Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Suho doesn’t talk about Yeon Sieun. Not to a single soul. He wraps him up tightly and warmly in his mind, where no one can hurt him anymore, where there is no pain or fear, and his face is smooth and clear of bruises. And sometimes, but only sometimes, when Suho is very desperate and sad, does he peel back the layers of shelter he’s buried under and picture Sieun’s modest smile, the gentlest little thing that it was. 

In the biting cold of reality, however, Sieun’s in a coma in a hospital in Seoul, and he hasn’t emerged from it. Not in months, as the seasons changed. Not even a twitch. And his full cheeks and earnest eyes are only memories Suho begs his mind to keep. 

And it would be easier to hope and cling on, had it not been Suho’s fault that Sieun was so hurt. He visits dutifully, brushing out his growing hair, fixing the wrinkles on his blankets, but each time, Suho is bowed by the depths of his guilt, that he is awake and well and living his life, no matter how dull, how pointless, while Sieun is here, and may never wake up.

It had been the first time he’d visited Sieun at the hospital, his hands still wrapped in bandages, that he’d met his parents. Sieun hadn’t talked much about his life, his family, but he hadn’t needed to. Not to Suho. He had seen Sieun’s empty apartment, and all the ways he kept to himself, closed himself off as though it were a habit, a muscle, something he’d learned and exercised. 

There, next to Sieun, a cast on his arm, bruises and cuts marring his face, his small frame tucked into the blankets, and comatose, somewhere no one can reach, Sieun’s mother had cried and sniffled and yelled, My son’s a good kid. He wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t met you.

And though Sieun’s father had apologized and escorted her out of the hospital room, the sentiment lingered, embers of a blaze Suho had no right to put out. 

It burned as he sat at Sieun’s bedside, and he cried, tears dripping down his cheeks, weeping with shaking, choking breaths. He cried until he couldn’t hold his head up anymore, and rested it by Sieun’s side, feeling the movement of his steady breaths and telling himself that Sieun was still alive.

It’s then that the lights change in the room. Like the oncoming of dusk, orange light and brilliant warmth, he sees it in the crack of his drooping eyelids, and then he hears Suho-yah , from the deep timbre of Sieun’s gentle voice. He’s awake on the bed, his eyes sparkle in the sudden brightness, and he’s staring fondly. 

“Were you napping?” Sieun whispers.

“Yeah,” he whispers back. “I was a little tired.”

“Mm.” 

“Sieun-ah…” It’s quiet in the room. There’s no beeping, nor the harsh breaths of the oxygen mask, and the hallway outside must be empty. There’s an expansive universe of things Suho wants to say, but he watches Sieun blink and stare, and there are no words that he can muster to the surface other than I’m sorry.

“For what?”

“For everything.” Sieun smiles then, just a twitch of his lips. His eyes are still soft and kind, but there’s sadness nestled in there, too. Regret.  

“Me too.” They look at each other, and they share that precious moment of knowing. And then Suho blinks away the tears in his eyes and the light dims and fades back to grey, and the noises of the hospital return, and Sieun is gone. 

As he sleeps, Suho promises Sieun that he won’t get involved in anything that’ll get him in trouble. He’ll mind his business. I’ll wait for you, Sieun. I’ll keep the peace so you can come home and never have to worry about cleaning my messes ever again. 

~

Suho is shaken awake by a nightmare, sweating and panicked, the lasting image of an empty warehouse behind his eyelids when he tries to blink it away. It’s the same every night. Sitting alone in the darkness. Sometimes flashes of memories join him. Of Sieun getting beaten, choked, thrown to the floor. Of Beomseok, too. Of Suho’s own fists hitting flesh with rage fueled precision and desperation. Blood and violence and dread solid in the pit of his stomach. 

He didn’t sleep much before, either, but at least it was by choice and necessity. 

The sun hasn’t risen yet. Suho wipes the sweat from his brow and sits up in bed, his blankets pooled at his waist. He doesn’t have a shift this morning, which brings him a little relief. The jobs are shittier here. They pay less. But they still pay. So he goes to work. Goes to school. Goes to Sieun. 

He gets ready sluggishly in the dark, and though he avoids the mirror when he’s in the bathroom, sometimes it can’t be helped. His hair is longer than he’d like, his bangs tickle his eyebrows. And he’s skinnier than he thinks he’s ever been, skeletal, he thinks. Gaunt. His eye bags and frown age him. He feels older, too. Much older. 

His grandma will cradle his cheeks and with her feeble soothing voice urge him to eat, beg him to take care of himself. But it’s not that he doesn’t want to. It’s that he can’t. Hunger doesn’t stop the nausea that comes each time he goes to take a bite. 

Suho doesn’t mean to worry her. But he does anyway. 

He’s out of the house before she’s awake, leaving her a note so she doesn’t fret when he’s not in his bed. Then drags his feet, hands in his pockets to school, through the yard, past the raucous crowd of students who resolutely ignore him. In the hallways people part for him, and the whispers follow. I heard he transferred here after killing some kid. Even that ass Choi Hyoman chickened out and didn’t mess with him. It doesn’t make a difference to Suho. He heads into his first class and sets his head on the desk as students scatter when they see he’s arrived.  

Suho’s tried to study hard so he can help Sieun when he wakes up. He’s not smarter than Sieun, he’s met few in his life who are, but who’s going to be there to guide him back to the rest of their peers, to help him manage his frustrations and support him? It’s enough motivation for him to try. But he’s so tired. He’s so weak. So he sleeps. 

He’s drifting when the shuffling of hurried steps filters in, and something bumps into his head, shaking his desk. He sits up and Seo Juntae’s there before him. He’s seen him running errands for Choi Hyoman and his lackeys, flying across campus doing god knows what. 

Juntae’s staring at him, petrified, eyes wide and looking like he’s ready to bolt. Suho wishes he would. He sets his head back down and wills Juntae to leave. He just wants to be left alone. 

He doesn’t yearn for anybody else’s company, just the one he can’t have.

Sieun had been a very lonely kid. It was something that Suho had noticed before he'd even known him. But Suho had been lonely, too. But in all the hectic cycles of school and work and trying, trying, trying, he hadn’t noticed. Not until he’d met Sieun, and the burst of pigmented rightness had shown him. But it was more than that, too. A fair bit more. Sieun wasn’t just a friend. He knew Sieun in his subconscious, and it was a reflex to care for him. A wordless, firm tug towards each other. 

He didn’t know such a thing existed, an inherent familiarity like theirs. Married in a past life, he’d said. Suho had known him less than 40 days, and still, the cavernous, famished grief consumes Suho and with each passing day, with Sieun comatose in a hospital bed, he feels less and less himself, and more the embodiment of his sorrow.

There are more whispers, Juntae’s screwed, but he must walk away, a slight breeze brushes against Suho’s skin, and Suho relaxes into his folded arms. 

Suho’s descending the stairs in between classes when Juntae calls his name. His shoes slap loudly against the linoleum steps until he’s a few feet away, keeping his distance. Suho takes a deep breath, trying to stay patient. He was sympathetic to people like Juntae once, but it’s hard to conjure that now.

“Ahn Suho-ssi.” His hands clutch the straps of his backpack, knuckles white. “I was wondering…what kind of phone do you use?”

“What?”

“Just…I was just wondering what kind of phone you use?”

“Why do you need to know?” Juntae stutters over his words, but can’t give Suho an answer. Whatever Juntae’s intentions are, Suho doesn’t have time for it. He turns and continues his walk down the stairs, and though he’s expecting him to, Juntae thankfully doesn’t follow.

He thinks it’s over by the next day. His classes blur together and Suho is carried along with the routine, numbed by the monotony of it all. Not once has Suho thought of Seo Juntae or Choi Hyoman by the time the final bell rings.

Suho isn’t eager to get up from his desk, instead waiting for the rest of the class to pack their things and retrieve their phones. The raucous mass of them soon leave, and it’s just him and Juntae alone in the room, who’s rushing to grab his bags. He’s almost out the door by the time Suho realizes his phone isn’t in the case. It’s empty. 

“Why is my phone missing?” Juntae has stopped in his tracks, back to Suho. He watches him turn, a look of confusion contrived on his face. 

“Huh? Your phone’s not there? That’s really weird, right?” He has a big bruise on his cheek that wasn’t there before, and his lip is bleeding. It’s all Suho can look at, his rambling words are irrelevant, nonsensical. He’s a bad liar, anyway.

“Do you think I’m stupid?” He cuts Juntae off. 

“No! No, of course not!” His face grows red and Suho’s anger is sapped from him in a blink. He used to have some sort of bravado, self-assuredness, at one point he might’ve even enjoyed this kind of game a little bit, maybe would’ve teased Juntae, good-natured and forgiving, and gotten to know him better, understand him better. Help him. But don’t get involved rings in his head so loud, nothing else can get through. He leaves Juntae and the empty phone case and heads home.

He doesn’t get very far outside the campus before Juntae’s pattering footsteps and huffs of tired breaths catch up to him.

“Suho-ssi! I've been feeling really bad about your phone. Since I'm partially responsible afterall, if you're thinking about getting a new phone, I could pitch in some money to help-”

“Yah, Juntae.”

“Yes?”

“Look. You’re just doing this to find your peace. I get it.” And he truly does. “But it doesn’t change the fact that it makes you a coward.” Juntae’s face drops, and Suho almost feels bad for the way it shuts him up.

He doesn’t give a shit about his phone. He can buy a cheap one, he hardly uses it anyway, just for work and the occasional call to his parents or grandma. But it irritates him. The only thing he feels justified in asking for is solitude, and he refuses to be dragged into another mess at another school. He won’t. He promised Sieun. 

He’s still upset when he enters Sieun’s room. The flowers his mother left the last time she came are dying. The petals are scattered on the windowsill and on the floor below. It’s been a while since he’s seen either of his parents here.

“I called a kid in my class a coward today,” he tells Sieun. His mask fogs with an exhale. “But I’m more of a coward than he is. I could put a stop to it. The bullying. They’re all idiots. Just mean and bored, and all they want is money and power, but I think they’re in over their heads.” Suho tucks Sieun’s blanket in where it was loose around his torso. It’s always too cold in here. “But I won’t. Even if I should. Does that make me a bad person?

“Everyone looks at me like I’m a monster. They think they know what happened at Byuksan.” He drops his head to his chest. “Am I a monster? I did a lot of bad things after you…” Suho clears his throat. “A lot of bad things that I don’t regret doing. Does that make me a monster?”

Sieun’s monitor continues to beep. He looks thin and empty. A shell, atrophied in the months of motionlessness. 

“Sieun-ah. Hyung’s here. Won’t you wake up?” He blinks through the blurry wetness of his eyes. “You’re missing all your classes. You’re getting left behind.” He clutches Sieun’s hand. There are still calluses on his palm. “I won’t leave you. I promise. No matter how far away time slips from you, I’ll be here when you wake up.”

~

Suho knows what’s awaiting him at the top of the stairs far before he sees it. Hyoman’s taunts resonate down, mingle with his friends’ laughter, and though Juntae’s voice is soft and careful, he knows he’s there, too. 

Hyoman’s stupid, but he’s also vile, and he has Juntae pressed against his side, gripping his arm tight, even as Juntae tries to pull away from him, curled into himself, distress and discomfort reshaping his features.

“Our puppy Juntae has a big dick.”

“Really? My precious Juntae has a big one?” Juntae shakes his head, begging Hyoman to stop as his hands violate him, mocking, perverted, and laughing all the while. “Let me see! We’re friends, asshole, let me see!”

For a moment, Suho pictures hurting all of them. Punching the smiles off the faces of the two on the sides, tossing them down the stairs and wrenching Hyoman’s hand off of Juntae, twisting until it breaks. He can hear the deep crack of Hyoman’s bone, and his screeching cries of pain. But it comes back to him, his promise to Sieun, and then the scene before him. They’re looking at Suho, waiting.

“You’re in my way.”

“So what?” Hyoman’s haughty tone, his shamelessness, his depraved, casual evil. Suho packs all his disdain into his gaze and watches Hyoman crumble under it.

“Okay! Okay, fine. Okay, get out of his way.” Juntae peels from Hyoman’s side and glances at Suho as he passes, but he ignores the pleading eyes. There is only one gaze Suho would rally for. 

Coward, he hears own voice say. Only this time he’s talking to himself. 

At lunch, Suho tries to sleep, but a rustling of plastic and something being set onto his desk keeps him from rest.

He blinks up into the brightness. There’s a carton of milk and a package of dried seaweed in front of him. And Juntae, zipping up his bag. 

“I notice you sleep through lunch,” he explains. “I never see you eating, Suho-ssi. You shouldn’t skip meals.” But Suho doesn’t need pity, nor this tacit apology from Juntae. 

“I don’t want this.”

“Please just take it.” Juntae pushes the snacks closer to Suho. “I thought a lot about what you said. About me being a coward. And you’re right, but I don’t know how not to be. I don’t see any other choice.” Juntae wrings his hands together. “Can you help me? Not to be a coward?” For most of Suho’s life, he didn’t concern himself with morals. He let them be what they were to someone else, but to him, surviving meant doing what was necessary, not what was right. Fighting, not just with his fists, but tooth and nail, scrambling, desperate, frantic through each day. His lines weren’t yet drawn. They weren’t even an idea. And sure, he’d learned the hard way that he needed them, and what it meant when they were crossed, but it was with Sieun that he realized what it meant to be good. To see goodness in someone else, to witness just how good good can be. How brilliant and breathtaking. A sunrise. A painting. Orange, pink, yellow. Sieun is the most kindhearted person Suho had ever met in all his life. Suho can’t help Juntae, he’s not qualified. But Sieun could. Sieun can.

“It’s easier to do nothing, hm? To just go with everything, let it all pass you by, be carried with it.” Suho would know. “But sometimes, I think it’s much easier to choose the right thing, even if the consequences are severe.” Sieun would know. 

“How do you know if it’s the right thing to do?” Suho thinks about Sieun and his courage. Suho knows now how split-second Sieun made the decision to take Suho’s place. Mere minutes between a text and leaving to confront Beomseok. It must not have felt like a decision at all. 

“You feel it,” Suho concludes. “And then you trust it.” 

~

Suho walks home. It’s a nice change to walk through the streets. Now when he rides his bike, he misses the weight of Sieun behind him. And the sight of his squished cheeks in the helmet. And the way his eyes followed Suho and his body followed him too. To karaoke and early morning jogs, dripping with sweat but pushing through. And to restaurants and around town. And then to places he never should’ve been, that neither of them should’ve been. It haunts him, all the spaces where Sieun once was, but is no longer. So he walks home. 

The crosswalk signal is red, cars speed past him, the wind pushing Suho’s bangs out of his face, and across the street, students around his age are congregating in the entrance of a PC cafe. Their conversation drifts towards him, and he can make out just enough of it. A couple of them are harassing Eunjang students, demanding money from them, something about not being part of the union, and then Choi Hyoman, dressed in knock-off luxury brands, looking like the fool he is, saunters up and enters the cafe. Suho knows nothing good can come from whatever that is. 

The light turns, and Suho lets them fade into the background. He wants to discount Hyoman as a threat, but there’s an ominous sense of something building. He’s getting déjà vu, like the last time when he knew something was wrong, something was coming, hidden in the details like a shadowed beast in the dark. This time, however, he won't be swept away by it. 

