#21 [EXO, Kai/DO, Kai/Lu Han]
Fandom: Exo
Title: Sound Theory
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Kai/D.O, Kai/Lu Han
Length: 8,102 words
Summary: On Jongin's to-do list, three things are listed as important: to win the presidency and reform society to disallow classism as the Red Party’s golden child, to fight off his political competition from the Yellow Party, and also refill his secret candy stash.
Warnings: (minor) character death
Notes: thank you, onyu, for allowing me to remix your fic; it was a pleasure to do so. Thank you to everybody who calmly kicked my butt into finishing my ficmix (you know who you are and I love you ♥).
It might also be worth noting for the non-musically inclined: the notes C, E, and G form the C major chord.
Remixee author: onyu
Title of work you remixed: Color Theory
Link to work you remixed: http://onyu.livejournal.com/2181.html
In the Spectrum, there’s sound flowing through each person’s veins, both musical and cacophonous. The best kind of sound are single frequencies, notes that never change; the worst, completely irregular frequencies. The more pure the sound in your blood is, the more opportunities you’ll be presented with and get. The more muddied, the more you’ll struggle to make ends meet. Notes that are too high-pitched or low-pitched also will count against you -- soothing alto notes, lately, have been in vogue.
Everything important is decided by sound, whether it’s fair or not.
Jongin was born with a lovely frequency, clear and almost frighteningly ideal. As such, his entire life was handed to him on a platter without him ever trying: he’d entered the Spectrum’s top schools and gotten the best education possible, despite his absolutely mediocre test scores. How strange, he thinks, that he didn’t go the route of all the other pures and instead dedicated himself to tearing down the very system that got him to where he is today, as one of the Spectrum’s top politicians currently in running in the latest presidential elections.
He rearranges his notes on the podium before looking out at the audience in front of him. It’s one of the largest crowds he’s ever spoken in front of, and the auditorium is alive with the sounds of the many. Jongin smiles. “Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to come here today.”
He’s given this speech time and time again, but it never gets old. The audience sits quietly as he explains his party platform: a restructuring of the old system to promote equality among frequencies. “One’s fate shouldn’t be allowed to be determined by something that can’t be controlled. And yet, our entire life is decided the moment our frequency is read. Pure frequencies become the elite and are pampered their entire lives, whether they deserve it or not. Regulars and semi-regulars are the working classes, assigned jobs based on wavelength rather than aptitude. And non-regulars? Gutter trash that’s not even given half a chance to prove otherwise. Barely a step above animals.” Jongin clears his throat and looks above the eyes fixed upon him, pausing before delivering the finishing line. “We, the Red Party, want to change that. We want to do away with this antiquated caste system. We want to breathe a new life into the Spectrum, to make this a fair and just society.”
For a few moments, the only sound that fills the auditorium is the quiet cacophony of notes that always happens when crowds come together. Then, in the back, somebody claps -- in a matter of moments, the applause is deafening.
“I thought we were advocating reform, not a complete revolution,” Kyungsoo says, tossing a binder onto Jongin’s desk. He looks displeased, but Jongin can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s satisfied -- the crowd had been transfixed..
“For all intents and purposes, it’s the same thing,” Jongin says, picking up the binder and opening it to its first page. “Is this my schedule for next week?”
“And a briefing on the latest moves the Yellow Party is making. They’re completely ignoring the Blue Party and focusing on you now,” Kyungsoo replies. “Their candidate is going to have a press conference sometime in the next two weeks, and they’re getting as many influential party members to make public endorsements for him as they can.”
“So it’s going to come down to me versus the Yellow Party’s Kim Jongdae, huh,” Jongin muses.
Kyungsoo nods. “We’re working on negotiations with the Blue Party right now, trying to get them to withdraw their candidate and throw support behind you in exchange for certain bonuses if you get elected. They’re going to fold soon, though, they know they have no chance of winning either way.”
“What would I do without you?” Jongin asks.
“Well, you definitely wouldn’t have a chance at becoming president,” Kyungsoo replies matter-of-factly.
Jongin laughs, but he knows it’s true -- without Kyungsoo as his campaign manager, there’d be no campaign to speak of in the first place. “I won’t deny that much. But can’t you just break all this down into a short summary instead of making me read all seventy-five pages of it?”
“The most important part is that I’ve asked Sehun to do a tour next week on your behalf,” Kyungsoo says. “That, and Joonmyun will be back from his in three days. Unless there’s something urgent at hand, he’ll be staying around for as long as possible.”
“Okay. Tell Sehun that if he does a good job, I’ll treat him to dinner when he comes back.”
Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. “You’ve got a cell phone. Tell him yourself.”
“You didn’t put time in my schedule for it,” Jongin teases.
Jongin grins when Kyungsoo laughs a little. “I’ll add it in. Only ten minutes, though, you have meetings to attend later this afternoon.”
He and Sehun chat over speakerphone as he watches Kim Jongdae give a press conference on mute, half-reading along with the closed captioning below. “I’m coming back soon, so be ready,” Sehun warns him. “I expect the full VIP treatment in exchange for all my hard work, and nothing less. Are you going to come pick me up in person?”
“I’m a busy man,” Jongin replies.”
Sehun clicks his tongue. “Send your limo, then,” he suggests, knowing very well that Jongin’s driven the same compact car since their college days.
“Haha, as if. I’ll come pick you up, though,” Jongin says.
“Don’t cause any major problems ‘til I’m back home,” Sehun says. “And get off the phone, I bet Kyungsoo’ll get mad if he knew how long you were gossiping.”
Jongin rolls his eyes, but smiles. “Yeah, I’ll try. See you later, Sehun.”
When he ends the call, he turns up the volume on the television. “The Red Party couches its platform in terms of fairness and equality while obscuring their true intentions,” Kim Jongdae says. He pauses to smile right at the camera, and for a moment it feels almost like somehow, Jongdae can see him through the screen.
He turns of the television and makes a note to get a transcript of the speech off the Internet later.
A few days later, they finish negotiations with the Blue Party “They had some weird requests, but they agreed to all of the major points we asked of them, so it doesn’t matter,” Kyungsoo explains, dropping yet another binder onto Jongin’s desk. “The only thing that affects you in the immediate future is that they’re sending one of their politicians to our base. They’ve asked that he be allowed officially be a part of your campaign.”
Jongin shrugs. “Okay, sounds reasonable enough. Where’s he from? We can send him there to garner up support.”
“No, they specifically want him to travel with you at all times,” Kyungsoo says. “I got one of the interns to make a dossier on him, you should read it over before he arrives.”
“Can you hire an intern to read the dossier for me, too?” Jongin mutters, opening the cover of the binder. On the front page is a picture with the name Lu Han printed underneath, along with his sound status -- a soothing E minor -- along with date of birth, hometown, and alma maters. He went to the same undergraduate school as Kim Jongdae, he notices.
Kyungsoo smiles slightly. “I know you can do it when you put your mind to it, Jongin. You’re going to be the president -- take some responsibility.”
“Give me something to make me want to,” Jongin replies, leaning forward and smiling. He reaches forward to take the end of Kyungsoo’s necktie, and wraps his fingers around the satiny fabric. Kyungsoo lets himself be pulled over the edge of the desk, smiling slightly.
It’s a game they play with each other, carefully dancing around the boundaries of friendship, co-workers, and something more -- but it’s a comfortable game, where both of them show their cards and their wagers a little too easily. “If you finish before six, I’ll treat you to dinner,” Kyungsoo says, and Jongin smiles, knowing he’s won this round.
“Make that pasta again, the one with the scallops,” Jongin says, letting go of his necktie.
Kyungsoo scoffs, but when six o’clock comes around, they drive to his apartment and he cooks them a meal for two.
The day before Sehun’s tour was to be completed, he’s assassinated on national television. Jongin doesn’t hear about it until hours after it happens, when Kyungsoo bursts into his office clutching his cell phone in one hand and says, “Sehun’s been shot. In the middle of a speech this morning.”
Jongin gets up so fast that he nearly knocks over the cup of coffee precariously balanced on the edge of his desk. “Where is he? Get me tickets to the closest airport as soon as possible.”
“I don’t think that it’s a good idea --”
“I don’t care if it messes up my schedule for months, Kyungsoo. I don’t even care if it costs me the election, okay, I’m going,” Jongin interrupts, shoving his cell phone into his pants pocket as he moves to grab his coat and briefcase.
“Jongin, he’s already dead,” Kyungsoo says. Jongin stops dead in his tracks, one foot out the door. “He had you down as his emergency contact,” Kyungsoo continues, handing his cell phone over. “We just got a call from local authorities concerning what... to do about him.”
He takes the phone and presses it to his ear. “Hello?” he asks.
“Hello, Mr. Kim?” the person on the other end replies, tone curt and unemotional. “We’re informed that Mr. Oh didn’t leave behind any information on his family. If you know them, could you give it to us?”
“His parents are dead, his relatives have gone underground. I’m his only family.” Jongin takes a deep breath. “Melt him down and keep his ashes in an urn -- anything I can take with me. I’ll bring him back home.”
In the three days that Jongin lets himself privately mourn, the Yellow Party campaigns harder than ever. The end of the week poll results show it pays off -- although Jongin’s numbers stay roughly the same, Kim Jongdae takes a narrow lead, swaying over a few of those crucial undecided voters. When Kyungsoo drops the report on his desk, for a few moments, Jongin thinks he’s about to get a lecture -- but there’s a pause, and Kyungsoo’s expression softens. “It’s only a few points, we can make it up. And polls are only an estimate anyway,” he consoles.
“Do I really look that down?” Jongin asks dryly.
Kyungsoo reaches over and touches his shoulder. “You’re allowed when it’s me,” he replies. So don’t go showing that face in public goes unsaid, but Jongin understands.
The politician from the Blue Party shows up the same day that Sehun’s remains delivered to his office. He sets it on his desk and listens -- the ashes are still fresh; they sing a pleasant middle E. “There’s no time for moping around,” he mutters aloud, reminding himself that Sehun would’ve wanted him to keep going no matter what.
Jongin barely has time to get himself together before Lu Han knocks on the door and walks in. “Nice to meet you, Jongin,” he says, offering a hand. “My name is Lu Han. It’ll be a pleasure to work with you, I’m sure.”
“Yes, nice to meet you too,” Jongin replies, shaking his hand almost robotically. From the youthfulness of Lu Han’s face to the platinum blond bleach job he’s had done, something about him doesn’t seem very much like a politician. Jongin, though, has been in the world of politics long enough that he can sense something in the way Lu Han holds his posture, shoulders turned back and back arched, the toes of his feet firmly pointing outward when he stands -- there’s more to him than meets the eye.
“I’ve heard quite a bit about you,” Lu Han says. “You’re quite impressive for somebody your age, you know. It’s an honor to work with you, Mr. Kim.”
