The Tortoise and the Desert, for transsherlock (2/2)
The skies darken over Seoul early that year, blocking out the sun before spring has really gotten started and leaving the city stranded in the perpetual night of high summer long before Jinwoo has mentally prepared himself for the exhaustive practice of living without light.
The office block opposite his apartment is an eternal beacon of hustle and bustle, crowds accumulating around the coffee machines on the hour, every hour. Like a flood of over enthusiastic termites to royal jelly, Jinwoo watches them long past bedtime and halfway through the day whenever he doesn’t have work to keep his schedule tight.
Minho passes the time Jinwoo spends asleep with his eyes glued to the building. He knows them all, if not by name then by their favourite shoes, or how they did their hair yesterday. As with everything, the enthusiasm of human endeavour fascinates him.
“What do they do it for?” he asks one day, as Jinwoo pushes a mug of coffee into his hands (Minho can’t drink the coffee, but the act of joining in thrills him, and he seems to think he can smell it).
And Jinwoo’s tired, dazed by the lights trying to grab his attention from the black. “Why does anyone do anything? They need the money.” He snaps, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Minho balks visibly and where his mouth had dropped open in wonder it closes.
Jinwoo closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and counts to three.
“I’m sorry. The Dark’s always a tough time of year.”
Minho’s shoulders drop, “it’s ok.”
Minho is a bot, Jinwoo shouldn’t need to apologise to him. Minho shouldn’t even have the programming to have his feelings hurt. Minho still can’t remember why he was built.
They stare out in silence, Minho’s eyes flicking to each and every cubicle, Jinwoo failing to focus on anything. Dressed as he is in an overlarge and overworn night shirt of Jinwoo’s, the lights of Minho’s circuitry cast a dim glow in the direction of their reflections - white and blue. Jinwoo looks tired and his hair is a mess, Minho looks like a head and hands suspended above a great light.
“I lost my job three years in a row during The Dark,” Jinwoo feels Minho turn to face him, he doesn’t need to look up to know his look of concern.
“Why?”
“Because I was too drunk to leave my flat,” Jinwoo takes a large gulp of coffee before he can try to remember the taste of spirits and burns the back of his tongue, “not really sure how I afforded the booze to see me through the summer to be honest. I just sort of…started drinking when the skies turned dark, and by the time I was sober enough to handle myself the sun was up again.”
He looks up and sees Minho staring him with a mixture of sorrow and astonishment, “how did you survive?” the bot asks, voice quiet.
Jinwoo shrugs, “you’d have to ask Seungyoon. He covered for me a lot.”
“What does ‘covered’ mean?”
“Not sure to be honest. I mean he must have made sure that I ate, he must have kept be sober for some of the time but I can’t remember it for the life of me. I dunno, he just made sure I was alive.”
“Why don’t you ask him about it?”
Jinwoo’s lips purse, “I’m not sure I care, and if I did, I reckon that particular trip down memory lane wouldn’t do me any good. I’m just grateful he did it at all.”
The sound of far off thunder pricks Minho’s ears. Jinwoo sees him tense up and moves towards him instinctively - not a grand gesture, just enough to close the gap. He rests his chin on the bot’s shoulder and watches steam rising from his coffee mug against the light of the office block, “can we go to a meeting tonight?”
Reflected in the mirror, Minho blinks in surprise. His brow furrows for a moment, then he nods.
“Hello everyone, my name is Hayi, and I am an alcoholic.”
Like Hanbin, Hayi looks miserably young. Unlike Hanbin, she makes the effort to smile. Jinwoo finds it hard to really listen as she talks, but he’s happy he came. If nothing else, it’s good to be surrounded by people, even if he doesn’t feel like talking today.
Hayi speaks of a hole she tried to fill with alcohol, a hole she’s still not sure is better used for anything else. She’s new, fresh to the sober world as Jinwoo had been when he first stepped into this room, though she’s far more eloquent than him. She smiles like she’s trying so hard to mean it and stares into the middle distance like positivity is an effort.
Jinwoo thinks that that’s as honest as anyone’s ever been within these four walls, and reminds himself that half-truths only hold out for so long.
“Who’s your friend?” Hanbin nods in Minho’s direction, chewing his way through biscuits once the talking’s done.
Jinwoo laughs and beckons Minho over to introduce them to each other, the bot characteristically straight backed and unwelcoming in the presence of others, “Kim Hanbin, meet Minho. He’s my bot.”
“What?” Hanbin’s shaking Minho’s hand before he remembers to double take, “shit, I thought he was real.”
“He is real.” Jinwoo bites his tongue a moment too late. He’s become used to this interaction, all too used to it. He forgets that people aren’t talking about Minho’s physical presence so much as his lack of humanity.
And that’s still approaching the problem from the wrong angle. Jinwoo has to stop pretending he doesn’t know what other people are expecting.
Minho mumbles his way through an introduction as Hanbin eyes him up with bemused fascination. They drop each other’s hands rather quickly and before he knows what’s what, Jinwoo feels Minho tugging on his shirt sleeve, silently imploring him to leave.
“So it’s going ok for you?” Hanbin asks.
“Yeah it’s…”Minho tugs on his sleeve with particular ferocity and Jinwoo suddenly remembers that he’s in a room full of alcoholics with a long walk home past several liquor shops (he knows their names and which one stocks the cheapest spirits) facing him once he leaves. The meetings aren’t supposed to be temptations, but like it or not all the right ingredients are there.
“I should go,” he smiles, and lets himself be dragged off.
Hayi is sitting on the step outside the front door, her wallet open and a handful of photographs lying in her lap. She stares at them like they are her whole world. She isn’t smiling anymore.
Jinwoo pauses as he passes her, “careful, someone will steal your wallet if you leave it out like that.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hayi doesn’t even look up, “it’s just money.”
Jinwoo doesn’t know what to say to that, so he lets Minho drag him onwards to the nearest bus station.
“I’ve heard it helps,” the bot says, eyes firmly on the pavement in front of them.
“What helps?”
“The photographs, they help them remember who they were supposed to be. But not why they were built.”
“What does that mean?”
Minho doesn’t answer, he doesn’t even seem to hear.
The clouds above them have settled low over the city, imposing and claustrophobic and dark dark dark. The streetlamps strain against the muggy perma-night, shedding a thin orange glow on the civilian walkways but failing to make the world feel any more like the sun is shining. They take the bridge over the motorway to the bus stand and for a moment the high reaches of Gangnam are visible across the river, brilliant and blazing. Jinwoo hears that the very richest people in this city pay for apartments lit by bulbs so bright and so packed with Ultra Violet rays that for them it need never feel like the sun goes down, while in Mapo they struggle to keep their world well enough lit to scare away the fairy tale monsters.
The Dark, replicants, the overwhelming desire to crawl inside a bottle and never come out. These are the monsters Seoul has been taught to fear, and the bright lights of Gangnam can only save you from one.
These days, they talk while they work, which is nice. Minho is full of stories from the stars, the light of Bellatrix glinting off Diana as it rises through the asteroid belt (still thousands of miles away but close enough to be beautiful when viewed through the porthole of a space station); run down ships being sent up in flames while Apollo watches, the silence of space when he stood on the hull of the ship with nothing but an astro-suit between him and eternity.
Jinwoo likes to tell him about life on an island half a lifetime from here, about natural greens and the sound of birds as the sun rises. A place so far from any city that the Dark barely touches it, and on the clearest nights you can still see the stars.
And to think for all those years they were staring at the same thing. As a boy, Jinwoo would trace out Orion from the belt upwards, and he knew that Bellatrix was his shoulder. For Minho, Bellatrix had been the centre of the universe.
“Did you drink before you came to Seoul?”
