11. (thought i) made you mine
People like them don't have souls. Myungsoo is one such person.
You can always tell from the eyes; them being windows to the soul and what not, after all.
“Chin up, Myungsoo,” his mother tells him, carefully adjusting the collar of his uniform. Myungsoo looks up and moves his mouth into a smile. His mother nods in approval, even if it’s just a beat short. “Remember,” she says, like she’s said every day since he’s started his first year of school: “Smile, and try to look people in the eyes when you do it.”
“I do smile! And I look people in the eyes, but they always look away.”
His mother shakes her head. “That’s not true,” she says but even then she looks away. Little Myungsoo finds it strange that people can’t seem to stand looking into his eyes for too long, even his own parents.
Myungsoo will learn, when he’s old enough, that it’s because his smile never reaches his eyes. Cold is the word they use for him and his smile and the energy he radiates but he does try. He really does.
They call it a ‘condition’, like it’s an illness and not a life sentence. People like him don’t have souls; they have elements inside them instead, elements that leak out from their skin and eyes, like the cold he seems to diffuse. His parents only found out after Moonsoo was born, because his baby brother would squirm and start crying every single time he touched him.
Myungsoo heard his parents talk about in the bedroom, in hushed voices as Myungsoo crouches outside their door: “I never thought it was elemental...I always thought it was because he had bad circulation. Bad circulation can still explain why he’s always so cool to the touch, right?”
He hears his father murmur in agreement, but when his mother quietly brings up Myungsoo’s eyes, they both fall silent.
Myungsoo remembers growing up starting at his reflection, but throughout the years, he doesn’t see anything in the boy staring back at him. Maybe that’s the problem.
“So you have superpowers?” They used to ask, crowding around Myungsoo during recess. This was back in his first year of school.
Myungsoo would shrug at his shoes. “Maybe.”
“That’s so cool! Show us something.”
“What do you think I can do?” This time Myungsoo looks up, but he stares at the area above their heads. He tries to smile though, and he can see the girl grin back at him.
“I don’t know,” her friend says. “Shoot ice from your fingertips? Or something?”
“I can freeze your drink.”
“What?”
Myungsoo takes the bottle of apple juice from the girl’s hand. He holds it at its base, and soon enough, the surface of the bottle starts to cloud. She snatches it back from him. “I’m not supposed to drink anything cold, you freak. Your eyes are weird too!”
She drops the drink and pulls her friend along by her wrist. This time, Myungsoo looks her in the eyes and she shoots him an apologetic look mixed with fear and wonder from behind her shoulder before they both disappear into the sea of students. Her long hair leaves behind the scent of flowers.
And he can’t help himself, he shouts after them: “All I want is a friend!”
They don’t reply, not when they’re so far away so Myungsoo picks up the bottle and drinks it alone, shoes kicking up small sand storms in the dirt. He then wonders what it’s like to have a soul (or a friend, because he thinks it’s kind of the same thing), to be warmed from the inside out.
Moonsoo is perfectly normal.
His parents would only hug him when they wear those ridiculously bulky jackets saved for winter, and the first word Moonsoo learns to say is ‘frostbite’.
On his official governmental file, because the government needs to keep tabs on elementals like him, he knows he’s labelled as ‘L’ because there are only eleven people before him with his element. Myungsoo learns with careful research, not questions that will make his mother cry, that there are other elements, other properties you can possess instead of a soul.
He also learns that out of all of them, his element is the worst - drawing heat from life, coating everything under a thin layer of ice.
His nickname is, unsurprisingly, ‘ice prince’. Girls flood his letter box with letters and chocolates even when it’s not a special occasion and he knows why. While the boy that stares back at him in the mirror has empty eyes, he knows he’s good-looking. His mother tells him this. All the letters tell him this.
But the girls use him as a starting block, someone to house their affections in without seeking anything more. As the years go by, he sees the tell-tale signs of his classmates dating by how some react when their names are called by certain boys and how others have matching keychains on their phones or the ones that hold hands under the lunch tables.
His letter box is never empty but the girls never leave names, or numbers.