~

In the morning, there’s a buzz through the hallways, cyclical conversation Suho can’t escape. Does Juntae have a death wish? Take a look! It’s my phone. I think that crazy bastard gave them all back. What did Juntae do?

At his desk, there’s a note. Class 4 Ahn Suho. I’m sorry. Look inside. Thank you. He reaches inside his desk slowly, and his fingers brush over the corner of what is unmistakably his phone. He pulls it out and sure enough, it’s there.

Suho looks for Juntae, unsure if he’ll even find him, but he’s slumped over his desk, head turned away from Suho. He’s never here this early, always running his errands for Hyoman, and though it eases Suho’s worry, seeing him here, it all but confirms that Juntae did something. Something changed.  

It’s the type of quiet before a storm that settles in the classroom. The air is so heavy. Dense. There’s a shout in the distance, and stomping that nears them, and then the door is thrown open and Hyoman bursts in, yelling Juntae’s name, spit flying and red with rage. 

“Where’s that fucking asshole?” Fingers raise and point to Juntae. “Juntae-yah, come on out.” Suho watches Juntae stand slowly, taking his glasses off and placing them on the desk. There’s a look on his face, set, resolute, no cowering or meekness. He won’t lift his eyes to Hyoman, who’s charging towards him, but the way he’s poised, shoulders squared and standing tall, Suho thinks his courage is staggering.

Hyoman kicks Juntae square in the chest and he goes flying. He lands hard against the wall, but he gets back up. 

“Did you really give them all back?” Hyoman laughs, disbelieving. Juntae’s eyes are full of tears as he nods, lip quivering, and he lifts loosely curled fists to his face. It pulls a reaction from the onlookers, but Hyoman slaps an arm aside and his punches rain down on Juntae. “Your guard is fucking sturdy!” Hyoman says as Juntae refuses to be knocked down. “Try to block this.” He pushes Juntae against the whiteboard, caging his hands above his head, and lands a punch that Suho can hear thud against the flesh of Juntae’s torso, and then he’s spitting out blood and his honey hotteok, and Suho doesn’t want them to, but ghosts cloud his vision, and it’s not Juntae lying there on the floor, it’s Sieun, clutching his ribs, eyes fearful and full of pain.

“Yah!” The yell is pulled out of him unbidden. He hasn’t heard his own voice this loud in so long. Hyoman stops mid kick and turns to Suho, the rest of the crowd turns with him. His ears ring in the resulting silence. “Let’s not cross the line.”

Chapter Text

“Yah!” The yell is pulled out of him unbidden. He hasn’t heard his own voice this loud in so long. Hyoman stops mid kick and turns to Suho, the rest of the crowd turns with him. His ears ring in the resulting silence. “Let’s not cross the line.” 

“Are you crazy?” Hyoman laughs. 

Suho’s never been afraid to fight. But the last time he’d used his fists, he’d lost all control of himself. And he wasn’t supposed to get involved, but here he is all the same. Him and his bleeding heart. 

“Today’s the day,” Hyoman says, like he’s dreamed of this moment. Maybe he has, he seems the type to fantasize such things, and he swings his fist towards Suho. He’s not skilled, just angry and cocky, and it’s easy dodging him, tedious. 

Hyoman keeps trying to get a hit in, grunting and swearing and stumbling. He falls into the lockers when Suho takes a sharp step to the left, and the crowd laughs and snickers as Hyoman scrambles up, kicking at the metal doors until they dent.

“What’s going on here?” Suho’s attention is pulled to the new voice, a kid in a blue hoodie, and his entrance is enough of a distraction that Hyoman’s able to hook Suho in the jaw as he’s turned away from him. Suho’s mind blanks, and he’s raising his fist to Hyoman before he can return to his senses. But it never lands. Blue Hoodie wraps his hand tight around Suho’s wrist and pulls him aside, taking his spot in front of Hyoman. “Yah, Hyoman. Is living your life like this really fun?”

“Yeah, it’s fucking fun,” Hyoman pants, sweat wet on his forehead. “Why don’t you go bother someone else. I’m busy here.”

“Really? You don’t look busy to me.” Hyoman scoffs at that. “Catch your breath before you talk to me, asshole.”

“Asshole? You’re the asshole! Talking all this shit when you’re just Baku’s little minion. Do you like cosplaying as him?” Blue Hoodie doesn’t seem to appreciate what Hyoman’s accusing him of. His demeanor changes, a crack in his lethargic cool, his spine straightening, his eyes narrowing. 

“What did you just say?” Hyoman takes the smallest step back, his smirk falls. “Say it again.” 

“You’re just Baku’s minion! Happy now?” He sneers. “If you didn’t have Baku on your side, you wouldn’t be waltzing in here all brave-” And viper-quick, before Hyoman can even close his mouth, the kid twists and swings his leg high in the air, his shoe skims off of the tip of Hyoman’s nose, and a streak of dirt is left behind on his skin. In the wake of his kick, Hyoman is frozen in place, blinking dumbly as he lands and tugs the fabric of his hoodie back into place. 

“Hyoman-ah. You know I could take you down in seconds, right? Want to take this to the gym?” Hyoman doesn’t answer right away. All of his boldness has deflated, and he stands mousy and pathetic, taking up a lot less space than he did just a moment ago.

“That disgusting gym? With that awful slippery floor?” He’s already backing away from Blue Hoodie. “I’ll take you down soon, though, you asshole. And you too!” He directs at Suho. He pushes past the crowd, cursing as he goes, and Suho waits until he’s sure he’s not coming back before going to Juntae, picking up his glasses from his desk. He’s propped up against the wall, his bloody nose dripping down to his lip. Suho hands him his glasses and helps him up. He hisses and winces, his arm cradling his ribs, so they go slow.  

“Let’s go to the nurse, Juntae.”

“You know, it might be a bit embarrassing, but you could at least say thank you,” Blue Hoodie says. His hands are in his pockets and he looks proud. Self-satisfied. 

“Yeah? And what would I be thanking you for?” He tries to lead Juntae to the door, but Blue Hoodie isn’t done. 

“Yah! It’s not like I wanted you to say thank you to me. But it’d still be nice.” Suho’s arms are careful around Juntae, and he glowers at the kid. 

“Thanks.” And walks out the door.

Juntae takes limping, shuffling steps next to Suho, but detaches from his grasp when they’ve almost made it all the way down the stairs. He unlocks a door Suho’s never noticed before, disappearing inside, and Suho has no choice but to follow. 

“What are you doing?” He watches as Juntae retrieves a first aid kit and sits down on a couch in the middle of the room. Suho looks around. The wall is filled with pins, flags, and posters, there are silly drawings and quotes on the whiteboard, and stuffed animals line the windowsill and on the cushion next to Juntae. It’s all rather gaudy and embarrassing.

“If we go to the nurse, they make a big deal. And Hyoman gets called to the teacher’s office, and we get beaten up again.” He smiles, sheepish, bitter. There’s blood staining his teeth. “It’s an endless cycle.” He has a tube of something, cap unscrewed and Q-tip at the ready. “Fucidin. Its main ingredient is antibiotics. Hyoman’s punches are germy and nasty.” Suho huffs out a laugh. 

He pushes the Q-tip towards Suho, placing it between his fingers when he doesn’t take the offering himself.

“Juntae. Why’d you do it?”

“Huh?” 

“Why’d you return the phones?” 

“Oh. I felt that it was the right thing to do. And then I trusted it.” He takes another Q-tip to the tube of Fucidin. “To be honest, though, Suho-yah, the consequences were a bit too much for me.” He smiles a bloody smile, and Suho finds himself smiling back.

He’s about to help Juntae apply the medicine to the cuts on his face when the door opens, and three boys rush in, fussing and worrying over Juntae. He tries to curb the urge to tease when they start blathering on. Choi Hyoman. One day, I shall seize your breaths with my sword. He leaves when he realizes Juntae’s taken care of. 

As he’s walking home, Juntae catches him before he’s gone too far, his backpack flopping behind him as he jogs up to Suho. There’s a bandage on his cheek, and his lip is still dark with dried blood. He pushes a plastic bag into Suho’s hand. 

“What’s this?”

“Magnesium. I looked it up and it’s supposed to help you sleep. There’s also Seolleongtang in there. I don’t think you eat enough, Suho-yah. It’s easy on your stomach.” Suho feels something inside him fracture and break off, something cold and dead. Something that had grown like cancer in these months. And underneath, it’s pleasant. Delicate. Sieun had bought him this soup, too. His favorite. He hadn’t remembered ever saying so, but Sieun had listened and held onto it, wordlessly, unassuming in that way he was. Is. And even though Suho had been stuck at the hospital, and hurting and maybe a little traumatized, a little shaken, Sieun’s kindness had been a revelation. And the emotions that had followed had been so sudden and so rapidly blooming that words he had tried to keep tightly coiled tumbled out of his lips. You’re so warmhearted. Your eyes, how you behave, how you speak. And your face. It was the first time Sieun had ever smiled at him. And the last.

Suho works a shift that night, and when he gets home late, weary and yawning, he eats the soup and takes the magnesium. And though he expects it to have no effect, slipping under his sheets, stomach full and settled, he closes his eyes and is lulled asleep, beckoned softly into a dreamless rest. 

~

Gossip circulates through Eunjang swift and decisive, so the whispers that follow Suho on a good day have only swelled and intensified since yesterday. But Suho can’t bring himself to care, not when he’s sitting next to Juntae at lunch, taking small bites of rice as Juntae smiles at him. Like this, he has an even clearer sense of what really matters. 

“You don’t usually eat lunch out here, Suho-yah. Usually you’re sleeping.”

“I guess I slept okay last night.” Juntae beams. 

“Yeah? Did you take the magnesium? It worked?” Suho nods, takes another little bite.

“Thanks, Juntae.” 

“Yeah! Yeah, of course!” He chews and talks, something about multivitamins and their health benefits. Suho’s even able to take a few bites of his own lunch. It’s been so long since he’s eaten with someone, with a friend. When Suho ate with Sieun, and even Beomseok, it felt nice to share something precious like a delicious meal with people he cared about. And it’s healing, having it again. But it’s tainted by doubt. Am I really this lucky? Do I deserve this?

It’s reminiscent of before. The chatter of students, the scraping of chairs and clattering of utensils, like sitting across the table from him will be Sieun, who never seemed enthusiastic about eating, blinking at Suho like the idea itself was foreign to him. He’d had to practically shove food into Sieun’s mouth to get him to eat. It’s funny, how much Suho understands him now. Or, not so funny, he supposes.

The sun is out, so Juntae urges them outside. The wind pushes through the trees, cool but not cold, a calming rustle as they sit on the steps looking over the basketball courts. 

“I’ve never been at peace during lunchtime before,” Juntae admits. Suho stares, expects to find hurt, resentment, but Juntae just looks ahead, content and relaxed as the breeze stirs his fringe. It’s cathartic, his composure, the way he persists.

“There you two are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere.” Of course their peace wouldn’t last with Hyoman around. He pushes between them, taking a seat and wrapping an arm around each of their shoulders. His cheap cologne sullies the fresh air. “I wanted to apologize for yesterday. I have serious anger issues, you know?”

“Get your arm off of me.”

“Okay, okay!” He does as he’s told, then shifts his attention to the group playing basketball on the court below them. “See that guy right there?” He points to Blue Hoodie. “That’s Go Hyuntak. He runs around saying he’s part of the basketball team, like it’s some great honor. He’s just fucking pretentious. A delinquent. You should watch your back. Apparently he really wants to kick your ass.” At some point, Go Hyuntak has noticed the three of them watching, and is staring back at them, brows furrowed. “That shithead keeps glaring at you. I’ll go talk to him.” He jumps down towards Hyuntak and they exchange words Suho can’t hear, and Hyoman must say something unfavorable, because Hyuntak lunges at him, fist in the air, as his friends hold him back. 

“Let’s go,” he says to Juntae. Suho doesn’t know what Hyoman’s schemes are, but he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t look back, but he feels Hyuntak watching them go.

They split once they’re back inside, and he doesn’t think much of Juntae’s initial absence as class starts up. But as the hours pass and Juntae’s still missing, he starts to worry.

Their teacher is lecturing them about bad behavior. Let’s not drink, huh? On or off campus. And no smoking! It’s mid rant when he notices Juntae’s absence.

“Whose empty seat is that? Seo Juntae? Where’s Seo Juntae?”

“I haven’t seen him since fifth period,” Suho offers.

“Are we speaking up in class now, Ahn Suho?”

“It’s not that. Something might’ve happened to him-”

“Nothing happened, I’m sure. Tell him to come see me first thing tomorrow.” And Suho isn’t shocked that the rot of Eunjang extends to their teachers, too, but he’s disgusted all the same. Juntae isn’t fine, that’s one thing Suho knows for sure. He dismisses class and Suho tries calling Juntae, but it goes to his voicemail. All his texts are unanswered, too.  

“Hey, Suho. Is Juntae doing okay?” It’s Choi Hyoman. Again. Leaning over the window into the classroom. His eyebrows are lifted up in a faux concern. Suho’s reaching a breaking point dealing with his provocations. “I saw Go Hyuntak dragging him all the way to their clubroom.” He knows Hyoman’s lying, but it’s the best lead he’s got. 

Suho races to the clubroom and though he’s never been here before, he figures the door isn’t supposed to be ajar like this. He pushes inside. It’s a disaster. Posters and papers are torn to shreds, trophies broken to bits, equipment strewn across the floor, and as he’s standing in the middle of the clutter, Suho hears a steady thud coming from the lockers. There’s one that’s closed shut with a bent wire, and once Suho removes it and opens the door, he finds Juntae hunched inside the small space, looking ruffled and hurt.

“Suho,” Juntae sighs in relief. Suho leans in and picks him up, holding a hand over his head so he doesn’t bump it against the locker. 

“Are you okay?” He tugs the drooping shoulder of Juntae’s coat, and straightens his crooked tie.

“I’m okay.” His cheeks are red in shame. Suho clenches his jaw. His idling protectiveness reignites at the sight of Juntae, and he doesn’t know what to do with the surge of it.

“Choi Hyoman. Right?” Juntae nods. “That fucker.” They navigate through the mess, Suho leading Juntae firmly forward, and they’re barely out the door when a voice calls down from above.

“Yah! Ahn Suho!” Hyuntak’s glaring at him from the top floor, eyes dark with vitriol even from this distance. And maybe Hyoman was lying about Hyuntak wanting to kick his ass before, but he thinks that might be true now. It’s obvious now that Hyoman’s trying to frame Suho and pit the two of them against each other, but Suho hasn’t done anything, and his weariness is beginning to sour into outrage. So Suho walks away, catching up to Juntae at the end of the courtyard and placing an arm over his shoulder, tugging him away.  

“Suho-yah. Do you always go this way?” They’re in the alleyways just outside campus. It’s quiet here, if not a little dirty and dark, but quiet is what Suho needs most.

“Yeah. Why?” 

“It’s a good shortcut,” Juntae concurs. “But you should probably take another way. This is where you get your money taken and kids get into fights with each other. It’s where I first met Hyoman.” They turn the corner. “Well, when Baku was around, everything quieted down. But you never know.” The wall ahead is marked with the message EUNJANG HIGH NO FIGHTING -BAKU with sloppy pink spray paint. Suho’s heard the name Baku before, even that night he’d overheard Hyoman at the PC cafe, but it’s clear his little decree didn’t work. Whoever this Baku is, his presence seems to be the only thing that scares these kids into order. 

