Super Junior {Hankyung/Heechul ; fingertips (1/23)}
Title: fingertips (1/23)
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !mutant)
Pairing: central Hankyung/Heechul, Siwon/Sungmin, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, Kangin/Eeteuk
Word count: 4,377
Rating: PG-13
Summary: At the Soo Man Academy for Gifted Individuals, those with mutant powers are taught how to control their gifts. Hankyung has come to learn to control something he doesn't consider a gift, but rather a curse, and he wants nothing else from the school, certainly not friendship, but then, his life has never gone how he wanted it.
A/N: crazychickencow was talking about writing some sort of mutant!au, and all I was supposed to do was come up with some powers for people, but then I ended up with a whole fucking universe of my own. Mine is basically a complete rip off of X-Men, I can admit it. Except no one in this fic relates to any character in X-Men, it's just the idea of a school for mutants. Hankyung is not Rogue, I'll just put that out now. He is an emo woobie, however :(
Pairings are not explicit right now, but will become more obvious throughout the fic. And I wouldn't expect this to be written particularly fast :| I am a failure. THESE FIC NOTES MAKE NO SENSE, I AM SORRY. I'm tired :( and I also don't like this fic (this chapter in particular) that much :\
fingertips (1/23)
aka WITH HAIR SLICKED BACK AND MUSCLES BULGING, WE'RE SHOOPA JUNIA
Hankyung stared in despair at his suitcase in the middle of his single bed. He was, by now, so miserable that he didn't even feel sad anymore, just completely numb. Although, now that he thought about it, the sight of that lone suitcase in the middle of the bed wasn't the worst part of the day. No, that had been in the airport, when one of the guards had told him to take off his gloves.
He shivered at the remembrance, and threaded his fingers on both hands together. Something like that could have been disastrous, although he understood the reasons for it: black leather gloves probably didn't make anyone flying feel safe, but then, taking them off would have been a whole lot worse. Thank god the professor who was escorting him managed to convince the officials otherwise: there was a reason Hankyung never travelled anywhere.
He sighed heavily and sat down next to his suitcase, holding his hand out to stop the case from dropping into the hollow that his weight made and hitting him. He stared until his gaze had become unfocused at the leather gloves on his hands, things that he had become so used to wearing that they were almost like a second skin. He hated everything about them, from the coolness of the material to the way it stretched out at his knuckles when he bent his fingers. They represented something that he wanted to forget, something that he wished he had never been born with: that so called 'power'.
There came a clattering from the hallway, voices loud and bright and happy. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be back in his bedroom in China, with the thick curtains and that lock that he had forgotten about one time too many and the comforting smell of being alone and not needing to worry about accidently touching someone. He watched the door anxiously, half desperate for no one to come in. He was still fairly certain that his teachers were completely insane for putting him in a room with someone else; what could happen when he made a mistake played on his mind constantly.
Unfortunately, luck was not with him, as it hadn't been for most of his life. There was a knock at the door, almost hesitant, and then the door slowly opened, revealing a tall boy who looked to be at least a year younger, who noticed him sitting on the bed and grinned. There was nothing forced about it, and if Hankyung had allowed himself, he knew that he would have warmed to him immediately. "Hi," said the boy, friendly and welcoming. Hankyung nodded in response.
"Are you Hankyung?" the boy asked, and Hankyung nodded again. "I'm Siwon, I'm your roommate." Hankyung nodded once more. Siwon frowned a little, clearly thrown by his silence, but it wasn't in the way that Hankyung hoped he would be. He didn't decide to give up: he changed his language. "Do you understand?" he asked in Chinese.
Hankyung cursed inside. The whole point of coming to this school was that he could pretend to get by on a language barrier, never having to speak to anyone, only listening to lessons in order to learn the control that he so desperately craved. But this boy spoke his language, and this boy expected an answer.
"Yes," said Hankyung, in Korean, and Siwon's smile practically broke his face in half.
"Good," he said. He noticed Hankyung's suitcase, still closed on the bed next to him. "You haven't finished yet?"
"No," said Hankyung. He figured that the less he said, the less Siwon would want to talk, and the better it would be for Hankyung.
"Do you--" began Siwon, but suddenly there were shouts from the end of the corridor, one person sounding angry, the other sounding amused at their expense. He turned his head a little and then sighed and went to the door to look out at whatever was happening. "Um," he said, glancing back at Hankyung. "Are you okay to finish by yourself?"
Hankyung nodded, and didn't say that he'd prefer to be by himself. Siwon nodded, almost absently, as a bout of laughter sounded, and someone shrieked in annoyance. "Dinner is at seven," said Siwon. "I'll be back to get you to take you down to dinner."
"No," said Hankyung quickly. "I can find my own way there."
Siwon looked at him with some surprise, but just shrugged. "Okay," he said, and then hurried out of the room, shouting; "Hyung, what did you do now?" as he went.