Jinwoo still has the last of a smile left over from the story of the last time he saw his father come back from the boat. He swallows it in an instant.
“We drank the rice wine the grandmother made when it was ready, but I was never old enough to be allowed much. I didn’t get drunk until…well until I saw my first Dark I guess.”
There’s a story in that, and a problem for Minho to analyse and deconstruct. Minho likes talking about these things, he thinks it helps more than his preordained urge to rid Jinwoo’s immediate world of alcohol, and he’s right. But that doesn’t stop the shame coiling in Jinwoo’s gut every time it’s mentioned, he surprises himself every time with how easy it is to let his cravings seep back into his field of vision.
The door to the cell slams open, “Kim Jinwoo, you’re needed up top.”
Bom stands in the doorway, hair dark red and nails painted gold - like she’s trying to make up for the sun all by herself. Minho glances at Jinwoo and doesn’t settle back into his work until he receives verbal confirmation that all will be well without him.
Jinwoo follows Bom to the elevator and tries not to let himself be disappointed when no one stops it on the work floor. He hasn’t seen Sandara in months, and he doubts he’ll be able to explain anything to her until Minho is gone.
Minho will be gone. Jinwoo knows this, and yet it is with a mighty falling of his stomach that he realises he has ever really thought about it before. The elevator rattles to a halt at the top floor and he’s still stuck on that concept as he follows the scarlet of Bom’s hair down the corridor and into her office.
In this office, there is a man, dressed all in black with drooping eyebrows. Jinwoo sees him and freezes. “you-“
“Hello, Kim Jinwoo. My name is Nam Taehyun, I’m with the Bladerunners,” obligatory presentation of his badge, “I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”
If he remembers Jinwoo, he doesn’t show it. Nam Taehyun raises his eyebrows at the dropped jaw he is greeted with, and waits for a response.
Bom clears her throat discreetly, Jinwoo catches up.
“I pretty much have to, they’ll fire me if I don’t.”
“Great!” Taehyun smiles, and it looks more convincing than Jinwoo would have thought possible, “we’re on the trail of a Nexus Seven, female, around one metre sixty, appearance of a girl around eighteen years old. She was last spotted at an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter that you are tied to, so we were hoping you might be able to help us out.”
“It’s supposed to be anonymous,” Jinwoo says dumbly. As if the entirety of the sobriety program was not carefully managed by the government’s public health division.
Taehyun frowns and carries on, “have you attended any meetings in the past two weeks?”
“Yeah, just the one though.”
“Just the one can be enough mister Kim. We don’t know exactly how smart this skinjob is, but last time we caught up with her, she was still going by her factory name - Lee Hayi. Now…”
Jinwoo stops listening right there. He feels numb, and terrified, and in awe. Hayi is just a normal girl, who talks about alcohol like she knew it as well as anyone and keeps pictures of her siblings in her wallet to remind herself of their faces on bad days. Everything she had done, from her expressions to the smile she was trying to force against the world, she had done with feeling - or at least that’s how Jinwoo remembers it. He can’t for the life of him imagine that she would be dangerous.
“I know her,” he cuts across Taehyun, “go down to the chapter sometime and talk to Kim Hanbin, he’ll help you out.”
Taehyun closes his mouth very deliberately and an air of smug satisfaction washes over his countenance.
“Thank you very much for your cooperation mister Kim.”
Jinwoo’s feet fall heavy on the way back to the elevator. Say the word ‘replicant’ and any resident of Seoul will hurry to do anything they can to make sure they never have to hear you say it again, a kneejerk reaction reinforced by years of public hysteria. But he can’t help feeling like he just did something awful.
Why would Hayi hide in a place like that if she were trying to kill people? Why wouldn’t she have just killed them all then and there? Jinwoo grabs the wall of the elevator as it lurches down the shaft and feels sick, feels confused, feels compromised.
“Are you ok?” Minho’s eyes are concerned when Jinwoo finds them amongst the mess of electronics at their work station.
He takes a deep breath and gathers himself, “I’m fine.”
The disbelief in Minho’s eyes is as real as his reluctant acceptance, the skin around them folds and smooths as neatly as any pair of eyes he’s ever seen. And in that moment, Jinwoo knows. For a moment at least, before he can keep pretending that his world is simpler than that.
Minho is a bot - half truths. They can save you.
“We should get a cab back today,” Jinwoo announces half way through the afternoon, “it’s not safe out there.”
Minho nods in ascension as he winds yet another cable round his hands. Jinwoo has no idea how many that must be, but if he asked he’d get a definite answer.
Outside, the skies are dark.
Minho is lying on his bed when Jinwoo gets out of the shower, staring at the ceiling with his hands nearly crossed over the plasma muscles that he has covering the space where a person would have a belly.
Jinwoo stands in the door, hair dripping water down his back, trying to think of a single reason in all the world that Minho would do something like that. Normally, at this time of night he’d be standing in the corner of the living room, plugged in and staring at his toes.
“I wanted to know if it was nice,” and it appears Minho can read his mind.
Jinwoo perches himself on the end of the mattress, “and?”
“It’s…I dunno. It’s not, not-nice?” Minho hoists himself up onto his elbows, “I don’t get why you spend so much time doing it though.”
Jinwoo tips back his head and laughs, revelling in the confused smile that crosses Minho’s face, “no one ever explained sleep to you?”
It takes a moment, but comprehension dawns on Minho’s face just as sure as the sun will rise after the Dark, “shit! I forgot,”
“It’s ok!” Jinwoo beams, “it’s fine. You can stay if you like.”
“For how long?”
“As long as you like. I’m a light sleeper anyway, just try not to run out of charge before morning.”
Minho nods, “yeah, they told me that you might have trouble sleeping.”
“Ahh it’s not so bad,” Jinwoo turns his back, saying no more on the subject. He changes into an old pair of boxer shorts - more than enough for a warm summer night - and slips beneath the top cover of the bed.
Minho crawls in after him, the metal of his spine warm from the rumblings of his electronic interior, but not warmer than Jinwoo’s skin. They lie back to back, Jinwoo setting his alarm before hitting the switch next to his bed and plunging them into darkness.
Or at least it should be darkness. Minho’s circuits never power off completely unless he runs out of battery and the lights from his heart are bright enough to shine through the glorified sheet that they’re wrapped in. More intense than the streetlamps, not even half as bright as Bellatrix through the clouds in winter; it’s nice to think that the Dark can’t touch them completely.
Minho stays for an hour, then shuffles through to plug himself in for the night. A failed experiment perhaps - he cannot sleep - but when he forgets to close the door on his way out Jinwoo doesn’t mind the light cutting through the crack.
It takes another two weeks’ sitting in on video calls, but Minho learns to trust Seungyoon not to take Jinwoo out drinking at the drop of a hat. Well, perhaps ‘trust’ is too strong a word, but when Jinwoo suggests that they go out to eat together, Minho doesn’t object.
“Hey there! Wasn’t expecting to see you for another eight months,” Seunghoon grins over the top of a wok filled with something frying vigorously, “who’s your friend?”
“This is Minho, he’s my bot,” Jinwoo laughs as Minho’s back goes very straight.
“Bot?” Seunghoon blinks, leaning forward to get a better look at Minho.
“I know, trust me though, that’s a bot,” Seungyoon collapses into a chair at the front of the cart and motions for Jinwoo and Minho to follow him.
Seunghoon sticks his nose back in his wok, sneaking furtive glances at the three of them like he expects someone to announce that they’re joking any second. “And will this bot be eating with you?”
“I can’t, got no stomach,” Minho grumbles.
