There's Still Time to Lose, for Everyone (1/2)
Title: There's Still Time to Lose
Rating: pg-13
Pairing: Kai / Lu Han
Summary: It might be the year 2425, and Kai wakes up on a lab table, smelly faintly of formaldehyde, gasoline, and tree. 15,159 words.
The moment Kai opens his eyes, he knows he's been dead for a while.
He remembers the tree-the tree appearing where he'd been expecting road; he remembers turning down what was supposed to be his street, his headlights glaring off the street sign, then getting into a car while properly, indubitably drunk, then the party-a high school graduation party that had stretched late into the night, past his half-heartedly enforced curfew. It takes his brain a short, clipped moment to make sense of it and play it in chronological order, and somewhere in there, he finds out that he can't remember his last name-or anything from before that night.
The moment Kai opens his eyes, he closes them again, white light burning spots into the backs of his eyelids. He knows he's been dead for a while; the memory of the crash is extremely vivid, almost as if someone had pieced it together for him like a picture-book-as if his brain is working independent of him, from the grip of the wheel in his hands to the way he'd helplessly swung it to the right while the tree had come crashing into his left, no doubt mangling his body beyond repair.
“Not so,” a voice says from across the room, muffled as if facing away.
Kai groans in response, eyes still squeezed shut.
“We-my ancestors picked up your body from that crash.” After a moment, a small hand angles away the light, and Kai blinks his eyes, dark spots dispersing. The boy standing there looks like a scientist-or, an intern, maybe even too young to be that, and he introduces himself as Lu Han. His hair is an unnaturally light brown, yet still a calming, friendly color, and when Lu Han offers a hand, Kai wants to take it-then realizes that there's no feeling in his arms, legs, or anywhere below his neck. He grunts again, and Lu Han blinks at him. Lu Han then jumps, murmuring, “Right, you can't move yet,” and then ruffles the hair falling into Kai's eyes.
Kai glances to the right, a couple screens hooked up to him by wire-heart monitor, blood pressure, vital signs. And there's another that looks like a security camera, but darkened around the edges of the screen. He blinks, and it goes black for a moment before coming back on, and when he looks to the right, the image on the screen moves to his right-
“A brain monitor. Reads what you're thinking,” Lu Han says. “I got it from a good friend. I'll give it back when you get up.”
A fucking brain monitor-and there's a chill wanting to run down Kai's spine but getting stuck at his neck somewhere, paralysis in the way. And he wonders what, exactly, his brain had been thinking when it had woken him up and gone along with this sick experiment-or whether it'd been his brain's choice at all.
“That must have been a really bad crash,” Lu Han says as he slips away to get water, and Kai's gaze follows him around the laboratory-a basement-type area with bare, fluorescent bulbs dangling from a low ceiling, scattered poorly and hung at various lengths. Everything is a strange mix of crude and modern: a five-monitor computer sits behind his feet, but stacks of torn paper litter the place, sheets pinned to every surface and folded into neat little triangular crumples and pyramided on top of each other in piles. The lamp is attached to the operating table with a clamp-the only lamp in the whole room, everything else just a bulb. Maybe this is the afterlife, in the form of a weird, surreal painting.
“You know, stealing bodies wasn't really-uh, good back then,” Lu Han says when he returns, bending a straw toward Kai, but Kai barely has control over his nose, much less his mouth, so he lets it dangle open. It takes Lu Han another minute to figure out that Kai isn't drinking. “Oh, sorry,” he says, pulling the glass away and setting it on the floor. “You woke up earlier than I thought you would. So I don't-really have everything-fixed yet.”
Maybe it's the way Lu Han speaks-in short, clipped stutters-that hints that there might be an actual world here.
Kai watches Lu Han shuffle around the room, rearranging test tubes and flasks that don't need organizing, dropping a beaker and having a shard of glass narrowly miss Kai's face, then humming a soft tune as he brushes it out of Kai's hair and onto the ground. It isn't his world, and he knows, still only half-conscious, that something isn't quite right about how he'd been put back together. Something about his brain is just a little too aware.
“Sleep,” Lu Han says, and his eyes look friendly enough, if not a bit spacey, and look like they mean well under that dull glaze. After some decades, though, Kai isn't really sleepy. “It'll be better tomorrow.”
-
It isn't better tomorrow. Or the day after that.
Kai finds out from Lu Han that it's been more than decades-about four centuries, Lu Han assumes from the pictures stuffed in his grandfather's notes taken of the accident. They don't jog Kai's memory at all when Lu Han holds them in front of his face, trembling. “Sorry,” Lu Han later says, explaining that he'd worked on putting together Kai's brain since the day he was old enough to handle the tools, but after Kai had “-obtained consciousness, further-further operation would have been too life, life-”
“Threatening,” Kai croaks out. Watching Lu Han's face light up is amusing, if not strange. Lu Han is smart enough to bring Kai back from the dead, brain overly active and body reconstructed extraordinarily well, so Lu Han stumbling on elementary vocabulary isn't exactly what Kai would've expected. Kai squints his eyes; so his memory, or what's left of it, really had been pieced together. “So you never thought of doing the unconscious parts first?” Kai continues, and Lu Han taps his own nose in thought.
“No,” he says slowly, somewhere between frowning and grinning. “I never thought of that.”
“Thanks to your stupidity, I'm left with pretty much no memory of my life?” Kai says, and Lu Han frowns this time.
“I did it on-sorry,” he says again, quirking his lips to the side, and Kai feels a jolt of guilt. “You know, the-the in-ves-ti-ga-tors,” Lu Han mumbles, enunciating every syllable, “said that they found the clothes but not the body when they got to the scene the next morning. The person who lived next to my ancestor called the police.”
“Great,” Kai replies, jerking his left middle finger-it's been happening for the past couple of days, regaining movement in his limbs rather suddenly, as if an overstretched rubber-band holding everything together had snapped. Lu Han watches him with mild interest.
“So it doesn't-bother you at all?” Lu Han says. “That we picked your body up off a tree?”
“Well, I'm alive, aren't I?” Kai says, and he cranks his arm up and around the back of his head. He almost hears the joints cracking. “I have you guys to thank for that.”
Lu Han slowly unravels into a smile again, and when Kai moves to sit up for the first time in centuries, he hits his forehead against one of the lower-hanging bulbs.
-
“So what, exactly, am I supposed to be doing here again?”
Lu Han leans over the desk, monitors casting residual light onto an open file folder, and Kai leans on his shoulder, knees giving out every once in a while but otherwise stable, about four full days since he'd woken up. “I don't know, I never thought about it,” Lu Han admits, and Kai isn't surprised. Lu Han flips through the first few pages, paperclips flying and loose sheets going with them. “You're supposed to-to a-ssi-milate himself with society. Yourself.”
“You can't read?” Kai asks, and Lu Han sighs, reaching across the table to gather most of the stray papers and simultaneously dropping Kai, knees buckling, onto the floor.
“Sorry, I'm learning,” Lu Han says, a hint of defensiveness in his voice. “Most people can't read. Reading is a-what's that word for when you partly-”
“Kind of?” Kai offers, and Lu Han doesn't light up quite as delightfully this time, his face scrunched in frustration and looking a bit older. “What's with the-are you not Korean?”
“I'm not,” Lu Han says, lifting Kai by the hand into a standing position again. “But that wouldn't change things. Words just don't come to me. Us.”
“But you understand what I'm saying?”
“That's because I read,” Lu Han says, slipping the folder between two stacks arbitrarily. “Most people wouldn't understand the word understand. We would just use know.”
“So you're smart for your time.”
“Not-we're not stupid,” Lu Han says. His voice is fluid but soft, as if just-not upset, but ruffled. “Just-not the same-”
“Different,” Kai finishes.
“Can you not?” Lu Han mumbles. “It's getting a little-”
“But it's just kind of pitiful,” Kai says. He'd never had much of a brain-to-mouth filter, and Lu Han balls up a wad of paper and throws it at him, missing by a good half-meter or so, mumbling something about letting Kai bother him too much. But it's the only thing Kai has, really-finishing Lu Han's sentences draws him a little closer to one world or the other, instead of dangling between them, lying almost dead still on that table for four days.
Lu Han squats down over the paper and unfolds it-Kai's pseudo-birth certificate, printed out a couple days ago and taped onto the edge of the monitor. Lu Han laughs. “Reading is kind of a lost skill. People don't care enough to learn it. You read in your day?”
“It was the smart thing to do,” Kai says, shrugging, and Lu Han hands the paper to him.
“Look, you're Kim Jongin,” Lu Han says, pointing at shakily scribbled English, as if he'd been trying to write with his non-dominant hand. “I know you don't remember your former name, so I went to a history teacher with your number, the one my grandpa gave you-J011, and he gave me this. So I copied it.”
Lu Han sounds like he's containing his pride at a few letters, a few simple letters that elementary school children could have written more legibly, and Kai, before he knows it, lets it slip-“W-what happened?”
For a moment, all Kai can hear is the whirring of the computers still on-Lu Han had turned off the vital monitors when he'd helped Kai off the table for the first time-and Lu Han lets go of the edge of the paper, and Kai lets it drop to the ground, swinging right, then left, then settling, as if too curious for its own good.
Lu Han's ability to catch on is surprising; Kai doesn't know exactly where he'd been directing the question-at Lu Han's handwriting, or at the current world. What happened. Lu Han doesn't appear offended this time, and he instead slips the lab coat over his shoulders and takes Kai's elbow, leading him toward the stairs. “Come, I'll show you.”
It's then when Kai touches his own bottom lip for the first time-a habit he apparently hasn't forgotten. It's chalky and peeling, and Kai squeezes it in an effort to force some life back into himself.
-
The rest of Lu Han's complex is much more open-excessively high ceilings, the entire home one large area, like a studio apartment, one square-floored room with some cold, hard tile and walls speckled with the occasional window. It's a bit more regular than the basement-a light fastened in the center of the ceiling and at every corner, a front door, a back door, basement stairs running down through a hatch in the floor. There's a kitchen and an island, all countered in some chrome-like material, and a bed in the center of the room, a full-sized mattress covered in plain white sheets “All the homes look like this,” Lu Han says, motioning around with his free hand. “If you need more rooms, you just build walls yourself.”
“They don't, like, sell homes with more rooms?” Kai says, and Lu Han laughs brightly this time, his jaw dropping.