“Just Jongin, please. And I’ve read about you as well -- it’s not very common that tuners choose to become politicians, isn’t it?” Jongin asks. “And not as lucrative, either.”
“Tuners can only touch so many peoples’ lives. A good politician can change more than that,” Lu Han replies.
Jongin smiles briefly, more to be polite than out of any feeling of happiness. “Have you been shown around the building yet?” he asks.
“Just the parts open to the public.”
“Then, I’ll get somebody to give you a tour of the rest. I’d give it myself, but there’s work to be done, so my apologies about that.” It’s not a lie, per se, but there’s an urn with Oh Sehun’s ashes sitting on his desk, and Jongin doesn’t think he’s in any state to play the pleasant host until he’s taken them somewhere safe.
Lu Han smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle a little. “Not at all,” he replies, and Jongin can tell that Lu Han has seen through him completely.
After passing Lu Han onto an unassuming intern, Jongin returns to his office to find Joonmyun -- freshly returned from a campaign tour of his own -- waiting for him, elbows propped up on Jongin’s desk next to where Sehun’s urn sits. “Well, you and Mr. Blue Party sure are getting along well,” Joonmyun teases. “But I can’t say I’m surprised. Half the interns are still afraid of you, did you know that?”
Jongin doesn’t know most of the interns’ names, so he can’t say he blames them. “If you have time to make fun of me, then why not help me figure out how to counter the Yellow Party’s platform instead?” Jongin asks.
“Business as always, aren’t you,” Joonmyun replies, but he smiles. “What exactly are you having trouble with?”
“They keep insisting that it’s not classism, it’s meritocracy. That people who have superior frequencies simply tend to be better at the things that matter than those with inferior frequencies,” Jongin says.
Joonmyun shrugs. “Their logic is appealing because they use science to back up their claims,” he says. “Hard facts. The human body is almost 75% water, you know. That makes it an ideal medium for transmitting sound waves, and it’s more or less understood to be true that certain sound waves have positive effects on the human brain -- that they help people concentrate better, or sleep more soundly, or remember things more accurately.”
“If that were true, then why is it that you’re the one who ended up with a postgraduate degree in, what was it -- international politics? I barely managed to get through undergrad,” Jongin mutters.
“Close. It was international economics, actually. And you’re the one running for president and here I am as your direct subordinate,” Joonmyun retorts.
Jongin sighs deeply, propping his head up on his hands. “Don’t say it like that, please.”
“Just playing devil’s advocate for you,” Joonmyun says, smiling slightly. He reaches out and bumps Sehun’s urn with his elbow gently, tone softening -- “Did this come in today? You should put it somewhere else, it’ll be a very depressing centerpiece to put on display in the office where you have to play polite politician.”
Jongin swiftly moves it somewhere out of Joonmyun’s reach. “I’m taking Sehun home later,” he replies stiffly. “Where he belongs.”
The next day, Lu Han settles in fully, claiming a small office space across the hall. As part of the deal with the Blue Party, he’s expected to be Jongin’s professional shadow until the elections, with the understanding that if Jongin wins, Lu Han will be appointed into his Cabinet. The arrangement works well for both of them: Jongin gets the support of the Blue Party, and the Blue Party gets one of its politicians into a reasonably influential position. Provided, of course, that he wins.
For almost a week, though, they step around each other carefully. Jongin has his inner circle, people who are allowed to see him for who he is instead of him as he presents to the rest of the world. Kyungsoo and Joonmyun are part of it. Sehun was, too. “You’re being cold,” Joonmyun informs him. “Can’t you at least try and make an effort?”
The breakthrough comes when Lu Han says, “I used to dance,” as they pass a studio in the car, on their way to a meet-and-greet. “In college, on a team.”
“Really? I did too,” Jongin asks, turning to look at him. “What type of dance?”
“Hip-hop, mostly. And you did ballet,” Lu Han says. He smiles and pre-empts Jongin’s next question: “I read plenty of biographies about you before I arrived. Feels kind of like cheating, doesn’t it?”
Jongin scoffs. “Cheating in what? Any good politician would.”
“Getting to know you, of course,” Lu Han replies. “I’m old-fashioned, I suppose. I prefer doing it the usual way.”
“Ask me something you wouldn’t be able to read online or in a newspaper, then,” Jongin offers.
“What’s your favorite thing to eat?” Lu Han asks, without hesitating.
Jongin shoots his answer back equally quickly: “Sweets. Chocolates, especially. And I appreciate a good cup of coffee in the morning.”
“Who doesn’t?” Lu Han replies, just as they pull into the speaking venue.
Lu Han reveals himself in bits and pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle. “I like singing,” he says once over a water cooler break. “I used to sing in a choir.”
“A singing, dancing tuner,” Jongin comments. “You’re more than you seem -- aren’t you, doctor?”
“Please, I’m not a doctor. I never practiced tuning, I realized I wasn’t cut out for it until I was already almost done with the degree,” Lu Han says, smiling slightly. “I never took the Hippocratic oath, either.”
“Why not?” Jongin asks.
Lu Han sighs, pausing to think before he replies. “Tuning is an intimate thing. You’re taking a person’s life into your hands, you know. Good tuners can hear and pin a person’s exact frequency without the use of tools, and know where something’s off. I’m more interested in playing with things than fixing them, I suppose.”
“Still, you’ve got a lot of tricks up your sleeve.”
Lu Han shakes his head and smiles. “It’s not good to reveal everything you’ve got upon first glance.”
If Lu Han hadn’t won Jongin over yet, he cinches it when he hands a box over to Jongin and says, “I received these sweets from a friend back home, but I don’t like this kind much,” Lu Han says. “I thought you’d enjoy them more than I would.”
Jongin puts them in a little bowl behind his desk, and snacks on them between meetings. They’re gone in about three days. “So I see you liked them,” Lu Han says, laughing.
“I told you I had a sweet tooth,” Jongin replies sheepishly. Mysteriously, he begins finding boxes of the same kind of candy waiting on his desk in the morning whenever his stash runs out.
“I just got out of a meeting with some of your political advisors,” Kyungsoo says flatly.
Jongin raises an eyebrow -- he knows that tone, and he knows he rarely likes what Kyungsoo has to say when he uses it. “Go on.”
“They think it would be a good idea if you gave a press conference regarding Sehun’s death. His assassination, to be more precise. And your friendship with him.” Kyungsoo sighs. “I agree with them. A speech like that will get a lot of positive attention.”
“You want me to make Sehun into a martyr,” Jongin says slowly. He can begin to feel a headache begin to build, and he suspects it has something to do with where the conversation is about to go. “Turn his death into a rallying point.”
“If he were alive, that’s what he would’ve wanted you to do. He supported you until the end, didn’t he?” Kyungsoo replies.
Jongin grits his teeth. “Sehun was my best friend,” he says shortly, wishing that he could come up with better words to explain all the ways it feels wrong to do that to him.
“Even more the reason not to waste the opportunity --”
“You aren’t actually this cold of a person, are you?” Jongin cuts in.
He thinks he sees Kyungsoo flinch a little, but he blinks and the impassive, cool-headed Kyungsoo is back. “One of us has to be,” he answers, “if you’re going to win this election.”
Jongin doesn’t want to admit Kyungsoo is right -- that it’s the best thing to do, that Sehun would have been fine with it, that Sehun would have even told him to do it. “Fine,” he says shortly. “Make the arrangements. Kim Jongdae is having a press conference next Tuesday, isn’t he? I’ll do it the Friday afterwards.”
“Flawless pick,” Kyungsoo replies softly. The compliment doesn’t particularly make him feel better.
“Are you angry at Kyungsoo?” Lu Han asks, setting down a cup of coffee on Jongin’s desk. It’s been two days since Jongin started stonewalling him, and everybody in the office has been tiptoeing quietly around the issue -- not Lu Han, though.
“It’s not that easy,” Jongin answers. “You can sit down, you know.”
Lu Han smiles and shakes his head. “I prefer to stand. And, Jongin -- you’re a politician, aren’t you? Isn’t it your job to make complicated issues easy for anybody to understand?”
Jongin sighs deeply, taking a sip of coffee to buy himself some time to think. “You must know of Oh Sehun,” he says.
“Of course. Everybody in the Spectrum who’s watched the news in the past month must know of Oh Sehun,” Lu Han replies. “Kim Jongin’s biggest advocate, killed right in the middle of a speech. Like something out of the movies.”
“Not just Kim Jongin’s biggest advocate. Kim Jongin’s best friend,” he corrects softly.
Lu Han hesitates for a moment before nodding slightly. “That’s a pain I won’t pretend like I can understand,” he says. Strangely, though, it’s one of the more reassuring things Jongin’s heard in the last few days -- the honesty is refreshing.
He cracks the tiniest of smiles in return before frowning again. “I’m going to give a speech about his assassination,” Jongin says hollowly. “I’m going to use his death as propaganda.”
“You’re not mad at Kyungsoo, then,” Lu Han says gently. “You’re mad because he’s the one who had to tell you.”
Jongin knows it’s true, but he doesn’t want to admit it -- he presses his lips together and shakes his head sharply. Lu Han leans forward and reaches out to touch his elbow lightly. “Oh Sehun was more than just a friend, wasn’t he?” Lu Han asks. His necktie dangles in front of him, and without thinking, Jongin reaches to touch it, grasping at its tip gently.
If there were a word Jongin would’ve used to describe Oh Sehun, it would be this: soulmate. Sehun was born the same year as him, had went to the same school as him from elementary school all the way through college. Sehun had coached him with his first date and consoled him through every single breakup, had introduced him to Kyungsoo and Joonmyun, had helped make his career. Jongin’s blood sings a middle C, and Sehun’s the E right above it -- a perfect major third. Without Oh Sehun, where would Kim Jongin be?
“Oh Sehun is dead,” Jongin replies. He pulls Lu Han down, but Lu Han is the one who presses their lips together first.
“I was in the same class as Kim Jongdae once, in undergrad,” Lu Han says as they go through poll updates. It would normally be Kyungsoo there, doing it with him, but Jongin still isn’t quite on speaking terms on him.
Jongin frowns slightly -- the lead that the Yellow Party has taken ahead of them is widening. “You must’ve been pre-med, right? But he graduated with a different degree than you.”
“We were both pre-med track, until he switched to political science. Can’t say I ever thought he would want to run for president,” Lu Han replies.
“The requisite ego hadn’t manifested yet?” Jongin jokes.
Lu Han laughs. “He preferred trading sarcastic comebacks over rousing speeches, that’s for sure. But yours has yet to, as far as I can tell, so I’m not sure about requisite.”
“Don’t sugarcoat. I want to change the Spectrum -- if that isn’t egoism in its finest, I don’t know what is,” Jongin replies, flipping a page in the reports.
