17; infinite; that ever i was born to set it right; part 1
that ever i was born to set it right | r for mature situations (spoiler:mental instability, time travel, character death)
hoya/sunggyu
8.7k words
oneshot length, split into two posts
modern magic au. a heavily revised repost of my 2013 infinitesanta fic for eightninetwo. please enjoy :)
They can only be rivals because that is what they are: the river and the ocean at its end, the inhale and the resulting sigh, the rock and the wind that whittles until only dust remains. Sunggyu, always the responsible one, the dot to Howon's run-on sentences, and Howon, the rushing current, the surprised breath, the crumbling stone-the only one who can catch Sunggyu as he falls.
But the one who stumbles is him, and Sunggyu always slips out of his reach.
The time is out of joint-O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Howon thinks that they all look ridiculous like this, a handful of magic students lined up on a field, pointing dead branches at targets barely a meter away and somehow combusting their own wands instead.
Woohyun, ever the natural, gets the hang of remotely setting things on fire fast, but many times he misjudges his aim and roasts a tree outside the training grounds instead. Next to him, Sungyeol sets the entire length of his own jacket sleeve ablaze, warranting immediate dousing action from their instructor.
Even then, at least they’re getting results. Try as he might to channel his inner magic through the wand or send burning anger through his glare, Howon isn’t getting anything.
The instructor tells him that it’s alright, and that most students don’t get it right in the first week anyway. It’s just that it’s embarrassing when a clash in schedules means they share the training grounds with an art class four years above them-the upperclassmen are making statues out of delicate threads of ice, and one of them even recreates Michelangelo’s Pieta.
Two weeks later, most of his classmates have already set themselves on fire one way or another. Howon consoles himself with the thought that at least he hasn’t given the upperclassmen any reason to laugh at him yet.
They do watch, however, when the instructor calls him to a quieter corner of the field to have a word with him.
“Howon,” Hyowan begins with a sigh, “I’m afraid that if this continues until next week, you might have to leave this college.”
Howon lowers his eyes to his wand. “I don’t know that I’m doing wrong,” he admits, fist clenching tight around the wood.
Hyowan rubs his chin. “I don’t think it’s the wand, since most students start with wands as their mediums… And if you didn’t have the aptitude you wouldn’t have been accepted in the first place.” He turns to Gonam, the instructor for the fifth year class, next to him. “What do you think?”
“Did you let him try other mediums?” Gonam answers. He takes a marble out of his pocket and lifts it to the air with a careful gust of wind, spinning it in small circles inches above his fingertip. “Couldn’t use a wand myself, but then I tried gems and I could cast magic just fine.”
Hyowan nods and tears a sheet of paper from his pad, giving it to Howon. “Paper’s a pretty common medium, why not give it a try? Pin it onto your target and channel your magic through it.”
Then an unfamiliar voice-“What if it’s because he doesn’t need a medium?”
Hyowan’s shoulders jump.
There’s a man perched on a tree branch above, looking down at them with a thin smile. His baggy white jacket, loud red hair, and casual slouch say ‘student’ instead of ‘instructor’, but when he leans forward and off the branch, powerful gusts immediately gather beneath him to ease his fall.
“Hello, Sunggyu,” Hyowan greets, taking a few steps back. His hands have turned stiff at his sides. “Please give a warning when you… show up from the sky.”
Gonam nods. “And about not requiring a medium, I doubt that’d be the case. Not every kid who can’t use a medium is like you.”
If Sunggyu notices the disdain in Gonam’s voice, he doesn’t react to it. He turns to Howon instead. “Try the paper thing first. If that doesn’t work, just imagine the target already on fire and channel your magic into that image.”
“Sunggyu!” Hyowan says, the most admonishing Howon’s ever heard him.
“What, is it forbidden?” Sunggyu meets Hyowan’s eyes, then Gonam’s. His head is tilted as if it’s an earnest question, but he ends with a breath that sounds like laughter.
When neither of them answer, Sunggyu gives Howon a thumbs up. Then he turns back around to mingle with the upperclassmen. They laugh and pat his back to greet him, but Gonam crosses his arms, and Hyowan is looking between Sunggyu and Howon with a slight frown.
A few days later, Howon is taking the same accelerated set of classes as Kim Sunggyu.
“Nice to see you again,” Sunggyu says, offering a hand.
Howon’s not sure if Sunggyu’s being sarcastic, but he shakes the offered hand and smiles back anyway. “You too.”
that ever i was born to set it right
part 1
This placid part of their acquaintanceship lasts for two hours, not even making it out of their first Magic Theory lecture together. Howon ends up driving their instructor out with a barrage of questions about the magic-to-medium exchange system-the very same system that apparently doesn’t apply to himself and Sunggyu.
“Yes, yes, go expose your lack of a medium even more,” Sunggyu says, the two of them seated on a bench at the gym. “We’re the trendsetters of unlimited magic.”