“We don't sell anything, Jongin,” Lu Han says, rubbing his chin.
“And the, uh, economy?”
Lu Han opens the front door, situated in the middle of what Kai assumes to be the front wall, and a cool, fresh breeze blows in-again, not what Kai would've expected, with all the talk of global warming and increased pollution back in his day. It's almost welcoming-almost. Kai scrunches his nose. “All the stuff you guys wasted on that was put to science for us,” Lu Han explains.
And it's Kai's turn to be indignant. “It wasn't waste,” he protests, and Lu Han shrugs.
“Some of it was.”
Up and down the streets, there are houses-apartments, that Lu Han calls blocks, and for good reason; they're rectangular, grey structures, each stretching up about a hundred meters, none more unique, really, than any of the others. “Some of them have solar things on the roofs, or-what are they-sa-te-lite plates-dishes, I think, for certain experiments, but you can't see them. People change the insides if they need something special,” Lu Han says. Kai thinks, meanwhile, that he probably could have expressed the same three sentences in half the number of words and pauses.
“You know,” Kai says, “it's easier to talk my way.”
“Easier, but people don't like it,” Lu Han replies. “They won't hurt you. They just stare at you. I've tried.”
The streets are empty, and when Kai asks, Lu Han says that it's because communication is pretty much unnecessary (or, as Lu Han would put it-“People don't need to talk to each other.”) “After we grow up, we live alone; we make our own things, and we make it work,” Lu Han says. “We move on to not the same things after we're done with our current things. No one needs to tell anyone to do it; it just happens. By nature, our-the things we think are important are the same.”
“Priorities,” Kai says slowly, and Lu Han gives him a half-glare.
“Why do you always know what I want to say?”
The sky floats a pleasant, fading blue; it's mid-evening, and Kai's mind is reeling, gears spinning forward as if just oiled after months of creaks and jams-it must be something about the world, something in the air that mixes with whatever Lu Han had added to his brain, because Kai remembers the general idea of learning to be slouched in a chair in the back of a classroom, throwing sharpened pencils at the ceiling and trying to get them to stay without the teacher noticing. “I don't know,” Kai says, “I just guess.” He turns to Lu Han, whose face is actually quite sharp under the harsh light, and says, “Shouldn't you know? Why I know things? You're the one who made me a new brain.”
Lu Han's face stretches into another bright grin that looks soft against the way his jaw casts a dark shadow over his neck, and Kai can almost feel the blood rushing into his lips after however many centuries; he rolls his shoulders and the motion is fluid, nothing cracking or snapping as he'd expected it to, and Lu Han holds his hand tight. Four days ago, he would've laughed in spite if his hands had simply crumbled between Lu Han's fingers, but now, he can feel Lu Han squeezing supple skin. “You would match perfectly with this world.”
“By guessing?”
They walk in step, and Kai watches their feet move together for a moment before glancing up-someone a couple doors down is dragging unwanted equipment to the curbside, and Kai takes a moment to wonder if there's a government, even, who collects trash, or whether it's just left on the curb to be picked at by neighbors. “That's how we make things,” Lu Han says. “We're very-we use our time well.”
“Efficient,” Kai says, and Lu Han nods, stepping closer to lace their fingers together. “What-”
“Isn't that normal?” Lu Han says, sensing Kai stiffening. “Your world was more-touching than ours, right?”
“Well, not. I mean, if we were dating,” Kai sputters, and Lu Han purses his lips, as if trying to understand.
“Let me have my moment,” he says finally, and it's probably the most eloquent thing Kai's heard come out of that mouth all day-“I haven't been around another human for such a long time since-I don't think I ever have.”
Kai owes this slim, baby-faced man his life, so he indulges him, relaxing his hand in Lu Han's and looking forward, maybe pretending Lu Han's hand is a girl's. Kai tries to go back to relationships he'd had but comes up with nothing-but then again, Lu Han would've been baffled by the prospect of relationships, not exactly knowing what to do with the memories. On the other hand, though, it's all a part of a hole that Kai's brain seems to have surrounded by a wall, and every time he tries to reach into it, it tells him to give up, it's empty inside, anyway. “Guessing,” Kai continues, and he feels Lu Han's hand naturally tighten around his in approval.
“Yeah,” Lu Han says. A couple people glance out their windows-no curtains, clear glass. The standard of dress seems spartan, a lab coat over scrubs, or simply shirts and pants, comfortably loose, dyed the same color. “Oh, you would be surprised,” Lu Han answers when Kai brings it up. “When people have to go outside for a long time, some start wearing these really weird things they made to cover skin, hair-to make them live longer.”
“So that's still the main goal,” Kai says, and Lu Han shrugs.
“Isn't it for all living things?”
“But you guys don't date or-”
“Oh,” Lu Han says. “I think people find other ways to make new people. I think I see someone new here every week, and I don't know how they got here. I do spend a lot of time in my basement.”
“So you guys don't-record your results?”
Lu Han shakes his head. “Guessing,” he says, with a slight upturn of his entire expression, a mischievous twinkle or what-have-you, “is how we do things. I brought you back to life. Someone else will do it tomorrow. We're all very the same.”
“Similar,” Kai says with a groan, and Lu Han shifts his weight.
“Similar,” Lu Han continues, but he doesn't let go of Kai's hand. “We share things if someone asks. But it's more-we want to find it ourselves. It makes us happy. Just like books and movies did for you.”
Us, you-Lu Han had let him borrow a set of clothes, but the more Kai walks around in them, the more he feels like he's coming out of his skin, shooting for either world but landing somewhere between them. “So how long has it been like this?” Kai says; they're nearing the house-the block again; they'd turned around in the walk, streets built in long, almost endless lines instead of the looping, stroll-friendly neighborhoods they'd had in Kai's day. But he wouldn't have been able to tell if they'd just continued and walked right into someone else's block, even-he doubts if they keep locks, if anyone steals things-there's no need to steal anything but time.
“I don't know,” Lu Han says, shrugging. “Longer than I have been alive, probably. I might have been built, or brought back to life when I was younger, too, but the person might not have spent as much time making my brain. You just never know these things.”
“Aren't you ever curious?” Kai mumbles, “Don't you feel like you're missing something?”
“I don't,” Lu Han says, nudging open the front door, his smile almost its own separate shadow against it. “And if I am curious, I just guess.”
-
A majority of their days are spent in this circular fashion, Lu Han asking Kai if he would like to find work under someone else, Kai wondering if it's somehow breaching some unspoken rule, betraying Lu Han like that, Lu Han asking what betraying means. “There's really no other way to explain it,” Kai says, struggling to come up with a definition. “I'm surprised you guys don't use it.” Kai has worked out most of the kinks of Lu Han's vocabulary-any word that can be described in simpler, though more wordy, terms, is 'strange' and not used. “It's like, when you are obligated to-when you owe someone something. Or when you belong to-or, with someone, or something. And then you ignore that, and you go with someone else. Or something else.” It's extremely tiring, speaking like this.
But Lu Han simply nods. “I know why we don't use it,” he says, hand curling around a cup of 'brown, bitter beverage'-Kai recognizes it as a mix of coffee and raw chocolate. “It's because we don't need to. No one betrays anyone. No one belongs to anyone. We aren't tied-were you tied in your day?”
“Yeah, sure,” Kai says. They're standing at the island in the center of the kitchen, leaning on it, and Kai can see himself in the reflection-a little pale, but better. He's taken to pressing down on his lower lip to check his own progress; it's still chalky and dusty and more like old, tea-stained paper than skin, but there's a distinct memory now, with the month or so that he's been here-a memory of Lu Han holding Kai's hand in his, skin thickened a bit. “Marriage, relationships.”
“Sounds hard,” Lu Han says, and Kai sighs.
“No more hard-no more tiring than the way you talk,” Kai says. You give some, you get some. “I'll stay with you,” Kai replies after Lu Han asks him again. “I feel like I owe you something.”
Lu Han laughs and ruffles Kai's hair again. It's begun to spring up, the hair, not quite so listless and flat. It makes his head look bigger, and younger. “You can keep thinking that way,” Lu Han says, “if you want to.”
Lu Han moves toward the kitchen, where a refrigerator sits, wide across the wall. Kai follows him, and when Lu Han opens it, Kai gets blast of cold air, icy air-must be a freezer. Lu Han takes out a pack of the flat, pancake-like things that Kai's been eating for the past couple of days and places it on the counter, underneath a infrared heat lamp. “So, what's your next project?” Kai asks, and Lu Han turns around, leaning his back against the counter. His lab coat falls open in front, revealing mismatched scrubs beneath. Kai raises an eyebrow.
“I don't know,” Lu Han says. “Maybe a moving thing. I've never thought about it before. I never thought you would, you know, work. You were just a project, like my job. I would wake up and work on you, and eat, and work on you more, and go to sleep.”
It's ironic how cyclical everything in this world seems to be-yet, Kai thinks as he stares out one of the back windows to a blue, cloudless sky and trees, foliage in natural, overgrown spaces between the streets, it's a lot more efficient than his world.
“Maybe a moving thing,” Lu Han says with a nod. “But that would be too easy. I don't like thinking about new things. I want something that will last ten, fifteen years.” He pokes at the covering over the bread; it's softened, and Lu Han slides it out from under the lamp, opening the package and thrusting it toward Kai. “I could work on anything, really, and with the right number of tests, I could make it work.”
The pancake is a little soggy-moisture had gotten into the package somehow. It's tasteless, almost like squishy, warm ice, but dry, just sustenance. Like dirt packed into a circular shape and a comforting light-brown color. Like Lu Han's hair. Efficient in a different way-a kind of cool way, focused and unchanging. Kai isn't sure if he likes it.
What happened keeps tugging at his mind, one memory in an otherwise empty brain-but properly empty, in a world where emptiness is valued.
Kai isn't sure if he likes it.
There's no need to steal anything but time.
“How about a time machine?” Kai says around his food, almost hoping that Lu Han hadn't understood him. His mind webs out to hundreds of possibilities, as if it's more mechanical than human, organizing everything in flow charts and maps-a time machine to go back, a time machine to go forward, a time machine to get out, to leave a world where Kai feels uncomfortable in his own skin. (Or is it his own skin, even?)
“A time machine,” Lu Han says with a speculative nod. “Yes, that would be hard.”
