Round 3: Mania
Title: Mania
Team: AU
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Infinite
Pairing: Sungyeol, Sungyeol/others
Summary: Sungyeol becomes a chewing gum-tester. Based off Wrigley’s products.
Prompt Used: Infinite - Before The Dawn
Sungyeol notices the man standing beside him first. He sneaks into Sungyeol’s side-view, carrying a briefcase that keeps banging into his stiff suit. When he opens the clasp, Sungyeol expects to see manila packet envelopes and a fountain pen that’s only been used for signatures.
But he sees packs of gums. Rows and rows, and flavors and flavors. His mouth suddenly feels dirty, and he thinks that he wouldn’t mind asking for a piece.
“Want one?”
Sungyeol pauses his music and slips off his headphones. They almost drop from the neck they’re hanging loosely from. “What?”
“A piece. Have a piece,” the guy says, throwing a pack at him. “It still hasn’t been opened. It’s not poisoned.”
“Look, it’s not like my mom warned me not to take things from strangers, just that it’s not in my nature to-”
The guy holds out a card to him. Sungyeol looks closely, and sees the name, address, and contact numbers and email addresses.
“Think of it as a survey. Try a stick and tell me how you think of it,” the guy says.
Sungyeol hesitantly opens the box, and hears the gum wrappers rustle inside. He takes one, unwraps it, and holds the stick of gum in front of his mouth.
“Nice wrapper design, by the way,” Sungyeol says. Then he pops it in.
“How does it feel?” the guy asks.
Sungyeol feels the stick of gum slide towards his canines, and the burn of his saliva mixing with it. He thinks of the guy’s question again: how does it feel, not taste.
“Feels good,” he answers, and tries to pass the pack back. The guy pushes it back towards him.
“Keep it,” the guy says. “You want a chance to get a lot more?”
“At first, I thought he was trying to sell me something,” Sungyeol says. “Then it turns out he was giving me an opportunity.”
His friends shake their heads and laugh at hearing his story. Of course, it’s the friends that know what they want to do, which universities they’re heading to, which careers they’re studying for. Telling them about yesterday isn’t much better than telling them that his original plan was to go to sleep and mow lawns.
“It’s cool what you’re going to do,” Sungjong says, letting Sungyeol go out the class before him first. “It’s like when elementary school teachers tell you that you can be a videogame tester.”
Sungyeol tries to seem excited, but ends up shrugging his shoulders. He used to want to pursue acting, but that fell off. “It’s just something to do before I figure things out.”
He leaves school, walking home by himself. There’s a mailbox he passes by and he shoves the tester application down inside it.
“Why is it so dark in here?” Sungyeol asks, lying on this thing that looks and feels like a dentist chair. He shakes his legs and twists his arm until the person in the lab coat grabs his limbs and pins them to the dentist chair. Sungyeol stops and looks up at the only light at the top of the high ceiling.
“When you can’t see, your other senses do it for you,” the person in-charge says.
Someone pushes a stick of gum into his hand. “Tell us how you feel.”
A little weirded out, Sungyeol thinks, but forgets that they want him to answer after he chews it. He slips it in, and flattens it to the roof of his mouth before chewing it up.
“It feels kind of hot,” Sungyeol says, voice breaking up in shallow breaths. The only thing that feels cool is the thermometers they stick into his mouth, ear, and underarm.
“His temperature’s 102,” he hears one of them say, and listens to each one of them scribbling on his clipboard.
“I’m burning up-oh, wait,” Sungyeol says, lip quivering. “It’s cool now. It’s cold.”
Someone helps lift him up off the chair, popping his clinging beads of sweat with their plastic gloves. “How does it feel? On a scale of 1 to 10.”
Sungyeol blinks, and the tears surge. “10.”
He goes through experiments once a day. Except it doesn’t feel like a real experiment because the process is just to chew first, then explain his reactions. The first experiment dipped him into lava and put him through a cold shower. Another experiment made him feel like he’s flying. The next gave him a cold sweat and goosebumps. They don’t expect him to go into detail when he has to explain. The last one, the one that put him on a roller coaster ride, left him babbling.
“I think you’re ready,” the lab doctor tells him, applying a stethoscope to his chest.
“Ready for what?” Sungyeol asks.
