Virtuality Complex (2 / 2)
Once the dreams start coming, they won’t stop. The most frequent one is the one in the coffee shop, but there are others too - individual situations he’s experienced the various people he’s “dated” on DateMe, with Minseok replacing the other avatars and Kyungsoo held captive, unable to act for himself. He watches Minseok walk away from him again, and again, and again.
Kyungsoo stops sleeping.
It’s not that hard. He just increases his coffee intake and holds out on sleep until he reaches the point where he no longer feels tired. He picks up energy drinks from the convenience store across the street to supplement the coffee, and uses the hours he would normally spend sleeping to work on the lesson plans he’s been sorely neglecting.
Chanyeol is holed up in the lab, too busy working on his studies to spend much time at home. Without Chanyeol around, Kyungsoo doesn’t even receive any nagging. Everything is essentially perfect.
Kyungsoo knows that he’ll have to sleep again at some point, but he hopes that by the time that happens he’ll be too exhausted to even dream. It’s logical, he tells himself, even if that logic is only held together by the thinnest of threads.
---
On his third day without sleep, Kyungsoo starts calling his students by the wrong names. That has the class perking up, straightening from their bored slouches and blinking at him in surprise. Do Kyungsoo may not be a particularly good teacher, in fact he’s well known for being rather boring, but he is never wrong. Not about the subject matter he teaches, not about smaller details like students’ names. Kyungsoo doesn’t notice the extra attention, though - he’s too busy convincing himself that he didn’t see Byun_Baek’s avatar sitting in the back of the classroom.
Byun_Baek is just the first. For the rest of the evening and into the next day, avatars Kyungsoo has previously “dated” appear every time Kyungsoo turns around. They’re in the subway train he takes home from work, in the convenience store he stops by for more energy drinks, in the hallway of his apartment complex.
Kyungsoo slams his apartment door in xingstar’s face and all but sprints for his room. He collapses into his desk chair and fishes an energy drink out of the plastic bag from the convenience store. His hands shake as he pops it open.
When Kyungsoo sleeps, Minseok becomes part of the virtual world. But now when Kyungsoo is awake, the virtual world is becoming part of the real world. Kyungsoo has completely lost the balance he’s worked so hard to perfect, and the lines he’s spent so long creating are blurring until there’s not so much as a smudge left.
---
On the fourth day, Kyungsoo meets Minseok at a bar after work. He can barely even remember what he had the students do in class today. In fact, he’s not even quite sure what day of the week it is. Friday, he thinks, based on the number of people crowded into the bar. But wasn’t yesterday Tuesday? The room spins a bit, and it’s all Kyungsoo can do to keep his balance. At least Minseok’s hand on his shoulder is reassuringly steady.
“Are you feeling okay?” Minseok’s face swims into his field of vision, and Kyungsoo does his best to smile reassuringly. Minseok doesn’t seem convinced. “Do you have a fever?”
“I’m fine,” Kyungsoo insists, waving away the hand Minseok tries to hold to his forehead. “I just haven’t been sleeping well.”
Minseok frowns. “Maybe you should go home,” he says. “We can just meet another time-”
“No!” Kyungsoo says, loud. Minseok’s eyes widen, and he pulls back slightly. Kyungsoo doesn’t even notice. In his mind, all he can see are his dreams, with Minseok leaving over, and over, and over… “No, I told you, I’m fine. Let’s get something to drink and grab some seats.”
Kyungsoo turns away from Minseok, intent on going to order a drink, and freezes. There, standing behind the bar and pouring out a brightly colored cocktail, is chenchen. Kyungsoo blinks hard. Usually that’s enough to dissolve the hallucinations, but when Kyungsoo opens his eyes the bartender is still the splitting image of chenchen’s avatar, right down to the thick-rimmed glasses and the horrendous middle-parted hair. Kyungsoo can feel the blood rush to his head, making his ears pound and his vision blur. This isn’t right, chenchen is supposed to disappear, why isn’t he disappearing?
“Watch out!” Minseok calls, lunging forward as Kyungsoo stumbles. Kyungsoo doesn’t see or hear him. His vision narrows down until the bartender is the only thing in it. The bartender, however, does hear Minseok, and looks up. He locks eyes with Kyungsoo, and the entire world tilts. The bartender pixelates, and now chenchen is staring back at him. “I can only come on in the morning, because I work nights,” chenchen says and no, it’s not right, this isn’t right, it’s not-
---
Chanyeol forgot to properly turn off his goddamn alarm clock again. Kyungsoo can hear the incessant beeping all the way from his room. Kyungsoo groans and scrunches his eyes shut more tightly. He’s going to kill Chanyeol later, and possibly throw the alarm clock out the window too.
It’s odd, though; the beeping seems a bit too slow. And the pitch isn’t quite right, either.
Kyungsoo opens his eyes, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. He isn’t at home at all, but in a hospital ward. He’s lying on a bed at the end of a line of other beds. He isn’t the only one in there, but there seem to be only one or two other patients, still deep in sleep. Sitting next to Kyungsoo’s bed in an uncomfortable-looking plastic chair is Minseok. He has his phone in his hands, as if he’d been in the middle of using it, but now he’s looking at Kyungsoo.