They’re having a Defense class right now, but Sunggyu’s busy upending his jug, watching the water flow out and gather at the jug’s mouth like a balloon. Howon realizes that his own wristwatch has stopped ticking-Sunggyu is bending time just to play with drinking water.
Howon grunts. “I didn’t mean to make her angry,” he replies, watching their classmates on the training mats. The one-on-one sparring matches are fascinating, but more for the variety of mediums everyone uses and not the actual fight; only Sungmin and Yunho look like they know hand-to-hand combat, so Howon watches them. “It’s just weird that we don’t need a medium when they’re needed to keep the world’s magic balance, or something.”
The flaming bracelets around Yunho’s wrists exhaust themselves into ashes. He pulls a new one on as he lunges forward, and Sungmin matches him by pulling a toothpick from his own pocket. It turns into a crystalline of ice spear just as Yunho makes impact-his fist is wrapped in flames, and they barely blink at the hiss of steam rising between them.
“It’s weird,” Sunggyu says in agreement. With a careful hand, he gathers the water floating before him back into his bottle. Then he unfreezes time, tosses the water into the air, and stops all over again; the spray freezes in a curtain, and the sunlight shines prismatic shapes by their feet. Sunggyu traces the shape of a star into the droplets.
“And you call me a show off,” Howon says, when it becomes apparent to him that Sunggyu’s doing it for two of their female classmates watching from the corner of the hall. “So you can use time magic, while everyone else gets Captain Planet elements. Cool story.”
“Ha, ha.” Sunggyu pushes the water back into his bottle and stands up. “Want to start sparring?” he says, which Howon’s sure actually means, ‘want to fight?’
The moment he stands, the instructor starts clearing a fourth of the mats out, relocating displaced pairs of students with frantic steps.
Howon has no reason to refuse, following Sunggyu over to the open space and stretching on the way. “Sure,” he says, grin sharp.
Sunggyu hums.
The match ends a few minutes later.
There are many reasons why Howon’s prone on his side right now, arm raised in the direction of Sunggyu’s face and ready to cast a spell. He knows he lost because that one second he needs to brew lightning in his palm can stretch on for forever with Sunggyu’s magic-Sunggyu, who has been in this college a year longer and is thus a year more skilled, standing over Howon with a halo of glowing spears all aimed at Howon’s neck. Sunggyu, who is a huge cheater for moving ungodly fast because of his time magic, forcing the reflexes Howon had learned from martial arts to the limit and completely surpassing them.
Howon notices small details of ivy sprawled across Sunggyu’s floating spears. He looks up at Sunggyu’s face for a few moments, breaths struggling to gather themselves together. The beginnings of a smirk are lingering in Sunggyu’s curved eyes.
Sunggyu steps back once their classmates begin cheering, and his spears fold out of existence. “Good game.” He offers Howon a hand.
Howon lets himself be pulled up. “It lasted three minutes,” he replies, trying not to frown.
“Don’t think about that,” Sunggyu answers, slight pant in his voice. He’s catching his breath as well. “You’re really good, it’s just that your spells all look like they came from Mortal Kombat. Feel free to experiment-we can afford to anyway.” He breathes out a laugh. “Spend a year in this college, and maybe we’ll be even.”
Even, he says. Howon will make sure of it. “Yeah, maybe.”
Later on, Howon learns from Dongwoo that before him, the person to last the longest in a fight against Sunggyu was Kim Jongwan, their instructor in Defense. The match lasted thirty seconds.
“You and Sunggyu seem pretty close now,” Woohyun tells him over lunch. “He’s popular, and a member of the student council-I’m glad you didn’t forget us mortals.”
“Why did I ever remember,” Howon answers. Next to him, Sungyeol protests, and Woohyun only snorts.
“Couldn’t help it,” Howon continues, swallowing a bite. “We have the same thing with our magic, and most of our classmates are older than us. Accelerated classes and all.”
“The thing with you not needing a medium, right?” Sungyeol sighs. “They’re letting us try other mediums in class, now. Just when I get used to the wand, too.”
“You can stick with the wand if you want to, you know.” Woohyun grins. “Hey, you know what my medium is? Watch this.” He inhales a breath and begins whispering a song, a lilting baby, my love, beautiful that has Howon grimacing and Sungyeol laughing at the illusory rose that Woohyun forms in his fingers.
“Your medium’s song?” Howon says, staring at the rose until Woohyun grins and lets it fade into the air.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
Sungyeol adds, “He sang The Day the Sun Rises earlier and set the tree outside the classroom on fire.”