Hankyung got up slowly and made his way over to the door, closing it gently against the noise of the hallway. He wasn't used to that sound, the sound of happiness; he hadn't, after all, been in a school for ten years, and he'd barely been outside for six. For three short years, that sound had graced his house, until he had taken it away.
Suddenly he felt like throwing up at the thought of dinner, at the thought of going out there and communicating with people. He didn't know how to do that, he was out of practise, and to be honest, the thought terrified him. He unzipped his case. Maybe if he took long enough, he could be forgiven for missing dinner. He wasn't hungry anyway.
An hour later, he had managed to stretch it out so only about a quarter of his case was unpacked, but unfortunately he was beginning to have to re-think his plan to only leave his room for his classes. Unable to ignore it any longer, he went to the door and stuck his head out to check whether there was anyone around. The coast appeared to be clear, and it wasn't until he had turned two corners that he realised that he had no idea where he was going, and no idea where he had come from.
He stopped and stared around himself in complete dismay, but the hallway looked exactly the same as all the other hallways. He sighed because he should have known that leaving the room had been a bad idea. He walked up to the end of the corridor in front of him and looked around the corner, but couldn't see anything worthwhile that way, and then heard a loud crash from the corner behind him.
"Fuck!" someone shouted.
"Hyung!" said Siwon's voice, disappointed and offended.
"Well, I'm sorry, Siwon," said the first voice, sounding annoyed. "But you just put a hole in the wall, so forgive me for being over coherent."
"I only leant against the wall," said Siwon, sadly. There was a pause, and Hankyung quietly went to see what was going on.
Siwon and another boy were standing in front of the wall, staring at a large hole which had appeared in it. "It's Kangin's room," said the unknown boy. "He's going to kill you."
"What happened?" asked Hankyung, before he could stop himself.
Their heads shot around to stare at him, Siwon's face white and worried, the other boy's brown eyes suspicious. Hankyung blinked a little at the attractive, feminine face, he hadn't been expecting that from the voice. "Who are you?" asked the boy, voice guarded.
"Hankyung?" Siwon's face seemed to regain some of its colour. "It's my roommate, Hankyung."
"Oh, someone finally decided to live with you?" The other boy looked Hankyung up and down. "Well, good luck with that."
"Hyung," said Siwon, looking at him with an upset look on his face. The boy grinned wickedly at him. "Hyung, what am I going to do?" Siwon seemed honestly scared. "Can you fix it for me?"
"I'm not a miracle worker," said the boy who still hadn't introduced himself. "I don't have the control to do that yet, the pieces are too small to concentrate on."
"But Kangin-hyung will kill me," wailed Siwon, staring morosely at the hole in the wall. Through it, Hankyung could make out a bed, unmade, and a bookshelf. "It's not like anyone else could have done it."
"We'll just have to--" The boy broke off in his sentence, looking down the hallway. There were footsteps. Siwon jumped a little in agitation. "Quick," said the boy. "In here."
He held open the doorway on the opposite side of the hall, revealing a broom cupboard. Hankyung just stared him, not quite sure whether to take him seriously, but apparently he was supposed to, because Siwon just obedientely got into the cupboard, and the stranger took hold of Hankyung's upper arm and tried to pull him in. "Come on," he said. "Don't make me get Siwon to pull you in, he'll take your arm off."
Hankyung looked at Siwon, uncertain, but then stepped into the cupboard, sighing. The boy stepped in behind him, and the door shut quickly, the lock strangely muffled. There was a pause, and then Hankyung said; "What is going on?"
"Quiet," hissed the other boy, and then, in a commanding tone; "Siwon." And Siwon clamped his hand over Hankyung's mouth. Hankyung was so shocked by this sudden move that he didn't even react other than being quiet.
The footsteps outside got louder until it was obvious that whoever it was was directly outside the cupboard, then they stopped, and someone sighed. "Siwon?" they called. "Siwon, come out from wherever you're hiding, you're not going to get into trouble."
"Don't move," whispered the boy.
"But it's Eeteuk-hyung," whispered Siwon.
"I don't care," the boy whispered back. "Just give it a minute or so."
"Siwon, I'm sure the teachers will understand, it's not your fault." The person outside was clearly directly outside the cupboard, and even Hankyung knew that whoever it was knew exactly where they were. "And if you're worried about Kangin, I'll talk to him."
"Yeah, I'm sure that's what you'll do," whispered the boy, and smothered a laugh against Siwon's shoulder.
"Siwon?" The boy stood up straight suddenly as whoever was outside began to pull the door open; Hankyung caught a glimpse of a young man with light brown hair before the door slammed shut by itself. Hankyung stared at it in shock. The boy on the other side of the door sighed. "Heechul," he said. "Open the door please."