Seunghoon throws vegetables and the protein infused fungus that passes for meat together with ease, and not five minutes later, Jinwoo and Seungyoon have bowls of noodles as big as their heads sitting in front of them. The Dark gives the impression of perpetual night, but Jinwoo knows from the clock behind the counter that it’s after midnight anyway - Seungyoon works late when he can, and finding an appetite is hard when you have no temporal cues to aid you. Steam rises through the warm night air, chasing the few insects that still dare to brave the city up towards the lights at the edge of the cart.
They eat, Minho’s eyes fix on something behind Seunghoon and stay there.
The chef notices of course, “something caught your eye?”
“You serve soju,” Minho snaps.
Seunghoon blinks in confusion, “of course I do, that a problem?”
“Jinwoo’s not supposed to drink.”
“And neither am I,” Seungyoon counters, “don’t worry, it’s more than his business is worth to serve to us. The police would be down here in a shot.”
Speak of the devil, no sooner has Seungyoon mentioned the police than the lights of a black Bladerunner cruiser light up what little of the street has not already succumbed to the forces of neon. They sit in silence as the vehicle rumbles down the road, all eyes fixed on the tinted windows as it passes.
“No replicants down this way! Get out of Mapo and do your damn jobs,” Seunghoon shouts after them. Like all small business owners north of the river, he’s sick of having his customers scared off by the prospect of replicants in their area. Of course, the local police offices rattle off the same lines about preventative measures whenever pressed about it, the same old bullshit about how the presence of Bladerunners doesn’t mean the presence of the things they’re sent out to catch, but no one buys that anymore.
Jinwoo almost points out that the last replicant incident was mere months ago and that Myeongdong isn’t far from here, but he sees Seunghoon’s bitter expression and thinks better of it.
The car comes to a stop just out of sight. They hear doors slamming and people shouting at each other, though it’s hard to tell if it’s on the job formalities driving up the volume of their voices, or nerves.
“Maybe we should go…” Seungyoon murmurs.
“Absolutely not,” Seunghoon snaps, “I refuse to rearrange my day to accommodate a couple of nervy Bladerunners.”
“I’m just saying-“
“Kang Seungyoon you stay in your seat and you finish your noodles.”
Jinwoo is about to turn around and continue with his own food when a movement at the top of the road, from the direction the Bladerunners had come from, catches his eye. Something moving through the few patches of shadow left, ducking into alleys, head down and trying not to be seen.
It’s a girl, short with hair past her shoulders, clutching something to her chest. She barrels past closed shops and open bars with a single minded determination, hard heels of her shoes clattering along the pavement. She steps into a patch of light and Jinwoo sees her neat nose, her wide eyes, and he recognises her.
“Hayi!” he screams, but if she hears him she doesn’t show it.
A second later, a gun goes off, and the street erupts into activity.
First there is a bang, loud and clean with nowhere to echo in these low buildings; then Seunghoon’s reaching over the counter, tugging at Jinwoo’s collar and urging him to move. Ears still ringing from the gunshot, Jinwoo can’t hear him urge to get out of the way, but from the frantic hand gestures he’s supplied with, he gets the message.
Grabbing Minho’s arm, Jinwoo follows Seungyoon round the back of the van and pushes himself flat against the metal wall. The structure rocks as Seunghoon packs up in a hurry, hard enough for him to convince himself that the shaking of his hands is not fear and shock. The shadows falling either side of the cart become messy and confused as people leave the restaurants and drinking holes they had been clamped up in, and as Jinwoo’s hearing begins to return he can hear the stunned silence falling over people as they realise what has happened.
“You knew her? What the fuck, why did you know her?” Seungyoon screams at him, and Jinwoo has to fight the urge not to slap him just to shut him up.
The van stops shaking and Seunghoon sticks his head round the back, “c’mon, let’s go.”
They sneak away through a back street, Seungyoon swearing profusely all the way. Jinwoo catches a glimpse of the street all the same, the body of a girl, surrounded by photographs spilling from an open book she had been clutching to her chest as she walks, and Nam Taehyun standing over her.
Taehyun turns, his eyes lock with Jinwoo’s, and he smiles.
Seungyoon’s flat is barely big enough for the four of them to sit in a circle. His bedroom doubles as a living room and kitchen, making the bathroom the only place he has to run to, and Jinwoo wonders that he doesn’t go stir crazy cooped up in here.
Seunghoon mutters about replicants and Bladerunners and everything that’s wrong with modern society as he’s handed a mug of tea. Seungyoon joins in as best he can, punctuating particularly biting statements with as potent a profanity as he can manage.
Minho is quiet, strangely so. His spine begins to curve and he sinks into himself, wobbling for a moment before leaning over to rest his head on Jinwoo’s shoulder.
“You alright?” Jinwoo asks, prodding him in the side.
No response. Slightly alarmed, Jinwoo looks down to see that Minho’s eyes have closed and his body gone limp, as if he were asleep.
Only Minho can’t sleep.
“Is he low on power?” Seungyoon asks, stopping Seunghoon midway through a particularly vicious tirade on the injustice of funnelling public money into a highly advanced and mostly useless police division.
Jinwoo nods, cursing internally, “I only caught a few hours’ sleep last night and he’d normally be plugged in by now, he must have been running low all day. Fuck, I didn’t even think.”
“No worries,” Seungyoon gets up and goes over to a kitchen cupboard filled with cleaning supplies, “I’m pretty sure I’ve still got my cables in here from when I had my bot. These things are standard issue, they should work for him…gotcha!”
Seungyoon steps back, holding up a thick red cable in triumph. He steps over to Minho and starts searching for the socket to plug it into.
“At the back of his neck, around the hairline,” Jinwoo says, propping Minho up and feeling for the spot, “just there.”
Seungyoon leans down, pushing Minho’s head forward till it rests on his chest. At this angle, Jinwoo can see the metal socket clearly, hidden amongst the skin on Minho’s neck. It looks strange and unnatural, nestled amongst organic matter, even if he does know what lies lower down the bot’s back.
“What the fuck?” Seungyoon drops the cable and abruptly steps away from Minho, eyes wide.
Jinwoo frowns, “what’s wrong? Did you get a shock?”
“I’ll say. You ever take a look at the brand name on this thing?”
Confused, Jinwoo pushes Minho’s hair back and moves him round into the light to get a better look. Sat on the bed, Seunghoon looks from Seungyoon to the bot and back again like either one of them might explode at any moment.
Minho’s brand is written in neat letters above his power socket, small enough that no one would notice them if they weren’t looking. Jinwoo reads it out dully, failing to process what the word means until Seunghoon lets out a high pitched whine and drops his mug, covering the floor with shards of pottery.
“What the fuck is that doing here?”
“Seunghoon-“
“Jinwoo why didn’t you look at the damn thing before?”
Jinwoo has no idea. He only knows that his blood feels like it’s cooling in his veins and he wants nothing more than to not know this.
Seungyoon takes a long, shuddering breath, “I need it out of here, right now.”
“Ok,” Jinwoo nods. A very large part of him wants to stay and argue that there’s no reason for this to change anything, that everything’s been fine up till now, but the part of him that gets to act knows that would be futile. He slings one of Minho’s arms over his shoulder and hoists him into a standing position - he’s heavy, but not as heavy as he looks - and drags him to the door. “Seungyoon, I-“
“Don’t come back here till you’ve gotten rid of it.” Seungyoon’s eyes are hard and cold. Seunghoon looks like he might collapse right there.
The door closes behind them and Minho’s head lolls forward once again. Jinwoo pauses to rearrange him before they move again, tipping back his head till the metal at the base of his skull is no longer visible, and he can try to pretend that the words “Nexus One” are not written next to Minho’s serial number.