It’s in his first year of high school that Myungsoo is shifted to the second best class and into a seat next to a boy he’s seen around sometimes, on the basketball field or at the park near his place, dancing with his friends under the wane, yellow streetlights.
“Hey,” the boy says to him as Myungsoo arranges his books and pencil case on top of the desk. Myungsoo stills, because most people don’t acknowledge him, let alone in such an innocuous tone.
“Hi,” Myungsoo replies, with his eyes still on the table.
“It’s okay, you can look at me.”
“I’d rather not, for your sake.”
“I know about you. My name is Lee Howon, but the government calls me Hoya. You can call me that too.”
Myungsoo blinks at his pencil case. “You have a government-codified name as well?”
“Yeah.”
This time, Myungsoo looks at him, straight into the eyes. Hoya doesn’t flinch, not even when Myungsoo holds his gaze.
That’s all they say about their conditions, but near the end of the day, when Hoya asks to borrow his English dictionary and Myungsoo’s fingers accidentally brush against his fingers, Hoya feels...different. Not like what he remembers of his brother’s skin, smooth but lukewarm like bath water. Hoya feels warm, like what it’s like to sit on a bench at the park in summer with the sun high over his head.
Hoya jolts a little, but he recovers quickly and nods his head in thanks. Myungsoo thinks he understands.
“So,” Hoya asks him during lunch, choosing not to sit with his usual group of friends today, “do you have superpowers?” He is smiling as he says this.
It brings Myungsoo back to elementary school, and he hopes he doesn’t colour. “Do you?” He shoots back.
Hoya shakes his head. “But I can do this,” he says. He unbottles the cap of his water bottle, and clenches his fingers around its soft body. Soon, the tiniest bubbles break past the surface.
Myungsoo laughs.
“What?”
“So you’re like a human kettle?”
“Stupid,” he retorts, pulling his hand away but there’s no bite in his voice. “Now I can’t even drink my own water because it’s too hot.”
Myungsoo reaches over and holds the bottle in his grip, until a familiar cloudiness mists the outside of the bottle. It’s the first time he’s done something like this, ever since that elementary school incident. He pushes it wordlessly to Hoya, who picks it up and gulps down the water.
Myungsoo watches him with his chin in his hands and Hoya doesn’t say anything and it’s as though what they just did is ordinary. It makes Myungsoo smile down at his kimbap and now, just because he can, he looks up and catches Hoya’s eyes and smiles.
Something that must feel a lot like warmth floods his chest.
Unlike Myungsoo, Hoya’s condition allows him to assimilate better into society - many just think his gaze is competitive and that he’s running a slight temperature, instead of being like Myungsoo. He even uses his government codified name in public, calling it a nickname.
But the truth of the fact remains: they were both born without souls, and even though Myungsoo nor his family are not religious, it scares him to the core.
“Where do you think we’ll go when we die?” Today they’re in Myungsoo’s room, sprawled out on the floor because it’s raining and Hoya can’t dance outside.
“The ground. Or ash, depending on what you choose to do with your body.”
“No, I mean...after.”
“It doesn’t really matter, much it? What’s important is here and now.”
And of course Hoya would think this way, Hoya and his dance crew and the drama classes he excels in and the sports teams he heads. Even though they’re similar, they’re still not the same. No one is like him and Myungsoo thinks he’s found something even terrifying than wondering where he’d go after he dies.
“Don’t worry too much about it, okay? Do you even know what you’re capable of?”
“Scaring people away?” Myungsoo replies, half-kidding.
“That’s handy, sometimes.”
Myungsoo rolls onto his back and shakes his head. “No, it isn’t.”
“Okay, fine,” Hoya says, mimicking his actions. “But at least we have each other.” He reaches out and pokes Myungsoo in the arm. His touch is warm, warmer than anything he’s ever felt in his life. It’s different too, from the way it feels when he warms his hand over a fire.