The one named Heechul laughed, but it wasn't the same bright, open laugh that Siwon had. It was wicked, more of a cackle. "But I'm just practising my skills, Teuk."
"Look, Siwon isn't going to get into trouble. You know he isn't."
"We thought you were Kangin," said Heechul. "Your footsteps are just as heavy, you might want to start dieting."
"Just get out here, Heechul."
Slowly, the door swung open, and Heechul stepped out casually, flicking his blonde -- obviously dyed -- hair back. "How am I supposed to practise if you keep stopping me?" he asked the boy in front of them, who just rolled his eyes.
"You only practise when it means you can be annoying," said the boy.
"He was trying to help me," said Siwon, who had removed his hand from Hankyung's mouth eventually. "Are you sure Kangin-hyung won't kill me?"
"I'm sure," said the boy. "Anyway, when he first came here, he put a hole in my wall too."
"Oh man, I remember that," said Heechul. "God, he practically threw himself at your feet begging forgiveness, it was epic."
The boy smiled a little and then noticed Hankyung standing in the doorway. "Oh!" he said, eyes suddenly lighting up. "Are you Hankyung?"
Hankyung nodded shortly. The boy smiled wider, revealing a dimple on his left side. "I'm Eeteuk, I'm the head boy here at the Soo Man Academy."
"It's nice to meet you," Hankyung tried quietly, and while he wasn't lying, he could just as easily lived without having met this boy.
"Did you finish unpacking?" Siwon asked. The hole in the wall appeared to have been completely forgotten. Hankyung suddenly remembered why he had left the room in the first place.
"No," he said, feeling himself turn a bit red. "I was looking for the bathroom."
"You turned the wrong way out of the room," said Siwon. "You should have turned left."
"Here," said Eeteuk. "I'll show you now. It's almost time for dinner so we should be heading downstairs anyway."
Hankyung silently followed them to the bathroom; they waited outside and he stood for a minute or two before he left the room, hoping hard for them to have become sick of waiting and having just left. On leaving the room, however, he found that Siwon was asking Eeteuk if he knew what was for dinner, while Heechul was leaning against a wall looking at his finger nails, clearly bored. "Finally!" he said, when he spotted Hankyung. "What, did you get lost in there too?"
"Be nice, Heechul," said Eeteuk severely, but Heechul just stuck his tongue out at him and started down the corridor.
"Come on, Siwon," he said over his shoulder. "I want to get to dinner before everything is gone, new boy made us late."
Siwon shot an apologetic look at Hankyung but followed Heechul down the corridor, looking like a dog following its master. Hankyung couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that, which Eeteuk noticed and smiled at.
"Don't mind Heechul," he said. "He can be a bit abrasive but he doesn't really mean it."
It hadn't really been Heechul that Hankyung had raised his eyebrow at, but he didn't argue with the point and just followed Eeteuk downstairs to the entrance hall and then into the dining hall, where the noise level suddenly seemed to explode into a thousand decibels. Hankyung felt sick again, staring around at the seeming mass of kids, teachers at tables in a raised level at the back. The noise and confusion threatened to overpower him, and he focused desperately on Eeteuk's back in front of him; Eeteuk's shirt was strangely bulky at the back.
The table they stopped at was one of the longest and almost all of the seats were taken: Siwon and Heechul were sat near the end, and while Siwon smiled welcomingly at him as they neared, Heechul didn't even pay him any attention.
There were various calls of welcome as Eeteuk motioned for Hankyung to sit down: he took the empty seat next to Siwon, and nodded to the people looking at him curiously, and let Eeteuk introduce him. Judging from the way everyone looked at him, they obviously thought that he couldn't speak any Korean.
"Kangin," said Eeteuk, squeezing into a seat between a strong looking boy with short black hair, and a boy with faded auburn hair. The black-haired boy looked at him with an obvious amount of eagerness.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"Don't get mad at Siwon," said Eeteuk, helping himself to some of the food on the table in front of him. "He leant against your wall and accidently put his arm through it."
"I'm sorry, hyung," said Siwon, almost pleadingly. The boy called Kangin looked at him, a twitch in his eyebrow, but Eeteuk just lay a hand on his arm. Kangin looked at him, nodded at him, shrugged at Siwon, and then went back to his meal.
"Hankyung?" asked a boy at the end of the table with black hair, who sat head and shoulders above the boy next to him with hair so blonde it was almost white. He sounded unsure as to whether he was pronouncing Hankyung's name correctly, and when he continued in perfect Chinese, Hankyung realised why. "That's not a Chinese name. How do you say your real name?"
Hankyung blinked at him. "Are you -- Are you Chinese?"
The boy nodded happily, a bright grin on his face. "I'm Zhou Mi," he said. "I'm supposed to be called Joomyuk here, but no one does. It's too hard to say."