“Ahn Suho!” And Jesus Christ , when will this shit end? It’s Go Hyuntak, looking ragged and crazed as he bares his teeth at Suho from the opening of the tunnel. “Why’d you fuck up the clubroom? Huh? You asshole!”

“I didn’t do shit.”

“Hyuntak-ssi,” Juntae stutters, “I think there’s been a misunderstanding-”

“Shut up and stay out of it unless you want to die.” He’s fucking had it with this guy. And Juntae is still hurt beside him. He’s been through enough torment, and Suho won’t let anyone else stand in front of him. Suho will be the shield for once.

“Yah! Go Hyuntak, take your own advice.”

“You think I’m just gonna let you off the hook for the shit you pulled back there? The clubroom is ruined!”

“So get along with it then!” 

“What?”

“You’re not gonna listen to us anyway. So why don’t you just do what you’re here to do and stop wasting my time.” Suho shouldn’t want this fight. But he does. He promised Sieun, of course he promised. But he’s angry. Wieldable, potent wrath that he’d hoped he had snuffed out, but it’s simply been hibernating, just under his skin. And is he supposed to go easy on Hyuntak because he’s being fooled by Hyoman? No. Hyuntak’s an idiot, too. He’ll be a challenge that Hyoman was not, but Suho can take him. His hands flex at his sides. 

“Oh, I bet you think you’re the shit, Ahn Suho.” Hyuntak’s so smug, with his haughty tone and smirk. “You think you can do whatever you want because of what you did back home. I heard you killed a guy and put a handful of others in the hospital. Should I be scared?”

Hyuntak’s careless with his words. But there’s truth there. It can’t be denied that on Suho’s birthday, while he was dozing away, waiting for his friends in vain, Sieun was beaten into a coma, and left forgotten on the dirty floor. Suho doesn’t need to picture it, his small, crumpled figure, his broken arm and his bloodied temple, the pain he must’ve been in before the final hit, his fear, because they’d recorded it. And Suho hated himself for it, but he’d watched. Watched Sieun, shaking and scared, fighting with everything he had. Animalistic abandon as he clawed and scratched and threw everything he could at them. But they’d played dirty, and Sieun hadn’t stood a chance. His sweet Sieun, who had never wanted to fight. And Suho hadn’t been there. When Sieun had needed him most, he hadn’t been there.

So he’d found everyone who’d dared to touch Sieun. Dared to be in the warehouse. Dared to say his name with derision. And he’d made them pay. And he took his time. 

He hears the sound of Sieun’s arm breaking through his phone’s speakers, his agonized cries as vivid as though he were there, over and over as he breaks Youngbin’s hand, crushing his fingers under his shoe. And watches him squirm and shriek with fathomless apathy. And when he finds Taehoon and Jungchan, he breaks the limbs that had kicked Sieun even when he’d collapsed, too wounded to stand. He takes a metal pole and wails on their tibias until the bones give, and he doesn’t stop, not until they’re still. And then it’s Wooyoung. Wooyoung who’d been so eager, so hungry for a rematch with Suho. And how pathetic he was, that he’d been training this whole time, training even as Suho found him, obsessing over redemption, and Suho hadn’t given him a single thought. And still, out of practice, years between him and their last fight, Wooyoung’s punches don’t hurt Suho, and he downs him, unhindered. A great numbness settles over Suho as he batters into him with his own dumbbells. And smashes his knee into tiny pieces, into confetti, and ends the career he never deserved. 

Beomseok hadn’t hidden from Suho. He was sitting at his desk, proper posture, his belongings neat and tidy before him, uniform tucked in, tie straight. Two rows over from Sieun’s vacant seat. He didn’t beg at first. No. He stared at Suho with resignation, sullen eyes and deep set frown, like he knew he deserved it, and had accepted his fate. But Beomseok didn’t know just how much violence Suho could unleash, how much raw, untethered hatred he felt. The ravenous bloodlust, the thirst, its enduring ferocity. He didn’t know. Not until he was beaten into a mushy pulp, until his face was so mangled, swollen, eye socket so dark and indiscernible that for a moment Suho thought he might’ve squeezed his neck until his eye had popped. Until Beomseok was spitting blood and begging for his life, the pitiful, sniveling worm that he was. His hands had shook as they gripped Suho’s shirt, and Suho had broken each finger until he let go. Every scratch on Sieun’s body, every cut, every bruise, every broken bone, every hurt Suho could not heal, he repaid in full on Beomseok’s body. And he would’ve killed him. He really would have, had Suho not been pulled off of him. As he’s dragged away, through the crowd of gathered students and teachers, his eyes stay on Beomseok, reveling in the music of his wheezing, crackling breaths, and smiling at the sight of his gory vagueness. And his revenge doesn’t wake Sieun up, but he hadn’t expected it to. 

In the darkest of nights, where no one can witness his godlessness, Suho envisions a world where he had killed them. Where he had held his hands against their throats until he felt their hearts stop in the palms of his hands. But it is not this world, and the urge to finish the job still beckons, as it sits unfulfilled. In the dark, the thrumming pangs of violence are insatiable.

Hyuntak scoffs at his silence like it’s Suho who’s said something loathsome, all the while Suho’s rage builds at the thought of his Sieun residing in Hyuntak’s mind, where he doesn’t belong. He doesn’t belong in there. The bristling beast of his protectiveness wants to snap its jaws at Hyuntak and bite down. To shut him up. How dare he talk about Sieun? He doesn’t even know his name. Doesn’t know how precious he is and how kind. How dare he use him for ammunition? 

“Am I wrong? Oh, no. That’s right. You didn’t kill him. You just put him in a coma. You just ruined his life.” A red film blankets Suho’s vision, and like he’s possessed, snarling and torrential, he tosses his bag to the side and hurls himself towards Hyuntak. His fist lands, and Hyuntak’s head snaps to the side.

He recovers quickly and springs forward, twirling and stretching his legs, wide motions that Suho dodges. His kicks are predictable, but when Hyuntak pushes closer, switching tactics, wide hooks left and right, and kicking when Suho ducks, his foot hits Suho’s arm and pushes him against the tunnel wall. It winds him for a second too long, and Hyuntak takes advantage, slamming the bottom of his shoe into Suho’s stomach.

“Stay down,” Hyuntak spits, but Suho won’t be hindered. He leaps up and throws his body at Hyuntak’s legs. His hood flaps when he stumbles and Suho grasps the fabric and tugs, yanking Hyuntak to the ground with him. He keeps the hood in his grip and twists, pulling and lifting, and Hyuntak chokes and reaches for his neck, scratching at his collar to get air through, but Suho isn’t letting go. He kicks his heel at Hyuntak’s ribs when his hand clutches Suho’s shoe. He watches Hyuntak’s face go red and pulls tighter. 

“Hey guys!” Hyoman’s voice echoes through the tunnel, and it startles Suho out of his trance. He forgets where he is. Who he is. He blinks down at Hyuntak, who’s limp in his hold, and drops the hood and puts distance between them. Hyuntak coughs and clutches at his neck as Hyoman and the cohort behind him walk closer. “Were you two having fun?” Hyoman slaps the bat up and down in his hand. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk. He grins. “Kill them all.”

The group charges at Suho and Hyuntak, Juntae presses himself against the wall, out of the way. They’re outnumbered, and Hyuntak is hurting, and they’re split up quickly, half of them attacking Suho and the other going for Hyuntak. It’s jarring, going from one fight to the next, and he’s drained. The bruises on his stomach ache. 

Suho isn’t expecting Hyoman’s bat to hit him. He swings it into Suho’s knee as his back is to him, as he’s fighting off his friends. The next swing brings him to the concrete, his palms scraping against the rocks as he tries to catch himself. Hyoman’s laughs are squeaky and exulted.

“Feeling tough now?” He grins. “You’re nothing.” His arm jerks upwards, and Suho braces for the impact. But it never comes. 

“Everybody freeze!” Hyoman does, bat raised high above Suho. His eyes grow wide and his arm lowers as he turns to the voice. 

Suho looks past Hyoman and the crowd of bullies, past Hyuntak curled up on the ground, past Juntae and all the way to the other side of the tunnel, where a red haired lunatic in a basketball jersey and flip flops lifts his phone to the air as a song starts playing from its speakers. What kind of fucking circus is this place?

“Who the hell is that?” One of the bullies says. “Is that Baku?” Baku ambles towards them, his flip flops drag and scuff against the concrete, and he tosses a basketball up and down. 

“Hey, Gotak.” He runs his fingers through his hair. “Aren’t I Kang Baekho’s spitting image?” 

“Have you seen yourself?” Hyuntak grimaces. “You look like you poured hot sauce on your head.” At Baku’s double take, his offended expression, Hyuntak laughs, and Baku turns his attention on Hyoman instead. 

“Hyomans! What do you think? I look like Kang Baekho, right?”

“Well, I haven’t read that manga yet, so…” Baku’s charming, easy grin drops, his face losing its playfulness. Hyoman tosses his bat, it clangs just behind Suho. “This isn’t what it looks like! I could see why you’d misunderstand the situation,” he stammers. Baku says nothing, he slides a leg backwards, lowering his body, clutching his basketball closer to his side, and then, without another word, breaks into a run towards Hyoman, who backs away from his advancing. Suho watches in disbelief as he launches into the air, swinging his basketball forward, so high Suho has to crane his neck to see. The basketball bounces into Hyoman’s head, the force of Baku’s swing so great, it deflates into his skull and bounces back off into the fence as Hyoman falls. 

Baku lands, smiles, runs a hand through his hair again. It takes a prolonged moment for him to notice Suho. His head is raised into the sun, posed as though for a picture, or an ending shot of a movie. Corny, Suho thinks, looking down at his palms and wiping the blood on his trousers. And it’s then that the spell is broken, and Baku, looming above him, smile fading into a bemused frown, tilts his head at Suho.

“Who are you?” 

Chapter Text

Baku’s hyper and unfocused, and doesn’t let Suho answer, shooing the bullies away and walking to Hyuntak. 

“What are you even doing, Gotak? You should be practicing right now.” Parallel to Suho, Hyoman is being tended to by the dispersed group. There’s a red spot forming on his forehead, the texture from the basketball indented into his skin. 

“Practice?” Hyuntak sits up and frowns at Baku. “Practice for what? We can’t even compete because of you!”

“What are you talking about?”

“We can’t compete in the tournament because you were suspended, you idiot!” Hyuntak shouts, and hisses, touching his split lip, a fresh bead of blood rising to the surface of the wound. 

“You’re kidding. No! No way! I shouldn’t have dyed my hair, this color takes so long to fade!” He laments. Suho watches him clutch his head in his hands, and tuck his chin into chest, and he’s half expecting him to fall to his knees. 

While Baku’s mourning, a couple of Hyoman’s gang run at him with the folly of a second wind, but without missing a beat, Baku whips around and catches the raised fist. 

“Hey,” he says, twisting the arm in his hold. “Happy to see me?” He pulls the other one close and squeezes his shoulder until he writhes away from the pinching of his nerve. He drags them together towards the rest of their group and tosses them into each other as easily as if he were bowling. They fall like pins, too. “I don’t care what you guys do, what you think or what you say, but when you’re wearing an Eunjang uniform, no fighting allowed. Say it after me, everyone. No fighting!” His voice booms. The responses are mumbled out, and Baku urges them away, corralling them together. Hyoman, miraculously recovered, jumps up and runs with them. Their footsteps grow distant, and then it’s a tense kind of quiet in the aftermath. An awkward ambience Suho doesn’t like breathing through. 

He gets to his feet as Juntae approaches him with a soft call of his name. 

“This is yours, Suho-yah,” he hands Suho his backpack. He looks him up and down with overt concern. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good.” He knows the bruises will come later, and his stomach still feels tender from the force of Hyuntak’s kick. He’s lucky his knee isn’t in worse condition, he lifts it and tests the joint, and concludes it’s still usable. “Thanks, Juntae.” 

“Suho-ssi.” Hyuntak limps towards them, looking abashed. “I think I had the wrong impression.” Suho would like to be rational and forgiving right now, it would make him feel more civilized. But only minutes ago he’d had Hyuntak on the ground choking for air, and that animosity remains. “I’m sorry.” 

“Yah. I don’t know what happened, but saying ‘I think’ doesn’t show much sincerity, Gotak,” Baku chimes in. He puts a hand on the back of Hyuntak’s neck and shoves him into a bow, bending with him. “I’m sorry! My dear Gotak comes with many faults, but he isn’t a bad kid at heart!” Suho winces at the volume of his grating shouts. Hyuntak lifts from Baku’s hold and slaps his arm away.

“Would you stop that? Please? Just go away!” And Baku laughs at his embarrassment, eyes twinkling, glued on him as he scowls. Suho doesn’t like their affectionate bickering. He doesn’t like how well they seem to know each other. Nor does he like their easy symbiosis, their balancing opposites. He doesn’t think of himself as a bitter person, but Baku is still smiling, and Hyuntak is still glaring, though his shoulders are relaxed, and Suho knows he’s hurt, but he obviously feels safe next to Baku, whose body is big next to him, and vibrant, and all Suho wants to do is smother their spirit. Instead, he tamps down the urge and leaves.

“Suho-yah! Where are you going?” Juntae calls. He runs after him. “Suho, you can’t just leave like that!” 

They sit together at the bus stop. Suho’s ears are ringing, and Juntae sounds muffled under the noise. 

“The timing was crazy, wasn’t it? What would’ve happened if Park Humin hadn’t shown up?” Suho’s breaths are ragged. It’s hard to steadily fill his lungs with air. He tries. Blinking and keeping his eyes shut for a moment, long enough to relive the fight behind his eyelids. And then the ringing is replaced by Hyuntak’s taunts. He’s unsettled and anxious. Sieun’s supposed to be safe in his mind. Now Hyuntak is in there, too, and he’s spitting at Sieun, ready to swing and kick at him like he did to Suho. And the image of Sieun in that video, beaten up and deathly still, unresponsive, is back, and he can’t stop it, and he can’t wrap Sieun back up to safety. That’s right. You didn’t kill him. You just put him in a coma. You just ruined his life. Suho is too meager and worthless to be Sieun’s self-appointed protector. You just ruined his life. 

“You must’ve been really hurt by Hyuntak’s words back there.” Juntae commiserates. “Don’t worry about those rumors, Suho. People who like talking behind other people’s backs aren’t worth the trouble.”

“It’s not a rumor.” 

“Huh?” 

“It’s not a rumor.” The bus pulls up, its brakes puff and squeal and Suho gets up before Juntae can respond. He’s stunned when he sits down and Juntae is lowering into the seat beside him. The bus starts moving, and neither of them speak, but Juntae is there. And when his stop comes, he bids Suho a farewell, smiles sincerely, and tells him he’ll see him tomorrow. The ringing in his ears dies down as he watches him hop off the bus and disappear down the street, and as much as he would be justified to never speak to Suho again, he believes him. That tomorrow will come, and he’ll be waiting for Suho at school. 

~

He is waiting for Suho the next morning, smiling nervously at him from the doorway of their first class. Suho thinks it must be directed at him. But he doesn’t have time to feel anything before Juntae tells him they’ve been called to the teacher’s office along with Baku and Hyuntak. 

“Let’s go then,” Suho sighs. “Might as well fetch the other two.”

