the world flung into far disaster; Jaekyu/Chihun; post-series White Christmas (drama, 2011)

2015-01-16T05:55:46Z

Title: the world flung into far disaster
Fandom: White Christmas - K-drama 2011
Author: kaiosea or on tumblr or ao3
Pairing/Focus: Jaekyu/Chihun, pre-slash, Jaekyu-centric
Length: 2854 words
Rating: PG-13 (though the series has a higher rating)
Notes: They didn’t get a backstory, an ending, or a future, so I felt motivated to write. Post-series. +The version I watched romanized his name as Chihun plus I knew someone irl whose name was Chihun so that's why I went with this spelling.

Summary: Though hope is not always the best rational decision, recovery (or the lack thereof) seldom follows a logical path.

Also on Ao3 where the formatting looks better, or here on LJ below:

Here’s what Jaekyu knows: The question’s not going to go away by itself.

Things have returned to normal, meaning they’ve all gone back to their tiny customized sectors of the hell that is Susin High. In the meantime they received awards for their bravery, but only Mireu, miraculously free of guilt, could smile on the stage where they accepted cheap gold medallions and flimsy pieces of paper that somehow constituted certificates. It was a masquerade of honor. Jaekyu hung his medal round his neck, and its lightness weighed upon him.

The school closed for the spring semester, claiming to be re-evaluating its curriculum and structure, when in reality no changes were being made. It was the public relations spin of all time, and so somehow the school re-opened in the fall semester. It’s yet another tribute to the extremely powerful fear that education strikes in the nation that very few families pull their children out of Susin. To fail at education, Susin High has them all believing, is as good as being dead.

Of course Jaekyu’s parents send him back come September. He did nothing the entire spring or summer, cut off from everyone and everything, didn’t speak to his friends or his parents. He tried not to move around much, preferring the company of his bed to any other thing. Muyeol phoned him a few times, and Jaekyu got the distinct feeling of being checked up on, like an unreliable patient who might not be taking their medicine. He found out later that Muyeol was essentially just phoning everyone on a regular basis, so like a hero. Everyone, of course, constituted the seven of them who were left.

When Jaekyu returns to school, the trees are already shedding leaves onto his head, sloughing off the dead even earlier than usual. The term begins, and the teachers dump even more homework on them as if that will provide a distraction from the chaos that overtook the school last winter.

And he has hope despite it all. He tries to find someone to study with, asking a few people to partner with him during class, but he discovers that his isolation is fated to continue. If anything, it’s all worse; the glass walls are cleaner, more sterile, and more foreboding. Instead the trails of conversation all lead to the same point as always, with a new depressing twist.

“What university will want us?”

“We’re branded. Everyone thinks we’re all crazy.”

“We’ll have to score higher than everyone else on the entrance exams to even be considered now.”

“I’m locking myself in the library over the weekend.”

“This is so unfair. Why should we be punished for a criminal and seven losers’ mistakes?”

They mean eight, Jaekyu corrects them in his head.

Classmates avoid him with more urgency now, never meeting his eyes. The teachers, they’re even stricter now. As the rumors go, cameras have been placed in every bathroom. Girls hold the stall doors closed for each other in case of intruders.

He finds himself more alone than the last year, back when he had been so desperate to be noticed that he sent the fateful letter that started it all.

People whisper about him everywhere when they used to just ignore him, and he’s sure: this is worse, it is now. Things like “I’m not surprised, he was always so weird” or “What’s that scar on his face?” or “Did you hear his parents divorced over him? How shameful” repeat like a broken record as he trawls the eerie open hallways. He sticks his headphones in his ears and goes to the lab.

He initially has hope that they, the seven survivors, will find a way to mobilize the bond holding them together, but instead their paths rarely seem to cross, and Jaekyu knows enough about living in a small school to know that he should be seeing everyone eventually. When he doesn’t run into anyone (besides Muyeol, doing his monthly checkups) in months, he uses his logical mind.

They’re avoiding him. They’re avoiding each other.

He finds that everything is normal, so he’s used to it, but normal still means hell, so he still hates it all.

He has a question, one that lingers even after the sharpness of the memories has faded to a dull tapping on his skull, and he wants to hear answers.

Things he wants to do have a habit of being things he really, really shouldn’t be doing.

:::

Youngjae’s the easiest to find, the one who most easily seems to repress what happened to them. He’s hanging around with other bullies, joking with them with his head thrown back and making too much noise for the hallway, but when he sees Jaekyu coming over he flashes his teeth and motions the others to go away. Even though Youngjae is the weakest bully, and therefore the meanest, they scatter when they recognize Jaekyu as one of the seven pariahs.

Youngjae speaks to him more carefully now than he ever has. “What?” The underlying menace in his voice remains clear, though.

Jaekyu gets to the point fast, since Youngjae is probably a lost cause. He’s tapping his foot impatiently and looks like he’ll bolt any second.

Youngjae’s laugh freezes on his face.

“I’m not talking about it, leave me alone.”

“What about,” Jaekyu begins slowly.

