round 01, challenge four: entry #2
Title: For All The Darkness
Fandom and Pairing: SS501, Kyujong-centric
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2237
Summary: The world he's born into is a world that was left devastated long ago.
Warnings: none
Prompt #: 1
For the first time in over one hundred years, a child is born who can see. And Kyujong doesn't understand it.
The world he's born into, grows up in, is a world that was left devastated long ago. An illness swept across the world, effecting, afflicting, everyone. Regardless of age, gender, or position, nobody was spared. It was unknown, what this illness was, but it left the world sightless and in the dark.
There had been chaos, in the beginning, panic and madness and no one could make sense of it, and no one knew how to deal with it. But society has had a long time now to adapt, and humans have always been very good at adapting to changes. The world has forgotten what it means to see; colours have no meaning, shapes are something picked out by the fingers, and beauty is a word for the sweet sound of someone's voice. Life is dictated and followed by sound and smell and touch. And technology fills in the gaps, is the eyes of the world. Robotics had already begun its journey on becoming one of the leading fronts in technology of the time, and now robots do the jobs that require sight. It's even standard practice for every household to have a housebot, programmed to help around the home.
Even now, it's unknown what caused the disaster to happen. Over the decades scientists and their sciencebots have managed to 'connect' the blindness with everything under the unseen sun; lifestyle, food, diseases, and still no one has been able to find the one thing that connects the entire planet to what happened.
But, as happens, time passes and people forget, desperation for a cure fades away with the memory of the colour blue, and as the sun rises every morning so life continues. Meanings and reasons and understanding fade like photographs, until nobody can remember whose relative is whose, or why anyone cared so much.
And it is this world that Kyujong is born into. This is the society in which he grows up, and he doesn't understand.
It shocks his mother when he begins to ask questions that don't make any sense. Like the day that Kyujong falls over and scrapes his knee, he comes crying to his mother and asks her what the wet, sticky stuff coming from his knee is. It's blood, she tells him, and for a moment Kyujong's tears stop as he considers this with interest.
And then, "It looks weird," he tells her.
Kyujong is taken to see a doctor, and there they determine that he can actually see. The first child within memory to be born with sight. It's a miracle, and they ask to run tests on him and his parents cautiously agree; they can't impede upon medical breakthroughs now, can they?
Still, the scientists and the doctors can't find any reason why Kyujong can see, and everybody else cannot. They retire, with their samples and their test results and their records, to research and Kyujong is no longer needed for that. The excitement fades like a memory into the background; the world has adjusted to this change, they don't really want to have to adjust to another.
And Kyujong begins to grow in a world that cannot see him. It's a strange experience, and his parents don't quite know how to deal with it, or with him. They can't raise him as they were raised, but they don't know how to raise him any other way. At first, he goes to school when he's old enough, sits there in a classroom full of dead-eyed children reading from their textbooks with their fingertips and listening to the teachingbot.
It doesn't quite work out, though, and eventually Kyujong is taught in a separate classroom, alone. There's a long, hard search, and a lot of repair work, but he ends up with an old turn of the century television and several old-fashioned discs to go with it. On the discs is the world that once had been. One of them is a learning disc for very young children, younger than him, and with the supervision of a teachingbot, Kyujong learns about colours and sights and letters.
It confuses him, and answers a lot of his questions; it astounds him, and frightens him; it makes him catch his breath, and wish to share it with the whole world. But the people around him only know what snow feels like, and they can only taste an orange, and only know what they are told.
The older Kyujong becomes, and the more he learns, the lonelier he feels himself becoming. An outcast, adrift alone in a sea of blindness. The world he moves through is a strange place for him, although Kyujong knows no better, it's still an eerie sensation to be walking through a crowd of people that can't see him. It makes him quiet and avoid the other students if he can help it, and more often than not Kyujong spends the breaks between classes in his room, furthering his learning.
But one day, Kyujong tries to understand. During one of the breaks, he takes a handkerchief from his bag and ties it tightly around his eyes. The world goes dark before him, and suddenly he feels lost, vulnerable. Is this how the rest of the world feels, he wonders. And then logic catches up with him; to the rest of the world, this isn't a loss, they don't know what they're missing.