He doesn’t bother turning on the lights when he gets home. The light from the office block is bright enough for now, and the space is small enough and familiar enough that his hands will find the way even if he can’t see it. The cables Minho uses to charge himself are still plugged in, so once the bot has been deposited on the couch it’s the work of a moment to pull them over and plug them into the socket at the back of his neck.
The cables hit home, a dull blue glow pulses through Minho’s shirt. Jinwoo supposes this will take a while.
In the kitchen, Jinwoo throws instant coffee and milk powder together as hurriedly as he can. He scrambles for mugs as the kettle boils and almost drops one on his head, only then does he think to turn the light on.
He walks back through to the living room with two cups of coffee, scalding against his knuckles. He sets them down on the floor and allows himself to become entranced by the swirl of lights in Minho’s belly as they flicker back to life.
Jinwoo’s not sure how long it takes, but eventually Minho’s eyes open, blinking groggily around the room like he doesn’t recognise it.
“I thought we were at Seungyoon’s” he drawls.
Jinwoo nods, “we were. Then we left.”
“Is everything ok?”
Jinwoo doesn’t know what to say to that, so he passes Minho his mug off coffee (still lukewarm) and says nothing.
The silence is incomplete, punctuated by the sounds of cars outside and the elevator rattling through the building out in the corridor. Jinwoo thinks of Yunhyeong and tries to remember when the last time was they saw each other.
Next to him, Minho holds the coffee to his mouth like he might take a sip at any moment, breathing deep through his nose to catch the steam. He’s still sluggish and his inner workings have yet to light up completely, but his grip is firm.
“Can you smell it?” Jinwoo asks for the hundredth time.
Minho hums, “I think I can.”
“You think you can, or you can?”
“I can smell it.” Minho says, very quietly. Jinwoo doesn’t know why he didn’t say as much in the first place.
“After you powered down at Seungyoon’s, he tried to charge you up with some old cables. But he couldn’t,” Jinwoo stares at Minho, “do you know why?”
“No idea.”
“He saw your brand.”
“Oh? Was there something wrong with it?”
“You’re a Nexus One”
Minho’s head snaps up, his eyes wide in the dark and expression stony, “you’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“If I was a…if I was a Nexus I would know.”
Jinwoo has to agree with him there, or at least, he agrees that Minho should know. The whole reason the Nexus series is so dangerous is because they know that they are Other. He holds Minho’s gaze helplessly, wondering how on earth he doesn’t know what he is.
“I’m sorry,” Jinwoo whispers.
This time, when emotion breaks over Minho’s face, Jinwoo doesn’t stop to wonder at the realism of it. Where there is a brain and flesh, emotion isn’t far behind. The way his mouth falls open, aghast, the way his eyes suck in light like a chasm has opened up within him, this time Jinwoo knows Minho’s programming doesn’t stretch that far.
Something that sounds like a sob escapes Minho’s mouth, “so I’m a replicant.”
Jinwoo nods. He has no idea how something so simple evaded the people who brought him back from Bellatrix. Out among the stars, the Nexus are legal, but any craft coming to Earth must be thoroughly searched to ensure the offworlders never make it back. With his metal bones and electronic heart on full display, maybe they simply never thought to look any deeper. Maybe it’s just a glitch in the system.
“I have to leave, don’t I?”
Jinwoo reaches over and pulls one of Minho’s hands into this, “yeah, I think so.”
“Can I have five more minutes?” Minho’s eyes flick around the room, like he’s drinking it in, like he doesn’t want to forget what it looks like in the dark.
“Sure you can.” Jinwoo squeezes his hand, and Minho squeezes back.
They decide to do it on the roof, with all of Seoul spread out below them. All the Earth that Minho has ever known. The elevator ride to the top floor is treacherous, the cage rattling around them and threatening to drop them into the abyss right then and there. Jinwoo remembers holding onto the bars like the ground could swallow him up and wonders how he keeps his cool with two hundred floors between him and the lobby.
The door to the roof is open to all residents but Jinwoo’s never taken advantage of it before. The moment that they step through it he feels his breath slip away from him and he vows to do better on that count. Under the Dark, the city burns bright before them, the screaming neon of company advertisements, the distant fires from factories on the edge of the city pulsating through the night.
Myeongdong is a beacon to the east, garish and colourful and defiantly, wonderfully bright. Jinwoo doesn’t squint to pick out specific brands amongst the clutter, just lets his eyes glaze over as the distant lights blur into a single entity. A flash of green erupts from somewhere in the centre of the market and he is reminded of Bom, daring the Dark to take her sun.
Next to him, Minho looks up. Their fingers are still interlocked, the metal of Minho’s bones hard beneath Jinwoo’s skin. He has to wonder if human bones feel this strange to replicants, or if they were designed not to notice the gulf between them and their creators.
Jinwoo remembers Hayi, smiling like she could make herself believe she was happy and hoarding her family photos where her money should be. He wonders if the space between himself and Minho has not been greatly exaggerated.
“I would have liked to have seen it, one last time ya know?” Minho smiles sadly, eyes still trained on the clouds above their head. Jinwoo leans into him, trying to see what he sees, and is of the opinion that if there were any justice in the world the skies would split and underneath all that doom and gloom the stars would shine out across Seoul to join the throng of lights.
Not possible, he knows. Even on clear nights, neon drowns out red giants. It’s a crying shame, but it doesn’t hurt to wish. Minho spent most of his life - however much of it he had been given - circulating a ball of burning gas billions of miles away, there’s no harm in wanting to take one last look.
“I’ll miss you, I promise.”
Minho’s fingers tighten over his, “you don’t have to.”
“I know, but I will.”
The office block is two stories taller than Jinwoo’s building, but as they peer over the edge, the two of them can see that the lights don’t extend any further than the fiftieth floor. From where they stand, the building looks dark and lifeless, a black blot on a shining horizon. Minho’s face falls a little further with every moment he stares at it, “they were always so alive.”
“They still are, just not up here,” Jinwoo says, “you have to remember that the empty floors are only half the story.”
“Half the truth.”
“Exactly.”
There’s nothing more Jinwoo can think to say. His hand grips ever tighter around Minho’s like strength alone can withhold the inevitable.
“Well then, I guess I should go.”
Minho takes the final step to edge of the rooftop, nowhere to go but down. His hand loosens in Jinwoo’s, but Jinwoo doesn’t let go. This is so unfair, so unnecessary, “you didn’t get to live,” he chokes out.
“Who does?” Minho shrugs. He peels Jinwoo’s hand off his, then takes his head in both hands and kisses him. Just once, dry and warm, and the lips that press against his feel as real as anything to Jinwoo.
By the time he opens his eyes, Minho is gone.
It’s only on the way down that Jinwoo starts to wonder if Minho had felt pain, if he had been scared. Not that it matters anymore, but they feel like questions he should have asked.
He gets to his floor, but he doesn’t get off. Glancing down the corridor, Jinwoo sees Nam Taehyun standing outside his apartment - face passive and a hand on his gun. For the briefest moment, their eyes lock, and Taehyun is shrewd and calculating in a way that sets Jinwoo’s nerves on the edge of a knife.
Taehyun has the face of a man who knows everything, a man who knows too much.
The moment passes, the cage rumbles on. Jinwoo knows with dull certainty that Taehyun will follow him as soon as he can. Because Jinwoo was in Myeongdong that night, and Jinwoo knew Hayi, and Jinwoo hid Minho without even realising it.
Jinwoo doesn’t know how he came to sit at the centre of a problem like that, but he knows it can’t be coincidence. He flees the building as fast as he might, running short on breath before he reaches the end of the second block. It’s only then that he realises it’s raining, acidic and putrid, stinging his skin where it lands and desperately trying to burn out his eyes.