Lu Han had understood him, but hadn't understood him. What does one do with a time machine, other than travel? Kai bites his lip; one of them would have to go, but everything in this world is a lovely shade of impulse. Lu Han doesn't think at all about the future, and doesn't think much about the past, but the time machine will.
“Yes, I think I'll do that,” Lu Han continues, smiling around his meal. Kai nods. His stomach rumbles in protest. He downs the rest of three pancakes with a glass of water, and Lu Han watches him curiously-the taste isn't unpleasant, just strange, and almost not worth the time, besides quelling his hunger. The web in his mind creaks, as if reminding him to make a decision.
-
They sleep in the same bed, Kai curled up on the side closer to the island, and Lu Han lying flat on the side closer to the bathroom. That first night sleeping above the basement, Kai lets his right arm dangle off the edge of the bed and holds his left hand under the pillow, but he wakes up with his left hand numb, and a rush of unpleasant memories washes over him like a cold, shocking shower, memories of him half dead, lying on that table, barely able to form words with his lips. So he takes care not to let anything crush any of his limbs, or interrupt blood flow for even a few seconds, jerking his arm out from underneath his head every time he finds it crawling there just before falling asleep.
It seems like every sensation is more; Kai starts forming habits more quickly and drawing nostalgically on memories that had only occurred a few days ago. “So what exactly did you do to my brain?” Kai says one morning, just as Lu Han stirs underneath the sheets. It's finally sunny again after a couple days of light rain, and Kai's voice is thick with disuse. He hasn't spoken much since taking that first walk with Lu Han-there isn't much to speak about when you can't remember anything specific. When Lu Han asks him about his world, Kai can come up with a general answer-marriage, relationships, but again, there isn't any single relationship he can speak of, or think of.
“I don't know,” Lu Han murmurs. “If you want the facts, the-”
“Procedure,” Kai says, and Lu Han turns toward him. Kai's been having to correct Lu Han less; Lu Han is a quick learner and gets used to speaking with Kai more slowly.
“Yes, I just-I filled in the parts of your brain with metal-light metal that shocks go through, and if anything really important wasn't there, I asked some people, some who were in front of me in the studying, and I asked them what went there.” Lu Han reaches over and presses his thumb to Kai's forehead, where his hair had parted the previous night. Kai stiffens naturally. “After getting a lot of info, I made some chips that send shocks. They're not alive like normal brains are, but they work. Right?”
“Yeah, too well,” Kai replies, and Lu Han's thumb is warm for having just woken up. “It's like I'm really smart and know a lot about the general world. But I feel kind of-empty.”
Lu Han laughs lightly, shaking his head as if he'd been waiting for it, as if Kai had been too slow on the uptake. “That was what I thought. The right amount of info to get by, but no real memories. It was in order to-” He stops there, tapping his nose, and his face changes into a blank kind of smile, polite but unreadable. “I didn't know the memories, so I couldn't make them. But I asked my teacher about your world, and I put in as much as I could know-understand.” Lu Han glances over toward the clock then, his hair almost shimmering as it catches glints of the rising sun. “I have to go see him for the time machine,” he says, turning back toward Kai. “Let me take you to him. I'm sure he'll have more, more-”
“Answers,” Kai finishes, and Lu Han grins. Kai's pretty sure he's heard Lu Han use the word answer before; it's hardly too difficult for him.
Lu Han stands and walks over to Kai's side of the bed, the bottoms of his pants trailing against the tiles. “Thanks,” he breathes with a bright smile.
Kai wonders if Lu Han isn't doing it on purpose.
-
Joonmyun's apartment is a 20 minute walk down Lu Han's street, then a cut through someone's yard, then a ten minute walk down that street. “He's kind of short,” Lu Han says. Lu Han explains that Joonmyun's parents had been rebels of society, marrying each other and thereby procuring the shortest offspring known to the modern world. Joonmyun, however, grew up to be a rule-follower, but either way he turned, he'd be rebelling against someone, be it his parents or society. “So he went with his parents,” Lu Han finishes. “Which is why he studies history.”
“What happened to them?” Kai asks, and Lu Han looks toward the sky. He's holding Kai's hand again and brings it up when he stretches, arching his back.
“They left,” Lu Han says. “It isn't really fun to go against everyone else here. No one cares about you. You're alone whether you're rebel or not. So they left. And Joonmyun lives quietly.”
Kai reaches forward to knock when they get to Joonmyun's door, but Lu Han puts a hand on his to stop him. “Just wait,” Lu Han says, and right then, Joonmyun opens the door, short, attentive, and in an odd but comfortable-looking knit sweater.
“Lu Han,” he says, breaking into a smile. “And this must be-”
“Jongin,” Lu Han says, “Remember?”
And of course Joonmyun does, but not before mumbling, “That was quick.”
Lu Han laughs and pats Kai's hand. “He has a good heart.”
The inside of Joonmyun's house is very much like Lu Han's in terms of dimensions and set-up-a front door, a back door, bathroom, kitchen with chrome countertops; however, Joonmyun has an oriental rug set up in the center of the floor, couches surrounding it and no hint of a bed. Where the bed should be is a large metal circle, raised about half a meter off the ground with a control panel and a screen welded into the side. “How would you like some jam? You must be hungry,” Joonmyun says, and sets out a jar of what looks more like peanut butter than jam. Kai glances at the nutrition label-the serving size, a small, tablespoon sized dollop, is about 900 kilocalories. Kai jumps back just as Lu Han brings a heaping spoonful to his mouth.
“Um,” Kai says, and Lu Han looks at him.
Everyone in this world, Lu Han and Joonmyun included, is obscenely slim. “That's because we metabolize things quickly,” Joonmyun says. “If I'm not mistaken, you lived during that awkward time between not having enough to eat and having too much to eat, correct?”
“There were a lot of awkward times,” Kai mumbles, and Joonmyun smiles before patting Kai's shoulder.
“Don't worry, you look good,” he says, and Kai jerks his shoulder away, shifting closer to Lu Han.
“Time,” Lu Han says with two blinks. Kai is more than grateful for the interruption. “Time machine-that's what I came here to talk to you about.”
“A time machine?” Joonmyun says, folding his hands over the island. “Why would you ever-” he starts, then cuts himself off with his mouth still open. His gaze stays fixed on Lu Han, but Kai can see the irises trembling, itching to turn toward him. “Did Jongin suggest it?”
Lu Han nods, and Kai casts Joonmyun a wary look. Joonmyun catches the way Kai's eyes move almost instantly, and he rolls up the sleeves of his sweater, giving a tired-sounding sigh, making him appear suddenly a lot older than he looks.
After a long pause, Joonmyun mumbles, “Time,” walking toward the large circle in the center of his apartment and looking at Kai again, as if to warn him that this is his last chance to back out-to back out of what, Kai isn't quite sure; or maybe, he doesn't want to be sure. And besides, he'll have plenty more chances; the machine will likely take years or longer to build, so Kai breaks the gaze, which ends it.
(He can't help but feel like it's final.)
“Time, to me, exists in planes,” Joonmyun continues, turning away, his voice rising to a normal volume again. He presses a button and taps some keys on the screen, and above the circle, a blue projection appears, a three-dimensional holograph that shows about fifteen squares stacked atop each other like sheets of paper. “There are an infinite number of planes on which we all exist at the same moment, and in order to travel through time, you must simply go from plane to plane. This is all just a theory, of course,” Joonmyun says. A red dot appears on one of the planes, then moves smoothly through half of them and lands in a different location, and Lu Han stares on with an endearing spoonful of jam dangling out of his mouth. “Somewhere out there, someone is getting married in a temple right now. Someone out there may be performing Shakespeare. Someone out there may be inconceivably overweight, lying on a couch with a wife and a dog and observing a television. The only difficult thing is how many planes there are, and how time interacts with conscience.”
Then, a human head, no distinguishing features, spins into place as the planes dissolve, but the red dot stays, this time implanting itself in the head's brain. “The only way we can travel through time is if we connect a conscience to it. They have something called a 'relationship.' Do you know what that means?” Joonmyun says, turning toward Lu Han, who nods. “One cannot simply go to a different time. You must appear in a different time, by using something to host yourself; you cannot change the amount of matter in a certain plane.”
At this point, Lu Han grabs a napkin from the quaint, chipped Precious Memories holder sitting on Joonmyun's island. He's scratching out notes, but Kai doesn't know how taking notes will help with the understanding of it all. Kai would've lost interest four centuries ago, but here, he can't help but listen, even if he tries not to, as if the nerves in his brain are moving too fast for him to intercept them.
“But you, Jongin, have stopped existing in your previous self's plane,” Joonmyun says, and Kai looks over to Lu Han, who seems to be occupied in his notes, eyebrows furrowed together and gaze trailing over messy sketches. When Kai turns back, Joonmyun is looking directly at him, speaking only to him. “However, if you manage to specify a point to which you would like to travel, perhaps you can capture your host self again before it dies.”
“Death is a strong word,” Lu Han says, jumping back into the conversation.
“Considering that we have another couple hundred years on us, yes, yes it is,” Joonmyun says, looking through the holograph but still at Kai.
“How come you know so much science for being a history teacher?” Kai says, suddenly uncomfortable.
Joonmyun laughs. “Don't be silly, history is everything. Perhaps your understanding of history and my understanding of history are different. In this world, everything that has been forgotten to the past, everything these young scientists do not know, but has been known before-all of that is history, correct?”
Kai hates the way Joonmyun turns the questions onto him. He hates the way he's forced to answer, forced between a nod and a shake of the head, because no response is the same as a reluctant, immature version of a nod. Kai grits his teeth and doesn't respond anyway. There's something about the sense of connection that knowledge gives him; Kai doesn't know why, but he likes it-he likes finishing Lu Han's sentences, enjoys the way Lu Han stares at him (only him) for a moment before nodding and brushing his hair back.
“You're pretty smart for being so young,” Kai says.
Lu Han adds, “He's younger than me.”
“How can you be younger than him and still be his teacher?” Kai says. It's past noon, and Kai takes an experimental lick from the jam before his stomach starts to rumble; just the smallest bit makes him feel surprisingly satisfied-it tastes sweet but pasty, not unpleasant, again, but in large amounts, it would be nauseating.
“One doesn't have to be older than you to teach you,” Joonmyun says, powering off the projector. The room goes still, almost as if the whir of the projector had been giving it life. “One just has to,” he continues, tapping his nose with a pensive look on his face. “One just has to be more-thoughtful.”