“Hey!” Woohyun gulps from his iced tea and nearly slams his cup back down. “At least the last time I accidentally set something on fire was half a year ago, during our first day in Spellcasting!” He leans closer to Howon and stage whispers, “He blew a gust of wind beneath our Enchanment prof’s skirt last meeting. Now you know why Miss Boa was in such a bad mood-”
“It was an accident!” Sungyeol swallows and hurriedly fixes his gaze on Howon instead. “Hey, so can Sunggyu travel in time? I’d like to pass myself the answers for the quiz earlier.”
Howon only raises a brow at him. “The most he’ll do is stop time or make things slower and faster. He’s not sure if can travel, but he says it might cause a paradox, so he won’t.”
Then from above them-“Talking about me again?”
Woohyun yelps, and Sungyeol’s coffee nearly spills over the table.
Howon only looks up. Sunggyu is sitting on a branch of the tree Howon is leaning against. When he jumps down, hair and jacket fluttering in the breeze that catches him, Sungyeol and Woohyun look simultaneously alarmed and star-struck.
“Spying on me again?” Howon answers.
Sunggyu lands on the grass without a whisper, taking the time to wave at Howon’s friends before speaking. “No, principal’s looking for you. I just knew you’d screw up someday.”
“Wow, thanks,” Howon answers, rising to his feet. He gives Sungyeol and Woohyun the last of his lunch and bids them goodbye before making his way to the principal’s office.
Sunggyu falls into step next to him.
“Did the principal tell you to follow after me, too?” Howon says, not breaking his stride.
When Sunggyu doesn’t snap back, instead lowering his gaze in thought, Howon slows down to turn his attention to him.
Finally Sunggyu looks up, a grim set to his frown. “Whatever he tells you,” he begins, “don’t let go of your magic, alright?” And before Howon can get a word in, he leaves.
Lee Jungyeop greets Howon upon his arrival. “Prodigy number two,” he says with a smile, taking a small box from one of his drawers. “Welcome. Take a seat.”
Howon does, hands loosely balled in his lap.
He gets the usual round of ‘and how was your time here so far’ check-up questions. Howon has an idea why he’s being engaged in such useless conversation, so he keeps his shoulders rigid and his eyes alert. After a few minutes, Jungyeop seems to give up on that and starts toying around with the tiny box in his hands instead.
“I’d like you and Sunggyu to keep tabs on each other,” Jungyeop finally says.
Howon can’t help but squint.
Jungyeop chuckles before continuing, opening the box in his hands to reveal a pair of simple stud earrings. “It may seem a bit strange, but as much as the two of you are excellent students, you have to admit that you both are, well, free spirits. I figured neither of you would mind these communicators.”
“Communicators,” Howon repeats, pointing down at the earrings, “sir.”
With a nod, Jungyeop pushes the box over. “You guys can talk to each other and to any of the faculty units, since we use a similar system of enchanted gems to relay messages.”
“So I put one on, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Is the other one for Sunggyu?”
“Yes.”
Which is why he’s meeting up with Sunggyu after lights-out, giving him an earring and wondering why he’s blushing.
“Is this a private proposal, or some kind of clandestine affair?” Sunggyu says, spinning a ball of light into the air.
“No,” Howon immediately insists, jamming his hands into his hoodie’s pockets and trying to will down the strange embarrassment rising to his face. “Principal told me to give it to you. They’re communicators; we can talk to each other and to whoever’s in the faculty units.”
“Don’t you guys already have my cellphone number,” Sunggyu says. His eyes trail up to the matching earring on Howon, then to the one nestled in his palm. He puts it on as he speaks. “They’re tracking devices.”
Embarrassment forgotten, Howon looks at him.
Sunggyu waves his hand once in the air, and visible threads of magic stream out from their earrings. They lead to several places across campus, one of the destinations being the principal’s office, but most of the threads end in various rooms of the teacher’s residences. Howon’s chest hollows, disquieted.
He’s startled out of this revelation by Sunggyu, who is forming a knife of deep blue fire in his hands. “Would you care if I,” Sunggyu begins, gesturing at the threads and moving the knife back and forth.
Before Howon can shake his head, Sunggyu is already severing the threads of magic flowing from own his earring with an easy sweep of his arm. He repeats the process with Howon’s own earring after a glance at Howon’s face and a pause. The faint light on each cut string dies out as it falls, and then all the threads are fading away, not leaving a single trace.
“Missed one,” Howon says, pointing at the one connecting their two earrings together.
Sunggyu only glances at it before waving his hand once more, rendering the thread invisible. “I’m leaving that so you can at least spy on me more discreetly.”
Howon quirks a brow. “Weren’t you the one doing the spying?”
“And you’re hopeless without me, this situation already case in point,” Sunggyu continues, ignoring him, “so you can call on me with this if you need me to save your ass.”
“I can save my own ass, thanks.”
“Yeah? Well, did you know that your dorm manager is going to open that window behind you within ten seconds?”
“What?”
Dongwoo’s first reaction to the story is laughter.