The boy next to him snorted. "No, Zhou Mi is too hard to say," he said in Korean. "We just humour you."
"Korean is hard," said Zhou Mi in Chinese, stubborn and ignoring the other boy. "Don't worry though, I can help you with it."
"It's okay," said Hankyung. "I already know Korean."
Some of the people on the table turned to look at him, shocked. He had spoken in Korean, and they were obviously surprised at his skill with the language. Zhou Mi just continued to smile at him. I know, Hankyung heard, but Zhou Mi hadn't opened his mouth. It wasn't Korean I was talking about.
Hankyung knocked his empty glass over in surprise, staring at Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi's grin grew wider, and the boy next to him realised what had just happened, and hit him on the arm. "I've told you before," he said. "Don't do that, it's so disconcerting."
"Did you just talk into his mind?" Eeteuk was frowning at Zhou Mi. "You're not supposed to do that."
"I was just reassuring him," said Zhou Mi, looking and sounding so innocent that Eeteuk's expression softened considerably. "It's not nice, coming to a new country."
"Well, I know," said Eeteuk. "But Hankyung wouldn't have known what was happening."
"So you can read minds?" Hankyung was still staring. If this boy could read his mind, and had access to his memories, then he could no doubt see the past that Hankyung was trying to hide.
"I get flashes," said Zhou Mi. "If people are screaming emotions at me, it's easier, but I'm learning to control it. It's a lot easier to talk through other people's minds."
"Was I screaming something at you?" Hankyung asked, sounding nervous.
"Fear," said Zhou Mi, simply, in Chinese. Hankyung avoided his eyes.
"So what's your power?" asked the boy next to him. Hankyung acted the foreigner and just frowned in confusion at him. Heechul snorted.
"Stop acting like you don't understand," he said. "He understands everything we say."
"You do?" Kangin scowled at him. "Why do you pretend otherwise?"
Hankyung just stayed silent. This was working out better than he could possibly imagine. Give it some time and maybe he could make it so that everyone at the table hated him, and then he would never have to interact with them ever again. He caught Heechul looking at him out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked around at him, Heechul was frowning at Kangin. "Hey," he said. "Leave him alone, he's just nervous."
"Well why didn't he just say?" asked Kangin.
"Because we're not all as much of a loud mouth as you," said Heechul. "Some of us like to keep our emotions inside."
"You're the loudest bitch in the school," said Kangin, and then added, a little snidely, "hyung."
Heechul glared at him, but Kangin just laughed at him and turned back to his meal. As he went to pick his fork back up, it moved suddenly, shooting into the air and hovering just above his head. He glared at Heechul, who laughed in a similar way to how Kangin had done it, and then tried to pluck the utensil from the air. It danced out of his reach. Kangin growled, a strangely animal noise, and tried again. The fork shot even further into the air.
"Heechul," said Eeteuk desperately, glancing between the fork hanging in mid-air, and the teacher's table. "They're going to notice, and you'll even get me into trouble."
"It's not high enough for them to notice," said Heechul. By now the fork was doing somersaults. "Anyway, you won't get wrong, you're the perfect head boy."
"Just stop it," said Eeteuk firmly, and then suddenly the fork clattered to the table and Kangin snatched it up. Heechul didn't even notice: he was too busy glaring at Zhou Mi.
"I was not showing off," he said. There was a pause, and then; "Seasoning, shut up! I do not!"
"You do not what?" asked Siwon curiously, but Heechul just ignored him and went back to his meal like nothing had happened. Siwon looked at Zhou Mi, who was just grinning. Hankyung had already noticed that Zhou Mi never seemed to not be smiling.
"Aren't you going to eat?" asked a boy down the other end of the table, looking at him with a slight amount of concern. He had delicate, feminine features, with light brown hair which had been carefully styled. Hankyung shook his head.
"I'm not hungry," he said.
Most of the other seemed to have given him up for weird, because they paid him no attention for the remainder of the meal. That was good: it meant he wouldn't have to answer any unwanted questions, such as what his power was. He was wanting to put that moment off for as long as possible. He actually wondered whether he could get through his time here without anyone ever knowing it; it seemed unlikely, but he liked the idea anyway.
Just through listening to their conversations, Hankyung managed to pick up on most of their names. The blonde boy sitting next to Zhou Mi was Kyuhyun, although Zhou Mi insisted on calling him Kui Xian, which seemed to annoy the boy who had asked Hankyung if he was eating, who was called Sungmin. The boy next to Kangin was Eunhyuk, who kept accidently putting his hand through the table. Sitting next to him was a boy called Donghae, who seemed to bolt his food down when Hankyung blinked, though he felt that that was probably just an illusion. Sitting opposite Donghae, next to Heechul, was a quiet boy called Kibum, a chubby boy called Shindong, and then Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi. Opposite Zhou Mi was a boy who looked younger than most of them, who didn't speak at all, and so Hankyung didn't catch his name, and then a boy with black hair tipped with red called Ryeowook, and a boy called Yehsung who had pierced ears.