-
Lu Han has a whole slew of scrap metal in his basement, stacked in a dark corner that Kai hadn't noticed before. The area is cleaned up now, and the table pushed to the side-with considerable effort, Kai had helped Lu Han move it, and underneath, they'd noticed that the legs had pressed dents into the already hard, already packed ground. “You lied there for a long time,” Lu Han says with a laugh, and Kai feels another shiver run through him, an uncomfortable one, this time traveling the whole length of his body. He almost prefers them being interrupted at the base of his neck. “It doesn't change things, what we make the time machine out of. It just has to go through the Earth's air.”
“Atmosphere,” Kai says, forcing his voice higher, lighter. But it only sounds empty.
Lu Han nods, leaning over the island, napkin in hand. “It also doesn't change things, how easy Joonmyun said time travel could be. We still need a black hole, or something like that.”
It's raining again that next day, and the basement has begun to smell dank and dewy. Kai had asked Lu Han why he, of all the people living in the apartment complex, got ownership of the basement. “I built the basement,” Lu Han said simply, spreading jam over another one of those pancake things. “It's my lab. Other blocks don't have basements.”
“You dug the basement,” Kai had said flatly.
Lu Han laughed. “Yes, my dad helped me. I dug the basement.”
No wonder the ceiling was just high enough for Kai to stand; his hair, on dry days, puffed up and touched it as he walked past. “What happened to your parents?”
“They moved,” Lu Han had said with a shrug. “Like Joonmyun's. Not because of the same things, though. I wanted to have my own block, so they left.”
“Your own block,” Kai said. “For me?”
Lu Han nodded. “I was really-”
“Invested.”
“Yes,” Lu Han said. “I wanted to make you happen. I didn't care how long it took. You were a person. I wasn't going to let you to sit in that large jar of liquid forever. Also, I'm an adult. Maybe you forgot.” Lu Han had looked at Kai then, tapping Kai's nose with his finger, then his forehead. It's a strange feeling, Lu Han treating Kai as if he were an extension of himself, not a separate person. But maybe this is how relationships are supposed to be; maybe it's how they're supposed to work, two halves of the same whole. “Your brain isn't working so well today.”
Sometimes, my brain doesn't work well around you, Kai had wanted to reply.
“Black holes make things longer, like light and people. And people can only go so far,” Lu Han says, and Kai looks at the drawing of a spaghettified figure, surrounded by a swirling mass of lines. Lu Han explains that whatever they were to send into the time machine would no doubt be destroyed, but its conscience would live on, “Which is why you need a host,” Lu Han finishes, underlining the word he'd written, again, rather messily, with his pen. Society has located and observed multiple black holes since Kai's time-or, observed the areas around what they were certain to be black holes. “I just need to get some notes from a friend. You can build the container. After all, it'll be your-”
Lu Han stops himself there, and after a pause, Kai figures he's waiting for a finishing word. “Responsibility?” Kai says, and his voice goes up at the end, as if in question. It's the only time he's ever doubted himself with Lu Han's unfinished sentences before.
Lu Han doesn't nod this time. He only draws his mouth briefly into a long, thin line, turning away before Kai can tell if it's a thoughtful line or a determined line or an angry line. “I will be out for a bit of time. This friend lives farther than Joonmyun. He is very smart and also knows a lot about history, but he does not teach. Food is in the freezer. You know where the metal is.”
Kai stares into the basement for a long time after he hears the front door click closed. Without the lights on, it might as well be a black hole, and Kai can imagine Lu Han's parents, watching their son get sucked up into it, into an almost hopeless project. Kai's body had been pretty much functional for years; he'd gone through Lu Han's few but detailed picture-notes, and he'd seen the frustration in them, the question marks that littered one of the sheets, Lu Han not knowing where to go next-what, if anything, he hadn't fixed yet. Lu Han's drawings of the brain are a bunch of wires, like tangled, curly hair, but with clear knots of connection and clear spaces of disconnect-it looks like a jumble, and Kai, one half of a whole somewhere, finds that he wants to understand it as easily as he understands Lu Han's jumbled speech.
Kai finds a welding torch near the metal, old but functional, probably picked up off the street on one of Lu Han's trips. He honestly doesn't know a thing about welding, and picks at the little drawing Lu Han had taped onto the side of the torch: a figure with the flame near it, then a big red X through the whole thing. Don't burn yourself. Lovely.
He flicks it on, then drops it as the flame shoots right out at him.
The torch continues burning into the flame retardant floor, and after the initial shock, Kai slowly makes his way over and picks it up again, staring into the light, calming blue. He'd never thought he'd be better at words and intellectual things than at boyish, hands-on activities.
But the torch in his hands doesn't give him that feeling that finishing Lu Han's sentences, that explaining the quirks of his world, had given him. He's staring into a blank shape that flickers and reacts predictably to Kai's movements. He blows it, and it pushes back; he pulls the torch to the right, and the flame lags to the left. It isn't a relationship without two equal halves, and the flame, though thick and dense, isn't Lu Han, and how much is it, Kai wonders, how often is it that you desperately need company?
Kai can feel the heat inside him, going from his chest to his face, burning up his cheeks, seeping into his head.
It flickers for a moment in front of him-he can't tell whether he'd blinked or not-and then, seconds later, everything goes dark.
-
“I meant to keep it away from your head,” are the first words Kai hears when he wakes up. (Again.)
Lu Han is staring down at him, concern written all over his furrowed brows-but it's an amused kind of concern, as if he were more worried about whether Kai would have any more stupid moments in the future rather than whether or not Kai would survive.
There's a short, contained chuckle in the background. “You melted your brain,” someone says, a man-his voice low and, for all intents and purposes, happy. “Lu Han worried you'd do that, so we ran all the way here from my place.”
“Then why did you leave me?” Kai grumbles, curling his fingers again. They aren't as stiff this time-Kai figures only a couple of hours or so have passed since he'd collapsed.
“You know, I asked him the same thing!” the other voice says. Kai turns his head and in a couple moments finds that he can sit up, and the man hops down from his spot perched on the edge of one of Lu Han's empty lab tables. He's tall, has a mop of messy, brown hair, but with a tinge of orange, as if fire had touched it and instead of singeing the strands dead, had left them in a warm, sun-kissed glow. “I'm Chanyeol,” he says, and his voice rumbles even throughout the damp, flat basement. “Lu Han and I went to school together.” Chanyeol dresses differently, like Joonmyun, but not quite as stiff-with less of a put-together look about him and a look more resembling that of an overgrown university student in rough jeans and a large tee-though Chanyeol doesn't appear much older than Kai, he looks as though he has a lot of knowledge hidden under that hair of his.
“The fire got too close to the metal in your brain,” Lu Han explains.
“He first brought me here to ask some questions about the holes, but it looks like I might have to stay to help with some of the construction,” Chanyeol says.
“Just show me how to weld, then I can do the rest myself,” Kai snaps.
Chanyeol raises an eyebrow, Kai's tone wiping the grin momentarily from his face. He looks at Lu Han, who looks back, as if sharing some kind of language in a frequency that Kai can't hear. It's the first time Kai's ever felt wary of Lu Han-the first time in a while that Kai's remembered to consider that Lu Han got through twenty some odd years of his life without Kai there-without Kai correcting his language or telling him stories of his “time” as if they were from completely different planets. It hurts, and Kai doesn't know whether it's because he wants to feel attached or whether he wants to feel important, important to Lu Han. Attached to Lu Han.
And as if on cue, Lu Han turns toward the stairs to go through some old books than Chanyeol had brought, leaving the two of them to become acquainted, Kai assumes.
Lu Han's steady steps up the basement stairs and Chanyeol's quieted voice cut through Kai's thoughts. “So, when are you planning to tell him?”
When Kai looks up, Chanyeol's expression has dropped-changed as if he'd put on a tightly-fitting mask with a thoughtful, almost angry frown. “What?” Kai says, and Chanyeol flicks the torch on. The thick blue flame stands out against his hair.
“When do you plan to tell him that you're using him?”
“I'm not-”
“I know a coward when I see one,” Chanyeol says, the blue glowing in his eyes. “From small things, like Joonmyun's parents leaving him to fend for himself, to big things, like-like this.”
Kai presses a sheet of metal between his hands, but the edges don't budge. “How am I-”
“You're running away. Simple as that.” Chanyeol takes the sheet from Kai's hands, and Kai lets go just as the sharp edges graze his skin; if he'd been holding on any tighter, he would've suffered deep cuts across his palms. Holding the torch near the metal, Chanyeol watches the heated area turn a mix of dull colors, then bend to the will of gravity around Chanyeol's fist as if alive. He rotates the metal sheet until it forms a cylinder; then, with a cool flick of the wrist, tosses a metal ball on top, forming a makeshift plug. “You're going to go into this time machine,” he says, dropping the torch and stuffing his free hand into the open end of the model, “and you're going to go back to your own time. Isn't that running away?”
“I didn't choose to wake up here,” Kai says, looking up under lowered eyebrows. “I'm just going back to where I belong.”
“Where you belong,” Chanyeol continues, his voice low but steady, so irritatingly steady, “is a matter of fate. If you're going to play the fate card, then maybe your world didn't want you anymore. Maybe it was fate for you to die off.”
“That was a decision!” Kai says, his fingers digging into the edges of the lab table he'd been leaning against.
“To drive while drunk,” Chanyeol says, tilting his head. “To crash, to die.” His eyes dance-or maybe in his eyes, the flame dances, suddenly given the personality radiating off Chanyeol. He leans back, amused again, and smiling. “Then, if I'm hearing you right, you technically did choose to wake up here.”
Kai grits his teeth, and Chanyeol laughs in response, as if he can hear the sound of them grinding against each other from across the room. He presses the sides of the metal cylinder, and it collapses between his fingers into a strange, dented ellipse, and he tosses it to Kai.
“I won't tell him,” Chanyeol says. “And you won't lose anything by going back. Won't lose your memories, won't lose what you know about this world. I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse.”
Chanyeol makes his way up the stairs then, steps echoing through the basement, even though the walls are made of insulating dirt, and there's really nothing to echo against-but a presence doesn't need anything, doesn't need a medium in order to be felt, only needs people there to feel it. Kai holds the metal sheet between his hands for a moment, then jams his arms together. The edges don't budge.