Baku has Hyuntak in a chokehold when they find them, laughing into his ear as Hyuntak slaps at his forearm. It’s Baku who notices Suho and Juntae first, and he repositions himself, hands lifting into a fighting stance in front of Hyuntak’s face. 

“What’s this? Is this a raid?” Suho sighs at his theatrics.

“The teacher wants to see us.”

“Well that’s never good,” Baku grins. 

Their teacher recounts what he’s been told about the fight as they stand before him, his face bland and listless, and though it’s not fully accurate, the optics are bad, nonetheless. 

“Well, that did happen,” Hyuntak admits. “But it’s been blown a little out of proportion.”

“Everyone who hangs out with Choi Hyoman is absent from school today. Doesn’t that seem odd to any of you?” Hyuntak tries to cut in, but he’s spoken over. “And there are several witnesses that saw you all fighting.”

“False acquisition,” Baku mutters.

“It’s accusation, you idiot, not acquisition,” Hyuntak retorts, teeth clenched.

“I said accusation.”

“Is your brain empty, Mr. 99 IQ?”

“Shut up, dumbass.” 

“Be quiet!” The teacher interrupts, ruffling through a file cabinet. He pulls a handful of papers out and hands them to Baku. “Take these. Make it up by volunteering over the weekend. You’ll still get demerits.”

“Wait, what about Hyoman and his friends? It’s not fair to single us out when they’re the ones who started it!” Hyuntak’s voice rises with each word. 

“Does this sound like a debate to you?” Their teacher scolds. 

“It’s true,” Suho adds. He doesn’t give a shit about a demerit, but they’d been harassed and antagonized, and they’re the ones getting punished? They’d simply been defending themselves. “Hyoman orchestrated the whole thing. They ambushed us.”

“Ahn Suho. Are they rubbing off on you? Stop talking back and do as you’re told. I’m not changing my mind.”

Suddenly, before it can be stopped, Baku snatches the back of Suho and Hyuntak’s heads and pushes them down into a bow, just like yesterday. “I’m sorry sir!” He hollers. “We’ll volunteer diligently from now on! And the basketball team won’t be involved in things like this anymore! And once again, as the captain of the team, I sincerely apologize!” He finishes with a bow of his own, falling next to Suho with a big grin on his face, looking up at the teacher. They’re dismissed with an unimpressed wave of a hand, and Baku lifts his hold of Hyuntak and Suho and bounds out the door.

“You’re not mad about this at all?” Hyuntak asks, trailing after him. “You’re gonna let Hyoman off the hook?”

“Well, you did get into a fight. What did I say about no fighting?”

“It’s not like I was looking for it! I told you, Baku-yah, they started it!” Hyuntak whines. Suho pushes past them. 

“Hey! Friend,” Baku calls. Suho has half a mind to ignore him, but he knows Baku wouldn’t be afraid to chase him down with his exuberant energy. “He has something to say to you.” His arm is around Hyuntak, and his chest is puffed, proud to be facilitating. 

“I do?”

“Yes, you have something to say.” He waits expectantly, but Hyuntak doesn’t engage. “Hey, he even sided with you back there.” He nudges Hyuntak, who meets Suho’s eyes for a moment, but doesn’t hold it. He looks shy, which Suho doesn’t like, especially since the Hyuntak of yesterday and today is so dichotomous. 

“I’m sorry, Suho-ssi.” He makes eye contact with Suho again, and this time he looks more sure. “For yesterday. For saying those things and for getting mad at you.” 

“I’m sorry, too.” There’s still a small red mark on Hyuntak’s neck that Suho doesn’t like looking at. He doesn’t know if there’s much else about the fight that he’s sorry for besides that, though. But if it gets them to leave them alone, he’ll concede. 

“What?” Hyuntak gawks.

“I’m sorry for yesterday, too.” Suho stares back at him, and the tension is off-putting. Next to Hyuntak, Baku glances between the two of them dubiously.

“It sounds like you two made up, but it doesn’t really look like it.”

“I’m not part of all this,” he says, gesturing to the two of them. He might as well clear this up now. “Your club. You did me a solid taking care of Hyoman, and I get it, we have to do this volunteer thing, whatever, but after that, I want nothing to do with you.” Baku frowns. “Oh, and for the love of god, stop touching me.” For once, Baku seems speechless, so Suho takes the blessing for what it is and leaves. He’s said his piece and he’s played his part. Putting his hands in his pockets, he hopes maybe Juntae will follow, but it’s not Juntae who runs after him, not if the heavy footfalls are any indication. A hand grabs at his hair and ruffles hard.

“What are you gonna do about it, huh?” Baku says. Suho’s shocked into silence, open-mouthed disbelief at Baku’s audacity. He ruffles his hair again, over and over with increasing intensity. “What are you gonna do about it, what are you gonna do about it, what are you gonna do?” He cackles. 

“Yah! Baku! Are you crazy? Leave him alone.”

“Sometimes shit happens in life, Suho. Hey, it’s your turn, okay?” He takes Suho’s hand and brings it to his hair. Suho yanks himself out of his hold and slaps him upside the head. Baku’s hair bounces and his eyes widen comically. 

“Hey!” He gasps, gingerly rubbing at his temple.  

“You had that coming,” Hyuntak takes Baku by the shoulders and leads him away. “Let’s go. Why are you so hyper today, huh? You can’t just do that to people.”

Juntae’s fingers fix Suho’s hair. He lets him as he watches Baku skip away, still bickering with Hyuntak and glancing back at Suho. 

“That is one weird fucker.” 

“He’s odd,” Juntae agrees. “But it’s peaceful when he’s here. He protects us.” Suho’s eyes flick to Juntae, away from Baku, when he sees the expression on his face. A ghost story in the gaze behind his glasses. 

“How so?”

“It’s not just Hyoman and his friends that we have to worry about. There’s another group. The Union. Hyoman tried to join by stealing phones.” He purses his lips. “Na Baekjin of Yeoil, Geum Seongje of Ganghak, Do Seongmok of Yeonsung, and Baek Dongha are the leaders. They run it like a real gang. But Baku has always been against it, so Eunjang’s the only school that isn’t part of it. They used to target anyone with our uniform, taking money and picking fights, but Humin got fed up and fought everyone. Nobody stood a chance.” Juntae smiles. Proud. “He did that for us. Eunjang’s top dog.”  

Truth be told, Suho’s heard of The Union. Whispers in the seedy corners back home of those you had to beware of. And if you could fight well, you better be ready for a call, or for someone to meet you in the alleyways after school. He’s heard their names. But Suho wasn’t one to be persuaded or enticed by that type of business. He was busy, he had a family to support. He wasn’t interested in power or glory or whatever The Union was trying to sell to its allies. Suho kept his head down. Suho dodged. Suho ignored. But he’s closer to it now than he was before. One idiot between Eunjang and The Union. How secure was Baku’s stronghold?

~

His grandma is there to meet him when he walks through the door. Her face is grey and fatigued, her wrinkles defined, her frailty an emphasized thing. 

“Suho. Did you fight again?” The school must’ve called her. Of course. He thinks about lying, all the ways he could twist this into something forgivable, but in her eyes, either he’s the aggressor or he’s the victim, and both scenarios are unpleasant.  

“I didn’t want to.” At least not at first. “I swear.” He can’t be more honest than this, though, his grandma has seen enough of what he is under the facade he shows her. “I was trying to protect a friend. We were ambushed.”

“Suho. Please. After everything. You can’t do this anymore.”

“I won’t! It wasn’t my fault.”

“I never said that it was your fault. I just want you to be safe. That’s all I want. You’ve been through so much in life. You’re too young to have seen such things. All the burdens on your shoulders. I don’t want this for you. All this pain and violence.” Suho’s eyes water. Her empathetic nurturing, she must feel Suho’s every ache and hardship. Suho lost Yeongi, so she did, too. And though she never met Sieun, she knew him in all the ways Suho brought him to life with his admiration and his fondness that he could never keep from her, always sharing and loving. Along the way she loved him too. And lost him. 

He thought he could be a good grandson. That he at least had the capacity to be. In this remade world, the one without Sieun, Suho can see all his shortcomings laid before him in painful transparency. He’s tried so hard for so long. And for what?

“I’m sorry, grandma. I’m so sorry. I won’t worry you anymore. I’ll stay out of trouble and out of fights.”

“Don’t just say that, Suho. Because I know you. I know you’ll say that, but you’ll keep things from me instead of keeping your word.” She touches his cheek. Her hands are soft and warm. “You are not alone in this world. Just be careful and be kind. That’s all I ask.”

He doesn’t have the courage to tell her that he’s not sure he can promise her even that. 

He takes her hand in his and smiles. And he feels rotten. 

~

The weekend comes, and it’s an early morning, getting to the museum with the rising of the sun. Juntae’s already there, pacing around the entrance, eyes lighting up when he sees Suho. 

“Did you sleep okay, Suho-yah?” 

“Like a baby.” He didn’t really. A nightmare woke him up again and he stayed awake in his sweaty sheets until his alarm went off. But he just smiles and pats Juntae on the back and they go inside together. 

They’re helping the staff set up when Baku and Hyuntak finally arrive, late and bleary eyed, and then they’re given their costumes and instructions for their responsibilities for the day.  

At their station, Juntae smiles and poses, there’s a looseness in his posture that makes Suho think he’s enjoying this. It’s not terrible, all things considered. The kids that bound up to them are energetic and curious, staring up at them in awe. 

Hyuntak and Baku walk by in their costumes, Baku flirting shamelessly with some of the girls volunteering, making a fool of himself as he seems to do best. He winks at Suho. 

“I got her number!” Baku boasts at their lunch break, waving a ripped piece of paper in the air. 

“You did not,” Hyuntak says. 

“I did! Look!”

“I bet you anything she gave you a fake number.”

“No, there’s no way! This is the real deal.”

“No sane person would give you their number, Baku,” Suho chimes in. Juntae giggles beside him.

“Hey! Fine. Let’s make a bet. I call her, and if she says yes to a date, you’re paying for the next meal, Gotak.”

“Me? Why me?”

“You doubted me first!”

“Okay! Deal! Call the number.” Baku smirks and punches in the number, putting it on speaker. Immediately, without a single ring, a robotic voice broadcasts through the speakers. The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try again.

“Yah, you idiot. Did you enter it properly? Let me see.” He snatches the phone from Baku. Suho watches his face scrunch and then he bursts into laughter. “Without the 010, aren’t there supposed to be eight digits? Why are there nine here, huh?”

“Give it back!” Baku grabs his phone and scrutinizes the screen, then the piece of paper. “Look, she accidentally added two sevens. I’m trying again.” He re-enters it, lips pouting. This time, someone picks up. Hello, you’ve reached Seonheung Finance. This is Hwang Minsik speaking. Hyuntak snorts and tries to stifle his laughter as Baku apologizes to the innocent worker. “I’m sorry,” he bows like he can see him. “I dialed the wrong number.”

They argue and wrestle over the table when Baku hangs up. Baku slaps Hyuntak’s hand and one of his chopsticks goes flying. Suho feels the soft collision on his stomach and looks down at the mess of sauce on his sweatshirt and sighs, tongue pressing against his cheek to stop the scolding.

“Oh no, Suho! Buldak sauce stains so easily.” 

“Juntae, be careful. I heard he’s not afraid to break bones.” He pushes Hyuntak forward as a shield. “Suho-yah, don’t even think about it.” Suho rolls his eyes, getting up from the table. 

“I’ll be back.”

“Use a lot of soap!” Baku calls after him. 

Suho’s not in a particular rush to get back to them, he meanders through the museum to the bathroom, exasperated by the sight of his stained hoodie. He doubts it’ll come out with soap. He tries anyway. Scrubbing the sauce with vigor. He does his best, but the artificial red stubbornly prevails.

Giving up, he turns the corner, tossing the soapy, saucy paper towel in the trash. And crouching in the doorway, blocking his exit, is a kid in glasses wearing a garish orange jacket, playing a game on his phone. The music and sound effects reverberate off the tiles. At Suho’s appearance, his attention shifts to him for a beat, smirking before returning to his game.  

“Are you Baku’s friend?” His thumbs fly across the screen, thumping against the glass. Suho wonders which member of The Union this is. “I’m just concerned.” He pauses the game, lifting up from the floor. “You can really fuck up your life hanging with the wrong crowd.”

“I’m sure you’d know.” The kid scoffs. He lifts his phone and points it at Suho’s face.

“Look here,” he says. “Pose!” He admires the picture for a moment. Then his brow furrows ever so slightly. “Do I know you?”

“You’d remember this face,” Suho quips. 

“Funny. You’re funny!” His laugh crackles like plastic. How much has he practiced that in front of a mirror to seem human? Then his smile fades and he moves his shoulders as though making to leave, but Suho isn’t fooled. His hands may be in his pockets and the lines of his figure are loose and lazy, but his eyes are brimming with something wriggling and greedy, and Suho knows he’s going to swing before he does. 

The punch is lightning. And angry. He tries to get a piece of him, breathing hard and grinning, but Suho dodges in the small space. Again and again. The kid stumbles into a stall and laughs. 

“You’re good, aren’t you?” Suho frowns at him. The kid is enjoying their little dance. Suho hates that. “I just came to say hello, so why don’t we save this for later? You can show me how much you were holding back the next time we meet. Okay?” He chuckles and wags his fingers in a wave. The door shuts behind him, and Suho is left buffering in the empty bathroom. 

Suho was holding back. But the kid was, too. His snickering, grinning face. His gleeful, crazed eyes. He wanted a fight, and Suho’s not stupid, he can tell by his cockiness, his erratic behavior, that he’ll get it one way or another. He takes deep breaths trying to ease his anger and nerves. Nothing happened. Nobody got hurt.

Baku’s just outside the bathroom when he walks out. He looks more serious than Suho’s ever seen him. 

“Did you meet someone in there? Did he say anything to you? Do anything to you?”

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” Suho shrugs.  

“I’m sorry,” Baku sounds genuinely remorseful. Suho’s confused. Why is Baku sorry? 

“Why?”

“It’s my fault.”

“What’s your fault?” Why should Baku feel the burden of blame for some crazy fucker going after Suho? Baku’s face clears up and his signature smile returns. 

“Nevermind!” His voice is cheery, and his teeth are showing, but Suho can see him lock away the distress for later. It lingers in his gaze, flicking around Suho like he expects to see a wound. 

“Let’s go.” He pats Baku’s arm. “Okay?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Suho. Let’s go.” He tries to wrap his arm around Suho’s shoulders.

“Off.”

“Right. Sorry.” He grins. 

~

“I’m starved.” Baku groans as they walk out the doors of the museum. The sun is starting to set, and it’s a purplish grey on the horizon. 

“Didn’t you say your stomach hurt?”

“That was hours ago! C’mon, let’s go eat. I’m paying anyway, thanks to that stupid bet of yours.” Juntae cheers at that, but Hyuntak shakes his head.

“Don’t believe a word he says. He’ll find a way to get out of paying.”

“Whatever!” Baku laughs. “Money doesn’t matter. Good food does. Ever heard of Michelin stars? Let’s go to the restaurant with the most.”

“Idiot,” Hyuntak scoffs. “You can’t afford that.”

“So you’ll pay this time! I’ll get the next one.”

“Idiot! I can’t afford that either! Let’s just go somewhere cheap.” They’re at the bottom of the steps, across the street is the bus stop. Beside Suho, they’re still arguing over where to go, what to get, and who’s paying, but he has a commute to Seoul ahead of him. 