"Which reminds me," said Eeteuk suddenly, looking down the table at Sungmin. "I heard that you and Heechul had an argument before."
"To have an argument, you have to exchange words," said Heechul. "We had a fight."
"Only with our minds," said Sungmin in a sing song tone. "You'd be impressed, hyung, it was all very intellectual."
"What happened?" asked Eeteuk with a sigh. Hankyung understood his exasperation: clearly whatever had happened between Heechul and Sungmin had become some sort of private joke.
"Hyung kept moving my book every time I tried to pick it up," said Sungmin cheerfully.
"So he teleported into the bathroom and put my toothbrush in the toilet," said Heechul, and mimed giving Sungmin a high five from across the table. Eeteuk actually looked like he wanted to scream.
"Don't worry, hyung," said Siwon brightly. "I stopped Heechul-hyung from killing Sungmin-hyung, and now everything's fine."
"Oh, well that's good then," said Eeteuk, a little faintly.
"I've got a spare toothbrush," said Zhou Mi helpfully. "You can have it if you want, hyung."
"Can do, Seasoning," said Heechul, giving him a mock-salute. Zhou Mi grinned happily.
The hour that Hankyung spent in the dining hall seemed to stretch on and on forever, but eventually Hankyung was free to go, that feeling of wanting to throw up ever constant in the pit of his stomach. He walked with Siwon and Heechul, who kept up a conversation in which Heechul stated a whole lot of things as truth and Siwon agreed with everything he said. Hankyung still didn't know what to make of them, but when Heechul turned and tried to grab hold his arm, only for Hankyung to flinch away from his touch, he knew that they didn't know what to make of him either.
"What, am I not good enough for you?" Heechul frowned at him, and Hankyung was surprised to see a touch of hurt in his features which vanished after a moment. "I wasn't going to hurt you or anything."
"I know," said Hankyung, beginning to feel a little angry at himself for his innate reaction, and angry at Heechul for not understanding. "It's not -- I just--"
"You know you never said what your power was?" Heechul was looking at him curiously. Hankyung avoided his eyes.
"I'd rather not talk about it," he said. Heechul opened his mouth, frowning, but there was a crash from the end of the hallway, and Siwon's voice saying "Oh," miserably, and they looked to see him holding the door to the room he shared with Hankyung in his hand.
"Oh, for god's sake, Siwon!" Heechul stalked up to him and hit him on the shoulder. "You're really going to have to learn about control, because I can't be around to fix your problems all the time."
"I'm sorry, hyung," said Siwon, looking and sounding honestly upset. Heechul sighed.
"It's fine. Look, just put the door against the wall." Siwon did so, and Heechul stood back, concentrating on it. It floated into the air a little, before sinking back down and placing itself into the doorway. Then, Heechul putting a hand to his head, the hinges slowly, painstakingly righted themselves and suddenly the door was fixed. Siwon went to open it, but Heechul slapped his hand away. "Not you," he said. "I don't want you touching the damn thing."
Suddenly he swayed a little, falling sideways into Siwon, who caught him, looking panic-stricken. "Hyung, I keep telling you to not push yourself too hard," he said, sounding terrified.
"I'm fine, Siwon," said Heechul, straightening with his hand pressed to his forehead. "It's just a headache, god." He caught Hankyung staring at him. "Hey, China boy. Get over here and open the door for juggernaught here."
Hanykung blinked a little at him, but after a pause came over to the doorway and put his hand on the handle. "Hey," said Heechul sharply. "Are those gloves something to do with your power?"
Hankyung glanced down at his gloves, the black having gone almost shiny with age. "Yeah," he said softly. "Something to do with it."
"Huh," said Heechul. "Oh well, I have an appointment with some painkillers and my bed. Hopefully Sungmin will not want to talk about Kyuhyun when I get there." He sauntered off down the corridor, just waving over his shoulder at Siwon's call of good night.
"I hope he's okay," Siwon said anxiously, as Hankyung pulled open the door. Hankyung, to be perfectly honest, didn't really care.
Fandom: Super Junior (AU, !mutant)
Pairing: central Hankyung/Heechul, Siwon/Sungmin, Kyuhyun/Zhou Mi, Kibum/Donghae, Yehsung/Ryeowook, Kangin/Eeteuk
Word count: 4,377
Rating: PG-13
Summary: At the Soo Man Academy for Gifted Individuals, those with mutant powers are taught how to control their gifts. Hankyung has come to learn to control something he doesn't consider a gift, but rather a curse, and he wants nothing else from the school, certainly not friendship, but then, his life has never gone how he wanted it.