“A little special project,” the doctor answers. “The maker’s been coming up with it ever since he was in high school. All these experiments you’ve been doing? Small stuff compared to the next big thing.”
“Glad to do my part,” Sungyeol mumbles. Something collides with his ribs, but he doesn’t know what.
“Sorry, that must have felt cold,” the doctor mumbles.
“What felt cold?”
“The stethoscope. Couldn’t you feel it?”
Sungyeol stares ahead and spits out the half-truth. “I felt it. I did.”
There are two other boys. They’re shorter than him, but that’s all they have in comparison with each other. One boy likes to laugh at Sungyeol dazing out and bumping into the walls. The other boy likes to steer clear of him and sometimes turns his head at a certain degree to see what Sungyeol’s doing.
Sungyeol is paired up with the first boy in a trial run. While they’re being strapped to their chairs, Sungyeol twists his head and notices the other boy’s breathing rate, his skin lighted by the dark lights, and the relaxation of his shoulders. Sungyeol’s eyes become sore from observing, but the darkness that immerses them lessens the strain.
After the experiment is over, and they’re both given towels and water bottles, they sit across from each other in some type of waiting room that doesn’t have much. No magazines, no tv, not even a multi-colored abacus to amuse themselves with.
“Have you been here for a long time?” Sungyeol asks, breaking the ice. The other boy shakes his half-empty water bottle, and the chunk of ice bounces around inside.
“A year? What about you?”
“A couple months after I graduated. Didn’t have anything better to do when the guy offered that I become a test dummy,” Sungyeol leans forward, setting the water bottle down on the table separating them. “A year. Wow. How did you end up here?”
The other guy puts down his water bottle also, and shrugs his shoulders, a gesture Sungyeol’s too familiar with. “I was supposed to be a model. An advertising scheme before it became experiments.”
Sungyeol opens his mouth, but pauses before asking the question. “What’s your name? Mine’s Sungyeol.”
The other boy looks at him blankly, making it more complicated than it should be. He finally answers, “It’s Myungsoo.”
Did you have dreams before, Sungyeol originally wanted to ask, but he changed his mind.
“Woohyun’s been here since forever,” Myungsoo tells him. Sungyeol knows Woohyun, sort of. He’s an offhand comment when the lab experts are comparing the both of them (“You’re more in stasis than Woohyun” “Woohyun didn’t react as harshly”). Not that they also don’t compare Sungyeol with Myungsoo, but they mention Woohyun more. From what Sungyeol can observe, Woohyun wouldn’t like him. They’re too different.
“So of course he’ll be part of the next experiment,” Myungsoo says. Sungyeol already knows what he’s talking about. It’s thrown around in every conversation and whisper.
“You mean that idea?” Sungyeol asks.
Myungsoo nods, before someone fetches for him and he has to be excused for an individual experiment. Before Sungyeol has to leave for his own, they give him a plate of food. He bites into a soft bagel that doesn’t taste like anything, and abandons the rest. He doesn’t understand the point of eating something plain, when he can taste something minty, something cinnamon, something berry. What’s the point if they already give him everything?
“This experiment is going to be a little different.”
Sungyeol’s only half-listening. It’s the first time he’s in extra-close proximity with Woohyun, and from the couple of glances he sneaks at him, Woohyun looks sort of like this actor whose dramas Sungyeol used to watch.
“We’re going to signal for you to tell us what you see. Not what you feel, but what you see,” the lab expert instructs them. “Describe us in detail what the image in front of you appears.”
“Okay?” he repeats, applying the last wire to Sungyeol’s skull.
“Okay,” all three of them answer back. Sungyeol sees Woohyun frown. He must have said it the loudest.
They’re all given the idea, all of its complexity meshed into a single piece of gum. Sungyeol feels it, trying to get a sense of its dryness like the first time. But his fingers rub and rub without telling him anything. He pops it in his mouth. Maybe he’ll feel something after he chews.
His eyes form an image so fast, that his breath hitches and his stomach buckles from suddenly feeling something after the long wait. An eagle formed from ink blots flies up and spreads it liquid wings out. A giant Rorschach test.
“Number 1, what do you see?” he hears them ask Myungsoo.
“A-a building,” Myungsoo stammers. His voice only cracks when he’s singing loudly.