“Thanks for the support,” Howon says, in the middle of weighing a bowl of featherdust. “Didn’t you say this was three grams?”
“You have to put the empty bowl there and set the scale to zero first,” Sunggyu replies from next to them, reaching over to take the bowl despite Howon’s protests. “And you’re supposed to use something small, like a watch glass, when you’re weighing on an analytical balance.”
“Yeah-hey!” Howon reaches for the bowl, but Sunggyu weaves past his attempts at retrieval as he leaves the ingredients inventory and returns to the working area. Finally he catches up to Sunggyu when the other man stops next to a desk. “Weigh your own potion ingredients!”
“This is your potion,” Sunggyu says, still not returning the bowl. He’s staring into the flask on Howon’s desk and shaking his head at what he sees. “Why did they even accelerate you?”
Howon leers at him. “The same reason they accelerated you.”
Dongwoo raises his palms out. “Guys-”
Sunggyu doesn’t reply, abruptly shoving the bowl back into Howon’s hands and crossing his arms.
Howon raises a brow right back.
“Your potion?” Sunggyu says, gesturing to the flask.
After giving Sunggyu a look, Howon faces his desk. He picks up a mini-spatula and begins scooping the featherdust into the flask. He’s gotten every ingredient down, he’s sure-crushed lizardscale, white moteberry juice, and a few other things. There’s no way he’s gotten this wrong.
Sunggyu throws up his arms and steps forward to grasp onto Howon’s wrists. “If this was a practical test, you would’ve been handed a forty out of a hundred.”
But all Howon can register is that Sunggyu’s hair smells like melon shampoo.
Howon jerks away. He feels lightheaded as Sunggyu guides Howon’s right hand into placing the mini-spatula back on the tray. “Could you not-”
“Honestly,” Sunggyu says, bending Howon’s fingers into closing around a glass funnel instead. “You’re hopeless without me.”
Howon’s mouth shuts on its own.
After positioning the funnel in Howon’s grip above the flask, and the bowl at an angle next to it, Sunggyu finally lets go. He has that self-satisfied look on him again.
Howon’s not having any of it, dumping the bowl’s contents into the funnel with great anger. “You could have just told me what to do!”
“But you never listen to what I say!”
“Where did you even get that idea? You’re just making excuses.”
“What are you even talking about?”
Dongwoo looks like he’s about to collapse into laughter again. “Sunggyu, your hair is on fire,” he says, grinning wide while struggling to catch his breath. Sunggyu jerks back to dump water on himself, then tightens his lips like he immediately regrets his drenched clothes and mop-like hair. He gives Howon a look.
Howon only smiles. Suddenly his potion smells like it’s burning.
Sunggyu doesn’t attend classes for the next few days.
Dongwoo doesn’t seem very concerned, despite Sunggyu not showing up to their dorm room either. “He did this a lot last year. I think the last time he escaped like this was in the third week of classes.”
The third week of classes. That was when Howon was accelerated.
When Howon’s sure that Sungyeol is asleep, he thinks of a string of light and reaches for Sunggyu’s thoughts. You missed Dongwoo enchanting a pizza slice and turning it into some pepperoni animal that moved like a lizard, is the first thing he says. Then, at a loss, he adds, If you don’t come back, I’m gonna spar with Inguk instead.
A week later they find Sunggyu dead in the greenhouse, a building of glass standing a fair distance away from the main building.
The teachers don’t let anyone enter, sealing up the glass dome with an enchantment. It lets in sunlight, but Howon and the rest of the students outside only see darkness, swallowing the silhouettes of their instructors and throwing a shadow over the last glimpse of Sunggyu they’ll ever get.
Woohyun, the student council secretary, is called to the greenhouse along with the other council members. He gives Howon one last look before turning away, disappearing into the building as well.
It’s hours later, with most of the students back in their dorms, when Woohyun’s head peeks out from the greenhouse doors. He calls Howon over with his hand. Howon immediately enters.
Vaguely, Howon registers Siwon, their student council president, approaching to block his way. But when Woohyun shakes his head, Siwon backs off, and then the few staff present start packing up whatever it is they brought inside-instruments, cameras, lights to illuminate a terrible scene for documentation. They’re all standing in quiet, broken lines around him. Everything feels strange, like a big, elaborate joke he hasn’t heard the punchline for yet.
Sunggyu’s body is lying where the each of the greenhouse’s stone paths intersect, right beneath the very center of the glass dome.
Howon finds himself standing as close as he can, shoes at the edge of a puddle of red. At this distance, he can’t even reach Sunggyu without getting blood on himself. It’s strange to be suddenly reminded like this, a death among things that wilt. Everyone is slowly dying. Sunggyu just had it faster.