-
part 2
Rating: pg-13
Pairing: Kai / Lu Han
Summary: It might be the year 2425, and Kai wakes up on a lab table, smelly faintly of formaldehyde, gasoline, and tree. 15,159 words.
The moment Kai opens his eyes, he knows he's been dead for a while.
He remembers the tree-the tree appearing where he'd been expecting road; he remembers turning down what was supposed to be his street, his headlights glaring off the street sign, then getting into a car while properly, indubitably drunk, then the party-a high school graduation party that had stretched late into the night, past his half-heartedly enforced curfew. It takes his brain a short, clipped moment to make sense of it and play it in chronological order, and somewhere in there, he finds out that he can't remember his last name-or anything from before that night.
The moment Kai opens his eyes, he closes them again, white light burning spots into the backs of his eyelids. He knows he's been dead for a while; the memory of the crash is extremely vivid, almost as if someone had pieced it together for him like a picture-book-as if his brain is working independent of him, from the grip of the wheel in his hands to the way he'd helplessly swung it to the right while the tree had come crashing into his left, no doubt mangling his body beyond repair.
“Not so,” a voice says from across the room, muffled as if facing away.
Kai groans in response, eyes still squeezed shut.
“We-my ancestors picked up your body from that crash.” After a moment, a small hand angles away the light, and Kai blinks his eyes, dark spots dispersing. The boy standing there looks like a scientist-or, an intern, maybe even too young to be that, and he introduces himself as Lu Han. His hair is an unnaturally light brown, yet still a calming, friendly color, and when Lu Han offers a hand, Kai wants to take it-then realizes that there's no feeling in his arms, legs, or anywhere below his neck. He grunts again, and Lu Han blinks at him. Lu Han then jumps, murmuring, “Right, you can't move yet,” and then ruffles the hair falling into Kai's eyes.
Kai glances to the right, a couple screens hooked up to him by wire-heart monitor, blood pressure, vital signs. And there's another that looks like a security camera, but darkened around the edges of the screen. He blinks, and it goes black for a moment before coming back on, and when he looks to the right, the image on the screen moves to his right-
“A brain monitor. Reads what you're thinking,” Lu Han says. “I got it from a good friend. I'll give it back when you get up.”
A fucking brain monitor-and there's a chill wanting to run down Kai's spine but getting stuck at his neck somewhere, paralysis in the way. And he wonders what, exactly, his brain had been thinking when it had woken him up and gone along with this sick experiment-or whether it'd been his brain's choice at all.
“That must have been a really bad crash,” Lu Han says as he slips away to get water, and Kai's gaze follows him around the laboratory-a basement-type area with bare, fluorescent bulbs dangling from a low ceiling, scattered poorly and hung at various lengths. Everything is a strange mix of crude and modern: a five-monitor computer sits behind his feet, but stacks of torn paper litter the place, sheets pinned to every surface and folded into neat little triangular crumples and pyramided on top of each other in piles. The lamp is attached to the operating table with a clamp-the only lamp in the whole room, everything else just a bulb. Maybe this is the afterlife, in the form of a weird, surreal painting.
“You know, stealing bodies wasn't really-uh, good back then,” Lu Han says when he returns, bending a straw toward Kai, but Kai barely has control over his nose, much less his mouth, so he lets it dangle open. It takes Lu Han another minute to figure out that Kai isn't drinking. “Oh, sorry,” he says, pulling the glass away and setting it on the floor. “You woke up earlier than I thought you would. So I don't-really have everything-fixed yet.”
Maybe it's the way Lu Han speaks-in short, clipped stutters-that hints that there might be an actual world here.
Kai watches Lu Han shuffle around the room, rearranging test tubes and flasks that don't need organizing, dropping a beaker and having a shard of glass narrowly miss Kai's face, then humming a soft tune as he brushes it out of Kai's hair and onto the ground. It isn't his world, and he knows, still only half-conscious, that something isn't quite right about how he'd been put back together. Something about his brain is just a little too aware.
“Sleep,” Lu Han says, and his eyes look friendly enough, if not a bit spacey, and look like they mean well under that dull glaze. After some decades, though, Kai isn't really sleepy. “It'll be better tomorrow.”
-
It isn't better tomorrow. Or the day after that.
Kai finds out from Lu Han that it's been more than decades-about four centuries, Lu Han assumes from the pictures stuffed in his grandfather's notes taken of the accident. They don't jog Kai's memory at all when Lu Han holds them in front of his face, trembling. “Sorry,” Lu Han later says, explaining that he'd worked on putting together Kai's brain since the day he was old enough to handle the tools, but after Kai had “-obtained consciousness, further-further operation would have been too life, life-”
“Threatening,” Kai croaks out. Watching Lu Han's face light up is amusing, if not strange. Lu Han is smart enough to bring Kai back from the dead, brain overly active and body reconstructed extraordinarily well, so Lu Han stumbling on elementary vocabulary isn't exactly what Kai would've expected. Kai squints his eyes; so his memory, or what's left of it, really had been pieced together. “So you never thought of doing the unconscious parts first?” Kai continues, and Lu Han taps his own nose in thought.
“No,” he says slowly, somewhere between frowning and grinning. “I never thought of that.”
“Thanks to your stupidity, I'm left with pretty much no memory of my life?” Kai says, and Lu Han frowns this time.
“I did it on-sorry,” he says again, quirking his lips to the side, and Kai feels a jolt of guilt. “You know, the-the in-ves-ti-ga-tors,” Lu Han mumbles, enunciating every syllable, “said that they found the clothes but not the body when they got to the scene the next morning. The person who lived next to my ancestor called the police.”
“Great,” Kai replies, jerking his left middle finger-it's been happening for the past couple of days, regaining movement in his limbs rather suddenly, as if an overstretched rubber-band holding everything together had snapped. Lu Han watches him with mild interest.
“So it doesn't-bother you at all?” Lu Han says. “That we picked your body up off a tree?”
“Well, I'm alive, aren't I?” Kai says, and he cranks his arm up and around the back of his head. He almost hears the joints cracking. “I have you guys to thank for that.”
Lu Han slowly unravels into a smile again, and when Kai moves to sit up for the first time in centuries, he hits his forehead against one of the lower-hanging bulbs.
-
“So what, exactly, am I supposed to be doing here again?”
Lu Han leans over the desk, monitors casting residual light onto an open file folder, and Kai leans on his shoulder, knees giving out every once in a while but otherwise stable, about four full days since he'd woken up. “I don't know, I never thought about it,” Lu Han admits, and Kai isn't surprised. Lu Han flips through the first few pages, paperclips flying and loose sheets going with them. “You're supposed to-to a-ssi-milate himself with society. Yourself.”
“You can't read?” Kai asks, and Lu Han sighs, reaching across the table to gather most of the stray papers and simultaneously dropping Kai, knees buckling, onto the floor.
“Sorry, I'm learning,” Lu Han says, a hint of defensiveness in his voice. “Most people can't read. Reading is a-what's that word for when you partly-”
“Kind of?” Kai offers, and Lu Han doesn't light up quite as delightfully this time, his face scrunched in frustration and looking a bit older. “What's with the-are you not Korean?”
“I'm not,” Lu Han says, lifting Kai by the hand into a standing position again. “But that wouldn't change things. Words just don't come to me. Us.”
“But you understand what I'm saying?”
“That's because I read,” Lu Han says, slipping the folder between two stacks arbitrarily. “Most people wouldn't understand the word understand. We would just use know.”
“So you're smart for your time.”
“Not-we're not stupid,” Lu Han says. His voice is fluid but soft, as if just-not upset, but ruffled. “Just-not the same-”
“Different,” Kai finishes.
“Can you not?” Lu Han mumbles. “It's getting a little-”
“But it's just kind of pitiful,” Kai says. He'd never had much of a brain-to-mouth filter, and Lu Han balls up a wad of paper and throws it at him, missing by a good half-meter or so, mumbling something about letting Kai bother him too much. But it's the only thing Kai has, really-finishing Lu Han's sentences draws him a little closer to one world or the other, instead of dangling between them, lying almost dead still on that table for four days.
Lu Han squats down over the paper and unfolds it-Kai's pseudo-birth certificate, printed out a couple days ago and taped onto the edge of the monitor. Lu Han laughs. “Reading is kind of a lost skill. People don't care enough to learn it. You read in your day?”
“It was the smart thing to do,” Kai says, shrugging, and Lu Han hands the paper to him.
“Look, you're Kim Jongin,” Lu Han says, pointing at shakily scribbled English, as if he'd been trying to write with his non-dominant hand. “I know you don't remember your former name, so I went to a history teacher with your number, the one my grandpa gave you-J011, and he gave me this. So I copied it.”
Lu Han sounds like he's containing his pride at a few letters, a few simple letters that elementary school children could have written more legibly, and Kai, before he knows it, lets it slip-“W-what happened?”
For a moment, all Kai can hear is the whirring of the computers still on-Lu Han had turned off the vital monitors when he'd helped Kai off the table for the first time-and Lu Han lets go of the edge of the paper, and Kai lets it drop to the ground, swinging right, then left, then settling, as if too curious for its own good.
Lu Han's ability to catch on is surprising; Kai doesn't know exactly where he'd been directing the question-at Lu Han's handwriting, or at the current world. What happened. Lu Han doesn't appear offended this time, and he instead slips the lab coat over his shoulders and takes Kai's elbow, leading him toward the stairs. “Come, I'll show you.”
It's then when Kai touches his own bottom lip for the first time-a habit he apparently hasn't forgotten. It's chalky and peeling, and Kai squeezes it in an effort to force some life back into himself.
-
The rest of Lu Han's complex is much more open-excessively high ceilings, the entire home one large area, like a studio apartment, one square-floored room with some cold, hard tile and walls speckled with the occasional window. It's a bit more regular than the basement-a light fastened in the center of the ceiling and at every corner, a front door, a back door, basement stairs running down through a hatch in the floor. There's a kitchen and an island, all countered in some chrome-like material, and a bed in the center of the room, a full-sized mattress covered in plain white sheets “All the homes look like this,” Lu Han says, motioning around with his free hand. “If you need more rooms, you just build walls yourself.”
“They don't, like, sell homes with more rooms?” Kai says, and Lu Han laughs brightly this time, his jaw dropping.
“We don't sell anything, Jongin,” Lu Han says, rubbing his chin.
