in a quiet world (redux)
in a quiet world (redux)
gdragon/top
dystopian au; a second take on in a quiet world, a drabble i wrote a long time ago. both are based on the quiet world by jeffrey mcdaniel.
rated r (violence)
3, 589 words
warning: please do not read if violence triggers you.
it's been a long time now
since i've seen you smile
nobody raise your voices
just another night in nantes
-- beirut
The first time they meet, the word quarantine is still in the thousands and Seunghyun is on the verge of drunk.
Jiyong had thought he was like this all the time, that he spilled words as freely as he ordered drinks. He liked the way he used them, deadpan sometimes and silly in others. Seunghyun spent most of that night hunched on a barstool, complaining about how difficult it was to order sushi when every kind of fish had a different name.
“At least they’re not counting syllables,” Seunghyun’d grumbled. Jiyong laughed at that, crow’s feet in a face much too young for them.
“You never know, I mean--”
“I like that.”
“What?”
Seunghyun tapped a finger to his temple. “The wrinkles around your eyes.”
Jiyong blinked.
“I like your mole too.”
“Are you always like this?”
“No,” Seunghyun shrugged, “but I’m kind of drunk, and they say people are more truthful once they’ve had a few beers.”
“So you really like my wrinkles?”
“So you admit that they’re wrinkles.”
“Fuck you,” Jiyong laughed, and Seunghyun’d cupped his face in his hands and kissed him then, tasting of cheap beer and bar peanuts.
"How was I supposed to know you were allergic?" he'd asked at the hospital later, eyeing Jiyong’s swollen mouth.
Jiyong'd grabbed his hand, written now you do on it with marker.
"Is that for future reference?"
Jiyong scribbled sure on his wrist and smeared ointment-stained lips against his cheek.
---
“How do you keep track?” Jiyong asks.
“I don’t.” Seunghyun bounces fingers on his knees, in timing with the sounds of marching on the other side of the park.
Jiyong stares at the hash marks staining his palms and nudges him in the side. “No, for real. Do you use a counter? the electronic ones are kind of expensive.”
“I’m a man of few words,” he declares. His mouth is solemn but his eyes grin wide for him. Jiyong thinks they might not be so different. Maybe their dichotomies fit together the same way their mouths do.
---
When the quarantine tightens into the hundreds, Jiyong begins to carry a thesaurus. He drags out his syllables. His sentences get florid. They ticket him and set court dates and Jiyong goes to protests almost daily. Seunghyun sets counters in his pockets and tags along, because the factory he works at is closed now, and Jiyong’s the only person he talks to anyway.
Eventually the hundreds dwindle into the nineties. Jiyong becomes angry. “Don’t you care?” he’ll spit, and Seunghyun will shrug and wrap fingers around the counter in his pocket, eyes darting away.
“If I didn’t care I wouldn’t come.”
Jiyong frowns but says nothing, arms crossed over his chest. The next time he goes out to picket Seunghyun trails him like a dog, silent and watchful. The obscene sign Jiyong has in his hands gets torn down by an officer and they wrestle him into a van, Seunghyun pushed down into the dirt at their feet.
When he gets out for the last time Seunghyun is waiting with a set of clothes (he’d always waited, he’s always waiting).
“I’ll just change in here,” Jiyong says, but Seunghyun follows him into the bathroom stall, all limbs, tongues and teeth. He moans shamelessly as Seunghyun presses him into the grimy wall, fingers tightening on his arms as Seunghyun works a hand into his pants. He smells of disinfectant and burnt plastic and Seunghyun breathes it all in, bites the taste of it away from his neck and licks it into his own mouth.
They go under the word count that day.
---
In the darkened house they still can’t speak. Words are tracked and tracking means they’ll know where you are, who you are, that you’re a refugee scuttled in a basement with rats and canned fruit for company, that you’re wanted for treason.
Jiyong’s never gone to his court dates and his face is included in every ‘Wanted Dissidents’ sign in the city, but all he does is write I hate that picture on his middle finger. He flips it off from a crack in the curtains. Laughter is never counted and so Seunghyun lets himself smile, mouth pressed into Jiyong’s shoulder as they kneel in front of the window, trying to see without being seen.
For Jiyong, the pens and paper are just as important as the food. He writes until words covers his arms, his legs, his ankles. He complains about the weather and muses about liberation efforts, the smell coming from his now-threadbare Galliano shirt, how his bangs are growing long.
At night, when Seunghyun is asleep, he writes I love you on the palms of his hands.
It’s a muggy Friday night when Youngbae sneaks down the stairs.
“They’re going to arrest you tomorrow,” he tells Jiyong. To Seunghyun he says, “they don’t want you. You’ve never gone over.”