His tears are lost in the rain, like moments slipping back into time. In the morning, the sun will rise over Seoul for the first time in months, and Taehyun will waltz into Mapo Police Station to announce that the replicant threat has been dealt with.
The office block opposite his apartment is an eternal beacon of hustle and bustle, crowds accumulating around the coffee machines on the hour, every hour. Like a flood of over enthusiastic termites to royal jelly, Jinwoo watches them long past bedtime and halfway through the day whenever he doesn’t have work to keep his schedule tight.
Minho passes the time Jinwoo spends asleep with his eyes glued to the building. He knows them all, if not by name then by their favourite shoes, or how they did their hair yesterday. As with everything, the enthusiasm of human endeavour fascinates him.
“What do they do it for?” he asks one day, as Jinwoo pushes a mug of coffee into his hands (Minho can’t drink the coffee, but the act of joining in thrills him, and he seems to think he can smell it).
And Jinwoo’s tired, dazed by the lights trying to grab his attention from the black. “Why does anyone do anything? They need the money.” He snaps, and immediately wishes he hadn’t. Minho balks visibly and where his mouth had dropped open in wonder it closes.
Jinwoo closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and counts to three.
“I’m sorry. The Dark’s always a tough time of year.”
Minho’s shoulders drop, “it’s ok.”
Minho is a bot, Jinwoo shouldn’t need to apologise to him. Minho shouldn’t even have the programming to have his feelings hurt. Minho still can’t remember why he was built.
They stare out in silence, Minho’s eyes flicking to each and every cubicle, Jinwoo failing to focus on anything. Dressed as he is in an overlarge and overworn night shirt of Jinwoo’s, the lights of Minho’s circuitry cast a dim glow in the direction of their reflections - white and blue. Jinwoo looks tired and his hair is a mess, Minho looks like a head and hands suspended above a great light.
“I lost my job three years in a row during The Dark,” Jinwoo feels Minho turn to face him, he doesn’t need to look up to know his look of concern.
“Why?”
“Because I was too drunk to leave my flat,” Jinwoo takes a large gulp of coffee before he can try to remember the taste of spirits and burns the back of his tongue, “not really sure how I afforded the booze to see me through the summer to be honest. I just sort of…started drinking when the skies turned dark, and by the time I was sober enough to handle myself the sun was up again.”
He looks up and sees Minho staring him with a mixture of sorrow and astonishment, “how did you survive?” the bot asks, voice quiet.
Jinwoo shrugs, “you’d have to ask Seungyoon. He covered for me a lot.”
“What does ‘covered’ mean?”
“Not sure to be honest. I mean he must have made sure that I ate, he must have kept be sober for some of the time but I can’t remember it for the life of me. I dunno, he just made sure I was alive.”
“Why don’t you ask him about it?”
Jinwoo’s lips purse, “I’m not sure I care, and if I did, I reckon that particular trip down memory lane wouldn’t do me any good. I’m just grateful he did it at all.”
The sound of far off thunder pricks Minho’s ears. Jinwoo sees him tense up and moves towards him instinctively - not a grand gesture, just enough to close the gap. He rests his chin on the bot’s shoulder and watches steam rising from his coffee mug against the light of the office block, “can we go to a meeting tonight?”
Reflected in the mirror, Minho blinks in surprise. His brow furrows for a moment, then he nods.
“Hello everyone, my name is Hayi, and I am an alcoholic.”
Like Hanbin, Hayi looks miserably young. Unlike Hanbin, she makes the effort to smile. Jinwoo finds it hard to really listen as she talks, but he’s happy he came. If nothing else, it’s good to be surrounded by people, even if he doesn’t feel like talking today.
Hayi speaks of a hole she tried to fill with alcohol, a hole she’s still not sure is better used for anything else. She’s new, fresh to the sober world as Jinwoo had been when he first stepped into this room, though she’s far more eloquent than him. She smiles like she’s trying so hard to mean it and stares into the middle distance like positivity is an effort.
Jinwoo thinks that that’s as honest as anyone’s ever been within these four walls, and reminds himself that half-truths only hold out for so long.
“Who’s your friend?” Hanbin nods in Minho’s direction, chewing his way through biscuits once the talking’s done.
Jinwoo laughs and beckons Minho over to introduce them to each other, the bot characteristically straight backed and unwelcoming in the presence of others, “Kim Hanbin, meet Minho. He’s my bot.”
“What?” Hanbin’s shaking Minho’s hand before he remembers to double take, “shit, I thought he was real.”
“He is real.” Jinwoo bites his tongue a moment too late. He’s become used to this interaction, all too used to it. He forgets that people aren’t talking about Minho’s physical presence so much as his lack of humanity.
And that’s still approaching the problem from the wrong angle. Jinwoo has to stop pretending he doesn’t know what other people are expecting.
Minho mumbles his way through an introduction as Hanbin eyes him up with bemused fascination. They drop each other’s hands rather quickly and before he knows what’s what, Jinwoo feels Minho tugging on his shirt sleeve, silently imploring him to leave.
“So it’s going ok for you?” Hanbin asks.
“Yeah it’s…”Minho tugs on his sleeve with particular ferocity and Jinwoo suddenly remembers that he’s in a room full of alcoholics with a long walk home past several liquor shops (he knows their names and which one stocks the cheapest spirits) facing him once he leaves. The meetings aren’t supposed to be temptations, but like it or not all the right ingredients are there.
“I should go,” he smiles, and lets himself be dragged off.
Hayi is sitting on the step outside the front door, her wallet open and a handful of photographs lying in her lap. She stares at them like they are her whole world. She isn’t smiling anymore.
Jinwoo pauses as he passes her, “careful, someone will steal your wallet if you leave it out like that.”
“I’ll be fine,” Hayi doesn’t even look up, “it’s just money.”
Jinwoo doesn’t know what to say to that, so he lets Minho drag him onwards to the nearest bus station.
“I’ve heard it helps,” the bot says, eyes firmly on the pavement in front of them.
“What helps?”
“The photographs, they help them remember who they were supposed to be. But not why they were built.”
“What does that mean?”
Minho doesn’t answer, he doesn’t even seem to hear.
The clouds above them have settled low over the city, imposing and claustrophobic and dark dark dark. The streetlamps strain against the muggy perma-night, shedding a thin orange glow on the civilian walkways but failing to make the world feel any more like the sun is shining. They take the bridge over the motorway to the bus stand and for a moment the high reaches of Gangnam are visible across the river, brilliant and blazing. Jinwoo hears that the very richest people in this city pay for apartments lit by bulbs so bright and so packed with Ultra Violet rays that for them it need never feel like the sun goes down, while in Mapo they struggle to keep their world well enough lit to scare away the fairy tale monsters.
The Dark, replicants, the overwhelming desire to crawl inside a bottle and never come out. These are the monsters Seoul has been taught to fear, and the bright lights of Gangnam can only save you from one.
These days, they talk while they work, which is nice. Minho is full of stories from the stars, the light of Bellatrix glinting off Diana as it rises through the asteroid belt (still thousands of miles away but close enough to be beautiful when viewed through the porthole of a space station); run down ships being sent up in flames while Apollo watches, the silence of space when he stood on the hull of the ship with nothing but an astro-suit between him and eternity.
Jinwoo likes to tell him about life on an island half a lifetime from here, about natural greens and the sound of birds as the sun rises. A place so far from any city that the Dark barely touches it, and on the clearest nights you can still see the stars.
And to think for all those years they were staring at the same thing. As a boy, Jinwoo would trace out Orion from the belt upwards, and he knew that Bellatrix was his shoulder. For Minho, Bellatrix had been the centre of the universe.
“Did you drink before you came to Seoul?”
Jinwoo still has the last of a smile left over from the story of the last time he saw his father come back from the boat. He swallows it in an instant.