“I said leave me alone! Do you want me to fight you?” Youngjae closes his mouth like a fish and rolls his eyes to the side guiltily. He seems to realize he chose the wrong words.

Jaekyu has learned how to take a hint and backs off, but more than that, he just never wants to be in a fight again.

:::

He’s seen her from a distance. Eunseong’s face is less frequently upset and yet more permanently scarred, the sadness now etched into her creased eyebrows, never lifting even when she laughs.

But on the surface, she’s light and brighter than before. She has friends now, and when she and Muyeol pass each other, their eyes lock like a vow.

So it’s with regret that he approaches her in the courtyard. She is studying and looks up, quick like a cat, when she notices a shadow fall over her book of literature. Her face falls.

“Oh,” she says. “It’s you.”

He doesn’t get in more than a few sentences before Eunseong, perceptive and straight to the point as always, cuts him off, her face like stone.

“Why are you trying to ruin my life again?” Jaekyu remembers her face when she sat next to him in the cafeteria, how it was drawn and closed and pale as the snow. She’s trying to forget, and he is a reminder.

“Sorry,” he mutters, and he walks away.

:::

Jaekyu doesn’t like Gangmo, he didn’t like him before it happened either. But he’s running out of options, two down and four to go.

He sits down next to Gangmo in the cafeteria. Gangmo is alone reviewing footage on his camera and barely looks up.

“Hey.” Jaekyu nods and starts to eat his lunch.

“Hey.”

Each mouthful takes precious, long seconds to chew. The silence is insurmountable in contrast to the short distance between them. Gangmo opens his mouth several times but no words materialize.

“Hey. What do you want from me? Do you want to be friends or something?” Gangmo asks directly.

Jaekyu glances at his tray. “Yeah… I guess. Kind of.”

Gangmo looks down while he stands up to clear his tray. His left hand starts to rise to his head, like he has an itch on his ear, but his hand stalls and returns to his side. “Sorry.” He seems sincere, but sincerity doesn’t help Jaekyu.

:::

Muyeol’s too good of a person, and Jaekyu knows he doesn’t deserve his time. But he’d rather go before him than the alternatives.

“How are you doing?” Muyeol asks. He purses his lips and his gentle eyes show concern, though there are dark circles underneath them.

“Pretty good.”

“Your classes?”

“Going well.” Vague platitudes as usual. Jaekyu licks his lips, sorry for what he’s about to ask. “So…” And he asks the question.

And Muyeol gives the answer Jaekyu would expect. It doesn’t even seem like a lie at first, when Muyeol says:

“No, of course not.” Then the innocence of his face is disturbed by his expression. His eyebrows shift inwards and he gazes off into the distance like an old soul trying to forget rather than reminisce. His lips press together, and Jaekyu knows better than to keep talking. If anyone alive should have had the nickname angel...

:::

The rogue’s too good for him too, apparently. Mireu only sneers when Jaekyu asks him, brushes him off, and continues along his twisting yet unbroken path. His hair’s growing out and it’s only half-red.

Here’s what Jaekyu knows: Nothing.

:::

Here’s what Jaekyu doesn’t know: why he thought everything would be different.

If there’s something he knows, it’s that people don’t change.

Jaekyu has always craved to know the worst of human existence, the human cesspools and disasters, the embezzlers, the murderers and worse. As a kid, his apartment was broken into one time. From then on, before he fell asleep, he’d always imagine the burglar creeping in through the window, garbed in black and shadows and evil morals. His toys would be the first thing to go, then his books and with them his fantastical havens, then his parents.

And then he’d imagine himself as the burglar, how he could sneak into a window on lightning-quick feet, soft as the night-time air, and find out all their secrets for himself. He could hide in his parents’ bedroom and determine what they argued about when they thought he’d gone to sleep. He could steal dreams and become strangers’ nightmares and take all the worldly belongings he’d dreamed of.

It was a common delusion he allowed himself, and he should have regretted it.

The fateful winter break was no surprise, looking back. He’d built his dreams on power and ended up power-tripping, when he was given the power to send the fateful note.

Then again, things were always clearer in retrospect.

I crave my own kind.

:::

Jaekyu finds the last one, the one he’s been avoiding, in the lab. His feet can barely move, like standing in hardening cement. He stands in the doorway and waits. He’s sure that Chihun has noticed him and is just choosing not to say anything.

He reminds himself that Chihun won’t ridicule him, since that would be a waste of his time and Chihun has neither emotional range nor time to waste.

His skin prickles and he wishes he’d worn a jacket. His throat clogs up and he attempts to force some words out, but his mouth is desert-dry and his brain is empty as a discarded present box.

Chihun tinkers with the wires. “Why are you here?”

The drought spreads to his brain, but he tries to be bold.

“What do you think about the final question?” Jaekyu asks obliquely, skirting around the phrasing and the naming of the monster, knowing that Chihun, that any of them, would understand immediately. It’s the question he’s been afraid to ask, afraid to ask because he thinks he knows the answer, afraid to ask anyone because he knows that they’d tell him the answer he wants to hear and in doing so, they would be lying. Just like Muyeol with his good intentions.