Sunggu’s earring lies shattered next to him, but Howon hears Sunggyu’s voice in his thoughts, loud and clear. Find him, Sunggyu says, through the gaping cut that runs from his side to his throat. His blood speaks with silence. Find the one who killed me.
part 2
hoya/sunggyu
8.7k words
oneshot length, split into two posts
modern magic au. a heavily revised repost of my 2013 infinitesanta fic for eightninetwo. please enjoy :)
They can only be rivals because that is what they are: the river and the ocean at its end, the inhale and the resulting sigh, the rock and the wind that whittles until only dust remains. Sunggyu, always the responsible one, the dot to Howon's run-on sentences, and Howon, the rushing current, the surprised breath, the crumbling stone-the only one who can catch Sunggyu as he falls.
But the one who stumbles is him, and Sunggyu always slips out of his reach.
The time is out of joint-O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!
Howon thinks that they all look ridiculous like this, a handful of magic students lined up on a field, pointing dead branches at targets barely a meter away and somehow combusting their own wands instead.
Woohyun, ever the natural, gets the hang of remotely setting things on fire fast, but many times he misjudges his aim and roasts a tree outside the training grounds instead. Next to him, Sungyeol sets the entire length of his own jacket sleeve ablaze, warranting immediate dousing action from their instructor.
Even then, at least they’re getting results. Try as he might to channel his inner magic through the wand or send burning anger through his glare, Howon isn’t getting anything.
The instructor tells him that it’s alright, and that most students don’t get it right in the first week anyway. It’s just that it’s embarrassing when a clash in schedules means they share the training grounds with an art class four years above them-the upperclassmen are making statues out of delicate threads of ice, and one of them even recreates Michelangelo’s Pieta.
Two weeks later, most of his classmates have already set themselves on fire one way or another. Howon consoles himself with the thought that at least he hasn’t given the upperclassmen any reason to laugh at him yet.
They do watch, however, when the instructor calls him to a quieter corner of the field to have a word with him.
“Howon,” Hyowan begins with a sigh, “I’m afraid that if this continues until next week, you might have to leave this college.”
Howon lowers his eyes to his wand. “I don’t know that I’m doing wrong,” he admits, fist clenching tight around the wood.
Hyowan rubs his chin. “I don’t think it’s the wand, since most students start with wands as their mediums… And if you didn’t have the aptitude you wouldn’t have been accepted in the first place.” He turns to Gonam, the instructor for the fifth year class, next to him. “What do you think?”
“Did you let him try other mediums?” Gonam answers. He takes a marble out of his pocket and lifts it to the air with a careful gust of wind, spinning it in small circles inches above his fingertip. “Couldn’t use a wand myself, but then I tried gems and I could cast magic just fine.”
Hyowan nods and tears a sheet of paper from his pad, giving it to Howon. “Paper’s a pretty common medium, why not give it a try? Pin it onto your target and channel your magic through it.”
Then an unfamiliar voice-“What if it’s because he doesn’t need a medium?”
Hyowan’s shoulders jump.
There’s a man perched on a tree branch above, looking down at them with a thin smile. His baggy white jacket, loud red hair, and casual slouch say ‘student’ instead of ‘instructor’, but when he leans forward and off the branch, powerful gusts immediately gather beneath him to ease his fall.
“Hello, Sunggyu,” Hyowan greets, taking a few steps back. His hands have turned stiff at his sides. “Please give a warning when you… show up from the sky.”
Gonam nods. “And about not requiring a medium, I doubt that’d be the case. Not every kid who can’t use a medium is like you.”
If Sunggyu notices the disdain in Gonam’s voice, he doesn’t react to it. He turns to Howon instead. “Try the paper thing first. If that doesn’t work, just imagine the target already on fire and channel your magic into that image.”
“Sunggyu!” Hyowan says, the most admonishing Howon’s ever heard him.
“What, is it forbidden?” Sunggyu meets Hyowan’s eyes, then Gonam’s. His head is tilted as if it’s an earnest question, but he ends with a breath that sounds like laughter.
When neither of them answer, Sunggyu gives Howon a thumbs up. Then he turns back around to mingle with the upperclassmen. They laugh and pat his back to greet him, but Gonam crosses his arms, and Hyowan is looking between Sunggyu and Howon with a slight frown.
A few days later, Howon is taking the same accelerated set of classes as Kim Sunggyu.
“Nice to see you again,” Sunggyu says, offering a hand.
Howon’s not sure if Sunggyu’s being sarcastic, but he shakes the offered hand and smiles back anyway. “You too.”
that ever i was born to set it right
part 1
This placid part of their acquaintanceship lasts for two hours, not even making it out of their first Magic Theory lecture together. Howon ends up driving their instructor out with a barrage of questions about the magic-to-medium exchange system-the very same system that apparently doesn’t apply to himself and Sunggyu.
“Yes, yes, go expose your lack of a medium even more,” Sunggyu says, the two of them seated on a bench at the gym. “We’re the trendsetters of unlimited magic.”
