyes flash, and then he’s charging, spears of light fanning out behind him like a halo.
It’s difficult now that Howon’s sworn off magic, and Sunggyu is relentless with his attacks, following a stab with a lightning bolt with fire suddenly erupting from the ground. Howon avoids those, and multiple times he’s had the opportunity to shoot, but his finger on the trigger never pulls, and Sunggyu is always, already someplace else before Howon can think to do it again.
Three minutes. Nothing has changed.
He’s lying by Sunggyu’s folded knees at the end of it, staring up at the other man’s face, then further up at the moon shining past the observatory’s glass ceiling. His Sunggyu, he knows, in some foregone timeline, is looking up at this same moon too. It’s beautiful. It’s something they can agree on for once, Howon is sure.
“Are you going to kill me?” Howon asks the man by his side.
“No,” this Sunggyu answers, after a moment. “But you don’t need to di-”
Then Howon calls his magic for one last time, and blood splatters on Sunggyu’s face. His eyes are wide, and his mouth is frozen in a silent gasp. He screams.
“I’m sorry,” Howon croaks, through the gaping cut running from his side to his throat. He feels like he’s drowning and burning at the same time, and each breath hurts, but with every word he speaks the world turns brighter, and brighter. “I’m a coward. But living without you…”
“Honestly,” Sunggyu murmurs.
They’re standing behind a desk. Sunggyu is guiding one of Howon’s hands to a glass funnel, and the other one to a bowl of featherdust. “You’re hopeless without me.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Howon says back, rolling his eyes as they pour the featherdust into the flask. Then as Sunggyu moves away, Howon pulls him back, cradling Sunggyu's hand to his face. "I know." He hides his eyes behind Sunggyu's fingers and breathes, mouths into his palm, “I know,” and Sunggyu laughs at the brush of Howon's lips. Howon smiles.
Light shines from inside the flask, and then the two of them are flying.
fin.
- masterlist + requests - watch - join - ao3 -
there are really only three ways this will end for the world: either howon gives in and lives, he never does and fails, or he never does and succeeds. well.
explores similar themes in an older exo work of mine (“i’ll give it all to you, someday”, which i hope to very heavily revise someday otl), but hopefully in a more complete manner. if you need an ear or a shoulder, feel free to message me, or anyone else you feel you can talk to. there is always someone who will listen :)
this is the… second… time i have killed sunggyu lol. darling, never doubt that ilu. ;w;
any comments are appreciated <3