Seunghyun blinks and shakes his head. He uncaps his pen, but all he sees are the marks on his hands.
That night those words smear up, along Jiyong’s legs, his jaw, his arms, black swipes against dear skin. When the sun breaks into the sky and the siren wails closer he watches Jiyong change his clothes.
Seunghyun does his tie up for him. “Let’s run,” he pleads, “please.”
The marching comes closer now, the litany of Jiyong’s crimes screamed out via loudspeaker.
Jiyong threads his fingers into his, squeezes. Seunghyun takes in his face, ink on his cheeks, fear and defiance in his eyes. He clears his throat, spits out the phglem, and speaks. “I knew you were eating peanuts,” he says.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Peanuts,” Jiyong says. “I’m allergic.”
“I... okay?”
The upstairs door cracks and thuds onto the floor overhead.
“I didn’t care, I wanted you to kiss me anyway. I wanted you.”
“Let’s leave,” Seunghyun begs, “there’s a door, we can run.”
“Where would we go?” His voice doesn’t shake, but his hands go up to tighten the knot in his tie. They do.
When they take him away he’s wearing his favorite Dior Homme suit and Pierre Hardy sneakers, head held high.
---
The Utility Centre, they call it: big, grey concrete, no windows. The signs are empty of letters, just diagrams with gender-neutral figures using the bathroom, spoons and forks for the cafeteria, odd and even numbers for the dorms.
Jiyong is lashed every day but he never goes mute. He stares at the words on his arms, scratches fingers over his shoulder (too fast to live, too young to die) and talks back to the guards, a steady stream of profanity until they throw him against the bars, guns shoved into the small of his back.
When he passes out, he dreams.
In the haze he can speak and the sun’s not obscured by dirigibles with party slogans painted all over them.
Seunghyun is there and they can say anything they want to. He kisses words into his mouth like he isn’t broken and bleeding on the bottom of a concrete floor, like Seunghyun is brave and has come to rescue him, whisking him away to some world where the silence can’t follow.
---
Inmate 367 is disposed of for stealing. The guards never figure out the bits and pieces he’s snuck out of the factory, only that the iron and steel count are off. The inmates in Block 300 spend two weeks agonizing over the makeshift radio he’d built there before turning it on.
There’s crusted blood in Jiyong’s ear. He uses the last of 367’s water to rinse it out as he squats in front of the little machine.
As expected, there is nothing but party propaganda and music without words. Jiyong can’t stand it, the ebb and flow with no voice to accompany it. The anger begins to build, his tongue itching to say things.
Then the music dies out.
“If anyone is listening,” a voice says, “this is an interception by the Verbal Liberation Front.”
The silence that follows is thicker than usual.
“We urge you to continue your resistance. For those still in hiding, for the dissidents in their cells, for the children who grow up mute.”
Inmate 315 closes his eyes.
“We can’t let language die.”
The voice goes over nouns, verbs, sentence structure. It recites poems in a hushed whisper. It goes over sixty-seven words, over the hundreds and into the thousands. They sit spellbound, the inmate by the door staring hawk-eyed into the distance.
When the broadcast ends, they dismantle the radio, bury the pieces in the dirt floor under 367’s bunk.
Jiyong stays there for a long time, hugging his knees to his chest. the voice had been halfway through ‘The Flea’ when it stumbled, chuckled to itself. The way the laughter cracked in the middle like it was broken: that was Seunghyun’s laugh, tinny from reception, loud enough to burrow into Jiyong’s chest and warm it from the inside.
The next broadcast is just music; sometimes there’s a murmur and a crackle as the record is changed, Seunghyun and someone whose voice Jiyong doesn’t recognize taking turns introducing singers and groups. The person watching the door breaks into a low harmony with the final song, startling smiles onto the faces of the huddled group next to him.
The third broadcast is someone else. It’s a man’s voice and he spends an hour detailing all of the things they’ll do to government officials once they seize power. To the inmates the threats sound as hollow as their stomachs, but they snort at the appropriate times. #6830 whispers into the air that night about their supervisor and what he’d like to do to him once the VLF comes into power. The thought carries them into what might pass for a happier sleep.
Seunghyun’s back on for the fourth broadcast. “Repetition is key,” he rasps into the mic, voice hushed. Jiyong imagines them in some bunker somewhere, shirt sleeves rolled up and maps on the walls. “Whatever you remember of before, laws, rules, stories, songs: repeat these in your head as often as you can. We’ll need your memories when things are normal again.” There’s a rustle: “Jay,” Seunghyun says, “what was that?”
“I don’t know,” a voice replies. “Turn the radio off.”