Kyujong wants to understand, though, wants to know how it feels, and maybe, deep down, wants to fit in, so he pushes the fear and the vulnerability aside, and puts his best foot forward. It's slow going, and he's unsteady on his feet, hands outstretched before him feeling, feeling. It's only now that he realises how much he depends upon his sight.
Every step feels like three strides, every minute like ten, and Kyujong finds that he can't take it any more, he just can't. Fingers fumble at his blindfold, tug, tug, tug until he can see again, and it's a blessed relief to him. Light fills his vision, and the world makes sense again. He can't do it, he can't understand, and he'll never fit in.
It's not that he's living a horrible life, and he's not as alone as he sometimes feels. His parents are there for him, try their best for him. As much as he's grown, his mother still likes to run her fingers through his hair and murmur how thick it is. And Kyujong listens to radio plays with his father, the both of them critiquing it when it's over. He laughs and smiles, he plays and he eats, he lives and he learns. It's a strange, dark world that he lives in, but Kyujong is grateful for his parents.
At school is where he feels most alone, though. Now he avoids completely the other students, doesn't even know their names. He spends his time with only his teachingbot, and his learning. Kyujong's friends are the ones he makes through the old-fashioned television, watching the old-fashioned viewing discs. The people that aren't real, and never were.
This is how he spends his time. This, and reading text books, reading with eyes, and not his fingers. He learns about how the world used to be, through all of the ages, amongst all of the cultures, along with all the events that happened. It was a bright, vivid, terrible, beautiful world, once. He follows the history of his world with his eyes, until one day, the words stop. They end before they can reach the great darkness that swept across the world; with no one who could read the words any more, there was no one to write the words.
But Kyujong is interested in the world before, not the world now.
Except. he can't escape the world now. And one day, as he re-reads his favourite history book, the present knocks firmly on his classroom door. The book drops from Kyujong's startled hands and he looks up to see the face of another student peering blindly into the room. Kyujong doesn't recognise him, doesn't know his name. Doesn't know what to do.
"A-are you lost?" The words stumble over his tongue on their way out, he can't help it.
The other student shakes his head. "I was looking for you. You're Kim Kyujong, aren't you? The boy who can see?"
Kyujong nods, and belatedly, remembers this is useless. "Yes," he speaks up. "That's me."
The boy steps further into the room, and there is none of the hesitation, none of the vulnerability in his steps that Kyujong felt when he tried to understand. He has no fear of his movements. It seems stunningly easy, as Kyujong watches the boy find an empty chair, and sit down on it. As he looks, he sees that the boy is about his own age, probably from the same class Kyujong used to be. His hair is dark, a little long, and his eyes are steady and unseeing. Instead, he tilts his head towards Kyujong, to better hear him, he guesses.
"The rest of the class wondered where you went. We never hear you anymore."
Suddenly, faced with his own avoidance, Kyujong finds himself uncomfortable.
"I just couldn't be there," he finally explains, looking away, not that it makes a difference.
"Hmm."
It's all the other boy says for what feels like an age, until Kyujong begins to feel uncomfortable. And then finally he says, "Can you tell me what it's like?"
The words are slow to come, but eventually Kyujong tries his best to explain his view of the world. It's hard, and he's sure his words are clumsy, and that none of it makes any sense, but the boy listens to him in earnest.
His name is Hyunjoong, and he becomes the first friend in this world that Kyujong has ever made.
Hyunjoong sits in Kyujong's classroom with him sometimes, listening as Kyujong reads from his history books, about the world that no one can remember. He listens to the movies that Kyujong plays for him, unable to see the pictures the viewing discs create, but Hyunjoong doesn't seem to mind. They talk, sometimes, and sometimes they just enjoy each others company.
The world isn't better off for it, it doesn't change, and Kyujong doesn't feel any more a part of it than he did before, but he's better off for it. He's not like anybody else, but he's not entirely alone, either.