“And the, uh, economy?”
Lu Han opens the front door, situated in the middle of what Kai assumes to be the front wall, and a cool, fresh breeze blows in-again, not what Kai would've expected, with all the talk of global warming and increased pollution back in his day. It's almost welcoming-almost. Kai scrunches his nose. “All the stuff you guys wasted on that was put to science for us,” Lu Han explains.
And it's Kai's turn to be indignant. “It wasn't waste,” he protests, and Lu Han shrugs.
“Some of it was.”
Up and down the streets, there are houses-apartments, that Lu Han calls blocks, and for good reason; they're rectangular, grey structures, each stretching up about a hundred meters, none more unique, really, than any of the others. “Some of them have solar things on the roofs, or-what are they-sa-te-lite plates-dishes, I think, for certain experiments, but you can't see them. People change the insides if they need something special,” Lu Han says. Kai thinks, meanwhile, that he probably could have expressed the same three sentences in half the number of words and pauses.
“You know,” Kai says, “it's easier to talk my way.”
“Easier, but people don't like it,” Lu Han replies. “They won't hurt you. They just stare at you. I've tried.”
The streets are empty, and when Kai asks, Lu Han says that it's because communication is pretty much unnecessary (or, as Lu Han would put it-“People don't need to talk to each other.”) “After we grow up, we live alone; we make our own things, and we make it work,” Lu Han says. “We move on to not the same things after we're done with our current things. No one needs to tell anyone to do it; it just happens. By nature, our-the things we think are important are the same.”
“Priorities,” Kai says slowly, and Lu Han gives him a half-glare.
“Why do you always know what I want to say?”
The sky floats a pleasant, fading blue; it's mid-evening, and Kai's mind is reeling, gears spinning forward as if just oiled after months of creaks and jams-it must be something about the world, something in the air that mixes with whatever Lu Han had added to his brain, because Kai remembers the general idea of learning to be slouched in a chair in the back of a classroom, throwing sharpened pencils at the ceiling and trying to get them to stay without the teacher noticing. “I don't know,” Kai says, “I just guess.” He turns to Lu Han, whose face is actually quite sharp under the harsh light, and says, “Shouldn't you know? Why I know things? You're the one who made me a new brain.”
Lu Han's face stretches into another bright grin that looks soft against the way his jaw casts a dark shadow over his neck, and Kai can almost feel the blood rushing into his lips after however many centuries; he rolls his shoulders and the motion is fluid, nothing cracking or snapping as he'd expected it to, and Lu Han holds his hand tight. Four days ago, he would've laughed in spite if his hands had simply crumbled between Lu Han's fingers, but now, he can feel Lu Han squeezing supple skin. “You would match perfectly with this world.”
“By guessing?”
They walk in step, and Kai watches their feet move together for a moment before glancing up-someone a couple doors down is dragging unwanted equipment to the curbside, and Kai takes a moment to wonder if there's a government, even, who collects trash, or whether it's just left on the curb to be picked at by neighbors. “That's how we make things,” Lu Han says. “We're very-we use our time well.”
“Efficient,” Kai says, and Lu Han nods, stepping closer to lace their fingers together. “What-”
“Isn't that normal?” Lu Han says, sensing Kai stiffening. “Your world was more-touching than ours, right?”
“Well, not. I mean, if we were dating,” Kai sputters, and Lu Han purses his lips, as if trying to understand.
“Let me have my moment,” he says finally, and it's probably the most eloquent thing Kai's heard come out of that mouth all day-“I haven't been around another human for such a long time since-I don't think I ever have.”
Kai owes this slim, baby-faced man his life, so he indulges him, relaxing his hand in Lu Han's and looking forward, maybe pretending Lu Han's hand is a girl's. Kai tries to go back to relationships he'd had but comes up with nothing-but then again, Lu Han would've been baffled by the prospect of relationships, not exactly knowing what to do with the memories. On the other hand, though, it's all a part of a hole that Kai's brain seems to have surrounded by a wall, and every time he tries to reach into it, it tells him to give up, it's empty inside, anyway. “Guessing,” Kai continues, and he feels Lu Han's hand naturally tighten around his in approval.
“Yeah,” Lu Han says. A couple people glance out their windows-no curtains, clear glass. The standard of dress seems spartan, a lab coat over scrubs, or simply shirts and pants, comfortably loose, dyed the same color. “Oh, you would be surprised,” Lu Han answers when Kai brings it up. “When people have to go outside for a long time, some start wearing these really weird things they made to cover skin, hair-to make them live longer.”
“So that's still the main goal,” Kai says, and Lu Han shrugs.
“Isn't it for all living things?”
“But you guys don't date or-”
“Oh,” Lu Han says. “I think people find other ways to make new people. I think I see someone new here every week, and I don't know how they got here. I do spend a lot of time in my basement.”
“So you guys don't-record your results?”
Lu Han shakes his head. “Guessing,” he says, with a slight upturn of his entire expression, a mischievous twinkle or what-have-you, “is how we do things. I brought you back to life. Someone else will do it tomorrow. We're all very the same.”
“Similar,” Kai says with a groan, and Lu Han shifts his weight.
“Similar,” Lu Han continues, but he doesn't let go of Kai's hand. “We share things if someone asks. But it's more-we want to find it ourselves. It makes us happy. Just like books and movies did for you.”
Us, you-Lu Han had let him borrow a set of clothes, but the more Kai walks around in them, the more he feels like he's coming out of his skin, shooting for either world but landing somewhere between them. “So how long has it been like this?” Kai says; they're nearing the house-the block again; they'd turned around in the walk, streets built in long, almost endless lines instead of the looping, stroll-friendly neighborhoods they'd had in Kai's day. But he wouldn't have been able to tell if they'd just continued and walked right into someone else's block, even-he doubts if they keep locks, if anyone steals things-there's no need to steal anything but time.
“I don't know,” Lu Han says, shrugging. “Longer than I have been alive, probably. I might have been built, or brought back to life when I was younger, too, but the person might not have spent as much time making my brain. You just never know these things.”
“Aren't you ever curious?” Kai mumbles, “Don't you feel like you're missing something?”
“I don't,” Lu Han says, nudging open the front door, his smile almost its own separate shadow against it. “And if I am curious, I just guess.”
-
A majority of their days are spent in this circular fashion, Lu Han asking Kai if he would like to find work under someone else, Kai wondering if it's somehow breaching some unspoken rule, betraying Lu Han like that, Lu Han asking what betraying means. “There's really no other way to explain it,” Kai says, struggling to come up with a definition. “I'm surprised you guys don't use it.” Kai has worked out most of the kinks of Lu Han's vocabulary-any word that can be described in simpler, though more wordy, terms, is 'strange' and not used. “It's like, when you are obligated to-when you owe someone something. Or when you belong to-or, with someone, or something. And then you ignore that, and you go with someone else. Or something else.” It's extremely tiring, speaking like this.
But Lu Han simply nods. “I know why we don't use it,” he says, hand curling around a cup of 'brown, bitter beverage'-Kai recognizes it as a mix of coffee and raw chocolate. “It's because we don't need to. No one betrays anyone. No one belongs to anyone. We aren't tied-were you tied in your day?”
“Yeah, sure,” Kai says. They're standing at the island in the center of the kitchen, leaning on it, and Kai can see himself in the reflection-a little pale, but better. He's taken to pressing down on his lower lip to check his own progress; it's still chalky and dusty and more like old, tea-stained paper than skin, but there's a distinct memory now, with the month or so that he's been here-a memory of Lu Han holding Kai's hand in his, skin thickened a bit. “Marriage, relationships.”
“Sounds hard,” Lu Han says, and Kai sighs.
“No more hard-no more tiring than the way you talk,” Kai says. You give some, you get some. “I'll stay with you,” Kai replies after Lu Han asks him again. “I feel like I owe you something.”
Lu Han laughs and ruffles Kai's hair again. It's begun to spring up, the hair, not quite so listless and flat. It makes his head look bigger, and younger. “You can keep thinking that way,” Lu Han says, “if you want to.”
Lu Han moves toward the kitchen, where a refrigerator sits, wide across the wall. Kai follows him, and when Lu Han opens it, Kai gets blast of cold air, icy air-must be a freezer. Lu Han takes out a pack of the flat, pancake-like things that Kai's been eating for the past couple of days and places it on the counter, underneath a infrared heat lamp. “So, what's your next project?” Kai asks, and Lu Han turns around, leaning his back against the counter. His lab coat falls open in front, revealing mismatched scrubs beneath. Kai raises an eyebrow.
“I don't know,” Lu Han says. “Maybe a moving thing. I've never thought about it before. I never thought you would, you know, work. You were just a project, like my job. I would wake up and work on you, and eat, and work on you more, and go to sleep.”
It's ironic how cyclical everything in this world seems to be-yet, Kai thinks as he stares out one of the back windows to a blue, cloudless sky and trees, foliage in natural, overgrown spaces between the streets, it's a lot more efficient than his world.
“Maybe a moving thing,” Lu Han says with a nod. “But that would be too easy. I don't like thinking about new things. I want something that will last ten, fifteen years.” He pokes at the covering over the bread; it's softened, and Lu Han slides it out from under the lamp, opening the package and thrusting it toward Kai. “I could work on anything, really, and with the right number of tests, I could make it work.”
The pancake is a little soggy-moisture had gotten into the package somehow. It's tasteless, almost like squishy, warm ice, but dry, just sustenance. Like dirt packed into a circular shape and a comforting light-brown color. Like Lu Han's hair. Efficient in a different way-a kind of cool way, focused and unchanging. Kai isn't sure if he likes it.
What happened keeps tugging at his mind, one memory in an otherwise empty brain-but properly empty, in a world where emptiness is valued.
Kai isn't sure if he likes it.
There's no need to steal anything but time.
“How about a time machine?” Kai says around his food, almost hoping that Lu Han hadn't understood him. His mind webs out to hundreds of possibilities, as if it's more mechanical than human, organizing everything in flow charts and maps-a time machine to go back, a time machine to go forward, a time machine to get out, to leave a world where Kai feels uncomfortable in his own skin. (Or is it his own skin, even?)
“A time machine,” Lu Han says with a speculative nod. “Yes, that would be hard.”