Myungsoo responds by clamping his hand around Hoya’s wrist. He can see the slightest way Hoya shivers, and it emboldens Myungsoo. He keeps contact with Hoya until Hoya pins Myungsoo’s free hand down with one hand and presses his palm on top of Myungsoo’s other hand. The warmth blossoms and bleeds under his skin, and Myungsoo lets out a laugh that sounds like an exhale.
He stays motionless, until the heat becomes so uncomfortable he has to wiggle out of Hoya’s grip until he’s straddling Hoya, thighs pinning Hoya down. Hoya’s eyes are closed now and the shivering is obvious now. “Tell me to stop,” Myungsoo says quietly.
“I can handle it,” Hoya replies, and pushes Myungsoo until he’s sitting on Hoya’s knees and Hoya sits up and holds Myungsoo in an embrace. Myungsoo is starting to sweat now, the tiniest droplets on his hairline and Hoya repeats it: “Tell me to stop.”
Myungsoo is quiet, even when he pushes himself closer to Hoya, so close their foreheads are touching and Hoya is shivering so much he’s shaking beneath him and Myungsoo feels like his skin is going to blister. Myungsoo is quiet, even when Hoya exhales against his mouth and he feels something bristle inside of him, completely unrelated to the heat. Myungsoo is quiet, even when he feels the skin of the palm that’s pressing against Hoya’s chest open with the smallest blister.
It's like discovering a secret and the truth at the same time, and this must be the only reason why Hoya doesn't move either.
“You didn’t come to school today,” Myungsoo says into the receiver. “And I couldn’t even copy half of the notes I was supposed to because of my blisters.”
Hoya says something unintelligible.
“What?”
“I said, I caught a cold. It’s all your fault.”
(epilogue)
And this is how Myungsoo and Hoya wait out the remainder of their high school days to the end, touching and testing their limits with each other because the end is their graduation day, where everyone would be breathless in anticipation for a world beyond school and teachers and uniforms.
Everyone ordinary, that is.
For people like them, high school is the final vestige of normalcy. Not that they know this yet but a day after they graduate, the government comes back to claim them, because normal people aren’t born without souls. Normal people aren’t elemental.
Normal people don’t have ice, or fire, within them.
You can always tell from the eyes; them being windows to the soul and what not, after all.
“Chin up, Myungsoo,” his mother tells him, carefully adjusting the collar of his uniform. Myungsoo looks up and moves his mouth into a smile. His mother nods in approval, even if it’s just a beat short. “Remember,” she says, like she’s said every day since he’s started his first year of school: “Smile, and try to look people in the eyes when you do it.”
“I do smile! And I look people in the eyes, but they always look away.”
His mother shakes her head. “That’s not true,” she says but even then she looks away. Little Myungsoo finds it strange that people can’t seem to stand looking into his eyes for too long, even his own parents.
Myungsoo will learn, when he’s old enough, that it’s because his smile never reaches his eyes. Cold is the word they use for him and his smile and the energy he radiates but he does try. He really does.
They call it a ‘condition’, like it’s an illness and not a life sentence. People like him don’t have souls; they have elements inside them instead, elements that leak out from their skin and eyes, like the cold he seems to diffuse. His parents only found out after Moonsoo was born, because his baby brother would squirm and start crying every single time he touched him.
Myungsoo heard his parents talk about in the bedroom, in hushed voices as Myungsoo crouches outside their door: “I never thought it was elemental...I always thought it was because he had bad circulation. Bad circulation can still explain why he’s always so cool to the touch, right?”
He hears his father murmur in agreement, but when his mother quietly brings up Myungsoo’s eyes, they both fall silent.
Myungsoo remembers growing up starting at his reflection, but throughout the years, he doesn’t see anything in the boy staring back at him. Maybe that’s the problem.
“So you have superpowers?” They used to ask, crowding around Myungsoo during recess. This was back in his first year of school.
Myungsoo would shrug at his shoes. “Maybe.”
“That’s so cool! Show us something.”
“What do you think I can do?” This time Myungsoo looks up, but he stares at the area above their heads. He tries to smile though, and he can see the girl grin back at him.
“I don’t know,” her friend says. “Shoot ice from your fingertips? Or something?”