"I don't think," Hyunjoong begins one day, after Kyujong finishes reading through the chapter about what was known as the second world war, "that I'd change anything, if they found a cure."
It catches Kyujong by surprise, this admission, and all he can do is utter a shocked, "Really?"
"Mm. It's been a long time, no one can remember what blue or red or snow or Saturn looks like anyway. I don't feel like I'm missing anything, or like there's something wrong with me. This is how we are, and I guess I just don't feel it needs to be any different." Hyunjoong turns toward Kyujong, and he seems to be gearing himself up for this, really getting into it, as he usually does when he's about to expound upon a subject.
"It's like, wishing for a tail. We might have had one billions and billions of years ago, but it's ancient history now, isn't it, and we've adjusted to life without it. Giving humans a tail now would put everyone out of balance, we'd have to relearn how to walk all over again. Sight's like that, I feel. It's ancient history, not a fault in our genes or whatever. Not any more."
Kyujong doesn't quite understand - he never does, with Hyunjoong - but he laughs and nods his head, and asks him what he would do with a tail anyway.
Those words make him think, all the same. And the more time he spends with Hyunjoong, laughing and joking and living, Kyujong begins to realise that he was the one that couldn't see for all the darkness blinding him. The world isn't as empty as the dead eyes of the people around him led him to believe. And whilst he may be different from everybody else, with a smile in his direction and a hand running through his hair, Kyujong knows that he isn't alone.
But, this isn't one of those old-fashioned movies that Kyujong watches, there's no moral to the story, and no obviously happy ending. He learns a lesson, he learns to live in the world he's born into, and to take what he's given, but those are lessons a person learns through life. Within his lifetime, scientists will never discover what happened to cause the great darkness, and how Kyujong was born able to see. And as time goes on, there will be a few people born every several decades with the ability to see, but it will never go any further than them.
For a long time, until science and technology and robotics truly advances, there will never be any answers.
This is the world that Kyujong lives and grows up in. He still doesn't understand it, and he thinks he never will. But he lives in it all the same, and eventually, he learns to see.
Fandom and Pairing: SS501, Kyujong-centric
Rating: PG
Word Count: 2237
Summary: The world he's born into is a world that was left devastated long ago.
Warnings: none
Prompt #: 1
For the first time in over one hundred years, a child is born who can see. And Kyujong doesn't understand it.
The world he's born into, grows up in, is a world that was left devastated long ago. An illness swept across the world, effecting, afflicting, everyone. Regardless of age, gender, or position, nobody was spared. It was unknown, what this illness was, but it left the world sightless and in the dark.
There had been chaos, in the beginning, panic and madness and no one could make sense of it, and no one knew how to deal with it. But society has had a long time now to adapt, and humans have always been very good at adapting to changes. The world has forgotten what it means to see; colours have no meaning, shapes are something picked out by the fingers, and beauty is a word for the sweet sound of someone's voice. Life is dictated and followed by sound and smell and touch. And technology fills in the gaps, is the eyes of the world. Robotics had already begun its journey on becoming one of the leading fronts in technology of the time, and now robots do the jobs that require sight. It's even standard practice for every household to have a housebot, programmed to help around the home.
Even now, it's unknown what caused the disaster to happen. Over the decades scientists and their sciencebots have managed to 'connect' the blindness with everything under the unseen sun; lifestyle, food, diseases, and still no one has been able to find the one thing that connects the entire planet to what happened.
But, as happens, time passes and people forget, desperation for a cure fades away with the memory of the colour blue, and as the sun rises every morning so life continues. Meanings and reasons and understanding fade like photographs, until nobody can remember whose relative is whose, or why anyone cared so much.
And it is this world that Kyujong is born into. This is the society in which he grows up, and he doesn't understand.
It shocks his mother when he begins to ask questions that don't make any sense. Like the day that Kyujong falls over and scrapes his knee, he comes crying to his mother and asks her what the wet, sticky stuff coming from his knee is. It's blood, she tells him, and for a moment Kyujong's tears stop as he considers this with interest.
And then, "It looks weird," he tells her.