There’s a sound of switches being flipped. “Our next broadcast will come soon,” Seunghyun says. Jiyong swears, ignoring the curious look #1128 turns on him. “Stay tuned.”
Weeks pass. The next time they find the right station, the man named Jay is speaking rapidly in a sort of code none of them understand. Someone turns the radio off and they spend the night speculating: how powerful is the VLF? What is the word count outside? How does the resistance keep from being counted? For once, the counter on the wall of the Block continues to tick, until the sun rises and they shuffle over for breakfast, more tired than usual. They are student dissidents and college professors, anarchists and loudmouths like Jiyong, foreigners caught in the crossfire and people who just didn’t bother to count. All of them with life returning to their eyes as they work and stay up the extra hour to listen.
Then the broadcasts stop. The rusty train creaks out of the gate and everyone knows: there will be new additions to the Centre.
The second Seunghyun speaks, stating his ID number before his food is shoved at him, whispers spread across the eating station like wildfire. VLF, they say. Abbreviations count as half-words but Jiyong wants to save all of his for Seunghyun. He wolfs down his soup and shoves the bread into the pocket of his coveralls, sneaking from table to table to plop down beside him.
Seunghyun is chained to the bench. The shackle rattles against his leg when he turns.
“You look like shit,” Jiyong murmurs, shoving the bread into his mouth.
Seunghyun’s eyebrows shoot up; he swallows and ducks his head to pull the bread out by one handcuffed arm. “I love you too,” he says.
When Jiyong just stares, Seunghyun shrugs, a corner of his mouth turning up. “Just thought you’d want to know.”
For a second they’re back in that bar, trading snipes over bottles with the labels peeled off. He watches Seunghyun’s eyes rove over his features and his face goes soft, just for a second.
Now Seunghyun is the brave one. Jiyong is so tired, skin stuck to bone; it’s all he can do to drop into his bunk and listen to the low hum of Seunghyun’s voice. He whispers to him in abbreviations about the resistance until the supervisors come and rap batons against the doorframes. They reassign him and work him ragged, take away the bread and drop cupfuls of gruel into his bowl. Seunghyun’s cheekbones stand in sharp relief, eyes sunken in their sockets and still he speaks, because Jiyong has lash marks around his arms and against his back, because #315 is named Myungsoo and liked driving cars, because #367 was Yonghwa, who was friends with Taehyun, #6830. They’d done Math League together. All the stories tumble out into each other; they’ve been held in for so long and Seunghyun tries to catch them all.
Maybe he tries too hard.
#1128 sees the curve of his mouth against Jiyong’s ear one night and the next morning Seunghyun’s reassigned, sent to a post so far the stories become myths and the VLF is just another failed mission, like the escape tunnel that’s now a grave, the radio that someone traded for a piece of bread. Jiyong scratches hash marks into the wall for every day he’s gone.
---
One day Jiyong is pushed into the Rehabilitation Chambers, where the air is thick and stale. He thinks this is it, I’m going to die, and coughs out some curses, enough to get the guards shoving him into walls and digging pistols into his ribs.
Jiyong doesn’t care, at least not until they push him into Chamber 18 and Seunghyun is there, his back a shredded mess, the leader’s boots clomping against the wounds there. Two soldiers stand guard: one of them flinches away as a bone makes a sickening crack and Seunghyun yelps, high and sharp. One of them jolts upright when the leader gestures to Jiyong. They push him towards Seunghyun, shove a gun into his hands.
“Put him out of his misery.”
Jiyong’s fingers shake around the muzzle. He keeps the safety on and earns a billy club to the knee for it.
“I can’t,” he whispers, stumbling to his feet. The words come out rusty, his voice almost inaudible.
“Do it.”
“No,” Jiyong moans, and the soldiers stand silent all around them, the leader with his arms crossed over his chest. “No, no, no.”
“Eight,” the counter notes, clicking like a metronome.
Seunghyun can barely speak. He raises his head, hair matted red against his forehead. “Jiyong, please.”
“I just, I can’t, please, I don’t--” Jiyong’s voice stumbles. “Is that all you can say?”
“I’m a man of few words,” he grits out. Jiyong’s mind tips away from it’s last bit of sanity at that, at Seunghyun’s dimples, the blood flecking his cheeks and the pools of it dotting the floor around them.
Jiyong thinks of the grass in the park that day, of Seunghyun’s fingerprints under his palms as he wrote words onto them he couldn’t say out loud, the thrilling weight that had dropped into his stomach when he’d sidled up beside him at the bar.
“Twenty-one.”
“You’ve used more than me.”