They’re having a Defense class right now, but Sunggyu’s busy upending his jug, watching the water flow out and gather at the jug’s mouth like a balloon. Howon realizes that his own wristwatch has stopped ticking-Sunggyu is bending time just to play with drinking water.
Howon grunts. “I didn’t mean to make her angry,” he replies, watching their classmates on the training mats. The one-on-one sparring matches are fascinating, but more for the variety of mediums everyone uses and not the actual fight; only Sungmin and Yunho look like they know hand-to-hand combat, so Howon watches them. “It’s just weird that we don’t need a medium when they’re needed to keep the world’s magic balance, or something.”
The flaming bracelets around Yunho’s wrists exhaust themselves into ashes. He pulls a new one on as he lunges forward, and Sungmin matches him by pulling a toothpick from his own pocket. It turns into a crystalline of ice spear just as Yunho makes impact-his fist is wrapped in flames, and they barely blink at the hiss of steam rising between them.
“It’s weird,” Sunggyu says in agreement. With a careful hand, he gathers the water floating before him back into his bottle. Then he unfreezes time, tosses the water into the air, and stops all over again; the spray freezes in a curtain, and the sunlight shines prismatic shapes by their feet. Sunggyu traces the shape of a star into the droplets.
“And you call me a show off,” Howon says, when it becomes apparent to him that Sunggyu’s doing it for two of their female classmates watching from the corner of the hall. “So you can use time magic, while everyone else gets Captain Planet elements. Cool story.”
“Ha, ha.” Sunggyu pushes the water back into his bottle and stands up. “Want to start sparring?” he says, which Howon’s sure actually means, ‘want to fight?’
The moment he stands, the instructor starts clearing a fourth of the mats out, relocating displaced pairs of students with frantic steps.
Howon has no reason to refuse, following Sunggyu over to the open space and stretching on the way. “Sure,” he says, grin sharp.
Sunggyu hums.
The match ends a few minutes later.
There are many reasons why Howon’s prone on his side right now, arm raised in the direction of Sunggyu’s face and ready to cast a spell. He knows he lost because that one second he needs to brew lightning in his palm can stretch on for forever with Sunggyu’s magic-Sunggyu, who has been in this college a year longer and is thus a year more skilled, standing over Howon with a halo of glowing spears all aimed at Howon’s neck. Sunggyu, who is a huge cheater for moving ungodly fast because of his time magic, forcing the reflexes Howon had learned from martial arts to the limit and completely surpassing them.
Howon notices small details of ivy sprawled across Sunggyu’s floating spears. He looks up at Sunggyu’s face for a few moments, breaths struggling to gather themselves together. The beginnings of a smirk are lingering in Sunggyu’s curved eyes.
Sunggyu steps back once their classmates begin cheering, and his spears fold out of existence. “Good game.” He offers Howon a hand.
Howon lets himself be pulled up. “It lasted three minutes,” he replies, trying not to frown.
“Don’t think about that,” Sunggyu answers, slight pant in his voice. He’s catching his breath as well. “You’re really good, it’s just that your spells all look like they came from Mortal Kombat. Feel free to experiment-we can afford to anyway.” He breathes out a laugh. “Spend a year in this college, and maybe we’ll be even.”
Even, he says. Howon will make sure of it. “Yeah, maybe.”
Later on, Howon learns from Dongwoo that before him, the person to last the longest in a fight against Sunggyu was Kim Jongwan, their instructor in Defense. The match lasted thirty seconds.
“You and Sunggyu seem pretty close now,” Woohyun tells him over lunch. “He’s popular, and a member of the student council-I’m glad you didn’t forget us mortals.”
“Why did I ever remember,” Howon answers. Next to him, Sungyeol protests, and Woohyun only snorts.
“Couldn’t help it,” Howon continues, swallowing a bite. “We have the same thing with our magic, and most of our classmates are older than us. Accelerated classes and all.”
“The thing with you not needing a medium, right?” Sungyeol sighs. “They’re letting us try other mediums in class, now. Just when I get used to the wand, too.”
“You can stick with the wand if you want to, you know.” Woohyun grins. “Hey, you know what my medium is? Watch this.” He inhales a breath and begins whispering a song, a lilting baby, my love, beautiful that has Howon grimacing and Sungyeol laughing at the illusory rose that Woohyun forms in his fingers.
“Your medium’s song?” Howon says, staring at the rose until Woohyun grins and lets it fade into the air.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
Sungyeol adds, “He sang The Day the Sun Rises earlier and set the tree outside the classroom on fire.”
“Hey!” Woohyun gulps from his iced tea and nearly slams his cup back down. “At least the last time I accidentally set something on fire was half a year ago, during our first day in Spellcasting!” He leans closer to Howon and stage whispers, “He blew a gust of wind beneath our Enchanment prof’s skirt last meeting. Now you know why Miss Boa was in such a bad mood-”
“It was an accident!” Sungyeol swallows and hurriedly fixes his gaze on Howon instead. “Hey, so can Sunggyu travel in time? I’d like to pass myself the answers for the quiz earlier.”