“That’s not egoism, that’s admirable,” Lu Han says. When Jongin looks up, his face is very, very near. Jongin briefly wonders whether Lu Han means it or not, but Lu Han cups his cheek and presses their lips together -- he stops thinking and lets Lu Han distract him with touches and kisses.
"That is one unattractive pile of papers on your desk, Kim Jongin."
Jongin sighs. He’d tried to cover up the mess that he and Lu Han had made earlier, but to no avail. "Just do your job and I'll do mine."
"But you're not doing yours."
“I can take care of things here, Kyungsoo,” Jongin says, wondering if Kyungsoo knows exactly what’s going on between him and Lu Han or not. "Please leave me alone, my head hurts."
Kyungsoo shakes his head, then turns around. Jongin is left half-disappointed, almost wishing Kyungsoo had stayed.
By a few days later, Jongin is ready to admit that he was wrong for getting mad, but Kyungsoo is worse at staying away from him than Jongin is from Kyungsoo. Jongin’s candy stash is thrown away and replaced by an assortment of gourmet chocolates with a carefully-penned note from Kyungsoo (a curt “I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” which makes Jongin smile slightly when he reads it).
When they pass each other in the hallway, Jongin reaches out and grabs Kyungsoo’s wrist. “You’re forgiven. And I’m sorry too,” he mutters, just loud enough for Kyungsoo’s ears alone.
Kyungsoo tugs his wrist away, but nods and smiles slightly. And like that, things between them are normal again.
With two months left to the elections, Jongin’s numbers steadily decline against Kim Jongdae’s. “I think we need to start targeting different voter groups,” he says during an impromptu strategy meeting with Joonmyun and Kyungsoo. “We’ve mostly been concentrating on, what -- young people? The lower-class? I think if we coached our platform in the right terms, it’d be popular with the middle-class as well.”
“If you ask me, it’s more a matter of getting the people who support you to actively want to vote,” Joonmyun suggests. “You know what the common wisdom about students and the working class, I’m sure. But I agree, we should also start going more after the middle-class.”
Jongin furrows his eyebrows. “Can’t we get the Blue Party to campaign for us more? They’re popular among that constituency,” he says.
“No, that wasn’t part of the deal. The Blue Party isn’t officially endorsing you, in the case that you lose,” Kyungsoo tells him dryly. From the tone, Jongin can tell that he’s not amused at the Blue Party attempting to put their fingers into as many pies as possible.
“I want some of those candies Lu Han kept giving me, I need them to make me feel more optimistic about my chances,” Jongin says, slumping against his chair and sighing childishly.
Jongin can see Kyungsoo restraining a smile. “Keep working and I’ll get you more chocolates,” Kyungsoo replies.
“Well, in that case --” Jongin pauses mid-sentence, cutting off abruptly as his vision blurs, going white for a few moments before slowly coming back into focus. When he comes back to, Kyungsoo and Joonmyun are both staring at him.
Joonmyun is the first to react: “Jongin, are you alright?” he asks, reaching out to touch his shoulder lightly. “Let me see your eyes, open them wide.”
“Just tired, I think,” he answers, letting Joonmyun examine him. Kyungsoo reaches over and touches his shoulder lightly.
“You’re going home right after we’re done talking, you need a decent night of sleep,” Kyungsoo says.
“Eight weeks left,” Jongin reminds him as Joonmyun takes his pulse, pressing two fingers to the inside of his wrist. “I can handle it. We’re all exhausted.”
Finally, Joonmyun says, “I think he’s alright. But in my opinion, Kyungsoo’s right.”
“Meeting first,” Jongin replies. The two of them are suitably distracted trying to figure out how to prop Jongin’s percentages up, and forget to send him home early.
The next morning, Jongin wakes up with a blistering migraine, so painful that he sinks back under the sheets and attempts to will himself back into sleep. He lies there half-conscious, dreaming vaguely of running around in what looks like a video game set-up: there are golden rings scattered across the floor, and he’s running to pick them up desperately. Run faster, a voice tells him. They’re coming after you. They’ll find you.
“Jongin. Jongin, can you hear me?”
He stirs. “Lu Han?” he says, voice cracking slightly.
That’s right. I’m Lu Han, the voice whispers. It feels like there are a thousand different lines running through his mind, threads of different colors that shine so brightly that it hurts. Trust me, Jongin. You can trust me.
“Lu Han,” he murmurs desperately, reaching forward --
“No. It’s me, Kyungsoo.”
With a jolt, he jerks out of sleep, eyes wide open and sweat trickling down from his forehead. “Kyungsoo?” he asks slowly. The person in front of him looks like Kyungsoo and sounds like Kyungsoo, but he can’t be sure.
Kyungsoo sits himself on the side of his bed, hand finding a perfect fit in his. “It’s me,” he repeats.
Jongin closes his eyes, lets himself lean into Kyungsoo's touch and buries his face in the crook of Kyungsoo's neck, whispering, "I'm sorry. So sorry. I'm sorry, Sehun."
Jongin is admitted to a small private clinic owned by some friends of Joonmyun’s. “Baekhyun and Chanyeol are reliable,” he assures Kyungsoo as they sit in the waiting room. “They won’t let it get out that Jongin’s -- you know. Anyway, Baekhyun said they’d run some blood tests and see what’s going on.”
“I can’t believe it,” Kyungsoo mutters. “How can this be happening? Now?”
“It’s just a good thing that you decided to go check on him when he didn’t show up at the usual time, if he’d been left in that state for much longer he might have...” Joonmyun trails off, then attempts to force some cheerfulness: “Well, it’s good.”
“What would have been good is if he hadn’t gotten to this point at all,” Kyungsoo says bitterly.
Joonmyun doesn’t disagree.
The test results come back a few hours later. Kyungsoo watches as Joonmyun huddles over the papers with Baekhyun and Chanyeol, feeling vaguely wary of letting two unfamiliar people handle Jongin’s medical records. Finally, though, they excuse themselves and Joonmyun calls Kyungsoo over. “There’s static in his system,” Joonmyun tells him. “Poisoning, most likely. He said he’d been having headaches for a while, those were probably the first symptoms. Now his body is beginning to shut down... his blood isn’t distributing oxygen properly.”
Kyungsoo grips his fists hard, fingernails leaving crescent moon marks in his palms. “What kind of poison is that bad?”
“Jongin has a pure frequency, so any sort of noise is deadly,” Joonmyun explains. “It means that he’s easily affected by contaminants. In this case, it looks like there’s a build-up of something in his system, and it’s causing static in his frequency. It could be deadly, but we’ve probably caught it in time.”
“How do you know about all of this?” Kyungsoo asks.
“My father died of from static poisoning,” Joonmyun explains. “It’s why I don’t have a pure frequency like you or Jongin... it’s subtle, probably not something a normal human can pick up on. But it’s in my veins somewhere. I was always interested in exactly why these things happen... actually, in college, I studied physiology because of it. Until I switched to economics, of course.” He smiles, but it doesn’t meet his eyes.
“So he’s been poisoned with an outside frequency,” Kyungsoo says. “I think we can safely say that this is the work of somebody that we know. There aren’t many opportunities for strangers to get into contact with Jongin multiple times.”
Joonmyun nods. “If I had to take I guess, it came from something he was eating -- there aren’t many other believable ways I can think of that toxins could’ve entered his system. Probably multiple times, because there’s an accumulation.”
“Like candies,” Kyungsoo says, thinking about the unfamiliar sweets he’d trashed when he snuck his chocolates into Jongin’s office. He clenches his fists -- “Lu Han’s candies.”
Lu Han doesn’t show up the next day, or the following day, or the day after that, with not a phone call or e-mail in warning. It’s more or less a confession to the crime, Kyungsoo thinks. Only the guilty conveniently disappear when they’re called into question. He stays at the office dutifully, attempting to fend off all the media by making excuses for Jongin’s sudden disappearance, keeping in touch with Joonmyun as often as he can. “Our fight was a blessing in disguise, he wouldn’t have stopped eating those candies if I hadn’t given him chocolates to him,” he says, more speaking to himself than to Joonmyun. “How is he, by the way?”
“We’re not sure. It’s hard to tell whether he’s sick because he’s overdosed on something or because he’s going on withdrawal,” Joonmyun replies.
"And how's Jongin doing now?"
“The doctor just put him on a new treatment. He’s going to attempt to cancel out the foreign frequency using artificially created ones.”
Kyungsoo frowns, shoving his cell phone between his cheek and shoulder as he balances a pile of papers to bring to Jongin’s office. “Is that safe? Putting even more foreign frequencies into his system?”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”
"What do you mean by th--"
The voice isn’t Joonmyun’s. Kyungsoo looks up, and Lu Han is sitting at Jongin’s seat, smiling smugly. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Lu Han asks. He gets up, sweeping his hand over the wooden desk as if marking his property, and walks towards Kyungsoo slowly.
Kyungsoo tenses. His cell phone drops to the floor -- he can hear Joonmyun say something, but it’s too quiet to make out the words. “Lu Han,” he says evenly, and it’s all he can do to restrain himself from tackling Lu Han to the ground.
“I’m surprised that he even made it past the first week, to be honest. He’d been eating so many of those candies.” Lu Han’s smile widens. “My own personal creations, of course. You could even go as far as to say that I even put my heart and soul into them.”
It takes Kyungsoo to realize that Lu Han means it literally. “You infected him with your own frequency,” he says slowly. “You’re insane, you know that?”
“I’m not. You just want to believe that. If anything, you could call me a genius.”
Kyungsoo makes his way to Lu Han and traps him against the wall, right hand gripping Lu Han's wrist tight, so hard that the wall digs into his skin and it breaks. "He trusted you. He trusted you enough to let you replace Sehun in his life and you just toyed with him! You --"
“Don’t get too ahead of yourself there, Kyungsoo, I hardly toyed with him. It’s not as if I told him to replace Sehun with me, you know -- that was all him. How could I have expected that he was going to take things so far?” Lu Han pauses, then smiles. “Anyway, he chose me. And besides, you must’ve been the one who approved of me, when the Blue Party and Red Party first made arrangements. That was you at the meeting, right, Mr. Do Kyungsoo?”
“Who the hell are you?” Kyungsoo asks, teeth gritted. Blood drips from the knuckles of his fist, and it hums a quiet note, somewhere near middle G. “Is Lu Han even your real name? Are you really from the Blue Party?”
Lu Han smiles wanly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he replies.
In the end, Kyungsoo is forced to simply let Lu Han walk away. “You have no proof I did anything, now do you? I bet you threw away the evidence with your own hands, when you tossed those candies into the wastebin,” Lu Han had said, looking far too self-satisfied. “If you keep me here against my own will, I can report that to the police, you know. That would be great publicity, I’m sure -- Kim Jongin’s campaign manager assaulting another politician.”