“What kind of building?”
“Few windows. They’re all barred. It looks like it’s falling apart.”
“A penitentiary?”
“Yeah,” Myungsoo answers quickly. “I’d say it was.”
“Number 2, what do you see?”
“An eagle. It’s facing me, looking down at me. It’s flying up.”
Sungyeol hears them scribble, catches the word “stasis” before they shut off the microphones.
“Number 3, what do you see-”
“A man. I can’t see his face. He’s wearing a mask,” Woohyun answers before they can finish.
“I see the man too,” Myungsoo whispers, but only Sungyeol is in the right range to hear him. He looks away from his own image and stares up at the giant inkblots in front of Woohyun. He sees only the same eagle, not the man Woohyun describes.
Sungyeol goes through more trials of the same experiment, except without Myungsoo and Woohyun accompanying him. He’s by himself when he sees and describes an octopus and a daisy. Being alone is okay until the images minimize and his senses return to being dull. When he sees, not feels, people taking the wires off him, he realizes he hasn’t heard Myungsoo’s laugh in a while.
“You look like you have a question,” the lab expert tells him.
“Hm? Oh. Uh,” Sungyeol bites his lip. “Can I go to the restroom?”
After he’s balanced, he roams the hallways. The only colors are in his shirt and jeans. The sound of his pacing bounces off the walls, until muffled noises come and clash. Sungyeol walks slowly until he’s standing at the exact place where the noises are loudest. He’s never heard a noise louder than a worker dropping his pen.
When a door in the wall opens, Sungyeol takes a turn and hides in a shadow two walls make. Two people in lab coats pass by, talking at a higher volume than his beating heart.
“Maybe if we change the formula, they’ll stop fighting.”
“What if fighting is the reaction we’re looking for?”
As soon as they’re only silhouettes at the end of the stretching wall, Sungyeol walks out of the dead end and comes up to the door. At first, he pushes it, but accidentally slams his arm in it before figuring out that he has to pull. He pulls opens the door, just a crack, and looks inside.
His first reaction is to laugh. The two guys fighting each other remind him of fights at school.
His second reaction is to laugh harder. He realizes it’s Woohyun who is beating up Myungsoo, and it looks so ridiculous, Woohyun punching Myungsoo’s stomach and the amount of fake blood splurging out of his mouth.
His third reaction is to laugh until it scratches his throat and fades.
His fourth reaction is to close the door, slide his back down the door, and think harder about what he’s just seen.
Sungyeol stands inside a room. He gazes at the Stanford diploma and the awards hanging up on the walls to pass the time, until he hears the door open behind him.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” It’s the same guy who offered him a stick of gum that day. The creater, the thinker behind the experiments.
Sungyeol tries to mutter a “no problem” or a “don’t worry about it,” but his voice wants to save itself for later. The creator motions toward an empty seat and takes the one behind the wooden desk. Sungyeol pulls it back and sits down. It’s been a long time since he sat with his back straight.
“I heard you’ve been producing results. Of course, I knew that you would the first time we met,” the man says, folding his hands in his lap.
“I,” Sungyeol starts. “I would have asked someone else this, but I think only you know.”
“Ask me. If I know, I’ll tell you,” the man replies.
Sungyeol leans forward, and tries to put more strength into his voice. “What exactly are you trying to sell? It’s not gum, isn’t it?”
“What is it exactly?” the creator rearranges his question. “Well, how did it make you feel? It made you feel good, right?”
Sungyeol nods, just like the procedure.
“I’m making something that makes people feel good. That’s your answer.”
“Then what went wrong with Myungsoo and Woohyun? That wasn’t something good.”
“See,” the creator pushes himself back and starts pulling out drawers. “I wanted to make people feel unstoppable. Fearless. People your age, they’re scared. They don’t know what’s ahead in their future. They’re worried about school, being on their own, and lots of other things. Wouldn’t it be nice if you weren’t scared?”
“That doesn’t explain the other two.”
“We’re still trying to figure it out. We will figure it out. All we know is that they were too conflicted. You came out alright because you’re not. Your results came out perfect-”
“You can’t give people feelings,” Sungyeol interrupts. He tunes out every voice besides the one in his head.