“I gotta go, guys.”

“Huh?” They turn to Suho, dismayed, his words taking the wind out of their sails. He’s touched by their reactions, that they’d wanted him with them at all. 

“But you said you’d eat with us!” Baku argues.

“When did I say that?”

“Well…” Baku looks up, thinking. “You probably did. Or, maybe you didn’t.” 

“You should still come, Suho-yah. It was a long day,” Juntae insists with his fretting tone. It was a long day. But it was nice, he thinks. The companionship. And Suho said he didn’t want anything to do with them. But then again, is that true? Is that what he wants? Baku and Hyuntak are stupid but funny. And Juntae is compassionate and thoughtful, and they want him here, they want him to stay. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, having friends again. Maybe it wouldn’t go wrong like it did before. Not everything is earth-shattering and extreme. It could be okay. But Suho is late. He usually visits Sieun early on the weekends. By the time he makes it to Seoul, there’ll be moonlight on Sieun’s sheets. 

“I have someone who’s waiting.” 

“Ah. Well, you’re gonna regret it!” Baku says to his retreating back. “But I’ll let you go since you said you’d pay next time.”

“Never said that!” Suho calls back. 

“Yes you did! You heard him, right? Gotak. Right?”

“Idiot.”

“Have a good night, Suho!” Juntae calls.

“Be safe!” Baku bellows. His voice echoes off the pavement. 

~

He gets a call as he’s signing in at the hospital. Friend, he writes under patient relation, as he always does. It never feels like it fits quite right.

“Hello?”

“Suho! It’s Humin.”

“Hi?”

“Hi! I just called to see if you made it home alright.” Suho looks up and bows at the nurse who takes the visitor’s sheet from him. 

“Yeah. I’m home safe.”

“Good. No Geum Seongjes tailing you?”

“Nope.” Geum Seongje. So that’s who he met today.

“Good! Good.” Baku clears his throat on the other line. “Hey, you know how I got rejected today? So weird. That never happens. But I was thinking maybe we could try to pick up some girls together sometime. You have that cool and confident thing going on that girls are into. What do you say?”

“Yah, Baku.” 

“Yeah?”

“Let’s not talk nonsense.”

“Fine. Asshole.” And he hangs up. Suho lifts his phone from his ear and stares at his blank screen, nonplussed. 

“Weirdo.” Suho pockets his phone and walks through the hospital halls, a path he could navigate with his eyes closed. 

At first glance when he opens Sieun’s door it’s like looking at a stranger, his hair has grown so long. When did that happen? Suho notes every detail of Sieun’s condition, doting and examining, but he’d missed this somehow.  

Sieun seemed the type to keep prim and proper, always put together when he came to school. When he was ruffled and dirty, cuts on his face, as he’d often seen him, it felt dissonant. Suho thinks he wouldn’t like the length it’s at now. 

He should ask the nurses if they can trim his bangs, because though he almost wants to do it himself, his hands shake even brushing his fingers through Sieun’s hair, seeing his forehead peek through, gazing undeterred at his sleeping face. 

“I’ll be right back, Sieun-ah. Your hair is too long, isn’t it? It’s gotta be annoying, hm?” Sieun takes a breath. He finds one of Sieun’s nurses, and she smiles at him softly and puts a hand on his arm and assures him she’ll take care of it. It’s a weight off his shoulders, and he quickens his pace as he turns the corner and pulls the door open. His mouth is already open to tell Sieun the news and to tell him about his day, but his jaw clamps shut as he steps inside. Because there’s somebody here. And it’s not a nurse.

“Pretty.” Seongje’s tall figure leans over Sieun, his glasses glinting in the low light. “This is Yeon Sieun, then? Your friend. It must be hard seeing him wasting away like this. Since it’s your fault he’s here.” A chill spreads through Suho, vicious and vindictive like gusting oceanic winds, his temper as tempestuous as a storm. 

“Get away from him,” he seethes. 

“What’s the survival rate of coma patients past a couple months?”

“Shut the fuck up!” Seongje laughs his synthetic laugh. 

“You might be able to hold your own in a fight, Suho-yah. We’ll find out soon enough. But what about Sieun-ie here? Do you think he can?” His eyes flick up to the IV drip at Sieun’s bedside. “I guess maybe not.”

Suho’s heart is beating in his chest, pounding, pounding and rattling his ribs, and he doesn’t expect the fear to freeze him like this, watching Seongje touch the corner of Sieun’s blanket. He’s paralyzed, his ire trapped with nowhere to go. Seongje’s too close to Sieun. He’s too close.

“What do you want?”

“For you to come with me.” He straightens and turns to Suho, all of his snark and humor gone. His eyes are sharp and dark. “Or I can always make another visit. Your Sieun-ie seems lonely, doesn’t he? You kept him waiting so long.” 

“I will fucking kill you.” 

“You could try. How about you just listen to me instead?” He turns from Sieun and Suho and walks out of the room, his pace languid, and Suho takes a final look at Sieun, committing to memory his steady, beeping heartbeat and tranquil, soft face. He follows Seongje outside and into the night.

Chapter Text

Suho glares at the back of Seongje’s head as he takes them through the streets of the city. Through desolate alleyways and in and out of the shadows. The acrid smoke of nicotine swirls around his head, blowing back towards Suho with a gust of headwind. He’s humoring this because he knows that Seongje is just the messenger, their dog, and he’s counting on him to take Suho to the source. If The Union is threatening Sieun, he needs to know every face and name. 

The street bends and far at the end of Suho’s line of sight is a bowling alley, its entrance teeming with loitering Union members, the sound of their rowdy mischief carries even from their distance. Seongje parades him through the herd of them as they bow, lined up and parted to let them through. 

“What the fuck is this? Are we the mob?” Seongje swears, his lips lopsided, pressed around his cigarette. “And keep it down, the neighbors will file another noise complaint.” They assent, obedient like the school children they are, as Seongje flicks the butt of his cigarette to the side, and they walk through the entrance.

Inside there are even more, all the colors of their clashing uniforms lit by the neon blues and pinks of the signs above them, and Suho realizes he hasn’t grasped the scale of operation that the Union must really be. The sheer volume of people involved.

In the quiet and vacant backrooms, Seongje stops them in front of a closed door but doesn’t move to open it. He turns to Suho and the contempt radiates off him as he scans him up and down.

“The fuck are you staring at? Go in.” Suho rolls his eyes and shoulders past Seongje. It’s a dingy little office, cold and industrial, and empty besides a kid sitting on the sole desk against the far wall. He doesn’t look up as he writes, an unhurried response as Suho steps closer, and he can tell, from his size, his broad shoulders, sitting with an air of someone who knows their importance, that he’s the leader. 

“Just a minute,” he says, without lifting his hand. Behind him, a Yeoil uniform is hanging from a clothing rack. Suho reads the nametag on the breast of the silver fabric. Na Baekjin.  

“No, you’re listening to me now. Cause I’m only going to say it once.” Baekjin’s eyes shift up to Suho. They’re a reserved kind of lethal. Black and incisive. “I don’t give a shit about your high school gang, if any of you step near Sieun’s hospital again, I will kill every single one of you. Every single one. Stay the fuck away from him.”

He leans back in his chair, his face suddenly alight with expression, he smirks at Suho but it’s not like Seongje, who enjoys the confrontation, if not just as an excuse to swear or to fight, no, he looks at Suho like he’s the dirt beneath his shoe. It only makes Suho angrier. He can underestimate Suho all he wants, but it’ll be his funeral. 

“I’d keep your eyes open. All that arrogance you Union guys have, you won’t see what you should be looking out for.” Baekjin meets that with silence. His gaze is vaporous again, impervious to deciphering. Without a response, Suho takes it as his cue to leave. 

“We can make a deal.” Baekjin calls from the desk. “Keep your word. If you do, no one will get hurt.” Suho waits for his terms. “I want you to stay away from Humin.”

“Sure. But make sure you keep your word.”

Suho leaves the way he came, dodging the crowd.

“Yah!” Seongje yells over the racket of clattering pins. Suho stops and glares. “Stop looking at me like that, or I’ll gouge out both of your eyes.” Then he laughs. Suho decides Seongje’s the first one he’ll kill when The Union inevitably breaks their truce. 

~

Suho doesn’t sleep. He listens to the whirring of the fan on his desk, its engine on its last legs, and to the slow passing of cars, watching the yellow headlights swim past his curtains. The hours are sluggish and torturous, when he can do nothing but think about Sieun, when sleep won’t come and he can’t drift or dream or escape. 

He thinks about Seongje’s hands so close to Sieun. Hands that are violent, attached to the body of a boy who would trifle with Sieun’s life without a second thought. That danger is too palpable as he lies in the waning midnight. 

And Suho has failed before, as Sieun’s guardian angel. 

For what is not the first time nor the last, Suho ruminates in perpetuity about a reality where he had never met Sieun. Where he didn’t crash into Sieun’s desk. Where he never stepped in when Sieun had gone after Youngbin. Lonely and kind Sieun, with his airpods in his ears, his pen case on his desk, his endless studying. Maybe Sieun would still be lonely without Suho, but he would be awake. 

But he did meet Sieun. And he pried open that which had been so tightly shut and invited himself in. If I had never even looked his way, Suho thinks, the world would be better. 

Was it preordained that he’d cause another mess and put Sieun in danger again? Maybe this is a loop he can’t escape, that he’s cursed or he’s being punished. He’d deserve that for all the things he’d done wrong. 

He should’ve tried to keep Yeongi close. She’d slipped away and he’d let her. He was too fettered by his grief to save her from her own. 

There had been a day where all three of them had been together after school, Beomseok, Sieun, and Suho, still sitting at their desks. Sieun had wanted to go eat. He had looked so serene, comfortable in a way Suho never got to see much, but it had withered when Suho and Beomseok left. Before, it had been such an insignificant moment, saying no to Sieun. Now he fixates on that memory and lets it pierce his heart when he grasps on to it. He should’ve indulged Sieun’s every whim.

And he should’ve taught Sieun to fight. He should’ve taught Sieun everything he knew. Not just the little lesson he’d given him in the early morning, when he was tired and sweaty and one tiny push had him on the ground. He had told only him to run because Suho knew he’d come for Sieun. He’d always come for him. But he hadn’t. Sieun had been alone. 

He gets up and gets dressed. There have been times when the hospital has let Suho in outside of visiting hours. And tonight, he will see Sieun, even if he has to sneak in. 

~

Sieun’s condition is mostly unchanged, as much as Suho had stressed that Seongje had come back and done something, though his hair is shorter.

“You look nice, Sieun-ah. She did a good job. She didn’t cut you on accident like I probably would have.” He smiles. It fades off his face the longer he gazes upon Sieun. He’s so pale and skinny. “I still can’t sleep. And when I can’t sleep, I wonder when you’ll wake up.” Tears spring from his blinking eyes. He touches a finger to the drop that pools on his waterline. He doesn’t know why he’s crying. 

He thinks of himself as much different than who he was before Sieun. How did he manage so long without him? Every aspect of his life was a mechanical routine, it was only a brief point in time that he was happy. Why did he feel more alive when Sieun was waving that chair at him? 

He can’t do it. Not without Sieun. Not when he knows what his life could be, and what it was. 

“I need you, Sieun-ah,” he whispers in the dark. 

~

He finds Baku, Hyuntak, and Juntae in the clubroom. He doesn’t say anything as he enters, his mouth glued shut, his jaw clenched and aching. There’s a heaviness that settles atop his shoulders.

“Oh! Ahn Suho,” Gotak smiles at him. He seemed to be teaching Juntae how to dribble a basketball when he first opened the door. “Are you joining our club?” Baku sits up from the couch, and Juntae cradles the basketball in his arms. They’re all looking at him. And it’s more difficult than he thinks it’s going to be, opening his mouth to tell them what he came to say. But once he says it, the resignation can take root, can supersede his loss. He’s doing this for Sieun. And he’s most important. He’ll never lose sight of that. 

“I met Na Baekjin,” he says to Baku. Somehow, in the silence, it gets even quieter at the mention of his name. Baku’s face, already strangely stormy and serious, falls ever further. Hyuntak’s smile drops, too. 

“Na Baekjin,” Hyuntak mutters. “That crazy asshole. What did he do to you? Did anything happen?”  

“Nothing happened. Look, I said it from the start, I don’t want to be involved. I don’t care what you’re doing or who you’re doing it with, but leave me out of it.”

“Suho-yah,” Juntae says timidly. “What’s wrong with you all of a sudden?”

“I don’t have the free time you guys have, I have too many things to do. You don’t need me to have your fun.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Hyuntak questions. He’s getting worked up and angry, his face has changed while Suho was speaking. “Did we ever ask you to hang out with us?”

“Exactly. So let’s just ignore each other from here on out.” Suho had pictured Baku objecting, going to ridiculous lengths to get Suho to stay. Instead, he doesn’t even look at Suho, not until what he’s saying fully registers. Then, his eyes drag upwards, and he nods. 

“I get what you’re saying,” he says. It’s odd how dispirited he sounds. He didn’t know Baku could be so muted. “Let’s do that then. Ignore each other.” 

“Yeah,” Suho nods. “Let’s do that.” And he leaves them behind. 

The clubroom door clatters shut, but he doesn’t take more than a couple steps before it’s wrenched open again.

“Suho-yah!” Juntae is running after him, he trips and stumbles before he catches up. Even though he knows it’ll be hardest, looking Juntae in the eyes before he leaves, Suho turns anyway. “Something’s making Baku act like that, right? And you too?” His eyes are hopeful, like he knows he’s cracked some code. “I don’t know what happened to you, Suho-yah, but I’m certain Hyumin didn’t mean what he said. You don’t need to worry about it.” Juntae’s kindness stings instead of balms. He has never deserved this level of sympathy, not when he is too blundering to handle cherished things. It’s better, even if it hurts, to leave all three of them at a safe distance, far, far away from Suho’s reckless existence. 

“He meant it.” Because Baku must understand. There’s no other way to explain his reaction. Baku understands the stakes, even if he doesn’t know about Sieun. “I’m better off alone, Juntae-yah. Nothing ever goes right when I butt in.” Juntae tries to reach for his hand, but Suho takes a step back. “I’m done.” 

He doesn’t go after Suho this time. It’s what he wants. But it doesn’t feel good. And he goes home feeling sicker and poorer than he ever has in his life. 

~

Much like before Juntae, he doesn’t sleep. He works. He visits Sieun. Days pass and it makes no difference. It’s all the same. Maybe he’s human, but maybe he isn’t anymore. He presses a hand against his chest and waits for the flesh to give. He’s hollow inside, he knows. 

He’s walking home, down the stairs not too far from campus. The blur of a couple of students passes him by, headed in the opposite direction.

“Hey, Eunjang!” They’re wearing Ganghak uniforms, looking back and forth from their phones to Suho. “Where are your friends?” 

“I don’t have any of those.” He calls back. “Not that it’s any of your fucking business.”

“Didn’t Baekjin tell us to leave this one alone?”

“He did? Shit. Then let’s go.” They don’t say another word to Suho, like he wasn’t worth the effort in the first place.

“Where’s Seongje?” One asks the other.

“He said he was coming later.” Suho watches them walk away, towards Eunjang and towards Baku, Hyuntak, and Juntae. And Suho can almost see how that will unfold, laid before him. But it will happen without him. He tries to swallow the guilt, but it isn’t easy. 