Kyujong is taken to see a doctor, and there they determine that he can actually see. The first child within memory to be born with sight. It's a miracle, and they ask to run tests on him and his parents cautiously agree; they can't impede upon medical breakthroughs now, can they?
Still, the scientists and the doctors can't find any reason why Kyujong can see, and everybody else cannot. They retire, with their samples and their test results and their records, to research and Kyujong is no longer needed for that. The excitement fades like a memory into the background; the world has adjusted to this change, they don't really want to have to adjust to another.
And Kyujong begins to grow in a world that cannot see him. It's a strange experience, and his parents don't quite know how to deal with it, or with him. They can't raise him as they were raised, but they don't know how to raise him any other way. At first, he goes to school when he's old enough, sits there in a classroom full of dead-eyed children reading from their textbooks with their fingertips and listening to the teachingbot.
It doesn't quite work out, though, and eventually Kyujong is taught in a separate classroom, alone. There's a long, hard search, and a lot of repair work, but he ends up with an old turn of the century television and several old-fashioned discs to go with it. On the discs is the world that once had been. One of them is a learning disc for very young children, younger than him, and with the supervision of a teachingbot, Kyujong learns about colours and sights and letters.
It confuses him, and answers a lot of his questions; it astounds him, and frightens him; it makes him catch his breath, and wish to share it with the whole world. But the people around him only know what snow feels like, and they can only taste an orange, and only know what they are told.
The older Kyujong becomes, and the more he learns, the lonelier he feels himself becoming. An outcast, adrift alone in a sea of blindness. The world he moves through is a strange place for him, although Kyujong knows no better, it's still an eerie sensation to be walking through a crowd of people that can't see him. It makes him quiet and avoid the other students if he can help it, and more often than not Kyujong spends the breaks between classes in his room, furthering his learning.
But one day, Kyujong tries to understand. During one of the breaks, he takes a handkerchief from his bag and ties it tightly around his eyes. The world goes dark before him, and suddenly he feels lost, vulnerable. Is this how the rest of the world feels, he wonders. And then logic catches up with him; to the rest of the world, this isn't a loss, they don't know what they're missing.
Kyujong wants to understand, though, wants to know how it feels, and maybe, deep down, wants to fit in, so he pushes the fear and the vulnerability aside, and puts his best foot forward. It's slow going, and he's unsteady on his feet, hands outstretched before him feeling, feeling. It's only now that he realises how much he depends upon his sight.
Every step feels like three strides, every minute like ten, and Kyujong finds that he can't take it any more, he just can't. Fingers fumble at his blindfold, tug, tug, tug until he can see again, and it's a blessed relief to him. Light fills his vision, and the world makes sense again. He can't do it, he can't understand, and he'll never fit in.
It's not that he's living a horrible life, and he's not as alone as he sometimes feels. His parents are there for him, try their best for him. As much as he's grown, his mother still likes to run her fingers through his hair and murmur how thick it is. And Kyujong listens to radio plays with his father, the both of them critiquing it when it's over. He laughs and smiles, he plays and he eats, he lives and he learns. It's a strange, dark world that he lives in, but Kyujong is grateful for his parents.
At school is where he feels most alone, though. Now he avoids completely the other students, doesn't even know their names. He spends his time with only his teachingbot, and his learning. Kyujong's friends are the ones he makes through the old-fashioned television, watching the old-fashioned viewing discs. The people that aren't real, and never were.
This is how he spends his time. This, and reading text books, reading with eyes, and not his fingers. He learns about how the world used to be, through all of the ages, amongst all of the cultures, along with all the events that happened. It was a bright, vivid, terrible, beautiful world, once. He follows the history of his world with his eyes, until one day, the words stop. They end before they can reach the great darkness that swept across the world; with no one who could read the words any more, there was no one to write the words.
But Kyujong is interested in the world before, not the world now.
Except. he can't escape the world now. And one day, as he re-reads his favourite history book, the present knocks firmly on his classroom door. The book drops from Kyujong's startled hands and he looks up to see the face of another student peering blindly into the room. Kyujong doesn't recognise him, doesn't know his name. Doesn't know what to do.