“I can freeze your drink.”
“What?”
Myungsoo takes the bottle of apple juice from the girl’s hand. He holds it at its base, and soon enough, the surface of the bottle starts to cloud. She snatches it back from him. “I’m not supposed to drink anything cold, you freak. Your eyes are weird too!”
She drops the drink and pulls her friend along by her wrist. This time, Myungsoo looks her in the eyes and she shoots him an apologetic look mixed with fear and wonder from behind her shoulder before they both disappear into the sea of students. Her long hair leaves behind the scent of flowers.
And he can’t help himself, he shouts after them: “All I want is a friend!”
They don’t reply, not when they’re so far away so Myungsoo picks up the bottle and drinks it alone, shoes kicking up small sand storms in the dirt. He then wonders what it’s like to have a soul (or a friend, because he thinks it’s kind of the same thing), to be warmed from the inside out.
Moonsoo is perfectly normal.
His parents would only hug him when they wear those ridiculously bulky jackets saved for winter, and the first word Moonsoo learns to say is ‘frostbite’.
On his official governmental file, because the government needs to keep tabs on elementals like him, he knows he’s labelled as ‘L’ because there are only eleven people before him with his element. Myungsoo learns with careful research, not questions that will make his mother cry, that there are other elements, other properties you can possess instead of a soul.
He also learns that out of all of them, his element is the worst - drawing heat from life, coating everything under a thin layer of ice.
His nickname is, unsurprisingly, ‘ice prince’. Girls flood his letter box with letters and chocolates even when it’s not a special occasion and he knows why. While the boy that stares back at him in the mirror has empty eyes, he knows he’s good-looking. His mother tells him this. All the letters tell him this.
But the girls use him as a starting block, someone to house their affections in without seeking anything more. As the years go by, he sees the tell-tale signs of his classmates dating by how some react when their names are called by certain boys and how others have matching keychains on their phones or the ones that hold hands under the lunch tables.
His letter box is never empty but the girls never leave names, or numbers.
It’s in his first year of high school that Myungsoo is shifted to the second best class and into a seat next to a boy he’s seen around sometimes, on the basketball field or at the park near his place, dancing with his friends under the wane, yellow streetlights.
“Hey,” the boy says to him as Myungsoo arranges his books and pencil case on top of the desk. Myungsoo stills, because most people don’t acknowledge him, let alone in such an innocuous tone.
“Hi,” Myungsoo replies, with his eyes still on the table.
“It’s okay, you can look at me.”
“I’d rather not, for your sake.”
“I know about you. My name is Lee Howon, but the government calls me Hoya. You can call me that too.”
Myungsoo blinks at his pencil case. “You have a government-codified name as well?”
“Yeah.”
This time, Myungsoo looks at him, straight into the eyes. Hoya doesn’t flinch, not even when Myungsoo holds his gaze.
That’s all they say about their conditions, but near the end of the day, when Hoya asks to borrow his English dictionary and Myungsoo’s fingers accidentally brush against his fingers, Hoya feels...different. Not like what he remembers of his brother’s skin, smooth but lukewarm like bath water. Hoya feels warm, like what it’s like to sit on a bench at the park in summer with the sun high over his head.
Hoya jolts a little, but he recovers quickly and nods his head in thanks. Myungsoo thinks he understands.
“So,” Hoya asks him during lunch, choosing not to sit with his usual group of friends today, “do you have superpowers?” He is smiling as he says this.
It brings Myungsoo back to elementary school, and he hopes he doesn’t colour. “Do you?” He shoots back.
Hoya shakes his head. “But I can do this,” he says. He unbottles the cap of his water bottle, and clenches his fingers around its soft body. Soon, the tiniest bubbles break past the surface.
Myungsoo laughs.
“What?”
“So you’re like a human kettle?”
“Stupid,” he retorts, pulling his hand away but there’s no bite in his voice. “Now I can’t even drink my own water because it’s too hot.”