To add insult to injury, Kim Jongdae himself comes and picks Lu Han up. “See you when the world ends,” Lu Han tells Kyungsoo, smiling gently and giving a two-fingered salute, looking for all the world like a pair of friends teasing each other. Terribly cliched and completely fucked up, Kyungsoo wants to reply, but he grits his teeth and doesn’t say a word.
Instead, he calls Joonmyun. “Lu Han was just here,” he says darkly. “I’m coming over to the clinic right now, I’ll explain it when I get there.”
Kyungsoo and Joonmyun sit on opposite sides of Jongin’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall weakly as Kyungsoo explains what happened between him and Lu Han at the office. “So he told you not to try and neutralize the static,” Joonmyun says. “Actually, Baekhyun and Chanyeol were telling me the same thing earlier. The static, it’s not regular... it doesn’t have a fixed frequency. He might not have been kidding when he called himself a genius, actually.”
“So neutralizing it is impossible,” Kyungsoo fills in. “Then what?”
Joonmyun looks at Jongin’s sleeping face, hesitating so long that Kyungsoo can guess what he’s about to say before he does. “There are medicines he can take to ease the pain, but I don’t think he’s ever going to be the same,” he says softly.
There’s a pause, and then Kyungsoo laughs harshly. “Does he know?” he asks.
“Not yet. He’s been sleeping almost this entire time, and when he wakes up --” Joonmyun shakes his head. “He’s still pretty much out of it. Keeps muttering about Lu Han and some other stuff I can’t make sense of.”
Kyungsoo sighs harshly. “Call me when he wakes up coherent. I want to be the one to break it to him.”
“I think it would be easier on both of you if it were me,” Joonmyun replies, not unkindly.
“It would be easier, but it wouldn’t be kinder,” Kyungsoo says.
Jongin fully wakes up roughly 36 hours later, light-headed but fully conscious of his surroundings. After a quick medical check-up, Kyungsoo is allowed to see him. “Good morning,” Kyungsoo says.
“Hey,” Jongin replies weakly.
Kyungsoo sits on the side of his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I just got thrown under a dump truck. And after it finished driving over me, it backed up,” Jongin answers dryly. He cracks a tiny smile, though, before he continues, “And how are you, Kyungsoo?”
“Not dump truck level, exactly. Maybe like your compact car level,” Kyungsoo replies.
Jongin laughs, but when he speaks again, he’s serious. “How long have I been out? How have you been explaining my absence?”
“By now, almost four days,” Kyungsoo says. “We’ve been telling them that you’re sick.”
“When can I get back to the campaign? I tried asking the doctors, but they wouldn’t tell me,” Jongin presses.
Kyungsoo hesitates and looks down, reaching out to grab Jongin’s hand. Jongin sighs deeply -- it’s answer enough. “It’s that bad,” Jongin mutters.
“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo says, thumbing Jongin’s plam gently.
“Don’t be. It was me who dragged myself into this whole mess,” Jongin replies quickly.
Kyungsoo is about to open his mouth to reassure him, but before he can, Joonmyun bursts into the room. “Jongin, Kyungsoo,” Joonmyun says, mouth slightly agape. “Lu Han’s on television. Lu Han’s on television giving a joint press conference with Kim Jongdae right now.”
Joonmyun lets them livestream the conference on his tablet, and they tune in just as Lu Han begins explaining his unexpected change in political support, painting the Red Party -- particularly Jongin -- in rather unsavory brushstrokes. “This is the lowest of low,” Joonmyun says, but Jongin and Kyungsoo just watch in stony silence as Lu Han methodically tears their campaign apart.
When it’s done, Jongin says, “I’ve never been so thoroughly insulted in my life. I almost feel flattered, in a way.”
“It’s not just that. The timing is too particular,” Kyungsoo says darkly. “This happened just as you woke up. They probably anticipated that you would be withdrawing soon and timed it so that ‘for medical excuses’ sounds more like an excuse than anything else.
“Well, what are we supposed to do about that?” Joonmyun asks.
“What are we supposed to do?” Kyungsoo's voice drifts off, only to be replaced with light laughter. "I have a crazy idea, but I think it might work. With a few risks, of course."
Kyungsoo returns to Jongin's office and accesses the employee database, and logs out as soon as he retrieves the information he needs. He types up a message on the phone, hits send, and returns to the laboratory.
From: Do Kyungsoo
To: Lu Han
I want to make concessions. Meet me at Pinnacle Point tomorrow, at the rooftop.
11:53 sharp. Kindly bring Kim Jongdae with you. I’ll have Jongin.
Let’s settle this. You’ll get what you want.
Do Kyungsoo.
From: Lu Han
To: Do Kyungsoo
It’s a date.
Pinnacle Point is the tallest building in all of the Spectrum. Once, it was used for radio and television broadcasts; now, a tourist attraction. Kyungsoo shows up early and surveys the place carefully: all the equipment is old, but functional. There are, however, no cameras on the rooftop -- Kyungsoo knows that Lu Han must know that, which is why he allowed for the meeting.
Later, Joonmyun drops Jongin off. “Pinnacle Point, how cheesy,” Jongin says. He smirks, but his voice is breathy and choked. “You know, I always wanted to take somebody out here. Woo my date from the very top of the world.”
Kyungsoo laughs, but stops short when Jongin nearly falls over his own feet. “Stop talking, you have to conserve your energy,” he warns Jongin, wrapping his arm under Jongin’s shoulder to support him.
“So I can punch Lu Han in the face?” Jongin asks fervently.
Kyungsoo smiles and shakes his head before putting a call through to Joonmyun. “We’re here, we’re ready.”
“Okay,” Joonmyun replies. “I’m running a little behind, but I should be fine too.”
“Don’t be late,” Kyungsoo says. He takes a glance at his watch -- 11:48. If all went as planned, Lu Han and Jongdae would be there at any moment. Kyungsoo extends his hand towards Jongin. “Ready?” he asks.
Jongin gives his hand a light squeeze and smiles. “Whenever you are.”
Lu Han shows up exactly on time. “I see you’re still alive, Jongin,” he says.
“Displeased?” Jongin asks, forcing out a laugh.
“No, you weren’t meant to die. This is, for my purposes, exactly what I wanted,” Lu Han replies, smiling broadly.
“Where’s Kim Jongdae?” Kyungsoo asks.
“I don’t need him for this and neither do you,” Lu Han answers smoothly. “He was never much more than a puppet, you know? Whether it was for his party or for me. You know how it is.”
11:54:33.
“You actually were this cold all along,” Jongin says.
Lu Han shrugs. “Now, I don’t need you two, either. So I might as well make this quick.”
Jongin scoffs. “I should’ve caught on faster. Fired you, when I had the chance.”
“Aw, but where’s the fun in that?” Lu Han laughs. “Besides, I never was your employee. Just somebody you thought was your ally.”
11:56:42.
“I want an explanation,” Jongin says. “Tell me why you did this. I have to know.”
“What will you give me in return? Could you grovel a little -- maybe break down and cry?” Lu Han teases.
Kyungsoo’s grip on Jongin tightens, but Jongin shakes his head when he sees Kyungsoo about to retort. It’s between the two of us, he tries to tell him silently. Kyungsoo seems to get it. “If that gets me what I want. I’ll think of it as a trade,” Jongin says.
11:58:59.
“You’re a hypocrite, you know,” Lu Han tells him. “A pure frequency telling people that classism is bad? I can’t believe it, honestly. Didn’t you ride on other peoples’ coattails straight to the top?”
“That’s the reason?” Jongin asks cautiously.
Lu Han laughs. “If I were righteous. But I’m not. I told you before, right? Why I decided not to become a tuner?”
I’m more interested in playing with things than fixing them.
12:00:00.
Jongin takes a deep breath and says, “So you’re saying you were playing with me this whole time?”
“Playing you like a fiddle,” Lu Han confirms.
“I guess you were in touch with Kim Jongin and his party this whole time, weren’t you? Planning to do this from the very start?” Jongin asks, trying to sound as cold as possible.
Lu Han shrugs and half-nods. “A first, I was just going to leak your secrets, but you were shockingly clean. But then, I realized what kind of person you are and thought -- wouldn’t it be more satisfying to see you completely destroyed?”
“Reputation down the sink, along with my very well-being,” Jongin says dryly. “You didn’t just put your frequency in that poison, did you? You made it yourself.”
Lu Han smiles. “And when I gave it to you, you didn’t even bat an eyelash. So trusting in others. Do you regret it? You’ll never be fully healthy again, I don’t think.”
Jongin returns the smile, but his expression is much tenser than Lu Han’s. “I regret trusting you,” he says evenly. “I don’t regret trusting in others.”
Kyungsoo’s cell phone rings Lu Han tilts his head towards Kyungsoo, as if to say, by all means, go ahead. It’s Joonmyun: “The timing was just right,” Joonmyun says. “Everything made it onto national television, right in time for the twelve o’clock news.”
He hangs up, cutting off the video stream he’d been taping and simultaneously sending to Joonmyun using Pinnacle Point’s broadcasting equipment. He smiles. “Got you,” he tells Lu Han.
Jongin does an official press conference to follow up the unofficial press conference from earlier. “But how did you get him to admit it?” a journalist asks.
He sighs and smiles tiredly. Before, it used to excite him to stand in front of a crowd; to hear the sound of dozens of people in the same place, all fixated on him. Now, it feels like a chore. “When you think you have it all, it’s easy to get deluded,” he replies. “I learned that the hard way.”
The Yellow Party’s campaign is destroyed overnight. At the same time, Kim Jongin becomes a national hero. He releases an official statement withdrawing from the presidential elections for personal reasons (which are hardly “personal,” as the entire Spectrum knows why) and encouraging citizens to vote in for write-in candidate Kim Joonmyun, a junior politician from the Red Party. Six weeks later, he wins in a landslide victory against Kim Jongdae and becomes the first president without a pure frequency.
Joonmyun tries to hire Kyungsoo as his Chief of Staff, but Kyungsoo turns the position down. “I’m bowing out of politics,” he says. Both of them know, though, that it’s less a matter of Kyungsoo leaving politics than him following Jongin elsewhere.
Kim Joonmyun, after completely restructuring the class system to allow for equality amount frequencies, is recognized as one of the greatest leaders in the history of The Spectrum. Some attribute it to Joonmyun's style of management and unwillingness to leave the office if there’s even a single papers on his desk; Joonmyun agrees, and silently thanks Jongin for a lesson well-learned.
Kim Jongin, Do Kyungsoo, and Oh Sehun are given the Spectrum-wide recognition as heroes. The Yellow Party is erased from political relevance completely.