“This is taking too long,” the leader mutters. He drags Seunghyun up by the elbow, ignoring the whimper of pain it wrenches out of him. “You talk too much.”
The gun is taken from Jiyong’s hands and he’s forced into a chair, forced to watch as Seunghyun struggles around thick ropes and the tug of a stranger’s hand into his hair. “Your words are dangerous,” they say, and the soldiers are silent when Seunghyun’s yells turn into screams and then gurgles, blood and flesh spattered onto the floor.
Jiyong thinks of Seunghyun speaking and quiet, the thoughtful hum in his throat and the static of his laugh, but then Seunghyun retches, lips wrinkled over a gaping open nothing and his tongue is cut out on the floor and they push him onto his knees, rub his nose into the dismembered flesh and Jiyong gags so hard he doubles over. His eyes close and the scene becomes sound.
Seunghyun has no more words left. He’d made an inarticulate noise when the door swung shut three days ago, the room left airless. This is where they’re meant to die.
The counting machine is gone and so is Jiyong’s mind, mostly. He holds Seunghyun’s hand and kneels next to him on the floor and tries to wipe the red from his cheeks. It just smears.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, even though Seunghyun shakes his head. “I should’ve done it, so you wouldn’t...”
Seunghyun shakes his head again.
“I’m sorry I said you didn’t care.” Jiyong can’t help but flinch at the strangled noise Seunghyun makes, low and quiet. “I should’ve ran, I was trying to be some sort of martyr, I don’t know.”
Seunghyun drags a finger along the skin of Jiyong’s arm (vita dolce). His hand crusts blood through Jiyong’s hair when he runs through it, soft and weak.
Hours pass. The room grows hot. The dried blood's begun to liquify, filling the air with iron smells. Fog clouds Jiyong’s brain; his fingertips tingle even as he tries the door. Seunghyun makes a noise that’s almost a laugh.
“Stupid idea, huh.”
Seunghyun nods.
Jiyong coughs, rubbing at his chest. “Not like there’d be anything out there for us anyway.”
Seunghyun’s smile is a little different now, lopsided. It’s going blue at the edges.
Jiyong talks to pass the time and to waste the air. He talks about friends they used to have, the crazy homeless man on the corner that used to dance for change, the train that was always late, bands they saw live, the rats in Youngbae’s basement.
“I wonder where he is now,” Jiyong murmurs. Seunghyun is curled up on the floor now, his head in Jiyong’s lap. Infection rings some of his wounds. “Hopefully somewhere far.”
Seunghyun makes a tired noise.
“I think when we get out, we should go to a bar.”
He looks up into Jiyong’s face, eyes warm.
“Seems like it was your favorite place to be, anyway.” Jiyong takes a hard breath. It won’t be long, now. “And you can eat as many fucking peanuts as you want and I won’t be allergic. And the drinks will be free.”
Seunghyun runs fingers down Jiyong’s side. He still shivers.
The blast is loud.
It’s louder than anything they’ve heard in a long time, louder than Seunghyun’s last scream, the bark of the officers, the crack of his bones.
Someone turns the lock in the door. Air rushes in, cool and sweet and Jiyong’s head swims hard with the feel of it in his lungs.
It’s a motley crew of people that rush past in the corridor, but someone grabs at an arm and yells “Jay,” pushing him into their cell. Then a short man with a mohawk is staring down at them, disbelief all over his face. He’s wearing fatigues, an armband with VLF stenciled onto it in black. “Come on,” he says, “let’s get out of here.”
---
Sometimes Jiyong will come outside and find Seunghyun on a park bench, cross-legged, listening to the river of speech flow past him. He’d written downtown on an index card when Jiyong’d asked him where he’d like to live, and after a few weeks he’d figured out why. Reconstruction and celebration were both loud, and although neither of them were much for debauchery anymore Seunghyun at least liked to listen.
“Out?” he asks, sounding the word out slow in his mouth. Jiyong blinks at him in surprise. “Let’s go out.”
“Stings,” Seunghyun winces, shaking the tumbler in his hand. “Kinda hurts.”
Jiyong watches him down the glass’s contents. “Doesn’t stop you though, does it.”
“Not really.” He grins his crooked grin.
The door swings open and shut, people milling in and out. A baseball game plays out on the TV. It’s all mellow light and slow speech now, and although everyone seems older, more cautious, there’s something fresh in the air, something hopeful.
Seunghyun’s hand is warm on Jiyong’s knee. He leans in, brushing lips to the corner of his mouth, and Jiyong tilts his head a little, smiles into the kiss.
Then he stops.