Juntae calls when Suho’s halfway home. He doesn’t pick up, lets it ring until his screen goes black again, but a text pings in the following seconds. Suho-yah. Are you headed home? Suho debates it, but thinks about the Ganghak kids he saw earlier, and calls Juntae back.

“Hello?” 

“Why’d you call, Juntae?”

“I was wondering if you made home okay.” His voice is weird. It’s barely above a whisper, and he sounds out of breath. It feels like Suho should be asking him that instead. 

“Why are you suddenly wondering that?” When Baku had asked Suho the same question the other night, it was because of Geum Seongje. And The Ganghak kids he saw weren’t looking for Suho.  

“I honestly was just wondering.” Suho can hear Juntae walking, his footsteps slow. Neither of them speak, so when Suho hears shouting approaching Juntae, he hears it loud and clear. “Suho-yah, don’t worry about me. I’m fine. Go straight home!” There’s cursing and the sounds of struggle. A slap and grunts and Juntae’s frantic, distressed voice cuts off as the call ends.

Suho doesn’t think, he just runs.

He tries to get Juntae back on the phone, but it’s to no avail. Each call rings all the way through. Suho’s back on campus when he passes two students whose conversation stops him in his tracks. 

“I heard Hyuntak went to fight Seongje.”

“What? Hyuntak is screwed. Seongje is fucking crazy.”

“Want to go watch? I have the address.”

“Yah!” Suho yells after them. They turn to him. “Give me that address.”

“Huh? Who the fuck are you?” Suho doesn’t have the time for this. He grabs the closest one’s ear and twists until he’s yelling and squirming. The other shoves his phone at Suho. 

“Okay! Here! Take it.” It’s not far from here, just a couple blocks. “They’re fighting on the roof.”

Suho goes as quickly as he can, ascending the stairs and breaking through the door onto the rooftop, where a flash of white sunlight blinds him before he can take in the scene. Two Union members are standing watch over Geum Seongje, his phone pointed at Hyuntak and Juntae, who are huddled together against the fence, Hyuntak looking half conscious, his face dotted with cuts and bruises. Juntae’s hand is wrapped around his arm, and he looks horrified as Suho approaches Seongje. 

“Newbie! I missed you.” Seongje’s lips curl. He looks pleased by Suho’s appearance. “I want our promised fight as much as you seem to want it, but don’t we have an agreement?” 

“We do, don’t we? But it looks like you broke your word.” He clicks his tongue. Hyuntak’s head lists to the side into Juntae’s shoulder. “And I can’t stand bullies.” 

“Oh is that why?” Seongje inches closer. “Or maybe you don’t care about Sieun anymore?” He whispers. “He really is so boring, lazing around all day.”

The cold from before, when he was frozen in front of Seongje in shameful ineptitude, is repurposed and harnessed now. A shock of fresh-aired clarity as Suho makes a decision. 

There was a time when he loved fighting. Back in the ring, when MMA was more than a sport or a hobby. It was meditation, focus, something that gave him purpose. With his gloved hands poised, he was lethal, his name powerful enough to invoke fear. He’d spit out blood and rise from the ground and finish the fight with the taste of copper on his tongue. 

He doesn’t need to impress anyone on this rooftop. The Union footsoldiers in front of him aren’t owed his composure. They don’t care who he was, or who he’s trying to be. And he’s not in Sieun’s hospital room anymore. He doesn’t have to act in the interest of Sieun’s safety when Seongje is in front of Suho now, and not Sieun. His grandma won’t ever know, because he won’t leave witnesses this time. Suho can repent later. There’s a satisfying kind of freedom in that fact. 

Geum Seongje’s getting too comfortable having Sieun’s name in his mouth, and he’s going to learn the hard way to keep his dirty fucking hands off of what’s Suho’s. 

“Geum Seongje.”

“Ahn Suho.” He tilts his head.

“You’re gonna fucking die.” He winds his arm back and the fabric of his windbreaker stretches against his bicep and he lets loose. And Seongje is fast. But so is Suho.

They clash in a flurry of lashing, swooping swings. Suho’s are forceful and swift as he hooks from left to right, Seongje blocking as he flashes his gums and teeth. Suho hates his gleeful intensity, hates that he laughs when Suho catches him in the jaw. Suho throws another punch, and blood spurts from Seongje’s nose. 

“Shit! You pack a punch don’t you, you fuck.” He wipes his upper lip and curls up his bloody fingers, firing into Suho’s cheek in the time it takes him to blink. The contact breaks skin, he can feel the rip and the sting of the cut, and it whips Suho’s head to the side. Seongje snags him with another one, two, three as he’s righting himself, cackling as Suho’s lip starts to swell.

“I’ve been waiting for this, Suho. Aren’t you gonna give me a little more?”

“Usually I stretch beforehand. Why don’t we call that a practice round?”

“Fine then. Tell me when you’re ready.”

“You’ll know when I’m ready, Seongje.” He shakes his arms, gets his muscles loose, and pulls his fists to his chest, taking a deep breath. The rooftop melts away in his peripheral vision, and it’s only him and Seongje’s inescapable fate. 

He propels forward, slaps Seongje’s arm from its course towards Suho and bashes his fist into Seongje’s glasses. The collision shatters the lenses and the glass pieces cut into Seongje’s cheekbone and stick out of Suho’s knuckles, so he swings again with the protruding shards and lets it pierce into his face. Seongje yells and clutches at his eye, where there’s red in the white of his cornea. His frames clatter to his feet and Suho squashes them into the ground with the bottom of his shoe.

“You fucker!” Seongje roars. He lunges at Suho and barrels into him with all his weight. Suho topples to the ground with Seongje on top of him. He presses his knee into Suho’s stomach and batters his fists into his jaw, rapid movements with brutal force. Suho’s teeth rattle and blood coats the inside of his mouth. He pounds his arms against Seongje’s side, but it does little to deter the assault.   

“Had enough?” He grins at Suho. Seongje’s blood trickles down his chin, darkening spots on his crimson uniform, and leaning over him, beads of it drip onto Suho’s face.

“You think I’m done?” His teeth are wet and his lips are too. “You’re still breathing.” If anything, Suho’s words seem to invigorate Seongje. A giddy spark in his eyes. Suho snatches Seongje’s fingers and presses upwards, bending them back as much as he can until Seongje screams. He pulls hard on his arm, and he crashes into Suho, his long, pointy limbs poking into his torso. There’s no space for Suho to work with. His neck is the only part of him that’s free from Seongje’s claustrophobic proximity. He snaps it into a headbutt that Seongje jolts away from, his hand flying to his forehead.

“Fuck! You fuck!” Suho uses the separation to bolt up. To his right, there are gardening supplies lining the entrance of the rooftop, shriveled up plants and pots full of soil. He remembers when Sieun took a brick to Gilsoo’s knee and thinks oh my genius. He was always creative when he fought, crafty in ways Suho never could be.

So he brings a piece of Sieun with him into the fight, grabbing the closest pot and holding it firmly in both hands, spinning it forward and breaking it open against Seongje’s head. It explodes, and Seongje swipes at the spray of fine dirt obscuring his sight. His uniform and hair get coated in grime. While he’s disoriented, Suho kicks into Seongje’s leg. He stumbles and can’t find his balance before Suho takes a fistful of his hair and knees him in the temple. Seongje hits the ground.

Suho had stopped when Gilsoo had been knocked out, when Sieun was standing ahead of him, with his hurting ribs and his cut up cheek. His messy hair and the fearful shine to his eyes. He’d stopped then. But he doesn’t stop now. He wails into Seongje who is too weak to counter anything Suho throws at him, all sapless and dried up. 

“You wanted a fight, remember?” He hisses at Seongje’s lacerated, unsmiling face. “Where’s the fight?” He grabs onto the collar of Seongje’s uniform. “You don’t get to threaten him.” He punches Seongje. “You don’t get to see him.” He punches him again. “You don’t get to say his name. He’s mine.” His nails are digging into the skin of his palm as he strikes Seongje with a final blow, cutting up into his chin. He hears the clatter of teeth and then Seongje’s eyes roll back into his head and he goes still.

His hold on Seongje releases and Suho collapses. His back presses into the concrete, limbs splayed out, his hand falling into the small pool of Seongje’s blood. He floats, like just before fading into a dream. The murky in-between.

He’s cognizant enough to feel a hand touch his shoulder, just a gentle press. His eyes are hazy and the figure is obscure. 

“Sieun-ah.” His voice is hoarse and thin, but he hopes it carries enough for Sieun to hear. He’s leaning over Suho now. Blocking the sun. “I keep breaking my promise. Will you forgive me?”

He waits for an answer as his body is lifted from the ground, but it never comes. He feels weightless for a dizzying moment, but only a moment, before he can’t stay awake any longer. 

Chapter Text

The afternoon light slants through the windows. It’s grey that day, but the clouds drift with the wind and the sun peaks out as Hyuntak is teaching Juntae in the courtyard outside, still in his volunteering outfit. Suho and Baku watch Juntae try for a kick that Hyuntak had executed flawlessly. His leg doesn’t get enough air, and he almost falls into Hyuntak to catch himself. 

“That kid,” Baku shakes his head. “He can’t be helped. Though, he doesn’t have the best teacher.”

“You could teach him.” Suho suggests. He could too, but Baku is better. And Juntae is not Sieun, and maybe they’re both brave and loyal, and maybe Suho is making the same mistake all over again, but he would rather keep Juntae as far from conflict as possible.  

“No.” It comes out a bit forceful. A bit fast. “No. I’m never gonna teach anybody else how to fight. Not ever.” That piques Suho’s interest. Anybody else? “You know, Gotak used to be a taekwondo pro. A real athlete.” Baku smiles, rueful. “But he had to quit because of me.” Baku doesn’t look away from Hyuntak, who’s scolding Juntae, but he’s fond, even from here Suho can tell. “He hurt his cruciate ligament. The doctor said his athletic future was done and that he couldn’t compete anymore. His mom cried her eyes out. I was so angry, the only thing I wanted to do was kill everyone who did that to Gotak.” Suho swallows. It’s a sudden shock, realizing that he’s sitting next to someone who might understand him more than anybody else on the planet. A person who smiles with all his teeth, bright, loud, funny, someone who had never given Suho any signs of such a past, of such pain. “All of it was hard. It was hard on Gotak and it was hard on his mother and it was hard on me. But I only realized a lot later what the hardest part really was. It was knowing that everything was all my fault. God. I felt…” Baku blinks fast and tilts his chin up and away from Suho, but he still notices the tears in his eyes. “It was the worst feeling. It um…I can’t remember the word. What is it again?”

“Guilt.”

“Yes!” Baku snaps his fingers. “That’s the word. Guilt.” And then it seems to hit him, and Baku turns to Suho and goes quiet, scanning him, trying to read him. Suho takes a breath. Outside, Hyuntak guides Juntae’s hands into proper form, tucking his elbows in, smiling when Juntae gets it right.

“I had a friend like that too.” 

~

Suho wakes into dimmed light, a low ceiling above him as he lies on his back against something soft.

“Did you sleep okay?” It takes a moment to recognize, but it’s Baku’s voice. Suho groans and sits himself up. Baku has his fingers interlaced as they rest on his lap, sitting against the wall next to Suho. The room is neat and sparsely decorated, but it’s warm. Welcoming. There’s a pudgy animal lamp on the table in the middle of the room that’s emanating a soft yellow glow. It’s the only source of light. “You slept forever. ” Baku’s voice is low to match the ambience. “I almost died carrying you here on my back. Why are you so heavy, huh?”

“What happened?” Suho remembers blood on Geum Seongje’s face, heavy hits and shattered glass and not much else. It gets especially hazy near the end of the fight, when he downed Seongje. Suho’s knuckles are wrapped when he looks down. And there’s an uncomfortable tug on the skin of his cheek that he knows is from another bandage. 

“You kicked Geum Seongje’s shit in, Suho-yah.” Baku’s demeanor is subdued, but Suho thinks he sees satisfaction in his eyes. It might not be pride exactly, but it’s close. “He’s still in the hospital. Though I heard the cops are there waiting for when he wakes up. We got away. All three of us. So no worries.” 

“I don’t remember what happened after the fight.” The gap in his memory is upsetting. And it’s hard to imagine Baku carrying him. 

“You passed out. I think you just exhausted yourself. Juntae told me you wouldn’t stop.” Baku didn’t see the fight, but it’s all the same, he’s peeled back a bit of who he is underneath, and maybe Baku doesn’t want to be around that, what with his no fighting rule thing. But Baku doesn’t loiter, and Suho’s worries are quickly assuaged. “I’m glad you’re okay, Suho-yah. I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” Suho doesn’t tell Baku that he’s kind of glad he wasn’t. He didn’t want anyone to stop him from going after Seongje. “But I’m thankful, too.”

“Huh? For what?”

“For doing what I couldn’t. I’ll make sure this never happens again.”

“Are you going to fight them?” Suho asks. Baku’s brow furrows. “The Union.” He watches him purse his lips and drop his gaze. It’s enough of an answer. And what is Suho going to say? He’s not going to tell him not to. It would be hypocritical. And there is a very hungry, very loud part of Suho that wants him to tear them apart. And maybe he wants to join. But it doesn’t look like Baku’s ready to confront that idea, and there are more questions swirling around Suho’s head. “What’s up with you and Na Baekjin, Baku?” Because it’s obvious to Suho how possessive Baekjin is. Treating Baku like he’s his territory that Suho was encroaching on, while Baku seems resolute in ignoring his entire existence, denying, downplaying. But Baku’s gaze is faraway, forlorn, and Suho realizes that Baku is a great deal more wounded by Baekjin than he wants to show. 

“We’re childhood friends.”

“What? What happened?” He can’t picture it, the two of them as children, innocent and free. He can’t even really picture the two of them together as they are now. 

“I wish I knew.” 

“I guess people change.” Suho thinks of Beomseok. Of murderous glares. Anger. Betrayal. The world being a few shades darker than he’d thought it to be. The harsh revelation that there is evil, and no matter how good he is, how hard he tries, it will find him regardless. “Sometimes quicker than you’d think.” 

“Yeah. I guess so.” Baku sighs like a wearied soul. Then he smiles again. Suho wants to tell him that he doesn’t have to. “Are you hungry? Let’s eat some chicken, get some protein in you.” 

“Are you paying?”

“Yah! I was the one who saved your ass! You owe me!” 

“Fine!” Suho laughs. It’s a fair trade. 

~

“Suho! Sweet boy, where on Earth have you been?” His grandma brings him into her arms, hugging him close as soon as Suho walks through the door. She pushes him back, keeping her hands on his shoulders, just enough distance to examine his sorry state. “What happened? I’ve been worried sick!” 

“I’m okay,” he sidesteps her questions. She can’t know about the fight. She won’t. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. I was staying with a friend and my phone died.”

“You were fighting again. Suho, this can’t go on. I’m so scared for you.”

“You don’t have to be! I promise I have it under control.”

“You’re covered in bandages and you didn’t come home last night!” She moves from Suho and places a hand on her head. He shouldn’t have come home. He should’ve stayed with Baku or gone to school to hide out until his injuries faded. But he’d been so disoriented, he wasn’t thinking at all. Suho drops his gaze, and it’s quiet for a while. Then, “I think we should move, Suho.”