Title: Sound Theory
Rating: PG-13
Pairing(s)/Focus: Kai/D.O, Kai/Lu Han
Length: 8,102 words
Summary: On Jongin's to-do list, three things are listed as important: to win the presidency and reform society to disallow classism as the Red Party’s golden child, to fight off his political competition from the Yellow Party, and also refill his secret candy stash.
Warnings: (minor) character death
Notes: thank you, onyu, for allowing me to remix your fic; it was a pleasure to do so. Thank you to everybody who calmly kicked my butt into finishing my ficmix (you know who you are and I love you ♥).
It might also be worth noting for the non-musically inclined: the notes C, E, and G form the C major chord.
Remixee author: onyu
Title of work you remixed: Color Theory
Link to work you remixed: http://onyu.livejournal.com/2181.html
In the Spectrum, there’s sound flowing through each person’s veins, both musical and cacophonous. The best kind of sound are single frequencies, notes that never change; the worst, completely irregular frequencies. The more pure the sound in your blood is, the more opportunities you’ll be presented with and get. The more muddied, the more you’ll struggle to make ends meet. Notes that are too high-pitched or low-pitched also will count against you -- soothing alto notes, lately, have been in vogue.
Everything important is decided by sound, whether it’s fair or not.
Jongin was born with a lovely frequency, clear and almost frighteningly ideal. As such, his entire life was handed to him on a platter without him ever trying: he’d entered the Spectrum’s top schools and gotten the best education possible, despite his absolutely mediocre test scores. How strange, he thinks, that he didn’t go the route of all the other pures and instead dedicated himself to tearing down the very system that got him to where he is today, as one of the Spectrum’s top politicians currently in running in the latest presidential elections.
He rearranges his notes on the podium before looking out at the audience in front of him. It’s one of the largest crowds he’s ever spoken in front of, and the auditorium is alive with the sounds of the many. Jongin smiles. “Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking the time to come here today.”
He’s given this speech time and time again, but it never gets old. The audience sits quietly as he explains his party platform: a restructuring of the old system to promote equality among frequencies. “One’s fate shouldn’t be allowed to be determined by something that can’t be controlled. And yet, our entire life is decided the moment our frequency is read. Pure frequencies become the elite and are pampered their entire lives, whether they deserve it or not. Regulars and semi-regulars are the working classes, assigned jobs based on wavelength rather than aptitude. And non-regulars? Gutter trash that’s not even given half a chance to prove otherwise. Barely a step above animals.” Jongin clears his throat and looks above the eyes fixed upon him, pausing before delivering the finishing line. “We, the Red Party, want to change that. We want to do away with this antiquated caste system. We want to breathe a new life into the Spectrum, to make this a fair and just society.”
For a few moments, the only sound that fills the auditorium is the quiet cacophony of notes that always happens when crowds come together. Then, in the back, somebody claps -- in a matter of moments, the applause is deafening.
“I thought we were advocating reform, not a complete revolution,” Kyungsoo says, tossing a binder onto Jongin’s desk. He looks displeased, but Jongin can tell from the tone of his voice that he’s satisfied -- the crowd had been transfixed..
“For all intents and purposes, it’s the same thing,” Jongin says, picking up the binder and opening it to its first page. “Is this my schedule for next week?”
“And a briefing on the latest moves the Yellow Party is making. They’re completely ignoring the Blue Party and focusing on you now,” Kyungsoo replies. “Their candidate is going to have a press conference sometime in the next two weeks, and they’re getting as many influential party members to make public endorsements for him as they can.”
“So it’s going to come down to me versus the Yellow Party’s Kim Jongdae, huh,” Jongin muses.
Kyungsoo nods. “We’re working on negotiations with the Blue Party right now, trying to get them to withdraw their candidate and throw support behind you in exchange for certain bonuses if you get elected. They’re going to fold soon, though, they know they have no chance of winning either way.”
“What would I do without you?” Jongin asks.
“Well, you definitely wouldn’t have a chance at becoming president,” Kyungsoo replies matter-of-factly.
Jongin laughs, but he knows it’s true -- without Kyungsoo as his campaign manager, there’d be no campaign to speak of in the first place. “I won’t deny that much. But can’t you just break all this down into a short summary instead of making me read all seventy-five pages of it?”
“The most important part is that I’ve asked Sehun to do a tour next week on your behalf,” Kyungsoo says. “That, and Joonmyun will be back from his in three days. Unless there’s something urgent at hand, he’ll be staying around for as long as possible.”
“Okay. Tell Sehun that if he does a good job, I’ll treat him to dinner when he comes back.”
Kyungsoo raises an eyebrow. “You’ve got a cell phone. Tell him yourself.”
“You didn’t put time in my schedule for it,” Jongin teases.
Jongin grins when Kyungsoo laughs a little. “I’ll add it in. Only ten minutes, though, you have meetings to attend later this afternoon.”
He and Sehun chat over speakerphone as he watches Kim Jongdae give a press conference on mute, half-reading along with the closed captioning below. “I’m coming back soon, so be ready,” Sehun warns him. “I expect the full VIP treatment in exchange for all my hard work, and nothing less. Are you going to come pick me up in person?”
“I’m a busy man,” Jongin replies.”
Sehun clicks his tongue. “Send your limo, then,” he suggests, knowing very well that Jongin’s driven the same compact car since their college days.
“Haha, as if. I’ll come pick you up, though,” Jongin says.
“Don’t cause any major problems ‘til I’m back home,” Sehun says. “And get off the phone, I bet Kyungsoo’ll get mad if he knew how long you were gossiping.”
Jongin rolls his eyes, but smiles. “Yeah, I’ll try. See you later, Sehun.”
When he ends the call, he turns up the volume on the television. “The Red Party couches its platform in terms of fairness and equality while obscuring their true intentions,” Kim Jongdae says. He pauses to smile right at the camera, and for a moment it feels almost like somehow, Jongdae can see him through the screen.
He turns of the television and makes a note to get a transcript of the speech off the Internet later.
A few days later, they finish negotiations with the Blue Party “They had some weird requests, but they agreed to all of the major points we asked of them, so it doesn’t matter,” Kyungsoo explains, dropping yet another binder onto Jongin’s desk. “The only thing that affects you in the immediate future is that they’re sending one of their politicians to our base. They’ve asked that he be allowed officially be a part of your campaign.”
Jongin shrugs. “Okay, sounds reasonable enough. Where’s he from? We can send him there to garner up support.”
“No, they specifically want him to travel with you at all times,” Kyungsoo says. “I got one of the interns to make a dossier on him, you should read it over before he arrives.”
“Can you hire an intern to read the dossier for me, too?” Jongin mutters, opening the cover of the binder. On the front page is a picture with the name Lu Han printed underneath, along with his sound status -- a soothing E minor -- along with date of birth, hometown, and alma maters. He went to the same undergraduate school as Kim Jongdae, he notices.
Kyungsoo smiles slightly. “I know you can do it when you put your mind to it, Jongin. You’re going to be the president -- take some responsibility.”
“Give me something to make me want to,” Jongin replies, leaning forward and smiling. He reaches forward to take the end of Kyungsoo’s necktie, and wraps his fingers around the satiny fabric. Kyungsoo lets himself be pulled over the edge of the desk, smiling slightly.
It’s a game they play with each other, carefully dancing around the boundaries of friendship, co-workers, and something more -- but it’s a comfortable game, where both of them show their cards and their wagers a little too easily. “If you finish before six, I’ll treat you to dinner,” Kyungsoo says, and Jongin smiles, knowing he’s won this round.
“Make that pasta again, the one with the scallops,” Jongin says, letting go of his necktie.
Kyungsoo scoffs, but when six o’clock comes around, they drive to his apartment and he cooks them a meal for two.
The day before Sehun’s tour was to be completed, he’s assassinated on national television. Jongin doesn’t hear about it until hours after it happens, when Kyungsoo bursts into his office clutching his cell phone in one hand and says, “Sehun’s been shot. In the middle of a speech this morning.”
Jongin gets up so fast that he nearly knocks over the cup of coffee precariously balanced on the edge of his desk. “Where is he? Get me tickets to the closest airport as soon as possible.”
“I don’t think that it’s a good idea --”
“I don’t care if it messes up my schedule for months, Kyungsoo. I don’t even care if it costs me the election, okay, I’m going,” Jongin interrupts, shoving his cell phone into his pants pocket as he moves to grab his coat and briefcase.
“Jongin, he’s already dead,” Kyungsoo says. Jongin stops dead in his tracks, one foot out the door. “He had you down as his emergency contact,” Kyungsoo continues, handing his cell phone over. “We just got a call from local authorities concerning what... to do about him.”
He takes the phone and presses it to his ear. “Hello?” he asks.
“Hello, Mr. Kim?” the person on the other end replies, tone curt and unemotional. “We’re informed that Mr. Oh didn’t leave behind any information on his family. If you know them, could you give it to us?”
“His parents are dead, his relatives have gone underground. I’m his only family.” Jongin takes a deep breath. “Melt him down and keep his ashes in an urn -- anything I can take with me. I’ll bring him back home.”
In the three days that Jongin lets himself privately mourn, the Yellow Party campaigns harder than ever. The end of the week poll results show it pays off -- although Jongin’s numbers stay roughly the same, Kim Jongdae takes a narrow lead, swaying over a few of those crucial undecided voters. When Kyungsoo drops the report on his desk, for a few moments, Jongin thinks he’s about to get a lecture -- but there’s a pause, and Kyungsoo’s expression softens. “It’s only a few points, we can make it up. And polls are only an estimate anyway,” he consoles.
“Do I really look that down?” Jongin asks dryly.
Kyungsoo reaches over and touches his shoulder. “You’re allowed when it’s me,” he replies. So don’t go showing that face in public goes unsaid, but Jongin understands.
The politician from the Blue Party shows up the same day that Sehun’s remains delivered to his office. He sets it on his desk and listens -- the ashes are still fresh; they sing a pleasant middle E. “There’s no time for moping around,” he mutters aloud, reminding himself that Sehun would’ve wanted him to keep going no matter what.
Jongin barely has time to get himself together before Lu Han knocks on the door and walks in. “Nice to meet you, Jongin,” he says, offering a hand. “My name is Lu Han. It’ll be a pleasure to work with you, I’m sure.”
“Yes, nice to meet you too,” Jongin replies, shaking his hand almost robotically. From the youthfulness of Lu Han’s face to the platinum blond bleach job he’s had done, something about him doesn’t seem very much like a politician. Jongin, though, has been in the world of politics long enough that he can sense something in the way Lu Han holds his posture, shoulders turned back and back arched, the toes of his feet firmly pointing outward when he stands -- there’s more to him than meets the eye.
“I’ve heard quite a bit about you,” Lu Han says. “You’re quite impressive for somebody your age, you know. It’s an honor to work with you, Mr. Kim.”