“Good morning,” Minseok says. His smile is strained. “Did you sleep well?”
Morning? Kyungsoo feels his eyes widen, and he jerks his head around to look at the window. Sure enough, sunlight is streaming in through the blinds. Shit.
“It must have been refreshing,” Minseok continues. His tone is light, but deceptively so. It is completely devoid of the playful undertone it usually has. “I mean, the doctor said it was likely you hadn’t slept in at least 72 hours.”
Kyungsoo winces. He wants to deny it, or defend himself, but what is there to say? It’s true. Minseok looks like he has something else he wants to say, and Kyungsoo steels himself. Instead, Minseok remains silent and reaches over to press the call button near Kyungsoo’s head.
They sit in awkward silence, Minseok’s eyes fixed on Kyungsoo and Kyungsoo’s eyes fixed on the ceiling, until a nurse bustles in with a clipboard. “Good morning, Mr. Do,” she chirps. “It’s so nice to see you awake! We were quite worried about you, you know.” All at once Kyungsoo realizes that he has a massive headache. The nurse’s voice is piercing through his skull. “We had to practically chase your friend out last night,” the nurse continues brightly, unaware of Kyungsoo’s pain.
Kyungsoo glances over at Minseok, but now Minseok is looking at his phone again instead of Kyungsoo. There are dark circles under his eyes, Kyungsoo now notices, and he’s wearing the same shirt from last night. A knot of guilt forms in the pit of Kyungsoo’s stomach. He wants to say sorry, or at least reach out towards Minseok, or something, but the nurse once again interrupts his thoughts.
“Being made in a lab doesn’t make you invincible,” the nurse tuts with a shake of her head. “It doesn’t matter what’s up here-” she gestures towards his head “-your body is still very much human. You can’t abuse it like this!”
Kyungsoo immediately freezes, blood running cold through his veins. She knows. Of course she knows; they would have checked his ID card first thing, and it’s right on there. In fact, once he processes the initial shock of it, Kyungsoo doesn’t even mind that she knows.
What he does mind is that a quick glance to the side reveals Minseok staring at the nurse with his mouth hanging open slightly. The hospital might have paid close attention to Kyungsoo’s ID, but apparently Minseok had not.
Kyungsoo feels nauseous. If he were in a drama, this would be the point where Kyungsoo jumped up, ripped the IV from his arm, and rushed from the room. As it is, Kyungsoo hates needles, and the thought of pulling one from his arm only intensifies his nausea. Instead of bolting, he continues to lie there, a statue in a hospital gown, as the nurse flits around him. He doesn’t look at Minseok again, can’t look at Minseok again. The nurse most likely wasn’t being malicious, just tactless, but that doesn’t change the fact that now Minseok knows.
Shit, Minseok knows.
The nurse finishes up whatever she was doing, still apparently oblivious to the now frigid atmosphere in the room, and leaves with a promise that a doctor will stop by soon. She closes the door on her way out, and leaves behind a silence that is only broken by the soft snores of one of the room’s other occupants. Kyungsoo fixes his eyes on the ceiling again, breathing through his nose and trying to stave off both the nausea roiling in his stomach and the panic he can feel rising in his chest.
“Were you going to tell me?” Minseok finally asks.
“No,” Kyungsoo says flatly. There’s a water stain on one of the ceiling tiles. Kyungsoo closes his eyes. “No,” he says again, before Minseok has a chance to interrupt. “If I told you, then you would know that I’m fake, that I can never give you what a real person can, and you would realize that you’re wasting your time.” Kyungsoo swallows. “And then you would leave.”
Minseok doesn’t immediately reply. Kyungsoo’s nausea intensifies. He rolls over onto his side, with his back facing Minseok, and curls into a ball. The headache is still there, pounding in time to the beeping of whatever machine it was that had woken him up.
“Were you staying up to play DateMe?” Minseok suddenly says. It’s more of a statement than a question. That’s not exactly it, but Minseok takes Kyungsoo’s silence as an affirmative. “I used your phone to call your roommate, since you’re always saying what a worrywart he is, and he immediately flew into a rage, cursing that site. He stopped by earlier, by the way, but had to leave for class.”
Minseok’s words immediately conjure an image in Kyungsoo’s mind of Chanyeol stomping around the apartment, using his shoulder to hold his phone to his ear so that he can gesture wildly with both hands as he gives his anti-DateMe tirade. Normally, the thought would at least make Kyungsoo smile. Now, it just makes him feel even guiltier. Chanyeol doesn’t deal well with stress - he’s probably making a complete mess of whatever lab he’s in right now.
“You know,” Minseok says, “I don’t care if you want to play on DateMe. And I don’t care about the- that other thing, either. Whether you came from a lab or a womb, you’re still a person. You’re still real, or whatever. And I know that it’s your right to decide whether you want to tell me about… you. Just-”
He pauses. Kyungsoo can hear him inhale deeply and then let it out in a rush.