“Oh, fuck you,” he laughs, cheeks beginning to swell. “You taste like peanuts.”
author's note: i feel like this should be longer. idk. :/
gdragon/top
dystopian au; a second take on in a quiet world, a drabble i wrote a long time ago. both are based on the quiet world by jeffrey mcdaniel.
rated r (violence)
3, 589 words
warning: please do not read if violence triggers you.
it's been a long time now
since i've seen you smile
nobody raise your voices
just another night in nantes
-- beirut
The first time they meet, the word quarantine is still in the thousands and Seunghyun is on the verge of drunk.
Jiyong had thought he was like this all the time, that he spilled words as freely as he ordered drinks. He liked the way he used them, deadpan sometimes and silly in others. Seunghyun spent most of that night hunched on a barstool, complaining about how difficult it was to order sushi when every kind of fish had a different name.
“At least they’re not counting syllables,” Seunghyun’d grumbled. Jiyong laughed at that, crow’s feet in a face much too young for them.
“You never know, I mean--”
“I like that.”
“What?”
Seunghyun tapped a finger to his temple. “The wrinkles around your eyes.”
Jiyong blinked.
“I like your mole too.”
“Are you always like this?”
“No,” Seunghyun shrugged, “but I’m kind of drunk, and they say people are more truthful once they’ve had a few beers.”
“So you really like my wrinkles?”
“So you admit that they’re wrinkles.”
“Fuck you,” Jiyong laughed, and Seunghyun’d cupped his face in his hands and kissed him then, tasting of cheap beer and bar peanuts.
"How was I supposed to know you were allergic?" he'd asked at the hospital later, eyeing Jiyong’s swollen mouth.
Jiyong'd grabbed his hand, written now you do on it with marker.
"Is that for future reference?"
Jiyong scribbled sure on his wrist and smeared ointment-stained lips against his cheek.
---
“How do you keep track?” Jiyong asks.
“I don’t.” Seunghyun bounces fingers on his knees, in timing with the sounds of marching on the other side of the park.
Jiyong stares at the hash marks staining his palms and nudges him in the side. “No, for real. Do you use a counter? the electronic ones are kind of expensive.”
“I’m a man of few words,” he declares. His mouth is solemn but his eyes grin wide for him. Jiyong thinks they might not be so different. Maybe their dichotomies fit together the same way their mouths do.
---
When the quarantine tightens into the hundreds, Jiyong begins to carry a thesaurus. He drags out his syllables. His sentences get florid. They ticket him and set court dates and Jiyong goes to protests almost daily. Seunghyun sets counters in his pockets and tags along, because the factory he works at is closed now, and Jiyong’s the only person he talks to anyway.
Eventually the hundreds dwindle into the nineties. Jiyong becomes angry. “Don’t you care?” he’ll spit, and Seunghyun will shrug and wrap fingers around the counter in his pocket, eyes darting away.
“If I didn’t care I wouldn’t come.”
Jiyong frowns but says nothing, arms crossed over his chest. The next time he goes out to picket Seunghyun trails him like a dog, silent and watchful. The obscene sign Jiyong has in his hands gets torn down by an officer and they wrestle him into a van, Seunghyun pushed down into the dirt at their feet.
When he gets out for the last time Seunghyun is waiting with a set of clothes (he’d always waited, he’s always waiting).
“I’ll just change in here,” Jiyong says, but Seunghyun follows him into the bathroom stall, all limbs, tongues and teeth. He moans shamelessly as Seunghyun presses him into the grimy wall, fingers tightening on his arms as Seunghyun works a hand into his pants. He smells of disinfectant and burnt plastic and Seunghyun breathes it all in, bites the taste of it away from his neck and licks it into his own mouth.
They go under the word count that day.
---
In the darkened house they still can’t speak. Words are tracked and tracking means they’ll know where you are, who you are, that you’re a refugee scuttled in a basement with rats and canned fruit for company, that you’re wanted for treason.
Jiyong’s never gone to his court dates and his face is included in every ‘Wanted Dissidents’ sign in the city, but all he does is write I hate that picture on his middle finger. He flips it off from a crack in the curtains. Laughter is never counted and so Seunghyun lets himself smile, mouth pressed into Jiyong’s shoulder as they kneel in front of the window, trying to see without being seen.
For Jiyong, the pens and paper are just as important as the food. He writes until words covers his arms, his legs, his ankles. He complains about the weather and muses about liberation efforts, the smell coming from his now-threadbare Galliano shirt, how his bangs are growing long.
At night, when Seunghyun is asleep, he writes I love you on the palms of his hands.
It’s a muggy Friday night when Youngbae sneaks down the stairs.
“They’re going to arrest you tomorrow,” he tells Jiyong. To Seunghyun he says, “they don’t want you. You’ve never gone over.”