“We drank the rice wine the grandmother made when it was ready, but I was never old enough to be allowed much. I didn’t get drunk until…well until I saw my first Dark I guess.”
There’s a story in that, and a problem for Minho to analyse and deconstruct. Minho likes talking about these things, he thinks it helps more than his preordained urge to rid Jinwoo’s immediate world of alcohol, and he’s right. But that doesn’t stop the shame coiling in Jinwoo’s gut every time it’s mentioned, he surprises himself every time with how easy it is to let his cravings seep back into his field of vision.
The door to the cell slams open, “Kim Jinwoo, you’re needed up top.”
Bom stands in the doorway, hair dark red and nails painted gold - like she’s trying to make up for the sun all by herself. Minho glances at Jinwoo and doesn’t settle back into his work until he receives verbal confirmation that all will be well without him.
Jinwoo follows Bom to the elevator and tries not to let himself be disappointed when no one stops it on the work floor. He hasn’t seen Sandara in months, and he doubts he’ll be able to explain anything to her until Minho is gone.
Minho will be gone. Jinwoo knows this, and yet it is with a mighty falling of his stomach that he realises he has ever really thought about it before. The elevator rattles to a halt at the top floor and he’s still stuck on that concept as he follows the scarlet of Bom’s hair down the corridor and into her office.
In this office, there is a man, dressed all in black with drooping eyebrows. Jinwoo sees him and freezes. “you-“
“Hello, Kim Jinwoo. My name is Nam Taehyun, I’m with the Bladerunners,” obligatory presentation of his badge, “I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”
If he remembers Jinwoo, he doesn’t show it. Nam Taehyun raises his eyebrows at the dropped jaw he is greeted with, and waits for a response.
Bom clears her throat discreetly, Jinwoo catches up.
“I pretty much have to, they’ll fire me if I don’t.”
“Great!” Taehyun smiles, and it looks more convincing than Jinwoo would have thought possible, “we’re on the trail of a Nexus Seven, female, around one metre sixty, appearance of a girl around eighteen years old. She was last spotted at an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter that you are tied to, so we were hoping you might be able to help us out.”
“It’s supposed to be anonymous,” Jinwoo says dumbly. As if the entirety of the sobriety program was not carefully managed by the government’s public health division.
Taehyun frowns and carries on, “have you attended any meetings in the past two weeks?”
“Yeah, just the one though.”
“Just the one can be enough mister Kim. We don’t know exactly how smart this skinjob is, but last time we caught up with her, she was still going by her factory name - Lee Hayi. Now…”
Jinwoo stops listening right there. He feels numb, and terrified, and in awe. Hayi is just a normal girl, who talks about alcohol like she knew it as well as anyone and keeps pictures of her siblings in her wallet to remind herself of their faces on bad days. Everything she had done, from her expressions to the smile she was trying to force against the world, she had done with feeling - or at least that’s how Jinwoo remembers it. He can’t for the life of him imagine that she would be dangerous.
“I know her,” he cuts across Taehyun, “go down to the chapter sometime and talk to Kim Hanbin, he’ll help you out.”
Taehyun closes his mouth very deliberately and an air of smug satisfaction washes over his countenance.
“Thank you very much for your cooperation mister Kim.”
Jinwoo’s feet fall heavy on the way back to the elevator. Say the word ‘replicant’ and any resident of Seoul will hurry to do anything they can to make sure they never have to hear you say it again, a kneejerk reaction reinforced by years of public hysteria. But he can’t help feeling like he just did something awful.
Why would Hayi hide in a place like that if she were trying to kill people? Why wouldn’t she have just killed them all then and there? Jinwoo grabs the wall of the elevator as it lurches down the shaft and feels sick, feels confused, feels compromised.
“Are you ok?” Minho’s eyes are concerned when Jinwoo finds them amongst the mess of electronics at their work station.
He takes a deep breath and gathers himself, “I’m fine.”
The disbelief in Minho’s eyes is as real as his reluctant acceptance, the skin around them folds and smooths as neatly as any pair of eyes he’s ever seen. And in that moment, Jinwoo knows. For a moment at least, before he can keep pretending that his world is simpler than that.
Minho is a bot - half truths. They can save you.
“We should get a cab back today,” Jinwoo announces half way through the afternoon, “it’s not safe out there.”
Minho nods in ascension as he winds yet another cable round his hands. Jinwoo has no idea how many that must be, but if he asked he’d get a definite answer.
Outside, the skies are dark.
Minho is lying on his bed when Jinwoo gets out of the shower, staring at the ceiling with his hands nearly crossed over the plasma muscles that he has covering the space where a person would have a belly.
Jinwoo stands in the door, hair dripping water down his back, trying to think of a single reason in all the world that Minho would do something like that. Normally, at this time of night he’d be standing in the corner of the living room, plugged in and staring at his toes.
“I wanted to know if it was nice,” and it appears Minho can read his mind.
Jinwoo perches himself on the end of the mattress, “and?”
“It’s…I dunno. It’s not, not-nice?” Minho hoists himself up onto his elbows, “I don’t get why you spend so much time doing it though.”
Jinwoo tips back his head and laughs, revelling in the confused smile that crosses Minho’s face, “no one ever explained sleep to you?”
It takes a moment, but comprehension dawns on Minho’s face just as sure as the sun will rise after the Dark, “shit! I forgot,”
“It’s ok!” Jinwoo beams, “it’s fine. You can stay if you like.”
“For how long?”
“As long as you like. I’m a light sleeper anyway, just try not to run out of charge before morning.”
Minho nods, “yeah, they told me that you might have trouble sleeping.”
“Ahh it’s not so bad,” Jinwoo turns his back, saying no more on the subject. He changes into an old pair of boxer shorts - more than enough for a warm summer night - and slips beneath the top cover of the bed.
Minho crawls in after him, the metal of his spine warm from the rumblings of his electronic interior, but not warmer than Jinwoo’s skin. They lie back to back, Jinwoo setting his alarm before hitting the switch next to his bed and plunging them into darkness.
Or at least it should be darkness. Minho’s circuits never power off completely unless he runs out of battery and the lights from his heart are bright enough to shine through the glorified sheet that they’re wrapped in. More intense than the streetlamps, not even half as bright as Bellatrix through the clouds in winter; it’s nice to think that the Dark can’t touch them completely.
Minho stays for an hour, then shuffles through to plug himself in for the night. A failed experiment perhaps - he cannot sleep - but when he forgets to close the door on his way out Jinwoo doesn’t mind the light cutting through the crack.
It takes another two weeks’ sitting in on video calls, but Minho learns to trust Seungyoon not to take Jinwoo out drinking at the drop of a hat. Well, perhaps ‘trust’ is too strong a word, but when Jinwoo suggests that they go out to eat together, Minho doesn’t object.
“Hey there! Wasn’t expecting to see you for another eight months,” Seunghoon grins over the top of a wok filled with something frying vigorously, “who’s your friend?”
“This is Minho, he’s my bot,” Jinwoo laughs as Minho’s back goes very straight.
“Bot?” Seunghoon blinks, leaning forward to get a better look at Minho.
“I know, trust me though, that’s a bot,” Seungyoon collapses into a chair at the front of the cart and motions for Jinwoo and Minho to follow him.
Seunghoon sticks his nose back in his wok, sneaking furtive glances at the three of them like he expects someone to announce that they’re joking any second. “And will this bot be eating with you?”
“I can’t, got no stomach,” Minho grumbles.