“Wait. Let me show you something. Let me show you what you could be a part of-”
“I’m forgetting things,” Sungyeol says, putting a hand up to his forehead.
“My idea’s going to be huge, and you just want to pass up the chance-”
“I’m forgetting to eat,” Sungyeol says, reaching under his shirt. His fingers skim the vastness of his stomach, searching for his baby fat. He used to be on the internet just to look up how to get rid of it. Now his shirt’s a little too loose over his waist, and not in a way he likes.
“You’re going to be part of a phenomena,” the creator says, laying out his charts and plans on his huge corporate desk. Drawings of electrodes travelling to the brain. Dusty stacks of college papers. Sungyeol pushes away the theories on aspartame and articles on inkblot tests. The creator grabs them back and tries to rub out the folds Sungyeol’s hands made.
“I’m forgetting myself,” Sungyeol says. He sits in his chair quietly. They both sit there quietly, until Sungyeol can actually hear himself drumming his fingers on his armrest. When the sound of something real pulses through his ears, he stands up. Dusts his pants off with numb fingers, and walks out with the option of leaving, something Myungsoo and Woohyun don’t have.
“I haven’t seen you in forever.”
Sungyeol drops the garden hose. His toes pick up blades of grass until he turns off the faucet. He then faces Sungjong.
“It’s nice seeing you again, too,” Sungyeol says, and waves.
They stand a distance from each other. Sungyeol gets the message that Sungjong is unsure of the next thing to say, so he grabs the hose off the grass and splashes Sungjong’s jeans with the runoff water.
“Hey!” Sungjong shouts, holding out his leg and trying to shake the water off.
Sungyeol laughs. “You’re still in school. Suck it up.”
“You still haven’t figured things out,” Sungjong says, aiming blades of grass into Sungyeol’s mouth. “Doesn’t make you any better than me.”
Sungyeol stares away from the ground, and redirects it to the sky. There’s no trick, no false feeling behind what he’s seeing. “Hey, you can see the sunset from here.”
Sungjong stares at where Sungyeol’s pointing. “That’s dawn. Didn’t you notice that when you were watering your mom’s flowers in the dark?”
Poll Round 3: Mania
Team: AU
Rating: PG-13
Fandom: Infinite
Pairing: Sungyeol, Sungyeol/others
Summary: Sungyeol becomes a chewing gum-tester. Based off Wrigley’s products.
Prompt Used: Infinite - Before The Dawn
Sungyeol notices the man standing beside him first. He sneaks into Sungyeol’s side-view, carrying a briefcase that keeps banging into his stiff suit. When he opens the clasp, Sungyeol expects to see manila packet envelopes and a fountain pen that’s only been used for signatures.
But he sees packs of gums. Rows and rows, and flavors and flavors. His mouth suddenly feels dirty, and he thinks that he wouldn’t mind asking for a piece.
“Want one?”
Sungyeol pauses his music and slips off his headphones. They almost drop from the neck they’re hanging loosely from. “What?”
“A piece. Have a piece,” the guy says, throwing a pack at him. “It still hasn’t been opened. It’s not poisoned.”
“Look, it’s not like my mom warned me not to take things from strangers, just that it’s not in my nature to-”
The guy holds out a card to him. Sungyeol looks closely, and sees the name, address, and contact numbers and email addresses.
“Think of it as a survey. Try a stick and tell me how you think of it,” the guy says.
Sungyeol hesitantly opens the box, and hears the gum wrappers rustle inside. He takes one, unwraps it, and holds the stick of gum in front of his mouth.
“Nice wrapper design, by the way,” Sungyeol says. Then he pops it in.
“How does it feel?” the guy asks.
Sungyeol feels the stick of gum slide towards his canines, and the burn of his saliva mixing with it. He thinks of the guy’s question again: how does it feel, not taste.
“Feels good,” he answers, and tries to pass the pack back. The guy pushes it back towards him.
“Keep it,” the guy says. “You want a chance to get a lot more?”
“At first, I thought he was trying to sell me something,” Sungyeol says. “Then it turns out he was giving me an opportunity.”
His friends shake their heads and laugh at hearing his story. Of course, it’s the friends that know what they want to do, which universities they’re heading to, which careers they’re studying for. Telling them about yesterday isn’t much better than telling them that his original plan was to go to sleep and mow lawns.