Seunghyun blinks and shakes his head. He uncaps his pen, but all he sees are the marks on his hands.
That night those words smear up, along Jiyong’s legs, his jaw, his arms, black swipes against dear skin. When the sun breaks into the sky and the siren wails closer he watches Jiyong change his clothes.
Seunghyun does his tie up for him. “Let’s run,” he pleads, “please.”
The marching comes closer now, the litany of Jiyong’s crimes screamed out via loudspeaker.
Jiyong threads his fingers into his, squeezes. Seunghyun takes in his face, ink on his cheeks, fear and defiance in his eyes. He clears his throat, spits out the phglem, and speaks. “I knew you were eating peanuts,” he says.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Peanuts,” Jiyong says. “I’m allergic.”
“I... okay?”
The upstairs door cracks and thuds onto the floor overhead.
“I didn’t care, I wanted you to kiss me anyway. I wanted you.”
“Let’s leave,” Seunghyun begs, “there’s a door, we can run.”
“Where would we go?” His voice doesn’t shake, but his hands go up to tighten the knot in his tie. They do.
When they take him away he’s wearing his favorite Dior Homme suit and Pierre Hardy sneakers, head held high.
---
The Utility Centre, they call it: big, grey concrete, no windows. The signs are empty of letters, just diagrams with gender-neutral figures using the bathroom, spoons and forks for the cafeteria, odd and even numbers for the dorms.
Jiyong is lashed every day but he never goes mute. He stares at the words on his arms, scratches fingers over his shoulder (too fast to live, too young to die) and talks back to the guards, a steady stream of profanity until they throw him against the bars, guns shoved into the small of his back.
When he passes out, he dreams.
In the haze he can speak and the sun’s not obscured by dirigibles with party slogans painted all over them.
Seunghyun is there and they can say anything they want to. He kisses words into his mouth like he isn’t broken and bleeding on the bottom of a concrete floor, like Seunghyun is brave and has come to rescue him, whisking him away to some world where the silence can’t follow.
---
Inmate 367 is disposed of for stealing. The guards never figure out the bits and pieces he’s snuck out of the factory, only that the iron and steel count are off. The inmates in Block 300 spend two weeks agonizing over the makeshift radio he’d built there before turning it on.
There’s crusted blood in Jiyong’s ear. He uses the last of 367’s water to rinse it out as he squats in front of the little machine.
As expected, there is nothing but party propaganda and music without words. Jiyong can’t stand it, the ebb and flow with no voice to accompany it. The anger begins to build, his tongue itching to say things.
Then the music dies out.
“If anyone is listening,” a voice says, “this is an interception by the Verbal Liberation Front.”
The silence that follows is thicker than usual.
“We urge you to continue your resistance. For those still in hiding, for the dissidents in their cells, for the children who grow up mute.”
Inmate 315 closes his eyes.
“We can’t let language die.”
The voice goes over nouns, verbs, sentence structure. It recites poems in a hushed whisper. It goes over sixty-seven words, over the hundreds and into the thousands. They sit spellbound, the inmate by the door staring hawk-eyed into the distance.
When the broadcast ends, they dismantle the radio, bury the pieces in the dirt floor under 367’s bunk.
Jiyong stays there for a long time, hugging his knees to his chest. the voice had been halfway through ‘The Flea’ when it stumbled, chuckled to itself. The way the laughter cracked in the middle like it was broken: that was Seunghyun’s laugh, tinny from reception, loud enough to burrow into Jiyong’s chest and warm it from the inside.
The next broadcast is just music; sometimes there’s a murmur and a crackle as the record is changed, Seunghyun and someone whose voice Jiyong doesn’t recognize taking turns introducing singers and groups. The person watching the door breaks into a low harmony with the final song, startling smiles onto the faces of the huddled group next to him.
The third broadcast is someone else. It’s a man’s voice and he spends an hour detailing all of the things they’ll do to government officials once they seize power. To the inmates the threats sound as hollow as their stomachs, but they snort at the appropriate times. #6830 whispers into the air that night about their supervisor and what he’d like to do to him once the VLF comes into power. The thought carries them into what might pass for a happier sleep.
Seunghyun’s back on for the fourth broadcast. “Repetition is key,” he rasps into the mic, voice hushed. Jiyong imagines them in some bunker somewhere, shirt sleeves rolled up and maps on the walls. “Whatever you remember of before, laws, rules, stories, songs: repeat these in your head as often as you can. We’ll need your memories when things are normal again.” There’s a rustle: “Jay,” Seunghyun says, “what was that?”
“I don’t know,” a voice replies. “Turn the radio off.”