A/N: crazychickencow was talking about writing some sort of mutant!au, and all I was supposed to do was come up with some powers for people, but then I ended up with a whole fucking universe of my own. Mine is basically a complete rip off of X-Men, I can admit it. Except no one in this fic relates to any character in X-Men, it's just the idea of a school for mutants. Hankyung is not Rogue, I'll just put that out now. He is an emo woobie, however :(
Pairings are not explicit right now, but will become more obvious throughout the fic. And I wouldn't expect this to be written particularly fast :| I am a failure. THESE FIC NOTES MAKE NO SENSE, I AM SORRY. I'm tired :( and I also don't like this fic (this chapter in particular) that much :\
fingertips (1/23)
aka WITH HAIR SLICKED BACK AND MUSCLES BULGING, WE'RE SHOOPA JUNIA
Hankyung stared in despair at his suitcase in the middle of his single bed. He was, by now, so miserable that he didn't even feel sad anymore, just completely numb. Although, now that he thought about it, the sight of that lone suitcase in the middle of the bed wasn't the worst part of the day. No, that had been in the airport, when one of the guards had told him to take off his gloves.
He shivered at the remembrance, and threaded his fingers on both hands together. Something like that could have been disastrous, although he understood the reasons for it: black leather gloves probably didn't make anyone flying feel safe, but then, taking them off would have been a whole lot worse. Thank god the professor who was escorting him managed to convince the officials otherwise: there was a reason Hankyung never travelled anywhere.
He sighed heavily and sat down next to his suitcase, holding his hand out to stop the case from dropping into the hollow that his weight made and hitting him. He stared until his gaze had become unfocused at the leather gloves on his hands, things that he had become so used to wearing that they were almost like a second skin. He hated everything about them, from the coolness of the material to the way it stretched out at his knuckles when he bent his fingers. They represented something that he wanted to forget, something that he wished he had never been born with: that so called 'power'.
There came a clattering from the hallway, voices loud and bright and happy. Suddenly he wanted nothing more than to be back in his bedroom in China, with the thick curtains and that lock that he had forgotten about one time too many and the comforting smell of being alone and not needing to worry about accidently touching someone. He watched the door anxiously, half desperate for no one to come in. He was still fairly certain that his teachers were completely insane for putting him in a room with someone else; what could happen when he made a mistake played on his mind constantly.
Unfortunately, luck was not with him, as it hadn't been for most of his life. There was a knock at the door, almost hesitant, and then the door slowly opened, revealing a tall boy who looked to be at least a year younger, who noticed him sitting on the bed and grinned. There was nothing forced about it, and if Hankyung had allowed himself, he knew that he would have warmed to him immediately. "Hi," said the boy, friendly and welcoming. Hankyung nodded in response.
"Are you Hankyung?" the boy asked, and Hankyung nodded again. "I'm Siwon, I'm your roommate." Hankyung nodded once more. Siwon frowned a little, clearly thrown by his silence, but it wasn't in the way that Hankyung hoped he would be. He didn't decide to give up: he changed his language. "Do you understand?" he asked in Chinese.
Hankyung cursed inside. The whole point of coming to this school was that he could pretend to get by on a language barrier, never having to speak to anyone, only listening to lessons in order to learn the control that he so desperately craved. But this boy spoke his language, and this boy expected an answer.
"Yes," said Hankyung, in Korean, and Siwon's smile practically broke his face in half.
"Good," he said. He noticed Hankyung's suitcase, still closed on the bed next to him. "You haven't finished yet?"
"No," said Hankyung. He figured that the less he said, the less Siwon would want to talk, and the better it would be for Hankyung.
"Do you--" began Siwon, but suddenly there were shouts from the end of the corridor, one person sounding angry, the other sounding amused at their expense. He turned his head a little and then sighed and went to the door to look out at whatever was happening. "Um," he said, glancing back at Hankyung. "Are you okay to finish by yourself?"
Hankyung nodded, and didn't say that he'd prefer to be by himself. Siwon nodded, almost absently, as a bout of laughter sounded, and someone shrieked in annoyance. "Dinner is at seven," said Siwon. "I'll be back to get you to take you down to dinner."
"No," said Hankyung quickly. "I can find my own way there."
Siwon looked at him with some surprise, but just shrugged. "Okay," he said, and then hurried out of the room, shouting; "Hyung, what did you do now?" as he went.
Hankyung got up slowly and made his way over to the door, closing it gently against the noise of the hallway. He wasn't used to that sound, the sound of happiness; he hadn't, after all, been in a school for ten years, and he'd barely been outside for six. For three short years, that sound had graced his house, until he had taken it away.
Suddenly he felt like throwing up at the thought of dinner, at the thought of going out there and communicating with people. He didn't know how to do that, he was out of practise, and to be honest, the thought terrified him. He unzipped his case. Maybe if he took long enough, he could be forgiven for missing dinner. He wasn't hungry anyway.