Myungsoo reaches over and holds the bottle in his grip, until a familiar cloudiness mists the outside of the bottle. It’s the first time he’s done something like this, ever since that elementary school incident. He pushes it wordlessly to Hoya, who picks it up and gulps down the water.
Myungsoo watches him with his chin in his hands and Hoya doesn’t say anything and it’s as though what they just did is ordinary. It makes Myungsoo smile down at his kimbap and now, just because he can, he looks up and catches Hoya’s eyes and smiles.
Something that must feel a lot like warmth floods his chest.
Unlike Myungsoo, Hoya’s condition allows him to assimilate better into society - many just think his gaze is competitive and that he’s running a slight temperature, instead of being like Myungsoo. He even uses his government codified name in public, calling it a nickname.
But the truth of the fact remains: they were both born without souls, and even though Myungsoo nor his family are not religious, it scares him to the core.
“Where do you think we’ll go when we die?” Today they’re in Myungsoo’s room, sprawled out on the floor because it’s raining and Hoya can’t dance outside.
“The ground. Or ash, depending on what you choose to do with your body.”
“No, I mean...after.”
“It doesn’t really matter, much it? What’s important is here and now.”
And of course Hoya would think this way, Hoya and his dance crew and the drama classes he excels in and the sports teams he heads. Even though they’re similar, they’re still not the same. No one is like him and Myungsoo thinks he’s found something even terrifying than wondering where he’d go after he dies.
“Don’t worry too much about it, okay? Do you even know what you’re capable of?”
“Scaring people away?” Myungsoo replies, half-kidding.
“That’s handy, sometimes.”
Myungsoo rolls onto his back and shakes his head. “No, it isn’t.”
“Okay, fine,” Hoya says, mimicking his actions. “But at least we have each other.” He reaches out and pokes Myungsoo in the arm. His touch is warm, warmer than anything he’s ever felt in his life. It’s different too, from the way it feels when he warms his hand over a fire.
Myungsoo responds by clamping his hand around Hoya’s wrist. He can see the slightest way Hoya shivers, and it emboldens Myungsoo. He keeps contact with Hoya until Hoya pins Myungsoo’s free hand down with one hand and presses his palm on top of Myungsoo’s other hand. The warmth blossoms and bleeds under his skin, and Myungsoo lets out a laugh that sounds like an exhale.
He stays motionless, until the heat becomes so uncomfortable he has to wiggle out of Hoya’s grip until he’s straddling Hoya, thighs pinning Hoya down. Hoya’s eyes are closed now and the shivering is obvious now. “Tell me to stop,” Myungsoo says quietly.
“I can handle it,” Hoya replies, and pushes Myungsoo until he’s sitting on Hoya’s knees and Hoya sits up and holds Myungsoo in an embrace. Myungsoo is starting to sweat now, the tiniest droplets on his hairline and Hoya repeats it: “Tell me to stop.”
Myungsoo is quiet, even when he pushes himself closer to Hoya, so close their foreheads are touching and Hoya is shivering so much he’s shaking beneath him and Myungsoo feels like his skin is going to blister. Myungsoo is quiet, even when Hoya exhales against his mouth and he feels something bristle inside of him, completely unrelated to the heat. Myungsoo is quiet, even when he feels the skin of the palm that’s pressing against Hoya’s chest open with the smallest blister.
It's like discovering a secret and the truth at the same time, and this must be the only reason why Hoya doesn't move either.
“You didn’t come to school today,” Myungsoo says into the receiver. “And I couldn’t even copy half of the notes I was supposed to because of my blisters.”
Hoya says something unintelligible.
“What?”
“I said, I caught a cold. It’s all your fault.”
(epilogue)
And this is how Myungsoo and Hoya wait out the remainder of their high school days to the end, touching and testing their limits with each other because the end is their graduation day, where everyone would be breathless in anticipation for a world beyond school and teachers and uniforms.
Everyone ordinary, that is.
For people like them, high school is the final vestige of normalcy. Not that they know this yet but a day after they graduate, the government comes back to claim them, because normal people aren’t born without souls. Normal people aren’t elemental.
Normal people don’t have ice, or fire, within them.