There’s a sound of switches being flipped. “Our next broadcast will come soon,” Seunghyun says. Jiyong swears, ignoring the curious look #1128 turns on him. “Stay tuned.”
Weeks pass. The next time they find the right station, the man named Jay is speaking rapidly in a sort of code none of them understand. Someone turns the radio off and they spend the night speculating: how powerful is the VLF? What is the word count outside? How does the resistance keep from being counted? For once, the counter on the wall of the Block continues to tick, until the sun rises and they shuffle over for breakfast, more tired than usual. They are student dissidents and college professors, anarchists and loudmouths like Jiyong, foreigners caught in the crossfire and people who just didn’t bother to count. All of them with life returning to their eyes as they work and stay up the extra hour to listen.
Then the broadcasts stop. The rusty train creaks out of the gate and everyone knows: there will be new additions to the Centre.
The second Seunghyun speaks, stating his ID number before his food is shoved at him, whispers spread across the eating station like wildfire. VLF, they say. Abbreviations count as half-words but Jiyong wants to save all of his for Seunghyun. He wolfs down his soup and shoves the bread into the pocket of his coveralls, sneaking from table to table to plop down beside him.
Seunghyun is chained to the bench. The shackle rattles against his leg when he turns.
“You look like shit,” Jiyong murmurs, shoving the bread into his mouth.
Seunghyun’s eyebrows shoot up; he swallows and ducks his head to pull the bread out by one handcuffed arm. “I love you too,” he says.
When Jiyong just stares, Seunghyun shrugs, a corner of his mouth turning up. “Just thought you’d want to know.”
For a second they’re back in that bar, trading snipes over bottles with the labels peeled off. He watches Seunghyun’s eyes rove over his features and his face goes soft, just for a second.
Now Seunghyun is the brave one. Jiyong is so tired, skin stuck to bone; it’s all he can do to drop into his bunk and listen to the low hum of Seunghyun’s voice. He whispers to him in abbreviations about the resistance until the supervisors come and rap batons against the doorframes. They reassign him and work him ragged, take away the bread and drop cupfuls of gruel into his bowl. Seunghyun’s cheekbones stand in sharp relief, eyes sunken in their sockets and still he speaks, because Jiyong has lash marks around his arms and against his back, because #315 is named Myungsoo and liked driving cars, because #367 was Yonghwa, who was friends with Taehyun, #6830. They’d done Math League together. All the stories tumble out into each other; they’ve been held in for so long and Seunghyun tries to catch them all.
Maybe he tries too hard.
#1128 sees the curve of his mouth against Jiyong’s ear one night and the next morning Seunghyun’s reassigned, sent to a post so far the stories become myths and the VLF is just another failed mission, like the escape tunnel that’s now a grave, the radio that someone traded for a piece of bread. Jiyong scratches hash marks into the wall for every day he’s gone.
---
One day Jiyong is pushed into the Rehabilitation Chambers, where the air is thick and stale. He thinks this is it, I’m going to die, and coughs out some curses, enough to get the guards shoving him into walls and digging pistols into his ribs.
Jiyong doesn’t care, at least not until they push him into Chamber 18 and Seunghyun is there, his back a shredded mess, the leader’s boots clomping against the wounds there. Two soldiers stand guard: one of them flinches away as a bone makes a sickening crack and Seunghyun yelps, high and sharp. One of them jolts upright when the leader gestures to Jiyong. They push him towards Seunghyun, shove a gun into his hands.
“Put him out of his misery.”
Jiyong’s fingers shake around the muzzle. He keeps the safety on and earns a billy club to the knee for it.
“I can’t,” he whispers, stumbling to his feet. The words come out rusty, his voice almost inaudible.
“Do it.”
“No,” Jiyong moans, and the soldiers stand silent all around them, the leader with his arms crossed over his chest. “No, no, no.”
“Eight,” the counter notes, clicking like a metronome.
Seunghyun can barely speak. He raises his head, hair matted red against his forehead. “Jiyong, please.”
“I just, I can’t, please, I don’t--” Jiyong’s voice stumbles. “Is that all you can say?”
“I’m a man of few words,” he grits out. Jiyong’s mind tips away from it’s last bit of sanity at that, at Seunghyun’s dimples, the blood flecking his cheeks and the pools of it dotting the floor around them.
Jiyong thinks of the grass in the park that day, of Seunghyun’s fingerprints under his palms as he wrote words onto them he couldn’t say out loud, the thrilling weight that had dropped into his stomach when he’d sidled up beside him at the bar.
“Twenty-one.”
“You’ve used more than me.”
“This is taking too long,” the leader mutters. He drags Seunghyun up by the elbow, ignoring the whimper of pain it wrenches out of him. “You talk too much.”