Lu Han had understood him, but hadn't understood him. What does one do with a time machine, other than travel? Kai bites his lip; one of them would have to go, but everything in this world is a lovely shade of impulse. Lu Han doesn't think at all about the future, and doesn't think much about the past, but the time machine will.
“Yes, I think I'll do that,” Lu Han continues, smiling around his meal. Kai nods. His stomach rumbles in protest. He downs the rest of three pancakes with a glass of water, and Lu Han watches him curiously-the taste isn't unpleasant, just strange, and almost not worth the time, besides quelling his hunger. The web in his mind creaks, as if reminding him to make a decision.
-
They sleep in the same bed, Kai curled up on the side closer to the island, and Lu Han lying flat on the side closer to the bathroom. That first night sleeping above the basement, Kai lets his right arm dangle off the edge of the bed and holds his left hand under the pillow, but he wakes up with his left hand numb, and a rush of unpleasant memories washes over him like a cold, shocking shower, memories of him half dead, lying on that table, barely able to form words with his lips. So he takes care not to let anything crush any of his limbs, or interrupt blood flow for even a few seconds, jerking his arm out from underneath his head every time he finds it crawling there just before falling asleep.
It seems like every sensation is more; Kai starts forming habits more quickly and drawing nostalgically on memories that had only occurred a few days ago. “So what exactly did you do to my brain?” Kai says one morning, just as Lu Han stirs underneath the sheets. It's finally sunny again after a couple days of light rain, and Kai's voice is thick with disuse. He hasn't spoken much since taking that first walk with Lu Han-there isn't much to speak about when you can't remember anything specific. When Lu Han asks him about his world, Kai can come up with a general answer-marriage, relationships, but again, there isn't any single relationship he can speak of, or think of.
“I don't know,” Lu Han murmurs. “If you want the facts, the-”
“Procedure,” Kai says, and Lu Han turns toward him. Kai's been having to correct Lu Han less; Lu Han is a quick learner and gets used to speaking with Kai more slowly.
“Yes, I just-I filled in the parts of your brain with metal-light metal that shocks go through, and if anything really important wasn't there, I asked some people, some who were in front of me in the studying, and I asked them what went there.” Lu Han reaches over and presses his thumb to Kai's forehead, where his hair had parted the previous night. Kai stiffens naturally. “After getting a lot of info, I made some chips that send shocks. They're not alive like normal brains are, but they work. Right?”
“Yeah, too well,” Kai replies, and Lu Han's thumb is warm for having just woken up. “It's like I'm really smart and know a lot about the general world. But I feel kind of-empty.”
Lu Han laughs lightly, shaking his head as if he'd been waiting for it, as if Kai had been too slow on the uptake. “That was what I thought. The right amount of info to get by, but no real memories. It was in order to-” He stops there, tapping his nose, and his face changes into a blank kind of smile, polite but unreadable. “I didn't know the memories, so I couldn't make them. But I asked my teacher about your world, and I put in as much as I could know-understand.” Lu Han glances over toward the clock then, his hair almost shimmering as it catches glints of the rising sun. “I have to go see him for the time machine,” he says, turning back toward Kai. “Let me take you to him. I'm sure he'll have more, more-”
“Answers,” Kai finishes, and Lu Han grins. Kai's pretty sure he's heard Lu Han use the word answer before; it's hardly too difficult for him.
Lu Han stands and walks over to Kai's side of the bed, the bottoms of his pants trailing against the tiles. “Thanks,” he breathes with a bright smile.
Kai wonders if Lu Han isn't doing it on purpose.
-
Joonmyun's apartment is a 20 minute walk down Lu Han's street, then a cut through someone's yard, then a ten minute walk down that street. “He's kind of short,” Lu Han says. Lu Han explains that Joonmyun's parents had been rebels of society, marrying each other and thereby procuring the shortest offspring known to the modern world. Joonmyun, however, grew up to be a rule-follower, but either way he turned, he'd be rebelling against someone, be it his parents or society. “So he went with his parents,” Lu Han finishes. “Which is why he studies history.”
“What happened to them?” Kai asks, and Lu Han looks toward the sky. He's holding Kai's hand again and brings it up when he stretches, arching his back.
“They left,” Lu Han says. “It isn't really fun to go against everyone else here. No one cares about you. You're alone whether you're rebel or not. So they left. And Joonmyun lives quietly.”
Kai reaches forward to knock when they get to Joonmyun's door, but Lu Han puts a hand on his to stop him. “Just wait,” Lu Han says, and right then, Joonmyun opens the door, short, attentive, and in an odd but comfortable-looking knit sweater.
“Lu Han,” he says, breaking into a smile. “And this must be-”
“Jongin,” Lu Han says, “Remember?”
And of course Joonmyun does, but not before mumbling, “That was quick.”
Lu Han laughs and pats Kai's hand. “He has a good heart.”
The inside of Joonmyun's house is very much like Lu Han's in terms of dimensions and set-up-a front door, a back door, bathroom, kitchen with chrome countertops; however, Joonmyun has an oriental rug set up in the center of the floor, couches surrounding it and no hint of a bed. Where the bed should be is a large metal circle, raised about half a meter off the ground with a control panel and a screen welded into the side. “How would you like some jam? You must be hungry,” Joonmyun says, and sets out a jar of what looks more like peanut butter than jam. Kai glances at the nutrition label-the serving size, a small, tablespoon sized dollop, is about 900 kilocalories. Kai jumps back just as Lu Han brings a heaping spoonful to his mouth.
“Um,” Kai says, and Lu Han looks at him.
Everyone in this world, Lu Han and Joonmyun included, is obscenely slim. “That's because we metabolize things quickly,” Joonmyun says. “If I'm not mistaken, you lived during that awkward time between not having enough to eat and having too much to eat, correct?”
“There were a lot of awkward times,” Kai mumbles, and Joonmyun smiles before patting Kai's shoulder.
“Don't worry, you look good,” he says, and Kai jerks his shoulder away, shifting closer to Lu Han.
“Time,” Lu Han says with two blinks. Kai is more than grateful for the interruption. “Time machine-that's what I came here to talk to you about.”
“A time machine?” Joonmyun says, folding his hands over the island. “Why would you ever-” he starts, then cuts himself off with his mouth still open. His gaze stays fixed on Lu Han, but Kai can see the irises trembling, itching to turn toward him. “Did Jongin suggest it?”
Lu Han nods, and Kai casts Joonmyun a wary look. Joonmyun catches the way Kai's eyes move almost instantly, and he rolls up the sleeves of his sweater, giving a tired-sounding sigh, making him appear suddenly a lot older than he looks.
After a long pause, Joonmyun mumbles, “Time,” walking toward the large circle in the center of his apartment and looking at Kai again, as if to warn him that this is his last chance to back out-to back out of what, Kai isn't quite sure; or maybe, he doesn't want to be sure. And besides, he'll have plenty more chances; the machine will likely take years or longer to build, so Kai breaks the gaze, which ends it.
(He can't help but feel like it's final.)
“Time, to me, exists in planes,” Joonmyun continues, turning away, his voice rising to a normal volume again. He presses a button and taps some keys on the screen, and above the circle, a blue projection appears, a three-dimensional holograph that shows about fifteen squares stacked atop each other like sheets of paper. “There are an infinite number of planes on which we all exist at the same moment, and in order to travel through time, you must simply go from plane to plane. This is all just a theory, of course,” Joonmyun says. A red dot appears on one of the planes, then moves smoothly through half of them and lands in a different location, and Lu Han stares on with an endearing spoonful of jam dangling out of his mouth. “Somewhere out there, someone is getting married in a temple right now. Someone out there may be performing Shakespeare. Someone out there may be inconceivably overweight, lying on a couch with a wife and a dog and observing a television. The only difficult thing is how many planes there are, and how time interacts with conscience.”
Then, a human head, no distinguishing features, spins into place as the planes dissolve, but the red dot stays, this time implanting itself in the head's brain. “The only way we can travel through time is if we connect a conscience to it. They have something called a 'relationship.' Do you know what that means?” Joonmyun says, turning toward Lu Han, who nods. “One cannot simply go to a different time. You must appear in a different time, by using something to host yourself; you cannot change the amount of matter in a certain plane.”
At this point, Lu Han grabs a napkin from the quaint, chipped Precious Memories holder sitting on Joonmyun's island. He's scratching out notes, but Kai doesn't know how taking notes will help with the understanding of it all. Kai would've lost interest four centuries ago, but here, he can't help but listen, even if he tries not to, as if the nerves in his brain are moving too fast for him to intercept them.
“But you, Jongin, have stopped existing in your previous self's plane,” Joonmyun says, and Kai looks over to Lu Han, who seems to be occupied in his notes, eyebrows furrowed together and gaze trailing over messy sketches. When Kai turns back, Joonmyun is looking directly at him, speaking only to him. “However, if you manage to specify a point to which you would like to travel, perhaps you can capture your host self again before it dies.”
“Death is a strong word,” Lu Han says, jumping back into the conversation.
“Considering that we have another couple hundred years on us, yes, yes it is,” Joonmyun says, looking through the holograph but still at Kai.
“How come you know so much science for being a history teacher?” Kai says, suddenly uncomfortable.
Joonmyun laughs. “Don't be silly, history is everything. Perhaps your understanding of history and my understanding of history are different. In this world, everything that has been forgotten to the past, everything these young scientists do not know, but has been known before-all of that is history, correct?”
Kai hates the way Joonmyun turns the questions onto him. He hates the way he's forced to answer, forced between a nod and a shake of the head, because no response is the same as a reluctant, immature version of a nod. Kai grits his teeth and doesn't respond anyway. There's something about the sense of connection that knowledge gives him; Kai doesn't know why, but he likes it-he likes finishing Lu Han's sentences, enjoys the way Lu Han stares at him (only him) for a moment before nodding and brushing his hair back.
“You're pretty smart for being so young,” Kai says.
Lu Han adds, “He's younger than me.”
“How can you be younger than him and still be his teacher?” Kai says. It's past noon, and Kai takes an experimental lick from the jam before his stomach starts to rumble; just the smallest bit makes him feel surprisingly satisfied-it tastes sweet but pasty, not unpleasant, again, but in large amounts, it would be nauseating.
“One doesn't have to be older than you to teach you,” Joonmyun says, powering off the projector. The room goes still, almost as if the whir of the projector had been giving it life. “One just has to,” he continues, tapping his nose with a pensive look on his face. “One just has to be more-thoughtful.”