Seunghoon throws vegetables and the protein infused fungus that passes for meat together with ease, and not five minutes later, Jinwoo and Seungyoon have bowls of noodles as big as their heads sitting in front of them. The Dark gives the impression of perpetual night, but Jinwoo knows from the clock behind the counter that it’s after midnight anyway - Seungyoon works late when he can, and finding an appetite is hard when you have no temporal cues to aid you. Steam rises through the warm night air, chasing the few insects that still dare to brave the city up towards the lights at the edge of the cart.
They eat, Minho’s eyes fix on something behind Seunghoon and stay there.
The chef notices of course, “something caught your eye?”
“You serve soju,” Minho snaps.
Seunghoon blinks in confusion, “of course I do, that a problem?”
“Jinwoo’s not supposed to drink.”
“And neither am I,” Seungyoon counters, “don’t worry, it’s more than his business is worth to serve to us. The police would be down here in a shot.”
Speak of the devil, no sooner has Seungyoon mentioned the police than the lights of a black Bladerunner cruiser light up what little of the street has not already succumbed to the forces of neon. They sit in silence as the vehicle rumbles down the road, all eyes fixed on the tinted windows as it passes.
“No replicants down this way! Get out of Mapo and do your damn jobs,” Seunghoon shouts after them. Like all small business owners north of the river, he’s sick of having his customers scared off by the prospect of replicants in their area. Of course, the local police offices rattle off the same lines about preventative measures whenever pressed about it, the same old bullshit about how the presence of Bladerunners doesn’t mean the presence of the things they’re sent out to catch, but no one buys that anymore.
Jinwoo almost points out that the last replicant incident was mere months ago and that Myeongdong isn’t far from here, but he sees Seunghoon’s bitter expression and thinks better of it.
The car comes to a stop just out of sight. They hear doors slamming and people shouting at each other, though it’s hard to tell if it’s on the job formalities driving up the volume of their voices, or nerves.
“Maybe we should go…” Seungyoon murmurs.
“Absolutely not,” Seunghoon snaps, “I refuse to rearrange my day to accommodate a couple of nervy Bladerunners.”
“I’m just saying-“
“Kang Seungyoon you stay in your seat and you finish your noodles.”
Jinwoo is about to turn around and continue with his own food when a movement at the top of the road, from the direction the Bladerunners had come from, catches his eye. Something moving through the few patches of shadow left, ducking into alleys, head down and trying not to be seen.
It’s a girl, short with hair past her shoulders, clutching something to her chest. She barrels past closed shops and open bars with a single minded determination, hard heels of her shoes clattering along the pavement. She steps into a patch of light and Jinwoo sees her neat nose, her wide eyes, and he recognises her.
“Hayi!” he screams, but if she hears him she doesn’t show it.
A second later, a gun goes off, and the street erupts into activity.
First there is a bang, loud and clean with nowhere to echo in these low buildings; then Seunghoon’s reaching over the counter, tugging at Jinwoo’s collar and urging him to move. Ears still ringing from the gunshot, Jinwoo can’t hear him urge to get out of the way, but from the frantic hand gestures he’s supplied with, he gets the message.
Grabbing Minho’s arm, Jinwoo follows Seungyoon round the back of the van and pushes himself flat against the metal wall. The structure rocks as Seunghoon packs up in a hurry, hard enough for him to convince himself that the shaking of his hands is not fear and shock. The shadows falling either side of the cart become messy and confused as people leave the restaurants and drinking holes they had been clamped up in, and as Jinwoo’s hearing begins to return he can hear the stunned silence falling over people as they realise what has happened.
“You knew her? What the fuck, why did you know her?” Seungyoon screams at him, and Jinwoo has to fight the urge not to slap him just to shut him up.
The van stops shaking and Seunghoon sticks his head round the back, “c’mon, let’s go.”
They sneak away through a back street, Seungyoon swearing profusely all the way. Jinwoo catches a glimpse of the street all the same, the body of a girl, surrounded by photographs spilling from an open book she had been clutching to her chest as she walks, and Nam Taehyun standing over her.
Taehyun turns, his eyes lock with Jinwoo’s, and he smiles.
Seungyoon’s flat is barely big enough for the four of them to sit in a circle. His bedroom doubles as a living room and kitchen, making the bathroom the only place he has to run to, and Jinwoo wonders that he doesn’t go stir crazy cooped up in here.
Seunghoon mutters about replicants and Bladerunners and everything that’s wrong with modern society as he’s handed a mug of tea. Seungyoon joins in as best he can, punctuating particularly biting statements with as potent a profanity as he can manage.
Minho is quiet, strangely so. His spine begins to curve and he sinks into himself, wobbling for a moment before leaning over to rest his head on Jinwoo’s shoulder.
“You alright?” Jinwoo asks, prodding him in the side.
No response. Slightly alarmed, Jinwoo looks down to see that Minho’s eyes have closed and his body gone limp, as if he were asleep.
Only Minho can’t sleep.
“Is he low on power?” Seungyoon asks, stopping Seunghoon midway through a particularly vicious tirade on the injustice of funnelling public money into a highly advanced and mostly useless police division.
Jinwoo nods, cursing internally, “I only caught a few hours’ sleep last night and he’d normally be plugged in by now, he must have been running low all day. Fuck, I didn’t even think.”
“No worries,” Seungyoon gets up and goes over to a kitchen cupboard filled with cleaning supplies, “I’m pretty sure I’ve still got my cables in here from when I had my bot. These things are standard issue, they should work for him…gotcha!”
Seungyoon steps back, holding up a thick red cable in triumph. He steps over to Minho and starts searching for the socket to plug it into.
“At the back of his neck, around the hairline,” Jinwoo says, propping Minho up and feeling for the spot, “just there.”
Seungyoon leans down, pushing Minho’s head forward till it rests on his chest. At this angle, Jinwoo can see the metal socket clearly, hidden amongst the skin on Minho’s neck. It looks strange and unnatural, nestled amongst organic matter, even if he does know what lies lower down the bot’s back.
“What the fuck?” Seungyoon drops the cable and abruptly steps away from Minho, eyes wide.
Jinwoo frowns, “what’s wrong? Did you get a shock?”
“I’ll say. You ever take a look at the brand name on this thing?”
Confused, Jinwoo pushes Minho’s hair back and moves him round into the light to get a better look. Sat on the bed, Seunghoon looks from Seungyoon to the bot and back again like either one of them might explode at any moment.
Minho’s brand is written in neat letters above his power socket, small enough that no one would notice them if they weren’t looking. Jinwoo reads it out dully, failing to process what the word means until Seunghoon lets out a high pitched whine and drops his mug, covering the floor with shards of pottery.
“What the fuck is that doing here?”
“Seunghoon-“
“Jinwoo why didn’t you look at the damn thing before?”
Jinwoo has no idea. He only knows that his blood feels like it’s cooling in his veins and he wants nothing more than to not know this.
Seungyoon takes a long, shuddering breath, “I need it out of here, right now.”
“Ok,” Jinwoo nods. A very large part of him wants to stay and argue that there’s no reason for this to change anything, that everything’s been fine up till now, but the part of him that gets to act knows that would be futile. He slings one of Minho’s arms over his shoulder and hoists him into a standing position - he’s heavy, but not as heavy as he looks - and drags him to the door. “Seungyoon, I-“
“Don’t come back here till you’ve gotten rid of it.” Seungyoon’s eyes are hard and cold. Seunghoon looks like he might collapse right there.
The door closes behind them and Minho’s head lolls forward once again. Jinwoo pauses to rearrange him before they move again, tipping back his head till the metal at the base of his skull is no longer visible, and he can try to pretend that the words “Nexus One” are not written next to Minho’s serial number.
He doesn’t bother turning on the lights when he gets home. The light from the office block is bright enough for now, and the space is small enough and familiar enough that his hands will find the way even if he can’t see it. The cables Minho uses to charge himself are still plugged in, so once the bot has been deposited on the couch it’s the work of a moment to pull them over and plug them into the socket at the back of his neck.