“Just Jongin, please. And I’ve read about you as well -- it’s not very common that tuners choose to become politicians, isn’t it?” Jongin asks. “And not as lucrative, either.”
“Tuners can only touch so many peoples’ lives. A good politician can change more than that,” Lu Han replies.
Jongin smiles briefly, more to be polite than out of any feeling of happiness. “Have you been shown around the building yet?” he asks.
“Just the parts open to the public.”
“Then, I’ll get somebody to give you a tour of the rest. I’d give it myself, but there’s work to be done, so my apologies about that.” It’s not a lie, per se, but there’s an urn with Oh Sehun’s ashes sitting on his desk, and Jongin doesn’t think he’s in any state to play the pleasant host until he’s taken them somewhere safe.
Lu Han smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle a little. “Not at all,” he replies, and Jongin can tell that Lu Han has seen through him completely.
After passing Lu Han onto an unassuming intern, Jongin returns to his office to find Joonmyun -- freshly returned from a campaign tour of his own -- waiting for him, elbows propped up on Jongin’s desk next to where Sehun’s urn sits. “Well, you and Mr. Blue Party sure are getting along well,” Joonmyun teases. “But I can’t say I’m surprised. Half the interns are still afraid of you, did you know that?”
Jongin doesn’t know most of the interns’ names, so he can’t say he blames them. “If you have time to make fun of me, then why not help me figure out how to counter the Yellow Party’s platform instead?” Jongin asks.
“Business as always, aren’t you,” Joonmyun replies, but he smiles. “What exactly are you having trouble with?”
“They keep insisting that it’s not classism, it’s meritocracy. That people who have superior frequencies simply tend to be better at the things that matter than those with inferior frequencies,” Jongin says.
Joonmyun shrugs. “Their logic is appealing because they use science to back up their claims,” he says. “Hard facts. The human body is almost 75% water, you know. That makes it an ideal medium for transmitting sound waves, and it’s more or less understood to be true that certain sound waves have positive effects on the human brain -- that they help people concentrate better, or sleep more soundly, or remember things more accurately.”
“If that were true, then why is it that you’re the one who ended up with a postgraduate degree in, what was it -- international politics? I barely managed to get through undergrad,” Jongin mutters.
“Close. It was international economics, actually. And you’re the one running for president and here I am as your direct subordinate,” Joonmyun retorts.
Jongin sighs deeply, propping his head up on his hands. “Don’t say it like that, please.”
“Just playing devil’s advocate for you,” Joonmyun says, smiling slightly. He reaches out and bumps Sehun’s urn with his elbow gently, tone softening -- “Did this come in today? You should put it somewhere else, it’ll be a very depressing centerpiece to put on display in the office where you have to play polite politician.”
Jongin swiftly moves it somewhere out of Joonmyun’s reach. “I’m taking Sehun home later,” he replies stiffly. “Where he belongs.”
The next day, Lu Han settles in fully, claiming a small office space across the hall. As part of the deal with the Blue Party, he’s expected to be Jongin’s professional shadow until the elections, with the understanding that if Jongin wins, Lu Han will be appointed into his Cabinet. The arrangement works well for both of them: Jongin gets the support of the Blue Party, and the Blue Party gets one of its politicians into a reasonably influential position. Provided, of course, that he wins.
For almost a week, though, they step around each other carefully. Jongin has his inner circle, people who are allowed to see him for who he is instead of him as he presents to the rest of the world. Kyungsoo and Joonmyun are part of it. Sehun was, too. “You’re being cold,” Joonmyun informs him. “Can’t you at least try and make an effort?”
The breakthrough comes when Lu Han says, “I used to dance,” as they pass a studio in the car, on their way to a meet-and-greet. “In college, on a team.”
“Really? I did too,” Jongin asks, turning to look at him. “What type of dance?”
“Hip-hop, mostly. And you did ballet,” Lu Han says. He smiles and pre-empts Jongin’s next question: “I read plenty of biographies about you before I arrived. Feels kind of like cheating, doesn’t it?”
Jongin scoffs. “Cheating in what? Any good politician would.”
“Getting to know you, of course,” Lu Han replies. “I’m old-fashioned, I suppose. I prefer doing it the usual way.”
“Ask me something you wouldn’t be able to read online or in a newspaper, then,” Jongin offers.
“What’s your favorite thing to eat?” Lu Han asks, without hesitating.
Jongin shoots his answer back equally quickly: “Sweets. Chocolates, especially. And I appreciate a good cup of coffee in the morning.”
“Who doesn’t?” Lu Han replies, just as they pull into the speaking venue.
Lu Han reveals himself in bits and pieces, like a jigsaw puzzle. “I like singing,” he says once over a water cooler break. “I used to sing in a choir.”
“A singing, dancing tuner,” Jongin comments. “You’re more than you seem -- aren’t you, doctor?”
“Please, I’m not a doctor. I never practiced tuning, I realized I wasn’t cut out for it until I was already almost done with the degree,” Lu Han says, smiling slightly. “I never took the Hippocratic oath, either.”
“Why not?” Jongin asks.
Lu Han sighs, pausing to think before he replies. “Tuning is an intimate thing. You’re taking a person’s life into your hands, you know. Good tuners can hear and pin a person’s exact frequency without the use of tools, and know where something’s off. I’m more interested in playing with things than fixing them, I suppose.”
“Still, you’ve got a lot of tricks up your sleeve.”
Lu Han shakes his head and smiles. “It’s not good to reveal everything you’ve got upon first glance.”
If Lu Han hadn’t won Jongin over yet, he cinches it when he hands a box over to Jongin and says, “I received these sweets from a friend back home, but I don’t like this kind much,” Lu Han says. “I thought you’d enjoy them more than I would.”
Jongin puts them in a little bowl behind his desk, and snacks on them between meetings. They’re gone in about three days. “So I see you liked them,” Lu Han says, laughing.
“I told you I had a sweet tooth,” Jongin replies sheepishly. Mysteriously, he begins finding boxes of the same kind of candy waiting on his desk in the morning whenever his stash runs out.
“I just got out of a meeting with some of your political advisors,” Kyungsoo says flatly.
Jongin raises an eyebrow -- he knows that tone, and he knows he rarely likes what Kyungsoo has to say when he uses it. “Go on.”
“They think it would be a good idea if you gave a press conference regarding Sehun’s death. His assassination, to be more precise. And your friendship with him.” Kyungsoo sighs. “I agree with them. A speech like that will get a lot of positive attention.”
“You want me to make Sehun into a martyr,” Jongin says slowly. He can begin to feel a headache begin to build, and he suspects it has something to do with where the conversation is about to go. “Turn his death into a rallying point.”
“If he were alive, that’s what he would’ve wanted you to do. He supported you until the end, didn’t he?” Kyungsoo replies.
Jongin grits his teeth. “Sehun was my best friend,” he says shortly, wishing that he could come up with better words to explain all the ways it feels wrong to do that to him.
“Even more the reason not to waste the opportunity --”
“You aren’t actually this cold of a person, are you?” Jongin cuts in.
He thinks he sees Kyungsoo flinch a little, but he blinks and the impassive, cool-headed Kyungsoo is back. “One of us has to be,” he answers, “if you’re going to win this election.”
Jongin doesn’t want to admit Kyungsoo is right -- that it’s the best thing to do, that Sehun would have been fine with it, that Sehun would have even told him to do it. “Fine,” he says shortly. “Make the arrangements. Kim Jongdae is having a press conference next Tuesday, isn’t he? I’ll do it the Friday afterwards.”
“Flawless pick,” Kyungsoo replies softly. The compliment doesn’t particularly make him feel better.
“Are you angry at Kyungsoo?” Lu Han asks, setting down a cup of coffee on Jongin’s desk. It’s been two days since Jongin started stonewalling him, and everybody in the office has been tiptoeing quietly around the issue -- not Lu Han, though.
“It’s not that easy,” Jongin answers. “You can sit down, you know.”
Lu Han smiles and shakes his head. “I prefer to stand. And, Jongin -- you’re a politician, aren’t you? Isn’t it your job to make complicated issues easy for anybody to understand?”
Jongin sighs deeply, taking a sip of coffee to buy himself some time to think. “You must know of Oh Sehun,” he says.
“Of course. Everybody in the Spectrum who’s watched the news in the past month must know of Oh Sehun,” Lu Han replies. “Kim Jongin’s biggest advocate, killed right in the middle of a speech. Like something out of the movies.”
“Not just Kim Jongin’s biggest advocate. Kim Jongin’s best friend,” he corrects softly.
Lu Han hesitates for a moment before nodding slightly. “That’s a pain I won’t pretend like I can understand,” he says. Strangely, though, it’s one of the more reassuring things Jongin’s heard in the last few days -- the honesty is refreshing.
He cracks the tiniest of smiles in return before frowning again. “I’m going to give a speech about his assassination,” Jongin says hollowly. “I’m going to use his death as propaganda.”
“You’re not mad at Kyungsoo, then,” Lu Han says gently. “You’re mad because he’s the one who had to tell you.”
Jongin knows it’s true, but he doesn’t want to admit it -- he presses his lips together and shakes his head sharply. Lu Han leans forward and reaches out to touch his elbow lightly. “Oh Sehun was more than just a friend, wasn’t he?” Lu Han asks. His necktie dangles in front of him, and without thinking, Jongin reaches to touch it, grasping at its tip gently.
If there were a word Jongin would’ve used to describe Oh Sehun, it would be this: soulmate. Sehun was born the same year as him, had went to the same school as him from elementary school all the way through college. Sehun had coached him with his first date and consoled him through every single breakup, had introduced him to Kyungsoo and Joonmyun, had helped make his career. Jongin’s blood sings a middle C, and Sehun’s the E right above it -- a perfect major third. Without Oh Sehun, where would Kim Jongin be?
“Oh Sehun is dead,” Jongin replies. He pulls Lu Han down, but Lu Han is the one who presses their lips together first.
“I was in the same class as Kim Jongdae once, in undergrad,” Lu Han says as they go through poll updates. It would normally be Kyungsoo there, doing it with him, but Jongin still isn’t quite on speaking terms on him.
Jongin frowns slightly -- the lead that the Yellow Party has taken ahead of them is widening. “You must’ve been pre-med, right? But he graduated with a different degree than you.”
“We were both pre-med track, until he switched to political science. Can’t say I ever thought he would want to run for president,” Lu Han replies.
“The requisite ego hadn’t manifested yet?” Jongin jokes.
Lu Han laughs. “He preferred trading sarcastic comebacks over rousing speeches, that’s for sure. But yours has yet to, as far as I can tell, so I’m not sure about requisite.”
“Don’t sugarcoat. I want to change the Spectrum -- if that isn’t egoism in its finest, I don’t know what is,” Jongin replies, flipping a page in the reports.