“What? Grandma, I promise I’m fine. This is nothing, really. I know you’re worried, but I can handle it.”

“You shouldn’t have to. It’s my responsibility to take care of you, I surrendered too much of that to you. I trusted you to find your own way in a dangerous world. It wasn’t fair to you.”

“I don’t want to move.” He didn’t know how much he meant that until the words are out of his mouth. He doesn’t want to. He really doesn’t. Not when there are people here who he cares about. People who would fight for him. Who he’d fight for. Who he has fought for. Suho hasn’t had that much in his life. And to have had it, to have known it, and to have lost it makes his desire to keep it all the more strong.

“I don’t want to upend your life, Suho, but I can’t bear seeing you hurt. You’re just a child.” Suho doesn’t know how to defend himself. He has no control. He has no defense. And if he leaves, Suho won’t have much of anything left at all. “We’ll talk about it some more after you rest and heal.” She smiles softly at him and smooths his bangs with a shaking hand. Suho soaks in the comfort, and exerts the rest of his energy blocking off his anxiety. 

~

“Yah! Suho-ssi!” Baku launches to his feet, fingers splayed towards the sky. Juntae leaps up beside him and uses both of his arms to wave excitedly at Suho. “Suho-ssi! Sushi! We were waiting so long I spotted a grey hair on Gotak’s head!” 

“Yah, Baku, what the fuck?” Hyuntak takes a hand out of his pocket to hit him. 

“Why would you wait for me?” Suho walks up to them and they stand at the entrance of Eunjang, all smiling at him. He knows the fight might’ve shifted their opinion of him, but he’s sure they haven’t forgotten the asshole he was a few days ago, when he’d demanded they leave him alone. 

“We waited so you can come with us, dumbass!” Baku grins. “Now that you’re here we can go.” They walk towards campus, Baku wrapping his arm around Hyuntak’s shoulders. Juntae grinning at them at their side. Suho doesn’t join them quite yet. It’s a nice sight, his friends. It’s a sad one, too. He needs to cherish it, he thinks. He needs to cherish this. 

“Let’s go eat, Suho-yah!” Juntae calls for him. 

“Hurry up!”

“Hurry!” Suho smiles and shakes his head, jogging to catch up with them. Baku starts yapping about food and Hyuntak berates him for talking about food so early in the day. They’re a handful, but being here with them reinforces his vehement desire to stay.

~

The dust settles. In a way that Suho hadn’t foreseen. Eunjang is behaving. Hyoman doesn’t even look in their direction, Juntae’s left alone, and Suho doesn’t hear whispers of his name as he walks the halls. It’s peace in a manner he’s never known since moving here. 

The four of them head out for lunch, Baku wrapped all over Suho. His face is pressed into Suho’s, the tip of his nose bumping into his cheek as he pushes further into him. 

They play a game of basketball out on the court, and Suho’s a lot better than anyone is expecting. Suho’s always been naturally athletic, but he’s never pursued anything besides MMA. And now, it doesn’t feel like there will ever be a time for it. 

“Please, god, please join the team,” Baku begs. When Suho laughs it off, Baku falls to his knees, his hands rubbing together with the vigor of his excessive pleading. 

“Yah! Get up, dumbass!” Suho slaps at his hands. 

“Not until you join the team.”

“I’m not joining the team!” But there’s a bubble of laughter that’s rising to the surface, and he feels light and happy and wanted. It would probably be fun to join. He imagines it. Hyuntak probably takes it seriously, acting like he does with Juntae. Cursing and stern but kind, he’d probably be a good teammate. And Baku with his euphoriant fervor, his sociability, his strength, he’d be a leader Suho would gladly follow. It’d be fun. It could’ve been. In another life.

They’re on the cool concrete steps, sweating and refueling with energy drinks and water, sitting together in a line. The breeze lifts Suho’s hair from his forehead. Juntae leans lightly into his shoulder.

“It’s been weirdly quiet,” Hyuntak says. “I didn’t think those Union guys would back down so easily.” Suho agrees, it’s not usually how these types of things go based on his experience, but he’s torn between anticipating the next move and letting it go, accepting the gift for what it is. 

“It’s because I already took care of everything.” Baku smiles. His normal temperament is back from wherever he’d left it the night before. He lifts a hand to gesture to Eunjang and boasts: “It’s peaceful, isn’t it? Enjoy it!”

“Did you meet up with Na Baekjin?” Hyuntak asks, leaning over Suho and Juntae to stare at Baku.

“I didn’t, okay? And don’t worry about those things. No Union stuff or anything.” Juntae nods at Baku, but Suho can tell Hyuntak isn’t convinced. And neither is Suho.

The buzzing of Baku’s phone cuts off Hyuntak’s inevitable retort. He picks it up still smiling, but as the call goes on, he grows quiet, his face dropping slowly and then all at once. He doesn’t say anything more as he hangs up, spacing out with his somber face turned towards the ground.

“Is everything okay?” Hyuntak breaks the stretching silence.

“Yeah! Yeah, it’s all good.” He’s putting on an act again. “Something came up, so I better get going.” He slaps his hands on his knees and sits up, making a hasty retreat and ignoring Hyuntak’s confused shouting, his phone clutched tightly in his hand. They sit stunned in his absence. 

Baku is hiding something from them. Suho understands carrying a burden all alone, but he thought maybe they had an understanding, and that Baku could lean on someone besides himself. 

On the day of the fight with Seongje, Suho made a choice. Two paths before him. And he’d chosen, despite his intentions of peace promised to Sieun, the path that would have him defend his friends. And now Baku’s problems are his. And he won’t leave him to endure this on his own.

~

Baku disappears. It’s bad timing. Suho’s preparing to move, and without Baku, there’s an imminent threat, dread that he can feel in the air. And it’s not just him. He passes by conversation in the halls, students have noticed Baku’s not here, and if not him, who will stop The Union from taking over? 

His ‘no fighting’ sign is crossed out in black spray paint the next time Suho walks out of campus. It shouldn’t feel so much like an omen, but it does. Strong and ostensible. 

~

Suho’s room is starting to look bare. He’s already taken down his posters and packed away some of his MMA trophies into bubblewrap and boxes. It’s depressing, the blank walls and the shrinking personality.

He places another knickknack into a half-filled box, and from down the hall he hears incessant knocking on his front door. 

“Ahn Suho! Open up!” Yeah, that’s definitely Go Hyuntak. He opens to see Hyuntak with Juntae at his side, and at his appearance, they both smile widely.

“Suho!” 

“How’d you guys know my address?” 

“Ah…Well our homeroom teacher gave it to me—”

“That’s not important!” Hyuntak interrupts, elbowing Juntae in the side. “Suho, come on.”

“What? Where are we going?”

“Out!” Hyuntak smiles and Juntae nods beside him. But he doesn’t really need to be convinced. He lets his grandma know his plans, and grabs a jacket before joining them. Hyuntak leads him with a hand around his shoulder as they head down the streets of his neighborhood. 

Suho’s always loved nighttime. Even when he’s working, through the witching hour and into dawn, it feels like his time. Where he can do as he pleases. He remembers sitting with Sieun, a Red Bull for each of them, clinking their cans together like champagne. It was cold that night. But it’s colder out here on a basketball court a couple blocks from his place. There are lights surrounding them that twinkle like stars, and the real stars are abundant above them. There’s no moon tonight. But it’s bright enough.

Hyuntak and Suho are sitting on the stands overlooking the court, taking a break to watch Juntae practice his shooting. He’s getting better. Making more than he’s missing.

“You’re really moving then?” Hyuntak suddenly asks. There’s a stilted quality to his voice, like he’s practiced it. Maybe he still has hope that Suho will say no. 

“I think so. Yeah.” Hyuntak nods, looking down at his hands. Juntae makes another basket, but kicks the ball away on accident and chases after it.

“We haven’t known each other for very long, Suho-yah. But it feels like I have a lot of things to apologize for. And a lot to be thankful for, too.” His eyes are set gazing into the night, he doesn’t quite turn back to look at Suho, but it feels better this way. A burgeoning thing held together by their fragile distance. Something blooming that Suho has to cut, has to kill. “It sucks, to be honest.” It’s then that he finally meets Suho’s eyes. And there he keeps it. Suho finds sincerity in Hyuntak’s expression.

“Yeah. It does.” Because there is a lot, Suho would agree. A lot to regret. A lot to mourn. A lot to wish for. A lot he’s going to miss. It’s imperfect, but he thinks he fostered something good with these three. They’re quiet again, back to watching Juntae. Suho can’t help but think about their missing piece, who’s still radio silent. “What happened to Baku, Hyuntak?”

“It’s not the first time he’s gotten himself into shit like this,” he sighs. “Don’t worry about it, though, Suho. I’ll knock some sense into him when he gets back.” There’s a false confidence in his voice, and he’s back to avoiding his gaze. “Let’s play one more round.” He pats Suho on the shoulder and gets up, already correcting Juntae for his form. 

But Suho doesn’t join right away. He pulls out his phone from his pocket, and though he isn’t really expecting Baku to answer, he does.

“Where are you?” Suho asks as soon as the call connects. Even over the sounds of Juntae and Hyuntak playing basketball, laughing and shouting, Suho can hear Baku’s shaky breaths.

“It doesn’t matter.” His voice trembles, resignation and defeat in the details of his syllables. “I won’t cause you any more trouble, Suho.”

“Yah, Baku, that’s not what I meant.” Baku carries his guilt like a punishment. Suho knows how lonely that feels. Whatever he’s doing, or whatever he’s about to do is going to be a mistake forged from misguided shame. He’s scared for Baku, and is scrambling to say something that will resonate, that will bring him back, but Baku hangs up without another word. 

Suho’s left with a black screen, his own face staring back at him.

~

There’s a tree just outside his window. Sometimes when he can’t sleep, he’ll watch the swaying branches, study the curves and knobs of its bark, and listen to its whispering song as the wind rustles through. 

He stayed long enough to know this tree. It’s just a tree, he supposes. But he’d stayed long enough to know it. Why doesn’t anybody understand that? Why doesn’t anybody care?

It’s motionless now as he sits on his windowsill. He waits for it to move. He waits and waits.

“Hi, Suho.” Suho jolts at the voice. He hadn’t heard anything but the ghost of the tree’s melody. And Juntae is here, in his room, as if materialized out of thin air.

“Juntae? What are you doing?” 

“Can we talk?” Suho doesn’t have much to say. But he lets Juntae take him to a park, and they sit next to each other on the swings. Suho sways lightly and waits for Juntae. 

“We know you go see your friend in the hospital,” he starts, his voice barely there. “And we know what happened to him.” At just the mere allusion of Sieun, Suho’s muscles twitch with the want to reach over, arm out, drag Sieun behind him and shield him, since he’s small enough to hide in Suho’s shadow. And it hurts him all over, every single time, even now, when he’s not there to be protected. But Juntae isn’t threatening like Seongje, or mocking, or using Sieun as a bargaining chip. His eyes are set on Suho and they’re soft and sympathetic. And it doesn’t feel like pitying. “I just wanted to say that it’s not your fault, Suho.” 

Juntae’s heart is so tender, but Suho won’t listen to nonsense, even the well-meaning kind. 

“It is my fault.” 

“No it’s not.” Juntae’s eyebrows are furrowed, and the conviction in his tone is sharp and indignant. 

“They were after me, not Sieun. It was supposed to be me! It should’ve been me, I want it to be me!” 

“No. You don’t want it to be you,” Juntae cuts off his spiraling. “You wanted to protect him. He protected you instead. It’s not your fault that it happened. And it’s not Sieun’s fault.”

“He knew it wasn’t safe,” he laments. He’s tired of crying, but tears wet his cheeks all the same. 

“He must’ve known,” Juntae agrees. “But I think he had one thing on his mind, Suho, and I think you’d understand, because he’s the one thing on your mind, too. Isn’t he?” Juntae smiles soothingly, knowingly.

Sieun’s always with him. His Sieun, who is quiet, but has eyes so pure they speak all on their own, clear and deep and as beautiful as a glacial lake. And his Sieun’s funny, too. He’s not sure if anyone else ever noticed. His jabs at Suho’s habits, the unimpressed stares that judged but never for too long. Even when he fought, with pens and chairs and with the feral rage he kept bottled up in that tiny frame, it had all been endearing to Suho, his affection growing colorful and new like a garden, like springtime. And maybe Suho is just an affectionate person, because all he wanted to do was touch Sieun and be near him. And their friendship was only at the very beginning, at the very start, but Suho would miss Sieun when he wasn’t around, would reach for him and think about him.

And if they had had more time, Suho thinks Sieun would’ve returned that affection. He had just needed more time. They both deserved more time. Didn’t they?

“Yeah. Yeah, he is.” A tear falls down his cheek. 

“Think about if it had been you instead, Suho. If they had been after Sieun and you took his place. If it had been you in that coma and not him. You’d never blame him like you’re blaming yourself.” Juntae’s eyes are wet with his own tears. “You two care for each other and take care of each other. Even now.” He places a warm hand on Suho’s shoulder. “It’s not your fault, Suho. It’s not your fault.”

~

“Grandma.” His face is puffy, and his voice is thick with emotion he can’t deny anymore. He wants to scream the words, but more tears fall, and all he can do is choke out his conviction. “I don’t want to leave.”

“Suho…” She looks so sad.

“I have people that I care about here. They care about me, too.” He doesn’t know how to stop crying. He doesn’t know if he wants to. There is so much grief spilling from his soul. “Why do I have to leave? Why do I have to leave them? I can’t lose anybody else. Why do I keep losing everyone, Grandma?”

Suho feels like a frayed wire, raw and broken and defunct as she holds him tightly and hushes his cries. He thinks of his parents, of Yeongi, of all his new friends. And he thinks of Sieun. He clutches on to his grandma, afraid of falling apart. 

“We’ll stay, Suho.” She cries with him. “We’ll stay.”

Chapter Text

“Get out of my way! Move! Yah, Ahn Suho!” Hyuntak yanks the door into Suho’s first class wide open, skidding to a halt in front of where he’s sitting with Juntae. “Is it true?” He asks, breathless. The tone of his voice is careful but open, as if he doesn’t want to hope, but does anyway. “Are you staying?” 

And even Suho can’t stop the smile that finds itself on his face. He nods.

“Yes!” Hyuntak exclaims, grabbing Juntae’s hands as they celebrate, both grinning from ear to ear. After the emotional strain of the past few days, inundated with stress and strife, this little scene of his friends and their joy is a breath of fresh air.  

But again, the hole created in Baku’s absence is nagging, painful, and Suho’s heard concerning rumors that the Union has Eunjang’s top dog now. And what can he do when Baku won’t answer his calls or texts anymore, when he won’t come to school, when he seems to have dropped off the face of the planet? Who knows what Na Baekjin is making him do, what he’s enduring for the sake of his friends. 

“I heard Baku joined the Union.” Hyuntak’s smile slides off his face. “It was because of us, wasn’t it?”

“He won’t pick up my calls,” Hyuntak says. He sounds dejected. It must be harder for him, knowing Baku better than most. Not being able to bring him back, to talk some sense into him like he’d promised Suho he would. 

“Mine neither,” Juntae adds.

“You know where he lives, right?” He asks Hyuntak. Suho doesn’t remember the way, too disjointed to guard the memory like he normally could. 

“Yeah?”

“Then let’s go get him.”