“It’s cool what you’re going to do,” Sungjong says, letting Sungyeol go out the class before him first. “It’s like when elementary school teachers tell you that you can be a videogame tester.”
Sungyeol tries to seem excited, but ends up shrugging his shoulders. He used to want to pursue acting, but that fell off. “It’s just something to do before I figure things out.”
He leaves school, walking home by himself. There’s a mailbox he passes by and he shoves the tester application down inside it.
“Why is it so dark in here?” Sungyeol asks, lying on this thing that looks and feels like a dentist chair. He shakes his legs and twists his arm until the person in the lab coat grabs his limbs and pins them to the dentist chair. Sungyeol stops and looks up at the only light at the top of the high ceiling.
“When you can’t see, your other senses do it for you,” the person in-charge says.
Someone pushes a stick of gum into his hand. “Tell us how you feel.”
A little weirded out, Sungyeol thinks, but forgets that they want him to answer after he chews it. He slips it in, and flattens it to the roof of his mouth before chewing it up.
“It feels kind of hot,” Sungyeol says, voice breaking up in shallow breaths. The only thing that feels cool is the thermometers they stick into his mouth, ear, and underarm.
“His temperature’s 102,” he hears one of them say, and listens to each one of them scribbling on his clipboard.
“I’m burning up-oh, wait,” Sungyeol says, lip quivering. “It’s cool now. It’s cold.”
Someone helps lift him up off the chair, popping his clinging beads of sweat with their plastic gloves. “How does it feel? On a scale of 1 to 10.”
Sungyeol blinks, and the tears surge. “10.”
He goes through experiments once a day. Except it doesn’t feel like a real experiment because the process is just to chew first, then explain his reactions. The first experiment dipped him into lava and put him through a cold shower. Another experiment made him feel like he’s flying. The next gave him a cold sweat and goosebumps. They don’t expect him to go into detail when he has to explain. The last one, the one that put him on a roller coaster ride, left him babbling.
“I think you’re ready,” the lab doctor tells him, applying a stethoscope to his chest.
“Ready for what?” Sungyeol asks.
“A little special project,” the doctor answers. “The maker’s been coming up with it ever since he was in high school. All these experiments you’ve been doing? Small stuff compared to the next big thing.”
“Glad to do my part,” Sungyeol mumbles. Something collides with his ribs, but he doesn’t know what.
“Sorry, that must have felt cold,” the doctor mumbles.
“What felt cold?”
“The stethoscope. Couldn’t you feel it?”
Sungyeol stares ahead and spits out the half-truth. “I felt it. I did.”
There are two other boys. They’re shorter than him, but that’s all they have in comparison with each other. One boy likes to laugh at Sungyeol dazing out and bumping into the walls. The other boy likes to steer clear of him and sometimes turns his head at a certain degree to see what Sungyeol’s doing.
Sungyeol is paired up with the first boy in a trial run. While they’re being strapped to their chairs, Sungyeol twists his head and notices the other boy’s breathing rate, his skin lighted by the dark lights, and the relaxation of his shoulders. Sungyeol’s eyes become sore from observing, but the darkness that immerses them lessens the strain.
After the experiment is over, and they’re both given towels and water bottles, they sit across from each other in some type of waiting room that doesn’t have much. No magazines, no tv, not even a multi-colored abacus to amuse themselves with.
“Have you been here for a long time?” Sungyeol asks, breaking the ice. The other boy shakes his half-empty water bottle, and the chunk of ice bounces around inside.
“A year? What about you?”
“A couple months after I graduated. Didn’t have anything better to do when the guy offered that I become a test dummy,” Sungyeol leans forward, setting the water bottle down on the table separating them. “A year. Wow. How did you end up here?”
The other guy puts down his water bottle also, and shrugs his shoulders, a gesture Sungyeol’s too familiar with. “I was supposed to be a model. An advertising scheme before it became experiments.”
Sungyeol opens his mouth, but pauses before asking the question. “What’s your name? Mine’s Sungyeol.”
The other boy looks at him blankly, making it more complicated than it should be. He finally answers, “It’s Myungsoo.”
Did you have dreams before, Sungyeol originally wanted to ask, but he changed his mind.