“That’s not egoism, that’s admirable,” Lu Han says. When Jongin looks up, his face is very, very near. Jongin briefly wonders whether Lu Han means it or not, but Lu Han cups his cheek and presses their lips together -- he stops thinking and lets Lu Han distract him with touches and kisses.
"That is one unattractive pile of papers on your desk, Kim Jongin."
Jongin sighs. He’d tried to cover up the mess that he and Lu Han had made earlier, but to no avail. "Just do your job and I'll do mine."
"But you're not doing yours."
“I can take care of things here, Kyungsoo,” Jongin says, wondering if Kyungsoo knows exactly what’s going on between him and Lu Han or not. "Please leave me alone, my head hurts."
Kyungsoo shakes his head, then turns around. Jongin is left half-disappointed, almost wishing Kyungsoo had stayed.
By a few days later, Jongin is ready to admit that he was wrong for getting mad, but Kyungsoo is worse at staying away from him than Jongin is from Kyungsoo. Jongin’s candy stash is thrown away and replaced by an assortment of gourmet chocolates with a carefully-penned note from Kyungsoo (a curt “I’m sorry. Please forgive me,” which makes Jongin smile slightly when he reads it).
When they pass each other in the hallway, Jongin reaches out and grabs Kyungsoo’s wrist. “You’re forgiven. And I’m sorry too,” he mutters, just loud enough for Kyungsoo’s ears alone.
Kyungsoo tugs his wrist away, but nods and smiles slightly. And like that, things between them are normal again.
With two months left to the elections, Jongin’s numbers steadily decline against Kim Jongdae’s. “I think we need to start targeting different voter groups,” he says during an impromptu strategy meeting with Joonmyun and Kyungsoo. “We’ve mostly been concentrating on, what -- young people? The lower-class? I think if we coached our platform in the right terms, it’d be popular with the middle-class as well.”
“If you ask me, it’s more a matter of getting the people who support you to actively want to vote,” Joonmyun suggests. “You know what the common wisdom about students and the working class, I’m sure. But I agree, we should also start going more after the middle-class.”
Jongin furrows his eyebrows. “Can’t we get the Blue Party to campaign for us more? They’re popular among that constituency,” he says.
“No, that wasn’t part of the deal. The Blue Party isn’t officially endorsing you, in the case that you lose,” Kyungsoo tells him dryly. From the tone, Jongin can tell that he’s not amused at the Blue Party attempting to put their fingers into as many pies as possible.
“I want some of those candies Lu Han kept giving me, I need them to make me feel more optimistic about my chances,” Jongin says, slumping against his chair and sighing childishly.
Jongin can see Kyungsoo restraining a smile. “Keep working and I’ll get you more chocolates,” Kyungsoo replies.
“Well, in that case --” Jongin pauses mid-sentence, cutting off abruptly as his vision blurs, going white for a few moments before slowly coming back into focus. When he comes back to, Kyungsoo and Joonmyun are both staring at him.
Joonmyun is the first to react: “Jongin, are you alright?” he asks, reaching out to touch his shoulder lightly. “Let me see your eyes, open them wide.”
“Just tired, I think,” he answers, letting Joonmyun examine him. Kyungsoo reaches over and touches his shoulder lightly.
“You’re going home right after we’re done talking, you need a decent night of sleep,” Kyungsoo says.
“Eight weeks left,” Jongin reminds him as Joonmyun takes his pulse, pressing two fingers to the inside of his wrist. “I can handle it. We’re all exhausted.”
Finally, Joonmyun says, “I think he’s alright. But in my opinion, Kyungsoo’s right.”
“Meeting first,” Jongin replies. The two of them are suitably distracted trying to figure out how to prop Jongin’s percentages up, and forget to send him home early.
The next morning, Jongin wakes up with a blistering migraine, so painful that he sinks back under the sheets and attempts to will himself back into sleep. He lies there half-conscious, dreaming vaguely of running around in what looks like a video game set-up: there are golden rings scattered across the floor, and he’s running to pick them up desperately. Run faster, a voice tells him. They’re coming after you. They’ll find you.
“Jongin. Jongin, can you hear me?”
He stirs. “Lu Han?” he says, voice cracking slightly.
That’s right. I’m Lu Han, the voice whispers. It feels like there are a thousand different lines running through his mind, threads of different colors that shine so brightly that it hurts. Trust me, Jongin. You can trust me.
“Lu Han,” he murmurs desperately, reaching forward --
“No. It’s me, Kyungsoo.”
With a jolt, he jerks out of sleep, eyes wide open and sweat trickling down from his forehead. “Kyungsoo?” he asks slowly. The person in front of him looks like Kyungsoo and sounds like Kyungsoo, but he can’t be sure.
Kyungsoo sits himself on the side of his bed, hand finding a perfect fit in his. “It’s me,” he repeats.
Jongin closes his eyes, lets himself lean into Kyungsoo's touch and buries his face in the crook of Kyungsoo's neck, whispering, "I'm sorry. So sorry. I'm sorry, Sehun."
Jongin is admitted to a small private clinic owned by some friends of Joonmyun’s. “Baekhyun and Chanyeol are reliable,” he assures Kyungsoo as they sit in the waiting room. “They won’t let it get out that Jongin’s -- you know. Anyway, Baekhyun said they’d run some blood tests and see what’s going on.”
“I can’t believe it,” Kyungsoo mutters. “How can this be happening? Now?”
“It’s just a good thing that you decided to go check on him when he didn’t show up at the usual time, if he’d been left in that state for much longer he might have...” Joonmyun trails off, then attempts to force some cheerfulness: “Well, it’s good.”
“What would have been good is if he hadn’t gotten to this point at all,” Kyungsoo says bitterly.
Joonmyun doesn’t disagree.
The test results come back a few hours later. Kyungsoo watches as Joonmyun huddles over the papers with Baekhyun and Chanyeol, feeling vaguely wary of letting two unfamiliar people handle Jongin’s medical records. Finally, though, they excuse themselves and Joonmyun calls Kyungsoo over. “There’s static in his system,” Joonmyun tells him. “Poisoning, most likely. He said he’d been having headaches for a while, those were probably the first symptoms. Now his body is beginning to shut down... his blood isn’t distributing oxygen properly.”
Kyungsoo grips his fists hard, fingernails leaving crescent moon marks in his palms. “What kind of poison is that bad?”
“Jongin has a pure frequency, so any sort of noise is deadly,” Joonmyun explains. “It means that he’s easily affected by contaminants. In this case, it looks like there’s a build-up of something in his system, and it’s causing static in his frequency. It could be deadly, but we’ve probably caught it in time.”
“How do you know about all of this?” Kyungsoo asks.
“My father died of from static poisoning,” Joonmyun explains. “It’s why I don’t have a pure frequency like you or Jongin... it’s subtle, probably not something a normal human can pick up on. But it’s in my veins somewhere. I was always interested in exactly why these things happen... actually, in college, I studied physiology because of it. Until I switched to economics, of course.” He smiles, but it doesn’t meet his eyes.
“So he’s been poisoned with an outside frequency,” Kyungsoo says. “I think we can safely say that this is the work of somebody that we know. There aren’t many opportunities for strangers to get into contact with Jongin multiple times.”
Joonmyun nods. “If I had to take I guess, it came from something he was eating -- there aren’t many other believable ways I can think of that toxins could’ve entered his system. Probably multiple times, because there’s an accumulation.”
“Like candies,” Kyungsoo says, thinking about the unfamiliar sweets he’d trashed when he snuck his chocolates into Jongin’s office. He clenches his fists -- “Lu Han’s candies.”
Lu Han doesn’t show up the next day, or the following day, or the day after that, with not a phone call or e-mail in warning. It’s more or less a confession to the crime, Kyungsoo thinks. Only the guilty conveniently disappear when they’re called into question. He stays at the office dutifully, attempting to fend off all the media by making excuses for Jongin’s sudden disappearance, keeping in touch with Joonmyun as often as he can. “Our fight was a blessing in disguise, he wouldn’t have stopped eating those candies if I hadn’t given him chocolates to him,” he says, more speaking to himself than to Joonmyun. “How is he, by the way?”
“We’re not sure. It’s hard to tell whether he’s sick because he’s overdosed on something or because he’s going on withdrawal,” Joonmyun replies.
"And how's Jongin doing now?"
“The doctor just put him on a new treatment. He’s going to attempt to cancel out the foreign frequency using artificially created ones.”
Kyungsoo frowns, shoving his cell phone between his cheek and shoulder as he balances a pile of papers to bring to Jongin’s office. “Is that safe? Putting even more foreign frequencies into his system?”
“Well, I wouldn’t do it if I were you.”
"What do you mean by th--"
The voice isn’t Joonmyun’s. Kyungsoo looks up, and Lu Han is sitting at Jongin’s seat, smiling smugly. “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Lu Han asks. He gets up, sweeping his hand over the wooden desk as if marking his property, and walks towards Kyungsoo slowly.
Kyungsoo tenses. His cell phone drops to the floor -- he can hear Joonmyun say something, but it’s too quiet to make out the words. “Lu Han,” he says evenly, and it’s all he can do to restrain himself from tackling Lu Han to the ground.
“I’m surprised that he even made it past the first week, to be honest. He’d been eating so many of those candies.” Lu Han’s smile widens. “My own personal creations, of course. You could even go as far as to say that I even put my heart and soul into them.”
It takes Kyungsoo to realize that Lu Han means it literally. “You infected him with your own frequency,” he says slowly. “You’re insane, you know that?”
“I’m not. You just want to believe that. If anything, you could call me a genius.”
Kyungsoo makes his way to Lu Han and traps him against the wall, right hand gripping Lu Han's wrist tight, so hard that the wall digs into his skin and it breaks. "He trusted you. He trusted you enough to let you replace Sehun in his life and you just toyed with him! You --"
“Don’t get too ahead of yourself there, Kyungsoo, I hardly toyed with him. It’s not as if I told him to replace Sehun with me, you know -- that was all him. How could I have expected that he was going to take things so far?” Lu Han pauses, then smiles. “Anyway, he chose me. And besides, you must’ve been the one who approved of me, when the Blue Party and Red Party first made arrangements. That was you at the meeting, right, Mr. Do Kyungsoo?”
“Who the hell are you?” Kyungsoo asks, teeth gritted. Blood drips from the knuckles of his fist, and it hums a quiet note, somewhere near middle G. “Is Lu Han even your real name? Are you really from the Blue Party?”
Lu Han smiles wanly. “Wouldn’t you like to know?” he replies.
In the end, Kyungsoo is forced to simply let Lu Han walk away. “You have no proof I did anything, now do you? I bet you threw away the evidence with your own hands, when you tossed those candies into the wastebin,” Lu Han had said, looking far too self-satisfied. “If you keep me here against my own will, I can report that to the police, you know. That would be great publicity, I’m sure -- Kim Jongin’s campaign manager assaulting another politician.”