The cables hit home, a dull blue glow pulses through Minho’s shirt. Jinwoo supposes this will take a while.
In the kitchen, Jinwoo throws instant coffee and milk powder together as hurriedly as he can. He scrambles for mugs as the kettle boils and almost drops one on his head, only then does he think to turn the light on.
He walks back through to the living room with two cups of coffee, scalding against his knuckles. He sets them down on the floor and allows himself to become entranced by the swirl of lights in Minho’s belly as they flicker back to life.
Jinwoo’s not sure how long it takes, but eventually Minho’s eyes open, blinking groggily around the room like he doesn’t recognise it.
“I thought we were at Seungyoon’s” he drawls.
Jinwoo nods, “we were. Then we left.”
“Is everything ok?”
Jinwoo doesn’t know what to say to that, so he passes Minho his mug off coffee (still lukewarm) and says nothing.
The silence is incomplete, punctuated by the sounds of cars outside and the elevator rattling through the building out in the corridor. Jinwoo thinks of Yunhyeong and tries to remember when the last time was they saw each other.
Next to him, Minho holds the coffee to his mouth like he might take a sip at any moment, breathing deep through his nose to catch the steam. He’s still sluggish and his inner workings have yet to light up completely, but his grip is firm.
“Can you smell it?” Jinwoo asks for the hundredth time.
Minho hums, “I think I can.”
“You think you can, or you can?”
“I can smell it.” Minho says, very quietly. Jinwoo doesn’t know why he didn’t say as much in the first place.
“After you powered down at Seungyoon’s, he tried to charge you up with some old cables. But he couldn’t,” Jinwoo stares at Minho, “do you know why?”
“No idea.”
“He saw your brand.”
“Oh? Was there something wrong with it?”
“You’re a Nexus One”
Minho’s head snaps up, his eyes wide in the dark and expression stony, “you’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“If I was a…if I was a Nexus I would know.”
Jinwoo has to agree with him there, or at least, he agrees that Minho should know. The whole reason the Nexus series is so dangerous is because they know that they are Other. He holds Minho’s gaze helplessly, wondering how on earth he doesn’t know what he is.
“I’m sorry,” Jinwoo whispers.
This time, when emotion breaks over Minho’s face, Jinwoo doesn’t stop to wonder at the realism of it. Where there is a brain and flesh, emotion isn’t far behind. The way his mouth falls open, aghast, the way his eyes suck in light like a chasm has opened up within him, this time Jinwoo knows Minho’s programming doesn’t stretch that far.
Something that sounds like a sob escapes Minho’s mouth, “so I’m a replicant.”
Jinwoo nods. He has no idea how something so simple evaded the people who brought him back from Bellatrix. Out among the stars, the Nexus are legal, but any craft coming to Earth must be thoroughly searched to ensure the offworlders never make it back. With his metal bones and electronic heart on full display, maybe they simply never thought to look any deeper. Maybe it’s just a glitch in the system.
“I have to leave, don’t I?”
Jinwoo reaches over and pulls one of Minho’s hands into this, “yeah, I think so.”
“Can I have five more minutes?” Minho’s eyes flick around the room, like he’s drinking it in, like he doesn’t want to forget what it looks like in the dark.
“Sure you can.” Jinwoo squeezes his hand, and Minho squeezes back.
They decide to do it on the roof, with all of Seoul spread out below them. All the Earth that Minho has ever known. The elevator ride to the top floor is treacherous, the cage rattling around them and threatening to drop them into the abyss right then and there. Jinwoo remembers holding onto the bars like the ground could swallow him up and wonders how he keeps his cool with two hundred floors between him and the lobby.
The door to the roof is open to all residents but Jinwoo’s never taken advantage of it before. The moment that they step through it he feels his breath slip away from him and he vows to do better on that count. Under the Dark, the city burns bright before them, the screaming neon of company advertisements, the distant fires from factories on the edge of the city pulsating through the night.
Myeongdong is a beacon to the east, garish and colourful and defiantly, wonderfully bright. Jinwoo doesn’t squint to pick out specific brands amongst the clutter, just lets his eyes glaze over as the distant lights blur into a single entity. A flash of green erupts from somewhere in the centre of the market and he is reminded of Bom, daring the Dark to take her sun.
Next to him, Minho looks up. Their fingers are still interlocked, the metal of Minho’s bones hard beneath Jinwoo’s skin. He has to wonder if human bones feel this strange to replicants, or if they were designed not to notice the gulf between them and their creators.
Jinwoo remembers Hayi, smiling like she could make herself believe she was happy and hoarding her family photos where her money should be. He wonders if the space between himself and Minho has not been greatly exaggerated.
“I would have liked to have seen it, one last time ya know?” Minho smiles sadly, eyes still trained on the clouds above their head. Jinwoo leans into him, trying to see what he sees, and is of the opinion that if there were any justice in the world the skies would split and underneath all that doom and gloom the stars would shine out across Seoul to join the throng of lights.
Not possible, he knows. Even on clear nights, neon drowns out red giants. It’s a crying shame, but it doesn’t hurt to wish. Minho spent most of his life - however much of it he had been given - circulating a ball of burning gas billions of miles away, there’s no harm in wanting to take one last look.
“I’ll miss you, I promise.”
Minho’s fingers tighten over his, “you don’t have to.”
“I know, but I will.”
The office block is two stories taller than Jinwoo’s building, but as they peer over the edge, the two of them can see that the lights don’t extend any further than the fiftieth floor. From where they stand, the building looks dark and lifeless, a black blot on a shining horizon. Minho’s face falls a little further with every moment he stares at it, “they were always so alive.”
“They still are, just not up here,” Jinwoo says, “you have to remember that the empty floors are only half the story.”
“Half the truth.”
“Exactly.”
There’s nothing more Jinwoo can think to say. His hand grips ever tighter around Minho’s like strength alone can withhold the inevitable.
“Well then, I guess I should go.”
Minho takes the final step to edge of the rooftop, nowhere to go but down. His hand loosens in Jinwoo’s, but Jinwoo doesn’t let go. This is so unfair, so unnecessary, “you didn’t get to live,” he chokes out.
“Who does?” Minho shrugs. He peels Jinwoo’s hand off his, then takes his head in both hands and kisses him. Just once, dry and warm, and the lips that press against his feel as real as anything to Jinwoo.
By the time he opens his eyes, Minho is gone.
It’s only on the way down that Jinwoo starts to wonder if Minho had felt pain, if he had been scared. Not that it matters anymore, but they feel like questions he should have asked.
He gets to his floor, but he doesn’t get off. Glancing down the corridor, Jinwoo sees Nam Taehyun standing outside his apartment - face passive and a hand on his gun. For the briefest moment, their eyes lock, and Taehyun is shrewd and calculating in a way that sets Jinwoo’s nerves on the edge of a knife.
Taehyun has the face of a man who knows everything, a man who knows too much.
The moment passes, the cage rumbles on. Jinwoo knows with dull certainty that Taehyun will follow him as soon as he can. Because Jinwoo was in Myeongdong that night, and Jinwoo knew Hayi, and Jinwoo hid Minho without even realising it.
Jinwoo doesn’t know how he came to sit at the centre of a problem like that, but he knows it can’t be coincidence. He flees the building as fast as he might, running short on breath before he reaches the end of the second block. It’s only then that he realises it’s raining, acidic and putrid, stinging his skin where it lands and desperately trying to burn out his eyes.
His tears are lost in the rain, like moments slipping back into time. In the morning, the sun will rise over Seoul for the first time in months, and Taehyun will waltz into Mapo Police Station to announce that the replicant threat has been dealt with.