“Woohyun’s been here since forever,” Myungsoo tells him. Sungyeol knows Woohyun, sort of. He’s an offhand comment when the lab experts are comparing the both of them (“You’re more in stasis than Woohyun” “Woohyun didn’t react as harshly”). Not that they also don’t compare Sungyeol with Myungsoo, but they mention Woohyun more. From what Sungyeol can observe, Woohyun wouldn’t like him. They’re too different.
“So of course he’ll be part of the next experiment,” Myungsoo says. Sungyeol already knows what he’s talking about. It’s thrown around in every conversation and whisper.
“You mean that idea?” Sungyeol asks.
Myungsoo nods, before someone fetches for him and he has to be excused for an individual experiment. Before Sungyeol has to leave for his own, they give him a plate of food. He bites into a soft bagel that doesn’t taste like anything, and abandons the rest. He doesn’t understand the point of eating something plain, when he can taste something minty, something cinnamon, something berry. What’s the point if they already give him everything?
“This experiment is going to be a little different.”
Sungyeol’s only half-listening. It’s the first time he’s in extra-close proximity with Woohyun, and from the couple of glances he sneaks at him, Woohyun looks sort of like this actor whose dramas Sungyeol used to watch.
“We’re going to signal for you to tell us what you see. Not what you feel, but what you see,” the lab expert instructs them. “Describe us in detail what the image in front of you appears.”
“Okay?” he repeats, applying the last wire to Sungyeol’s skull.
“Okay,” all three of them answer back. Sungyeol sees Woohyun frown. He must have said it the loudest.
They’re all given the idea, all of its complexity meshed into a single piece of gum. Sungyeol feels it, trying to get a sense of its dryness like the first time. But his fingers rub and rub without telling him anything. He pops it in his mouth. Maybe he’ll feel something after he chews.
His eyes form an image so fast, that his breath hitches and his stomach buckles from suddenly feeling something after the long wait. An eagle formed from ink blots flies up and spreads it liquid wings out. A giant Rorschach test.
“Number 1, what do you see?” he hears them ask Myungsoo.
“A-a building,” Myungsoo stammers. His voice only cracks when he’s singing loudly.
“What kind of building?”
“Few windows. They’re all barred. It looks like it’s falling apart.”
“A penitentiary?”
“Yeah,” Myungsoo answers quickly. “I’d say it was.”
“Number 2, what do you see?”
“An eagle. It’s facing me, looking down at me. It’s flying up.”
Sungyeol hears them scribble, catches the word “stasis” before they shut off the microphones.
“Number 3, what do you see-”
“A man. I can’t see his face. He’s wearing a mask,” Woohyun answers before they can finish.
“I see the man too,” Myungsoo whispers, but only Sungyeol is in the right range to hear him. He looks away from his own image and stares up at the giant inkblots in front of Woohyun. He sees only the same eagle, not the man Woohyun describes.
Sungyeol goes through more trials of the same experiment, except without Myungsoo and Woohyun accompanying him. He’s by himself when he sees and describes an octopus and a daisy. Being alone is okay until the images minimize and his senses return to being dull. When he sees, not feels, people taking the wires off him, he realizes he hasn’t heard Myungsoo’s laugh in a while.
“You look like you have a question,” the lab expert tells him.
“Hm? Oh. Uh,” Sungyeol bites his lip. “Can I go to the restroom?”
After he’s balanced, he roams the hallways. The only colors are in his shirt and jeans. The sound of his pacing bounces off the walls, until muffled noises come and clash. Sungyeol walks slowly until he’s standing at the exact place where the noises are loudest. He’s never heard a noise louder than a worker dropping his pen.
When a door in the wall opens, Sungyeol takes a turn and hides in a shadow two walls make. Two people in lab coats pass by, talking at a higher volume than his beating heart.
“Maybe if we change the formula, they’ll stop fighting.”
“What if fighting is the reaction we’re looking for?”
As soon as they’re only silhouettes at the end of the stretching wall, Sungyeol walks out of the dead end and comes up to the door. At first, he pushes it, but accidentally slams his arm in it before figuring out that he has to pull. He pulls opens the door, just a crack, and looks inside.
His first reaction is to laugh. The two guys fighting each other remind him of fights at school.