An hour later, he had managed to stretch it out so only about a quarter of his case was unpacked, but unfortunately he was beginning to have to re-think his plan to only leave his room for his classes. Unable to ignore it any longer, he went to the door and stuck his head out to check whether there was anyone around. The coast appeared to be clear, and it wasn't until he had turned two corners that he realised that he had no idea where he was going, and no idea where he had come from.
He stopped and stared around himself in complete dismay, but the hallway looked exactly the same as all the other hallways. He sighed because he should have known that leaving the room had been a bad idea. He walked up to the end of the corridor in front of him and looked around the corner, but couldn't see anything worthwhile that way, and then heard a loud crash from the corner behind him.
"Fuck!" someone shouted.
"Hyung!" said Siwon's voice, disappointed and offended.
"Well, I'm sorry, Siwon," said the first voice, sounding annoyed. "But you just put a hole in the wall, so forgive me for being over coherent."
"I only leant against the wall," said Siwon, sadly. There was a pause, and Hankyung quietly went to see what was going on.
Siwon and another boy were standing in front of the wall, staring at a large hole which had appeared in it. "It's Kangin's room," said the unknown boy. "He's going to kill you."
"What happened?" asked Hankyung, before he could stop himself.
Their heads shot around to stare at him, Siwon's face white and worried, the other boy's brown eyes suspicious. Hankyung blinked a little at the attractive, feminine face, he hadn't been expecting that from the voice. "Who are you?" asked the boy, voice guarded.
"Hankyung?" Siwon's face seemed to regain some of its colour. "It's my roommate, Hankyung."
"Oh, someone finally decided to live with you?" The other boy looked Hankyung up and down. "Well, good luck with that."
"Hyung," said Siwon, looking at him with an upset look on his face. The boy grinned wickedly at him. "Hyung, what am I going to do?" Siwon seemed honestly scared. "Can you fix it for me?"
"I'm not a miracle worker," said the boy who still hadn't introduced himself. "I don't have the control to do that yet, the pieces are too small to concentrate on."
"But Kangin-hyung will kill me," wailed Siwon, staring morosely at the hole in the wall. Through it, Hankyung could make out a bed, unmade, and a bookshelf. "It's not like anyone else could have done it."
"We'll just have to--" The boy broke off in his sentence, looking down the hallway. There were footsteps. Siwon jumped a little in agitation. "Quick," said the boy. "In here."
He held open the doorway on the opposite side of the hall, revealing a broom cupboard. Hankyung just stared him, not quite sure whether to take him seriously, but apparently he was supposed to, because Siwon just obedientely got into the cupboard, and the stranger took hold of Hankyung's upper arm and tried to pull him in. "Come on," he said. "Don't make me get Siwon to pull you in, he'll take your arm off."
Hankyung looked at Siwon, uncertain, but then stepped into the cupboard, sighing. The boy stepped in behind him, and the door shut quickly, the lock strangely muffled. There was a pause, and then Hankyung said; "What is going on?"
"Quiet," hissed the other boy, and then, in a commanding tone; "Siwon." And Siwon clamped his hand over Hankyung's mouth. Hankyung was so shocked by this sudden move that he didn't even react other than being quiet.
The footsteps outside got louder until it was obvious that whoever it was was directly outside the cupboard, then they stopped, and someone sighed. "Siwon?" they called. "Siwon, come out from wherever you're hiding, you're not going to get into trouble."
"Don't move," whispered the boy.
"But it's Eeteuk-hyung," whispered Siwon.
"I don't care," the boy whispered back. "Just give it a minute or so."
"Siwon, I'm sure the teachers will understand, it's not your fault." The person outside was clearly directly outside the cupboard, and even Hankyung knew that whoever it was knew exactly where they were. "And if you're worried about Kangin, I'll talk to him."
"Yeah, I'm sure that's what you'll do," whispered the boy, and smothered a laugh against Siwon's shoulder.
"Siwon?" The boy stood up straight suddenly as whoever was outside began to pull the door open; Hankyung caught a glimpse of a young man with light brown hair before the door slammed shut by itself. Hankyung stared at it in shock. The boy on the other side of the door sighed. "Heechul," he said. "Open the door please."
The one named Heechul laughed, but it wasn't the same bright, open laugh that Siwon had. It was wicked, more of a cackle. "But I'm just practising my skills, Teuk."
"Look, Siwon isn't going to get into trouble. You know he isn't."
"We thought you were Kangin," said Heechul. "Your footsteps are just as heavy, you might want to start dieting."
"Just get out here, Heechul."
Slowly, the door swung open, and Heechul stepped out casually, flicking his blonde -- obviously dyed -- hair back. "How am I supposed to practise if you keep stopping me?" he asked the boy in front of them, who just rolled his eyes.