“I guess I just wish you trusted me more.” There’s a rustling sound, like Minseok is standing. “I have to go now - I got someone to cover the first part of my shift, but she has to go soon. Chanyeol said to call him if you need anything.” Minseok touches Kyungsoo’s shoulder lightly. Even through the covers, it burns. “Please take care of yourself, okay? Text me when you get home, if you want.”
Only after Minseok leaves does Kyungsoo allow the tremors he’s been staving off to wrack through his body. His shoulder stings where Minseok touched it, pulsing along with each echo of Minseok’s words in Kyungsoo’s mind. Kyungsoo is no longer sure if he’s shaking from lingering anxiety and fear or from rage. How dare Minseok speak to him like that, as if he has any idea about Kyungsoo’s life. What gives him the right to expect something like trust in the first place?
You guys have been going out for months now, the ever-logical part of his mind supplies. The absence of a relationship title doesn’t necessarily equate to an absence of feelings. He has every right to be upset. Kyungsoo’s anger immediately dissipates, receding to a dull throb that mixes with all the other things clouding his mind. The nausea is still flaring in his stomach, and his head still aches.
Kyungsoo hasn’t cried since he was five years old and standing in the schoolyard with blood oozing from his skinned knees. Some older kids had pushed him down; they wanted to see if an artificial person would bleed, they said. When Kyungsoo cried at that time, they had just laughed and pushed him down again. Ever since, Kyungsoo has refused to let himself cry. After all, rule one of schoolyard survival is to never show weakness. That rule had kept him alive, and eventually become a reflex. But now, lying alone in a hospital room with his thoughts, he feels tears pricking at the back of his eyelids.
The doctor will be coming in soon, Kyungsoo reminds himself forcefully. Pull yourself together. Kyungsoo can’t let the doctor see him like this. Showing strangers vulnerability is always a risk, even now that he’s no longer the weird outsider with the wrinkled school uniform and the awful bowl cut.
Kyungsoo carefully uncurls himself and rolls over onto his back. His eyes find the water stain on the ceiling again, focuses on it, and he starts his mantra: this isn’t real, none of this is real, nothing you’re feeling is real, so just forget about it.
Over the years Kyungsoo has been able to draw strength from this refrain. Today, though, it feels hollow. He wonders if maybe his younger self hadn’t been so wrong after all, back when he still insisted that he was no different from anyone else, that he and his emotions were real. It doesn’t seem possible that fake emotions could hurt this much.
---
Kyungsoo doesn’t get home until early afternoon. He half-expects to find a hallucinated DateMe avatar waiting for him when he opens the front door, but all that greets him is his empty apartment. Kyungsoo lets out a quiet sigh of relief and shuts the door behind him. He trudges toward his room, taking inventory of the apartment as he goes. Kyungsoo is usually the one to do the cleaning around their home, and he’s been neglecting it for the last… however long, he can’t even remember, but the apartment is spotless. It seems that Chanyeol is a stress-cleaner.
Guilt starts to weigh heavy in Kyungsoo’s stomach again, so he hastens into the kitchen and grabs a water bottle from the fridge - hydration, doctor’s orders - and a bag of chips from the cupboard - food, also doctor’s orders, although, admittedly, she probably hadn’t meant junk food. Then, sustenance in hand, Kyungsoo heads for his room. He dumps everything on his desk including his cell phone and wallet, both of which he fishes from his pocket, and sinks into his desk chair. His hand reaches out on autopilot to turn on his laptop. Technically he’s supposed to get some more rest, but complete bed rest for a few days like the doctor had suggested is out of the question. Kyungsoo has work later, and he can’t afford to miss. A few hours of relaxation will have to suffice.
Kyungsoo pops open the lid on his water bottle and takes a drink while he waits for his laptop to boot up. As soon as he judges that he can safely use his computer without the programs protesting, he maneuvers his cursor over to the DateMe shortcut. Kyungsoo really should log in and let chenchen know what happened. He had, after all, disappeared without any explanation. Even if it had only been for a day, chenchen might be worried.
Just as Kyungsoo’s about to click, his phone buzzes. Kyungsoo pauses and glances over at the lit-up display screen. It’s just another worried text from Chanyeol, but the sight of his phone on his desk suddenly reminds him of what Minseok had said earlier. Text me when you get home.
Kyungsoo hesitates. It would be so easy to open DateMe and lose himself in the simulation until it’s time to go to work. He could play the game, and not text Minseok, and save himself all the confusion and stress and whatever else it is spending time with Minseok is making him feel. He can go back to his world, the one he created for himself, spending all of his time outside of work online, leveling up and chatting with cute avatars. He can continue the cycle, on and on and on, and stick to what he’s used to - what he’s comfortable with, a place where he’s accepted.
Please take care of yourself, okay?
Or Kyungsoo could shut his laptop. He could text Minseok back, apologize, ask to meet up later. He could go outside, find a restaurant to get some real food at, take a walk. Spend his breaks at work actually talking to the other teachers he works with. Make an effort to live in the world everyone else is in. A world that doesn’t always want him, but that he’s stuck with regardless. He could try-
The cursor hovers over the shortcut. The notification light on his phone blinks.
Kyungsoo takes a deep breath.