His second reaction is to laugh harder. He realizes it’s Woohyun who is beating up Myungsoo, and it looks so ridiculous, Woohyun punching Myungsoo’s stomach and the amount of fake blood splurging out of his mouth.
His third reaction is to laugh until it scratches his throat and fades.
His fourth reaction is to close the door, slide his back down the door, and think harder about what he’s just seen.
Sungyeol stands inside a room. He gazes at the Stanford diploma and the awards hanging up on the walls to pass the time, until he hears the door open behind him.
“Sorry to keep you waiting.” It’s the same guy who offered him a stick of gum that day. The creater, the thinker behind the experiments.
Sungyeol tries to mutter a “no problem” or a “don’t worry about it,” but his voice wants to save itself for later. The creator motions toward an empty seat and takes the one behind the wooden desk. Sungyeol pulls it back and sits down. It’s been a long time since he sat with his back straight.
“I heard you’ve been producing results. Of course, I knew that you would the first time we met,” the man says, folding his hands in his lap.
“I,” Sungyeol starts. “I would have asked someone else this, but I think only you know.”
“Ask me. If I know, I’ll tell you,” the man replies.
Sungyeol leans forward, and tries to put more strength into his voice. “What exactly are you trying to sell? It’s not gum, isn’t it?”
“What is it exactly?” the creator rearranges his question. “Well, how did it make you feel? It made you feel good, right?”
Sungyeol nods, just like the procedure.
“I’m making something that makes people feel good. That’s your answer.”
“Then what went wrong with Myungsoo and Woohyun? That wasn’t something good.”
“See,” the creator pushes himself back and starts pulling out drawers. “I wanted to make people feel unstoppable. Fearless. People your age, they’re scared. They don’t know what’s ahead in their future. They’re worried about school, being on their own, and lots of other things. Wouldn’t it be nice if you weren’t scared?”
“That doesn’t explain the other two.”
“We’re still trying to figure it out. We will figure it out. All we know is that they were too conflicted. You came out alright because you’re not. Your results came out perfect-”
“You can’t give people feelings,” Sungyeol interrupts. He tunes out every voice besides the one in his head.
“Wait. Let me show you something. Let me show you what you could be a part of-”
“I’m forgetting things,” Sungyeol says, putting a hand up to his forehead.
“My idea’s going to be huge, and you just want to pass up the chance-”
“I’m forgetting to eat,” Sungyeol says, reaching under his shirt. His fingers skim the vastness of his stomach, searching for his baby fat. He used to be on the internet just to look up how to get rid of it. Now his shirt’s a little too loose over his waist, and not in a way he likes.
“You’re going to be part of a phenomena,” the creator says, laying out his charts and plans on his huge corporate desk. Drawings of electrodes travelling to the brain. Dusty stacks of college papers. Sungyeol pushes away the theories on aspartame and articles on inkblot tests. The creator grabs them back and tries to rub out the folds Sungyeol’s hands made.
“I’m forgetting myself,” Sungyeol says. He sits in his chair quietly. They both sit there quietly, until Sungyeol can actually hear himself drumming his fingers on his armrest. When the sound of something real pulses through his ears, he stands up. Dusts his pants off with numb fingers, and walks out with the option of leaving, something Myungsoo and Woohyun don’t have.
“I haven’t seen you in forever.”
Sungyeol drops the garden hose. His toes pick up blades of grass until he turns off the faucet. He then faces Sungjong.
“It’s nice seeing you again, too,” Sungyeol says, and waves.
They stand a distance from each other. Sungyeol gets the message that Sungjong is unsure of the next thing to say, so he grabs the hose off the grass and splashes Sungjong’s jeans with the runoff water.
“Hey!” Sungjong shouts, holding out his leg and trying to shake the water off.
Sungyeol laughs. “You’re still in school. Suck it up.”
“You still haven’t figured things out,” Sungjong says, aiming blades of grass into Sungyeol’s mouth. “Doesn’t make you any better than me.”
Sungyeol stares away from the ground, and redirects it to the sky. There’s no trick, no false feeling behind what he’s seeing. “Hey, you can see the sunset from here.”
Sungjong stares at where Sungyeol’s pointing. “That’s dawn. Didn’t you notice that when you were watering your mom’s flowers in the dark?”
Poll Round 3: Mania