-
Lu Han has a whole slew of scrap metal in his basement, stacked in a dark corner that Kai hadn't noticed before. The area is cleaned up now, and the table pushed to the side-with considerable effort, Kai had helped Lu Han move it, and underneath, they'd noticed that the legs had pressed dents into the already hard, already packed ground. “You lied there for a long time,” Lu Han says with a laugh, and Kai feels another shiver run through him, an uncomfortable one, this time traveling the whole length of his body. He almost prefers them being interrupted at the base of his neck. “It doesn't change things, what we make the time machine out of. It just has to go through the Earth's air.”
“Atmosphere,” Kai says, forcing his voice higher, lighter. But it only sounds empty.
Lu Han nods, leaning over the island, napkin in hand. “It also doesn't change things, how easy Joonmyun said time travel could be. We still need a black hole, or something like that.”
It's raining again that next day, and the basement has begun to smell dank and dewy. Kai had asked Lu Han why he, of all the people living in the apartment complex, got ownership of the basement. “I built the basement,” Lu Han said simply, spreading jam over another one of those pancake things. “It's my lab. Other blocks don't have basements.”
“You dug the basement,” Kai had said flatly.
Lu Han laughed. “Yes, my dad helped me. I dug the basement.”
No wonder the ceiling was just high enough for Kai to stand; his hair, on dry days, puffed up and touched it as he walked past. “What happened to your parents?”
“They moved,” Lu Han had said with a shrug. “Like Joonmyun's. Not because of the same things, though. I wanted to have my own block, so they left.”
“Your own block,” Kai said. “For me?”
Lu Han nodded. “I was really-”
“Invested.”
“Yes,” Lu Han said. “I wanted to make you happen. I didn't care how long it took. You were a person. I wasn't going to let you to sit in that large jar of liquid forever. Also, I'm an adult. Maybe you forgot.” Lu Han had looked at Kai then, tapping Kai's nose with his finger, then his forehead. It's a strange feeling, Lu Han treating Kai as if he were an extension of himself, not a separate person. But maybe this is how relationships are supposed to be; maybe it's how they're supposed to work, two halves of the same whole. “Your brain isn't working so well today.”
Sometimes, my brain doesn't work well around you, Kai had wanted to reply.
“Black holes make things longer, like light and people. And people can only go so far,” Lu Han says, and Kai looks at the drawing of a spaghettified figure, surrounded by a swirling mass of lines. Lu Han explains that whatever they were to send into the time machine would no doubt be destroyed, but its conscience would live on, “Which is why you need a host,” Lu Han finishes, underlining the word he'd written, again, rather messily, with his pen. Society has located and observed multiple black holes since Kai's time-or, observed the areas around what they were certain to be black holes. “I just need to get some notes from a friend. You can build the container. After all, it'll be your-”
Lu Han stops himself there, and after a pause, Kai figures he's waiting for a finishing word. “Responsibility?” Kai says, and his voice goes up at the end, as if in question. It's the only time he's ever doubted himself with Lu Han's unfinished sentences before.
Lu Han doesn't nod this time. He only draws his mouth briefly into a long, thin line, turning away before Kai can tell if it's a thoughtful line or a determined line or an angry line. “I will be out for a bit of time. This friend lives farther than Joonmyun. He is very smart and also knows a lot about history, but he does not teach. Food is in the freezer. You know where the metal is.”
Kai stares into the basement for a long time after he hears the front door click closed. Without the lights on, it might as well be a black hole, and Kai can imagine Lu Han's parents, watching their son get sucked up into it, into an almost hopeless project. Kai's body had been pretty much functional for years; he'd gone through Lu Han's few but detailed picture-notes, and he'd seen the frustration in them, the question marks that littered one of the sheets, Lu Han not knowing where to go next-what, if anything, he hadn't fixed yet. Lu Han's drawings of the brain are a bunch of wires, like tangled, curly hair, but with clear knots of connection and clear spaces of disconnect-it looks like a jumble, and Kai, one half of a whole somewhere, finds that he wants to understand it as easily as he understands Lu Han's jumbled speech.
Kai finds a welding torch near the metal, old but functional, probably picked up off the street on one of Lu Han's trips. He honestly doesn't know a thing about welding, and picks at the little drawing Lu Han had taped onto the side of the torch: a figure with the flame near it, then a big red X through the whole thing. Don't burn yourself. Lovely.
He flicks it on, then drops it as the flame shoots right out at him.
The torch continues burning into the flame retardant floor, and after the initial shock, Kai slowly makes his way over and picks it up again, staring into the light, calming blue. He'd never thought he'd be better at words and intellectual things than at boyish, hands-on activities.
But the torch in his hands doesn't give him that feeling that finishing Lu Han's sentences, that explaining the quirks of his world, had given him. He's staring into a blank shape that flickers and reacts predictably to Kai's movements. He blows it, and it pushes back; he pulls the torch to the right, and the flame lags to the left. It isn't a relationship without two equal halves, and the flame, though thick and dense, isn't Lu Han, and how much is it, Kai wonders, how often is it that you desperately need company?
Kai can feel the heat inside him, going from his chest to his face, burning up his cheeks, seeping into his head.
It flickers for a moment in front of him-he can't tell whether he'd blinked or not-and then, seconds later, everything goes dark.
-
“I meant to keep it away from your head,” are the first words Kai hears when he wakes up. (Again.)
Lu Han is staring down at him, concern written all over his furrowed brows-but it's an amused kind of concern, as if he were more worried about whether Kai would have any more stupid moments in the future rather than whether or not Kai would survive.
There's a short, contained chuckle in the background. “You melted your brain,” someone says, a man-his voice low and, for all intents and purposes, happy. “Lu Han worried you'd do that, so we ran all the way here from my place.”
“Then why did you leave me?” Kai grumbles, curling his fingers again. They aren't as stiff this time-Kai figures only a couple of hours or so have passed since he'd collapsed.
“You know, I asked him the same thing!” the other voice says. Kai turns his head and in a couple moments finds that he can sit up, and the man hops down from his spot perched on the edge of one of Lu Han's empty lab tables. He's tall, has a mop of messy, brown hair, but with a tinge of orange, as if fire had touched it and instead of singeing the strands dead, had left them in a warm, sun-kissed glow. “I'm Chanyeol,” he says, and his voice rumbles even throughout the damp, flat basement. “Lu Han and I went to school together.” Chanyeol dresses differently, like Joonmyun, but not quite as stiff-with less of a put-together look about him and a look more resembling that of an overgrown university student in rough jeans and a large tee-though Chanyeol doesn't appear much older than Kai, he looks as though he has a lot of knowledge hidden under that hair of his.
“The fire got too close to the metal in your brain,” Lu Han explains.
“He first brought me here to ask some questions about the holes, but it looks like I might have to stay to help with some of the construction,” Chanyeol says.
“Just show me how to weld, then I can do the rest myself,” Kai snaps.
Chanyeol raises an eyebrow, Kai's tone wiping the grin momentarily from his face. He looks at Lu Han, who looks back, as if sharing some kind of language in a frequency that Kai can't hear. It's the first time Kai's ever felt wary of Lu Han-the first time in a while that Kai's remembered to consider that Lu Han got through twenty some odd years of his life without Kai there-without Kai correcting his language or telling him stories of his “time” as if they were from completely different planets. It hurts, and Kai doesn't know whether it's because he wants to feel attached or whether he wants to feel important, important to Lu Han. Attached to Lu Han.
And as if on cue, Lu Han turns toward the stairs to go through some old books than Chanyeol had brought, leaving the two of them to become acquainted, Kai assumes.
Lu Han's steady steps up the basement stairs and Chanyeol's quieted voice cut through Kai's thoughts. “So, when are you planning to tell him?”
When Kai looks up, Chanyeol's expression has dropped-changed as if he'd put on a tightly-fitting mask with a thoughtful, almost angry frown. “What?” Kai says, and Chanyeol flicks the torch on. The thick blue flame stands out against his hair.
“When do you plan to tell him that you're using him?”
“I'm not-”
“I know a coward when I see one,” Chanyeol says, the blue glowing in his eyes. “From small things, like Joonmyun's parents leaving him to fend for himself, to big things, like-like this.”
Kai presses a sheet of metal between his hands, but the edges don't budge. “How am I-”
“You're running away. Simple as that.” Chanyeol takes the sheet from Kai's hands, and Kai lets go just as the sharp edges graze his skin; if he'd been holding on any tighter, he would've suffered deep cuts across his palms. Holding the torch near the metal, Chanyeol watches the heated area turn a mix of dull colors, then bend to the will of gravity around Chanyeol's fist as if alive. He rotates the metal sheet until it forms a cylinder; then, with a cool flick of the wrist, tosses a metal ball on top, forming a makeshift plug. “You're going to go into this time machine,” he says, dropping the torch and stuffing his free hand into the open end of the model, “and you're going to go back to your own time. Isn't that running away?”
“I didn't choose to wake up here,” Kai says, looking up under lowered eyebrows. “I'm just going back to where I belong.”
“Where you belong,” Chanyeol continues, his voice low but steady, so irritatingly steady, “is a matter of fate. If you're going to play the fate card, then maybe your world didn't want you anymore. Maybe it was fate for you to die off.”
“That was a decision!” Kai says, his fingers digging into the edges of the lab table he'd been leaning against.
“To drive while drunk,” Chanyeol says, tilting his head. “To crash, to die.” His eyes dance-or maybe in his eyes, the flame dances, suddenly given the personality radiating off Chanyeol. He leans back, amused again, and smiling. “Then, if I'm hearing you right, you technically did choose to wake up here.”
Kai grits his teeth, and Chanyeol laughs in response, as if he can hear the sound of them grinding against each other from across the room. He presses the sides of the metal cylinder, and it collapses between his fingers into a strange, dented ellipse, and he tosses it to Kai.
“I won't tell him,” Chanyeol says. “And you won't lose anything by going back. Won't lose your memories, won't lose what you know about this world. I don't know if that's a blessing or a curse.”
Chanyeol makes his way up the stairs then, steps echoing through the basement, even though the walls are made of insulating dirt, and there's really nothing to echo against-but a presence doesn't need anything, doesn't need a medium in order to be felt, only needs people there to feel it. Kai holds the metal sheet between his hands for a moment, then jams his arms together. The edges don't budge.
-
part 2