Howon only raises a brow at him. “The most he’ll do is stop time or make things slower and faster. He’s not sure if can travel, but he says it might cause a paradox, so he won’t.”
Then from above them-“Talking about me again?”
Woohyun yelps, and Sungyeol’s coffee nearly spills over the table.
Howon only looks up. Sunggyu is sitting on a branch of the tree Howon is leaning against. When he jumps down, hair and jacket fluttering in the breeze that catches him, Sungyeol and Woohyun look simultaneously alarmed and star-struck.
“Spying on me again?” Howon answers.
Sunggyu lands on the grass without a whisper, taking the time to wave at Howon’s friends before speaking. “No, principal’s looking for you. I just knew you’d screw up someday.”
“Wow, thanks,” Howon answers, rising to his feet. He gives Sungyeol and Woohyun the last of his lunch and bids them goodbye before making his way to the principal’s office.
Sunggyu falls into step next to him.
“Did the principal tell you to follow after me, too?” Howon says, not breaking his stride.
When Sunggyu doesn’t snap back, instead lowering his gaze in thought, Howon slows down to turn his attention to him.
Finally Sunggyu looks up, a grim set to his frown. “Whatever he tells you,” he begins, “don’t let go of your magic, alright?” And before Howon can get a word in, he leaves.
Lee Jungyeop greets Howon upon his arrival. “Prodigy number two,” he says with a smile, taking a small box from one of his drawers. “Welcome. Take a seat.”
Howon does, hands loosely balled in his lap.
He gets the usual round of ‘and how was your time here so far’ check-up questions. Howon has an idea why he’s being engaged in such useless conversation, so he keeps his shoulders rigid and his eyes alert. After a few minutes, Jungyeop seems to give up on that and starts toying around with the tiny box in his hands instead.
“I’d like you and Sunggyu to keep tabs on each other,” Jungyeop finally says.
Howon can’t help but squint.
Jungyeop chuckles before continuing, opening the box in his hands to reveal a pair of simple stud earrings. “It may seem a bit strange, but as much as the two of you are excellent students, you have to admit that you both are, well, free spirits. I figured neither of you would mind these communicators.”
“Communicators,” Howon repeats, pointing down at the earrings, “sir.”
With a nod, Jungyeop pushes the box over. “You guys can talk to each other and to any of the faculty units, since we use a similar system of enchanted gems to relay messages.”
“So I put one on, sir?”
“Yes.”
“Is the other one for Sunggyu?”
“Yes.”
Which is why he’s meeting up with Sunggyu after lights-out, giving him an earring and wondering why he’s blushing.
“Is this a private proposal, or some kind of clandestine affair?” Sunggyu says, spinning a ball of light into the air.
“No,” Howon immediately insists, jamming his hands into his hoodie’s pockets and trying to will down the strange embarrassment rising to his face. “Principal told me to give it to you. They’re communicators; we can talk to each other and to whoever’s in the faculty units.”
“Don’t you guys already have my cellphone number,” Sunggyu says. His eyes trail up to the matching earring on Howon, then to the one nestled in his palm. He puts it on as he speaks. “They’re tracking devices.”
Embarrassment forgotten, Howon looks at him.
Sunggyu waves his hand once in the air, and visible threads of magic stream out from their earrings. They lead to several places across campus, one of the destinations being the principal’s office, but most of the threads end in various rooms of the teacher’s residences. Howon’s chest hollows, disquieted.
He’s startled out of this revelation by Sunggyu, who is forming a knife of deep blue fire in his hands. “Would you care if I,” Sunggyu begins, gesturing at the threads and moving the knife back and forth.
Before Howon can shake his head, Sunggyu is already severing the threads of magic flowing from own his earring with an easy sweep of his arm. He repeats the process with Howon’s own earring after a glance at Howon’s face and a pause. The faint light on each cut string dies out as it falls, and then all the threads are fading away, not leaving a single trace.
“Missed one,” Howon says, pointing at the one connecting their two earrings together.
Sunggyu only glances at it before waving his hand once more, rendering the thread invisible. “I’m leaving that so you can at least spy on me more discreetly.”
Howon quirks a brow. “Weren’t you the one doing the spying?”
“And you’re hopeless without me, this situation already case in point,” Sunggyu continues, ignoring him, “so you can call on me with this if you need me to save your ass.”
“I can save my own ass, thanks.”
“Yeah? Well, did you know that your dorm manager is going to open that window behind you within ten seconds?”
“What?”
Dongwoo’s first reaction to the story is laughter.
“Thanks for the support,” Howon says, in the middle of weighing a bowl of featherdust. “Didn’t you say this was three grams?”