The gun is taken from Jiyong’s hands and he’s forced into a chair, forced to watch as Seunghyun struggles around thick ropes and the tug of a stranger’s hand into his hair. “Your words are dangerous,” they say, and the soldiers are silent when Seunghyun’s yells turn into screams and then gurgles, blood and flesh spattered onto the floor.
Jiyong thinks of Seunghyun speaking and quiet, the thoughtful hum in his throat and the static of his laugh, but then Seunghyun retches, lips wrinkled over a gaping open nothing and his tongue is cut out on the floor and they push him onto his knees, rub his nose into the dismembered flesh and Jiyong gags so hard he doubles over. His eyes close and the scene becomes sound.
Seunghyun has no more words left. He’d made an inarticulate noise when the door swung shut three days ago, the room left airless. This is where they’re meant to die.
The counting machine is gone and so is Jiyong’s mind, mostly. He holds Seunghyun’s hand and kneels next to him on the floor and tries to wipe the red from his cheeks. It just smears.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers, even though Seunghyun shakes his head. “I should’ve done it, so you wouldn’t...”
Seunghyun shakes his head again.
“I’m sorry I said you didn’t care.” Jiyong can’t help but flinch at the strangled noise Seunghyun makes, low and quiet. “I should’ve ran, I was trying to be some sort of martyr, I don’t know.”
Seunghyun drags a finger along the skin of Jiyong’s arm (vita dolce). His hand crusts blood through Jiyong’s hair when he runs through it, soft and weak.
Hours pass. The room grows hot. The dried blood's begun to liquify, filling the air with iron smells. Fog clouds Jiyong’s brain; his fingertips tingle even as he tries the door. Seunghyun makes a noise that’s almost a laugh.
“Stupid idea, huh.”
Seunghyun nods.
Jiyong coughs, rubbing at his chest. “Not like there’d be anything out there for us anyway.”
Seunghyun’s smile is a little different now, lopsided. It’s going blue at the edges.
Jiyong talks to pass the time and to waste the air. He talks about friends they used to have, the crazy homeless man on the corner that used to dance for change, the train that was always late, bands they saw live, the rats in Youngbae’s basement.
“I wonder where he is now,” Jiyong murmurs. Seunghyun is curled up on the floor now, his head in Jiyong’s lap. Infection rings some of his wounds. “Hopefully somewhere far.”
Seunghyun makes a tired noise.
“I think when we get out, we should go to a bar.”
He looks up into Jiyong’s face, eyes warm.
“Seems like it was your favorite place to be, anyway.” Jiyong takes a hard breath. It won’t be long, now. “And you can eat as many fucking peanuts as you want and I won’t be allergic. And the drinks will be free.”
Seunghyun runs fingers down Jiyong’s side. He still shivers.
The blast is loud.
It’s louder than anything they’ve heard in a long time, louder than Seunghyun’s last scream, the bark of the officers, the crack of his bones.
Someone turns the lock in the door. Air rushes in, cool and sweet and Jiyong’s head swims hard with the feel of it in his lungs.
It’s a motley crew of people that rush past in the corridor, but someone grabs at an arm and yells “Jay,” pushing him into their cell. Then a short man with a mohawk is staring down at them, disbelief all over his face. He’s wearing fatigues, an armband with VLF stenciled onto it in black. “Come on,” he says, “let’s get out of here.”
---
Sometimes Jiyong will come outside and find Seunghyun on a park bench, cross-legged, listening to the river of speech flow past him. He’d written downtown on an index card when Jiyong’d asked him where he’d like to live, and after a few weeks he’d figured out why. Reconstruction and celebration were both loud, and although neither of them were much for debauchery anymore Seunghyun at least liked to listen.
“Out?” he asks, sounding the word out slow in his mouth. Jiyong blinks at him in surprise. “Let’s go out.”
“Stings,” Seunghyun winces, shaking the tumbler in his hand. “Kinda hurts.”
Jiyong watches him down the glass’s contents. “Doesn’t stop you though, does it.”
“Not really.” He grins his crooked grin.
The door swings open and shut, people milling in and out. A baseball game plays out on the TV. It’s all mellow light and slow speech now, and although everyone seems older, more cautious, there’s something fresh in the air, something hopeful.
Seunghyun’s hand is warm on Jiyong’s knee. He leans in, brushing lips to the corner of his mouth, and Jiyong tilts his head a little, smiles into the kiss.
Then he stops.
“Oh, fuck you,” he laughs, cheeks beginning to swell. “You taste like peanuts.”
author's note: i feel like this should be longer. idk. :/