To add insult to injury, Kim Jongdae himself comes and picks Lu Han up. “See you when the world ends,” Lu Han tells Kyungsoo, smiling gently and giving a two-fingered salute, looking for all the world like a pair of friends teasing each other. Terribly cliched and completely fucked up, Kyungsoo wants to reply, but he grits his teeth and doesn’t say a word.
Instead, he calls Joonmyun. “Lu Han was just here,” he says darkly. “I’m coming over to the clinic right now, I’ll explain it when I get there.”
Kyungsoo and Joonmyun sit on opposite sides of Jongin’s bed, watching his chest rise and fall weakly as Kyungsoo explains what happened between him and Lu Han at the office. “So he told you not to try and neutralize the static,” Joonmyun says. “Actually, Baekhyun and Chanyeol were telling me the same thing earlier. The static, it’s not regular... it doesn’t have a fixed frequency. He might not have been kidding when he called himself a genius, actually.”
“So neutralizing it is impossible,” Kyungsoo fills in. “Then what?”
Joonmyun looks at Jongin’s sleeping face, hesitating so long that Kyungsoo can guess what he’s about to say before he does. “There are medicines he can take to ease the pain, but I don’t think he’s ever going to be the same,” he says softly.
There’s a pause, and then Kyungsoo laughs harshly. “Does he know?” he asks.
“Not yet. He’s been sleeping almost this entire time, and when he wakes up --” Joonmyun shakes his head. “He’s still pretty much out of it. Keeps muttering about Lu Han and some other stuff I can’t make sense of.”
Kyungsoo sighs harshly. “Call me when he wakes up coherent. I want to be the one to break it to him.”
“I think it would be easier on both of you if it were me,” Joonmyun replies, not unkindly.
“It would be easier, but it wouldn’t be kinder,” Kyungsoo says.
Jongin fully wakes up roughly 36 hours later, light-headed but fully conscious of his surroundings. After a quick medical check-up, Kyungsoo is allowed to see him. “Good morning,” Kyungsoo says.
“Hey,” Jongin replies weakly.
Kyungsoo sits on the side of his bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I just got thrown under a dump truck. And after it finished driving over me, it backed up,” Jongin answers dryly. He cracks a tiny smile, though, before he continues, “And how are you, Kyungsoo?”
“Not dump truck level, exactly. Maybe like your compact car level,” Kyungsoo replies.
Jongin laughs, but when he speaks again, he’s serious. “How long have I been out? How have you been explaining my absence?”
“By now, almost four days,” Kyungsoo says. “We’ve been telling them that you’re sick.”
“When can I get back to the campaign? I tried asking the doctors, but they wouldn’t tell me,” Jongin presses.
Kyungsoo hesitates and looks down, reaching out to grab Jongin’s hand. Jongin sighs deeply -- it’s answer enough. “It’s that bad,” Jongin mutters.
“I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo says, thumbing Jongin’s plam gently.
“Don’t be. It was me who dragged myself into this whole mess,” Jongin replies quickly.
Kyungsoo is about to open his mouth to reassure him, but before he can, Joonmyun bursts into the room. “Jongin, Kyungsoo,” Joonmyun says, mouth slightly agape. “Lu Han’s on television. Lu Han’s on television giving a joint press conference with Kim Jongdae right now.”
Joonmyun lets them livestream the conference on his tablet, and they tune in just as Lu Han begins explaining his unexpected change in political support, painting the Red Party -- particularly Jongin -- in rather unsavory brushstrokes. “This is the lowest of low,” Joonmyun says, but Jongin and Kyungsoo just watch in stony silence as Lu Han methodically tears their campaign apart.
When it’s done, Jongin says, “I’ve never been so thoroughly insulted in my life. I almost feel flattered, in a way.”
“It’s not just that. The timing is too particular,” Kyungsoo says darkly. “This happened just as you woke up. They probably anticipated that you would be withdrawing soon and timed it so that ‘for medical excuses’ sounds more like an excuse than anything else.
“Well, what are we supposed to do about that?” Joonmyun asks.
“What are we supposed to do?” Kyungsoo's voice drifts off, only to be replaced with light laughter. "I have a crazy idea, but I think it might work. With a few risks, of course."
Kyungsoo returns to Jongin's office and accesses the employee database, and logs out as soon as he retrieves the information he needs. He types up a message on the phone, hits send, and returns to the laboratory.
From: Do Kyungsoo
To: Lu Han
I want to make concessions. Meet me at Pinnacle Point tomorrow, at the rooftop.
11:53 sharp. Kindly bring Kim Jongdae with you. I’ll have Jongin.
Let’s settle this. You’ll get what you want.
Do Kyungsoo.
From: Lu Han
To: Do Kyungsoo
It’s a date.
Pinnacle Point is the tallest building in all of the Spectrum. Once, it was used for radio and television broadcasts; now, a tourist attraction. Kyungsoo shows up early and surveys the place carefully: all the equipment is old, but functional. There are, however, no cameras on the rooftop -- Kyungsoo knows that Lu Han must know that, which is why he allowed for the meeting.
Later, Joonmyun drops Jongin off. “Pinnacle Point, how cheesy,” Jongin says. He smirks, but his voice is breathy and choked. “You know, I always wanted to take somebody out here. Woo my date from the very top of the world.”
Kyungsoo laughs, but stops short when Jongin nearly falls over his own feet. “Stop talking, you have to conserve your energy,” he warns Jongin, wrapping his arm under Jongin’s shoulder to support him.
“So I can punch Lu Han in the face?” Jongin asks fervently.
Kyungsoo smiles and shakes his head before putting a call through to Joonmyun. “We’re here, we’re ready.”
“Okay,” Joonmyun replies. “I’m running a little behind, but I should be fine too.”
“Don’t be late,” Kyungsoo says. He takes a glance at his watch -- 11:48. If all went as planned, Lu Han and Jongdae would be there at any moment. Kyungsoo extends his hand towards Jongin. “Ready?” he asks.
Jongin gives his hand a light squeeze and smiles. “Whenever you are.”
Lu Han shows up exactly on time. “I see you’re still alive, Jongin,” he says.
“Displeased?” Jongin asks, forcing out a laugh.
“No, you weren’t meant to die. This is, for my purposes, exactly what I wanted,” Lu Han replies, smiling broadly.
“Where’s Kim Jongdae?” Kyungsoo asks.
“I don’t need him for this and neither do you,” Lu Han answers smoothly. “He was never much more than a puppet, you know? Whether it was for his party or for me. You know how it is.”
11:54:33.
“You actually were this cold all along,” Jongin says.
Lu Han shrugs. “Now, I don’t need you two, either. So I might as well make this quick.”
Jongin scoffs. “I should’ve caught on faster. Fired you, when I had the chance.”
“Aw, but where’s the fun in that?” Lu Han laughs. “Besides, I never was your employee. Just somebody you thought was your ally.”
11:56:42.
“I want an explanation,” Jongin says. “Tell me why you did this. I have to know.”
“What will you give me in return? Could you grovel a little -- maybe break down and cry?” Lu Han teases.
Kyungsoo’s grip on Jongin tightens, but Jongin shakes his head when he sees Kyungsoo about to retort. It’s between the two of us, he tries to tell him silently. Kyungsoo seems to get it. “If that gets me what I want. I’ll think of it as a trade,” Jongin says.
11:58:59.
“You’re a hypocrite, you know,” Lu Han tells him. “A pure frequency telling people that classism is bad? I can’t believe it, honestly. Didn’t you ride on other peoples’ coattails straight to the top?”
“That’s the reason?” Jongin asks cautiously.
Lu Han laughs. “If I were righteous. But I’m not. I told you before, right? Why I decided not to become a tuner?”
I’m more interested in playing with things than fixing them.
12:00:00.
Jongin takes a deep breath and says, “So you’re saying you were playing with me this whole time?”
“Playing you like a fiddle,” Lu Han confirms.
“I guess you were in touch with Kim Jongin and his party this whole time, weren’t you? Planning to do this from the very start?” Jongin asks, trying to sound as cold as possible.
Lu Han shrugs and half-nods. “A first, I was just going to leak your secrets, but you were shockingly clean. But then, I realized what kind of person you are and thought -- wouldn’t it be more satisfying to see you completely destroyed?”
“Reputation down the sink, along with my very well-being,” Jongin says dryly. “You didn’t just put your frequency in that poison, did you? You made it yourself.”
Lu Han smiles. “And when I gave it to you, you didn’t even bat an eyelash. So trusting in others. Do you regret it? You’ll never be fully healthy again, I don’t think.”
Jongin returns the smile, but his expression is much tenser than Lu Han’s. “I regret trusting you,” he says evenly. “I don’t regret trusting in others.”
Kyungsoo’s cell phone rings Lu Han tilts his head towards Kyungsoo, as if to say, by all means, go ahead. It’s Joonmyun: “The timing was just right,” Joonmyun says. “Everything made it onto national television, right in time for the twelve o’clock news.”
He hangs up, cutting off the video stream he’d been taping and simultaneously sending to Joonmyun using Pinnacle Point’s broadcasting equipment. He smiles. “Got you,” he tells Lu Han.
Jongin does an official press conference to follow up the unofficial press conference from earlier. “But how did you get him to admit it?” a journalist asks.
He sighs and smiles tiredly. Before, it used to excite him to stand in front of a crowd; to hear the sound of dozens of people in the same place, all fixated on him. Now, it feels like a chore. “When you think you have it all, it’s easy to get deluded,” he replies. “I learned that the hard way.”
The Yellow Party’s campaign is destroyed overnight. At the same time, Kim Jongin becomes a national hero. He releases an official statement withdrawing from the presidential elections for personal reasons (which are hardly “personal,” as the entire Spectrum knows why) and encouraging citizens to vote in for write-in candidate Kim Joonmyun, a junior politician from the Red Party. Six weeks later, he wins in a landslide victory against Kim Jongdae and becomes the first president without a pure frequency.
Joonmyun tries to hire Kyungsoo as his Chief of Staff, but Kyungsoo turns the position down. “I’m bowing out of politics,” he says. Both of them know, though, that it’s less a matter of Kyungsoo leaving politics than him following Jongin elsewhere.
Kim Joonmyun, after completely restructuring the class system to allow for equality amount frequencies, is recognized as one of the greatest leaders in the history of The Spectrum. Some attribute it to Joonmyun's style of management and unwillingness to leave the office if there’s even a single papers on his desk; Joonmyun agrees, and silently thanks Jongin for a lesson well-learned.
Kim Jongin, Do Kyungsoo, and Oh Sehun are given the Spectrum-wide recognition as heroes. The Yellow Party is erased from political relevance completely.