“You have to put the empty bowl there and set the scale to zero first,” Sunggyu replies from next to them, reaching over to take the bowl despite Howon’s protests. “And you’re supposed to use something small, like a watch glass, when you’re weighing on an analytical balance.”
“Yeah-hey!” Howon reaches for the bowl, but Sunggyu weaves past his attempts at retrieval as he leaves the ingredients inventory and returns to the working area. Finally he catches up to Sunggyu when the other man stops next to a desk. “Weigh your own potion ingredients!”
“This is your potion,” Sunggyu says, still not returning the bowl. He’s staring into the flask on Howon’s desk and shaking his head at what he sees. “Why did they even accelerate you?”
Howon leers at him. “The same reason they accelerated you.”
Dongwoo raises his palms out. “Guys-”
Sunggyu doesn’t reply, abruptly shoving the bowl back into Howon’s hands and crossing his arms.
Howon raises a brow right back.
“Your potion?” Sunggyu says, gesturing to the flask.
After giving Sunggyu a look, Howon faces his desk. He picks up a mini-spatula and begins scooping the featherdust into the flask. He’s gotten every ingredient down, he’s sure-crushed lizardscale, white moteberry juice, and a few other things. There’s no way he’s gotten this wrong.
Sunggyu throws up his arms and steps forward to grasp onto Howon’s wrists. “If this was a practical test, you would’ve been handed a forty out of a hundred.”
But all Howon can register is that Sunggyu’s hair smells like melon shampoo.
Howon jerks away. He feels lightheaded as Sunggyu guides Howon’s right hand into placing the mini-spatula back on the tray. “Could you not-”
“Honestly,” Sunggyu says, bending Howon’s fingers into closing around a glass funnel instead. “You’re hopeless without me.”
Howon’s mouth shuts on its own.
After positioning the funnel in Howon’s grip above the flask, and the bowl at an angle next to it, Sunggyu finally lets go. He has that self-satisfied look on him again.
Howon’s not having any of it, dumping the bowl’s contents into the funnel with great anger. “You could have just told me what to do!”
“But you never listen to what I say!”
“Where did you even get that idea? You’re just making excuses.”
“What are you even talking about?”
Dongwoo looks like he’s about to collapse into laughter again. “Sunggyu, your hair is on fire,” he says, grinning wide while struggling to catch his breath. Sunggyu jerks back to dump water on himself, then tightens his lips like he immediately regrets his drenched clothes and mop-like hair. He gives Howon a look.
Howon only smiles. Suddenly his potion smells like it’s burning.
Sunggyu doesn’t attend classes for the next few days.
Dongwoo doesn’t seem very concerned, despite Sunggyu not showing up to their dorm room either. “He did this a lot last year. I think the last time he escaped like this was in the third week of classes.”
The third week of classes. That was when Howon was accelerated.
When Howon’s sure that Sungyeol is asleep, he thinks of a string of light and reaches for Sunggyu’s thoughts. You missed Dongwoo enchanting a pizza slice and turning it into some pepperoni animal that moved like a lizard, is the first thing he says. Then, at a loss, he adds, If you don’t come back, I’m gonna spar with Inguk instead.
A week later they find Sunggyu dead in the greenhouse, a building of glass standing a fair distance away from the main building.
The teachers don’t let anyone enter, sealing up the glass dome with an enchantment. It lets in sunlight, but Howon and the rest of the students outside only see darkness, swallowing the silhouettes of their instructors and throwing a shadow over the last glimpse of Sunggyu they’ll ever get.
Woohyun, the student council secretary, is called to the greenhouse along with the other council members. He gives Howon one last look before turning away, disappearing into the building as well.
It’s hours later, with most of the students back in their dorms, when Woohyun’s head peeks out from the greenhouse doors. He calls Howon over with his hand. Howon immediately enters.
Vaguely, Howon registers Siwon, their student council president, approaching to block his way. But when Woohyun shakes his head, Siwon backs off, and then the few staff present start packing up whatever it is they brought inside-instruments, cameras, lights to illuminate a terrible scene for documentation. They’re all standing in quiet, broken lines around him. Everything feels strange, like a big, elaborate joke he hasn’t heard the punchline for yet.
Sunggyu’s body is lying where the each of the greenhouse’s stone paths intersect, right beneath the very center of the glass dome.
Howon finds himself standing as close as he can, shoes at the edge of a puddle of red. At this distance, he can’t even reach Sunggyu without getting blood on himself. It’s strange to be suddenly reminded like this, a death among things that wilt. Everyone is slowly dying. Sunggyu just had it faster.
Sunggu’s earring lies shattered next to him, but Howon hears Sunggyu’s voice in his thoughts, loud and clear. Find him, Sunggyu says, through the gaping cut that runs from his side to his throat. His blood speaks with silence. Find the one who killed me.
part 2