And now he’s here, with the person most likely to be a monster himself, the most likely to pity and understand monsters deep in their souls. They never figured out, any of them, what Chihun really thought even until the end: whether Chihun thought Yohan was a simple menace and self-preservation required the final act; whether he felt the need for revenge for the first time in his life; whether he wanted to help Muyeol who had saved his life out of a moral obligation.

Here’s what Jaekyu knows and fears: that Chihun will never tell him what he wants to hear.

“That question?” Chihun says, to clarify what Jaekyu's referring to.

Jaekyu nods.

“I hadn’t thought about it.” And he returns his attention to the machine.

Here’s what Jaekyu forgot: Chihun will also never tell him what he expects, needs, or wants to hear.

He waits, but Chihun makes no indication that he is going to continue talking. He slides into the seat across from him and sits up as straight as possible.

“Are you going to answer?” Jaekyu prompts.

“Is it important?”

“I don’t know.” Now that Jaekyu finds himself in the position of the interrogator, not the accused, he doesn’t know what to do.

“What do you want from me?” Chihun switches their positions with a question.

Jaekyu stutters. “I- I don’t think I want anything.”

“People always want something when they talk to me, since talking to me is something they find unpleasant.” Chihun says this matter-of-factly, like he’s reciting the answer to a math problem he found facetious at best.

Jaekyu stands and looks at him.

“Yeah, you’re right.” He breathes out. “I want to be friends.” It’s one of the truer things he’s said in the last year.

“I thought you didn’t like me.”

“I guess I still don’t.”

Without pausing the clockwork motions of his hands, Chihun says, “Interesting.”

“What?”

“I didn’t know that other people wanted to be friends with people they hated.”

“What do you mean, ‘other people’? Do you do the same thing?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

Jaekyu thinks of Youngjae and Eunseong. Then he thinks about his parents. “It’s not uncommon.”

“I didn’t realize. Thanks for telling me.” Coming from any other person, it would sound sarcastic. On Chihun’s lips the words are merely clinical and chilling.

“So?”

Chihun flicks a switch, and his mouth curves up into that strange half-smile. “Emotional relationships don’t work for me.”

“Have you ever tried?”

“Plenty.”

Jaekyu reckons that probably means “sample size of at least two.” He laughs, presses his hand to his mouth to make it stop, teeth cutting into his knuckles. “You could say they haven’t worked for me in a while either.”

Being lonely is so familiar and so far from what he desires, so close to what he deserves.

“Why did you laugh at that?”

“You wouldn’t understand.”

“I doubt that.” Chihun’s mouth pulls in at the corners and he puts down his tools. Jaekyu incompetently stifles a smile. Apparently insulted, Chihun is waiting for an answer.

“Do… does ‘plenty’ mean two people?”

“I have a family of four,” Chihun says, and he picks up his tools to resume working.

“You have a sibling?” Jaekyu isn’t sure if Chihun meant to be funny or not.

“Yes,” Chihun says. “Two sisters.”

Corrected, Jaekyu blinks rapidly, unable to imagine this.

“And my mom,” Chihun adds. He obviously knew Jaekyu was about to ask.

Jaekyu starts to speak very quickly. “I can teach you,” he says. If this is how the devil works, he’s desperate enough to make a deal. “I can tell you about people. It’ll be useful. You can learn how to, how to imitate better.”

Chihun flips a hand up and down. “Sounds difficult and unfulfilling.”

“I have a scientific mind. That’ll make it easier. You’ll like it… maybe.”

“Will I?” Chihun says to the air, seriously asking himself. His eyes turn and focus back on Jaekyu. “I suppose it’s a possibility.” He doesn’t look like he cares either way.

Jaekyu waits.

“Won’t the morality be a problem?” Chihun dispassionately asks, like he’s asking a waiter whether the chicken or the beef is a better option.

“No…” Second-guessing himself, “I guess not.”

Chihun cuts him off with a flap of a hand. “You can say all the worst things to me. I won’t tell, because I won’t care.”

“You’ll listen, though.” Jaekyu frames it as a question.

“It will be hard not to if you continue to follow me around.”

Jaekyu presses his lips together, but his eyes widen in shock.

That’s as close to an overture of friendship as it gets around here, at the exceptional Susin High. It’s also his cue to leave.

“So.” Chihun says. Jaekyu stands in the doorway and waits. “Is it important to you? The answer?”

Jaekyu nods.

“Then I’ll think about it,” he says, calling slightly to catch him on the way out.

Chihun isn’t Yohan, but he certainly isn’t a good guy. Jaekyu can’t rely on him for anything except to act in his own self-interest, but the nice thing about that truth is that it forms a distinct rule. Show Chihun that he’s better off with Jaekyu around, and he’ll get to stick around. Rules help clear his mental miasma and keep him going.

In the end, the world isn’t going to repair itself.

If anyone can fix it, it’s certainly not Chihun and Jaekyu. But it’s not his self-imposed responsibility to deliver justice anymore; he never figured out what that concept meant in the first place.

Rather than seeking shelter, he might as well walk forward into the storm with eyes unblinking.