"A-are you lost?" The words stumble over his tongue on their way out, he can't help it.
The other student shakes his head. "I was looking for you. You're Kim Kyujong, aren't you? The boy who can see?"
Kyujong nods, and belatedly, remembers this is useless. "Yes," he speaks up. "That's me."
The boy steps further into the room, and there is none of the hesitation, none of the vulnerability in his steps that Kyujong felt when he tried to understand. He has no fear of his movements. It seems stunningly easy, as Kyujong watches the boy find an empty chair, and sit down on it. As he looks, he sees that the boy is about his own age, probably from the same class Kyujong used to be. His hair is dark, a little long, and his eyes are steady and unseeing. Instead, he tilts his head towards Kyujong, to better hear him, he guesses.
"The rest of the class wondered where you went. We never hear you anymore."
Suddenly, faced with his own avoidance, Kyujong finds himself uncomfortable.
"I just couldn't be there," he finally explains, looking away, not that it makes a difference.
"Hmm."
It's all the other boy says for what feels like an age, until Kyujong begins to feel uncomfortable. And then finally he says, "Can you tell me what it's like?"
The words are slow to come, but eventually Kyujong tries his best to explain his view of the world. It's hard, and he's sure his words are clumsy, and that none of it makes any sense, but the boy listens to him in earnest.
His name is Hyunjoong, and he becomes the first friend in this world that Kyujong has ever made.
Hyunjoong sits in Kyujong's classroom with him sometimes, listening as Kyujong reads from his history books, about the world that no one can remember. He listens to the movies that Kyujong plays for him, unable to see the pictures the viewing discs create, but Hyunjoong doesn't seem to mind. They talk, sometimes, and sometimes they just enjoy each others company.
The world isn't better off for it, it doesn't change, and Kyujong doesn't feel any more a part of it than he did before, but he's better off for it. He's not like anybody else, but he's not entirely alone, either.
"I don't think," Hyunjoong begins one day, after Kyujong finishes reading through the chapter about what was known as the second world war, "that I'd change anything, if they found a cure."
It catches Kyujong by surprise, this admission, and all he can do is utter a shocked, "Really?"
"Mm. It's been a long time, no one can remember what blue or red or snow or Saturn looks like anyway. I don't feel like I'm missing anything, or like there's something wrong with me. This is how we are, and I guess I just don't feel it needs to be any different." Hyunjoong turns toward Kyujong, and he seems to be gearing himself up for this, really getting into it, as he usually does when he's about to expound upon a subject.
"It's like, wishing for a tail. We might have had one billions and billions of years ago, but it's ancient history now, isn't it, and we've adjusted to life without it. Giving humans a tail now would put everyone out of balance, we'd have to relearn how to walk all over again. Sight's like that, I feel. It's ancient history, not a fault in our genes or whatever. Not any more."
Kyujong doesn't quite understand - he never does, with Hyunjoong - but he laughs and nods his head, and asks him what he would do with a tail anyway.
Those words make him think, all the same. And the more time he spends with Hyunjoong, laughing and joking and living, Kyujong begins to realise that he was the one that couldn't see for all the darkness blinding him. The world isn't as empty as the dead eyes of the people around him led him to believe. And whilst he may be different from everybody else, with a smile in his direction and a hand running through his hair, Kyujong knows that he isn't alone.
But, this isn't one of those old-fashioned movies that Kyujong watches, there's no moral to the story, and no obviously happy ending. He learns a lesson, he learns to live in the world he's born into, and to take what he's given, but those are lessons a person learns through life. Within his lifetime, scientists will never discover what happened to cause the great darkness, and how Kyujong was born able to see. And as time goes on, there will be a few people born every several decades with the ability to see, but it will never go any further than them.
For a long time, until science and technology and robotics truly advances, there will never be any answers.
This is the world that Kyujong lives and grows up in. He still doesn't understand it, and he thinks he never will. But he lives in it all the same, and eventually, he learns to see.