~

Hyuntak leads them to Baku’s house after school. It sits high on a hill, a long stretch of rising altitude through quiet residential streets. 

“It must be tough for Baku,” Juntae huffs, “to climb this every day.”

“That’s why Baku has the highest stamina I’ve ever seen.” Hyuntak says in between panting breaths. Suho knows what it’s like, climbing up hills and flights upon flights of stairs, up and down and up and down, a blur of steps as he sprints to make a delivery. It builds muscle, it builds mental fortitude. He tries to picture Baku trudging up here on his own every day, growing stronger with each step. 

“It’s this one.” They turn up a small walkway and Hyuntak reaches for the door, knocking and calling for Baku. But he told them on the way here that he didn’t think he’d be home, so his posture is already slouched in disappointment. 

There’s a clatter behind them, and an older man appears from the side street, hands in his pockets, a large bag slung over his shoulder. He stares at them as Hyuntak waves stiltedly. 

“What are you brats doing here?”

“Hey, Mr. Park. Have you been well?” Hyuntak gives him a smile that’s a little too grimace-like to fool anyone.

“What the hell do you think?” Baku’s dad sighs and begrudgingly brings them inside. Last time he was here, Suho had rushed out without observing. It’s not too messy inside, folded blankets on a dresser and coats hanging on a rack near the entrance. A lot of brown with spots of color. 

Mr. Park gestures for them to sit as he pours himself a shot of soju. He downs it before a word can be spoken, slamming the glass on the table and pushing it to Hyuntak. 

“When was the last time Humin was here?” Suho asks when the stuffy silence stretches on for too long. “Has it been a while?”

“I should’ve beat more sense into him.” He shakes his head, ignoring Suho’s question entirely. “That brat is crazy. He’s just like his mother, I can never tell what that idiot is thinking.” He pours more soju into the glass. Hyuntak eyes it warily. “When you see him next, tell him to either die out there or come home and learn how to fry chicken.” 

This man doesn’t look like Baku. He’s small and surly, his gaze cold. Who did Baku get his fierce kindness from? Because it’s not the person in front of them, who’s already treating their concern for his son as an imposition.

“Did he do something to you?” Suho snaps.  

“What?”

“He’s not crazy and he’s not an idiot.”

“You little shit–”

“Yah! He’s a good friend. He cares for everyone. Everything he does, he does for others. Could you do that? Could you make those sacrifices?”

“I let you into my house and you’re talking to me like that?” Suho’s livid. Here they are, clambering to find Baku, who’s most certainly in danger, and his own father couldn’t care less if he lives or dies.

“Hey, guys, let’s just go,” Hyuntak cuts in. “Thank you for the…” Hyuntak glances at the shot glass. “Thank you.” He urges all of them out, pushing at Juntae who lingers to bow slightly at Baku’s dad. The door clicks shut and Hyuntak takes a deep breath. 

“I knew we shouldn’t have gone there. Every time his dad got drunk, Baku would come and stay at my place.”
“He was scary,” Juntae shudders. 

What a waste of time. They’re not any closer to locating Baku. All they managed to do was piss off Baku’s dad and find out he’s an asshole.  

“Why does Na Baekjin need Humin?” The question has been bothering Suho, taking shape in the shadows of this growing mystery of Baku. 

“You know, they used to be fucking BFFs before.”

“What happened?” Since Baku wouldn’t lend him the story, maybe Hyuntak will.

“Baekjin used to be a nerd. Couldn’t even look other kids in the eye. Then Baku taught Baekjin everything he knew about fighting.” The pieces slot together, all of their intricate edges merge and the picture starts to form. It was Na Baekjin Baku was talking about all those times, at the museum, in his bedroom, with all the unceasing guilt in his gaze. Na Baekjin was the one who Baku taught to fight and the one who hurt Hyuntak’s knee irreparably. The significance of Baku joining the Union is even greater than he’d thought. His sacrifice even more profound. 

It strengthens Suho’s resolve. They have to find Baku. 

~

If Baku’s not at home, and he’s not at school, then he must be staying with the Union. And if that’s the case, then they’re screwed. None of them know how the Union operates and from where, not past the basics, past the few things they’ve gleaned along the way. It pains Suho to admit, but there’s one person he can think to ask, someone with an obsessive interest in the Union. 

Juntae knows where Hyoman hangs out, and that’s where they find him, blended into the mess perfectly like he belongs there, cocooned under a blanket on the couch. Suho’s nose wrinkles. Hyoman’s so pathetic, it’s loathsome.

“Yah, Hyoman.” Suho kicks at his curled up form. 

“What?” He mumbles under the blanket. 

“Baku joined the Union.”

“So what?”

“Any ideas where a person could find a Union member?”

“How the hell should I know? And even if I did know, why the hell would I tell you?”

“I’m hearing some attitude,” Hyuntak takes a rag from the back of a chair and wrings it into a whip. “Tell us while we’re still playing nice, okay?”

“Fuck you!” Hyoman jumps up from under his blanket, face red, spittle flying. “Still acting tough even when Baku abandoned you!” Hyuntak jolts forward and Hyoman flinches back. They face off in silence for a beat too long. 

“Okay,” Hyuntak relents. “My bad.” And despite their collective disdain for Hyoman, Suho’s grateful Hyuntak knows they need his cooperation. 

“Asshole,” Hyoman grumbles. “I don’t know, he’s probably at Daesung Motorcycle or polishing bowling balls. Okay?”

“Daesung Motorcycle?”

“You don’t even know that? Christ,” he scoffs. Then he seems to realize that he has something to lord over them. He perks up and his voice changes, dropping his moody pout. He was right, Hyoman wants to talk about this. “Na Baekjin’s the manager at the bowling alley, but it’s just a money laundering front. The owner manipulates the sales and hires Union guys as part-timers to blow up their pay on paper. The profit he makes from Daesung is illegal so he launders everything he gets from there, too.” It explains the specific crowd Suho saw when he’d been taken there by Seongje. 

“What do they do with Daesung Motorcycle?” Hyuntak asks, arms crossed. 

“Those crazy pricks steal every kind of bike you can think of. They swap the license plates, repaint them, and change the parts. Then they sell them as unregistered vehicles.” This is a much larger operation than Suho would’ve thought. “Here’s the fun part. They keep a list of everything that they’ve sold and use the copies of keys they’ve made and steal everything back.”

“What?” Hyuntak frowns. “That makes no sense. Someone would’ve called the police if that happened.”

“Police?” Hyoman laughs. “You dumbass, how would they make a report? They only sell by cash or burner bank accounts. And the business has gotta be tied to the fucking mob or something, because the police always seem to turn a blind eye.”

“And why do these Union guys work for Baekjin?”

“It’s so simple! He pays them good money. Think about it. They make a couple million won just by running some fucking errands! It makes sense that Baku joined since he’s dirt poor.” That sets Hyuntak off, he grabs the rag he’d threatened Hyoman with before and chucks it at him. 

“Do you want to fucking die? You don’t know shit about him, asshole!”

“Let’s go,” Suho says, grabbing Hyuntak’s shoulder. Hyoman’s not worth the hassle. “We got what we came for.”

“Yah!” Hyoman shouts. “What are you three up to, anyway? Going to beat up Na Baekjin?” He stands from the couch and approaches them. “I also have some unresolved business with him, so why don’t we all team up, huh? I can round up some guys and we can catch him when he’s alone and fuck his shit up.”

“Hyoman, why don’t you go back to napping on the couch, hm?” Suho walks away first, with Hyuntak right behind him. 

“Should we grab one of those Union guys and get the address of Daesung Motorcycle out of him?” Hyuntak suggests as Juntae catches up with them outside. “I have a pretty good feeling that Baku will be there.”

“Then they’d know we were coming.” The image of Hyuntak and Juntae bloodied on that rooftop is a new nightmare for Suho. Neither of them should be fighting or getting into unnecessary trouble. “Don’t do anything,” he implores them. “I have something in mind.” And the sooner he does it, the better. He gives Hyuntak a pat on the arm, Juntae a smile, and heads for the bowling alley. 

“Can you at least tell us what you’re thinking?” Hyuntak yells after him. Suho pretends not to hear that. “You expect us to just sit here?”

“Yes!” He shouts back. They better. He can take care of this.

~

Suho might not have remembered his way to Baku’s house, but the way to the bowling alley is seared into his mind, thanks to the slow trek led by Seongje. It’s much quieter this time, just a handful of Union members huddled together inside. They don’t even seem to notice him. 

“Where’s Na Baekjin?” A couple of heads lift at Suho’s question. 

“Hyung!” One walks over to a pair playing a card game. They’re both tall, but one has more muscle on him, a more somber look on his face. Juntae had mentioned a few names a good while back, and he wonders if these are the other two. They have that aloof impression that Suho’s seen in Seongje and Baekjin. Arrogant, lazy authority. “This kid’s looking for Baekjin hyung.”
“Who?” 

“The asshole who beat up Geum Seongje.”

“You’re the fucker who beat up Seongje?” He drops his cards and comes closer with a smile on his face. His eyes are unique, one open wider than the other, appraising him. “I’ve been so curious about you. The pleasure’s all mine.” He offers Suho his hand to shake, but Suho slaps it away.

“Seongje was last week’s trash. Where the fuck is Baekjin?”

“Why are you asking?”

“I have something I need to say to him, but nothing to say to you.” The bulkier of the two tries to lunge at Suho, but he’s stopped by the other. 

“You must be crazy,” he chuckles. “Baekjin will be here soon, so feel free to stick around. Play some games if you’re bored.” 

Suho sits at a table closest to the stairs, and the Union members go back to ignoring him as the minutes tick by. Their conversations are vapid and dull, idle talk of girls and money and school, and Suho’s bored to tears by the time the leaner one of the duo answers the phone. Baekjin’s name is mentioned, and the call is brief, orders of some sort, Suho assumes, because the two are swiftly heading for the exit.

“Baekjin’s coming,” he tells Suho as they pass by. His eyes stay on him until he can’t hold the angle anymore, and there is mirth that Suho finds there when he stares back, just a small dose of it, diluted in the hostility of his gaze. He’s gloating. He knows something Suho doesn’t and wants Suho to know it. 

It takes far too long for Baekjin to finally appear after they’ve left. His languid pace carries him down the stairs, and he’s dressed in his Yeoil uniform, a backpack on his shoulders. It’s unsettling, thinking of Na Baekjin sitting in a classroom, being an obedient student. The remaining Union members greet him with bows that he ignores. 

“Leave us,” he orders them. They scatter, and then it’s just Suho and Baekjin. 

“I thought we’d never meet again,” Baekjin says. He sets his backpack on the seat next to him and sits across from Suho.  

“Something was bothering me. I hear a lot of bullshit around town, but when I heard you’re a top student with a bunch of scholarships, it got me thinking. There had to be a reason someone like you would make money illegally through the Union, playing crime boss. I don’t know what that reason is. But I bet Baku does, doesn’t he?” Baekjin scoffs at Suho, turning his head with a little laugh. 

“Are you implying that Baku knows my secret and I’m only doing this because I’m scared he’ll tell?”

“Nah. But he’s the only one who knows everything about you. Isn’t that right? So you think of him as your only friend. But does Baku think the same? I thought he made it pretty clear that he fucking hates your guts.” The shot hits its target. Baekjin becomes ice and rage. His frown deepens into something gruesome, and he pulls out his phone from his pocket. He tilts it to the side and his thumbs slap against the screen, angry, emphatic. He slides it to Suho’s side of the table. It’s CCTV footage, the date and time in the corner, and Suho’s heart sinks when he realizes he’s looking at live footage of Juntae and Hyuntak, rifling through Union papers at what he assumes is Daesung Motorcycle. Fuck.

“My boys will be there soon,” Baekjin tells him. His voice is even and unaffected. This part is just business to him, only, there’s a fair bit of creeping satisfaction in his next words. “You told me to keep my eyes open. So I did. I kept careful watch.” His smile returns, but it’s a wicked thing now. “Last time, Baku rushed all the way to save you guys on that rooftop. Do you think you can do the same?” Suho’s gonna kill this fucker, too. He reels back for a punch, but Na Baekjin is no Geum Seongje. He had a different teacher. Baekjin counters before Suho can blink, and the hit stuns Suho. Baekjin’s fueled by something much more dangerous than Seongje’s twisted whimsy. 

Baekjin’s eyes are rimmed red with hatred as he looms over Suho, breathing hard, salivating at the idea of ripping Suho to shreds, savoring the moments before bloodshed. When footsteps descend from the stairs, Baekjin reluctantly turns, and from behind Baekjin’s wide shoulders, Suho sees Baku, who’s frozen at the sight before him.

“Why are you here?” He asks Suho, his eyes fearful, his voice shaking. When Suho doesn’t answer, the fear turns to anger. “I said what are you doing here?” He stomps over to Suho and grabs him by the collar of his jacket, pulling him forward. “Let’s go.” He drags Suho up the stairs, pace brisk, his grasp tightening before he tosses him out of the bowling alley and onto the street.

“Baku, what the fuck?”

“Why the hell would you come here?” Baku yells. His voice is splitting with fury. It’s such a stark difference from his normal volume that’s softened by his kind warmth. He sounds transformed. 

“Baku, Hyuntak and Juntae are at Daesung Motorcycle right now. Baekjin just sent Union guys after them. We have to go. ” Baku stares at him with frustration, horrified tears forming in his eyes. 

“Fuck! Fuck! ” he yells, pulling at his hair. He paces in a circle, agitated energy like he can’t decide what to do. 

“Park Humin,” Baekjin calls, appearing at the entrance behind them. The tension is heavy between the two, the tangible weight of the shared years between them. 

“Ahn Suho, get out of here.” Baku looks wrecked. His hair in disarray, his eyes wet and broken, and though he’s usually a formidable figure, he looks awfully young and lost. “I’ll be fine. Just get out of here.” Suho doesn’t want to leave him, but he doesn’t have the time to convince him to come with, to urge him from Baekjin’s side. With one last shared look, Suho takes off towards Daeseung Motorcycle, leaving Baku behind.  

~

Suho’s not gonna make it. He’s not going to make it, and Hyuntak and Juntae will be outnumbered, ambushed, and history will repeat itself. Suho’s same shortcomings claiming new victims. He couldn’t save Sieun, and he can’t save his friends. 

He keeps running despite the inevitability. Through the busy streets, pushing past shoulders and slipping in between the crowds. He races towards an intersection when he feels his phone vibrate in his hands. 

“Hello. Is this Ahn Suho?”

“Yes,” he pants, his heart beating in his throat.
“I’m calling from Sungang University Hospital. Patient Yeon Sieun is in critical condition. I couldn’t reach any of his primary contacts and found your number in the visitor log…”

Her voice fades. And everything shrinks into naught. What was the point of it all? He visited Sieun as much as he could, talking to him as though he were awake. He tried to keep the promises he made to him. Suho carried Sieun’s memory in the caged palms of his hands, so he could live for Sieun, with Sieun, so that when he woke up, there would be a space for him waiting. But is Sieun going to die? Is he going to die as Suho stands in the middle of a crosswalk, far away from his hospital room? Is he going to die alone?

The truck comes at him in slow motion. It turns the corner and the headlights blind Suho all at once, and even with all the time in the world, with the nurse’s voice in his ear, he lets it come. And he lets the darkness come with it. If Sieun is not on this planet, then he will meet him in the next one.