"You only practise when it means you can be annoying," said the boy.
"He was trying to help me," said Siwon, who had removed his hand from Hankyung's mouth eventually. "Are you sure Kangin-hyung won't kill me?"
"I'm sure," said the boy. "Anyway, when he first came here, he put a hole in my wall too."
"Oh man, I remember that," said Heechul. "God, he practically threw himself at your feet begging forgiveness, it was epic."
The boy smiled a little and then noticed Hankyung standing in the doorway. "Oh!" he said, eyes suddenly lighting up. "Are you Hankyung?"
Hankyung nodded shortly. The boy smiled wider, revealing a dimple on his left side. "I'm Eeteuk, I'm the head boy here at the Soo Man Academy."
"It's nice to meet you," Hankyung tried quietly, and while he wasn't lying, he could just as easily lived without having met this boy.
"Did you finish unpacking?" Siwon asked. The hole in the wall appeared to have been completely forgotten. Hankyung suddenly remembered why he had left the room in the first place.
"No," he said, feeling himself turn a bit red. "I was looking for the bathroom."
"You turned the wrong way out of the room," said Siwon. "You should have turned left."
"Here," said Eeteuk. "I'll show you now. It's almost time for dinner so we should be heading downstairs anyway."
Hankyung silently followed them to the bathroom; they waited outside and he stood for a minute or two before he left the room, hoping hard for them to have become sick of waiting and having just left. On leaving the room, however, he found that Siwon was asking Eeteuk if he knew what was for dinner, while Heechul was leaning against a wall looking at his finger nails, clearly bored. "Finally!" he said, when he spotted Hankyung. "What, did you get lost in there too?"
"Be nice, Heechul," said Eeteuk severely, but Heechul just stuck his tongue out at him and started down the corridor.
"Come on, Siwon," he said over his shoulder. "I want to get to dinner before everything is gone, new boy made us late."
Siwon shot an apologetic look at Hankyung but followed Heechul down the corridor, looking like a dog following its master. Hankyung couldn't help but raise an eyebrow at that, which Eeteuk noticed and smiled at.
"Don't mind Heechul," he said. "He can be a bit abrasive but he doesn't really mean it."
It hadn't really been Heechul that Hankyung had raised his eyebrow at, but he didn't argue with the point and just followed Eeteuk downstairs to the entrance hall and then into the dining hall, where the noise level suddenly seemed to explode into a thousand decibels. Hankyung felt sick again, staring around at the seeming mass of kids, teachers at tables in a raised level at the back. The noise and confusion threatened to overpower him, and he focused desperately on Eeteuk's back in front of him; Eeteuk's shirt was strangely bulky at the back.
The table they stopped at was one of the longest and almost all of the seats were taken: Siwon and Heechul were sat near the end, and while Siwon smiled welcomingly at him as they neared, Heechul didn't even pay him any attention.
There were various calls of welcome as Eeteuk motioned for Hankyung to sit down: he took the empty seat next to Siwon, and nodded to the people looking at him curiously, and let Eeteuk introduce him. Judging from the way everyone looked at him, they obviously thought that he couldn't speak any Korean.
"Kangin," said Eeteuk, squeezing into a seat between a strong looking boy with short black hair, and a boy with faded auburn hair. The black-haired boy looked at him with an obvious amount of eagerness.
"Yeah?" he asked.
"Don't get mad at Siwon," said Eeteuk, helping himself to some of the food on the table in front of him. "He leant against your wall and accidently put his arm through it."
"I'm sorry, hyung," said Siwon, almost pleadingly. The boy called Kangin looked at him, a twitch in his eyebrow, but Eeteuk just lay a hand on his arm. Kangin looked at him, nodded at him, shrugged at Siwon, and then went back to his meal.
"Hankyung?" asked a boy at the end of the table with black hair, who sat head and shoulders above the boy next to him with hair so blonde it was almost white. He sounded unsure as to whether he was pronouncing Hankyung's name correctly, and when he continued in perfect Chinese, Hankyung realised why. "That's not a Chinese name. How do you say your real name?"
Hankyung blinked at him. "Are you -- Are you Chinese?"
The boy nodded happily, a bright grin on his face. "I'm Zhou Mi," he said. "I'm supposed to be called Joomyuk here, but no one does. It's too hard to say."
The boy next to him snorted. "No, Zhou Mi is too hard to say," he said in Korean. "We just humour you."
"Korean is hard," said Zhou Mi in Chinese, stubborn and ignoring the other boy. "Don't worry though, I can help you with it."
"It's okay," said Hankyung. "I already know Korean."
Some of the people on the table turned to look at him, shocked. He had spoken in Korean, and they were obviously surprised at his skill with the language. Zhou Mi just continued to smile at him. I know, Hankyung heard, but Zhou Mi hadn't opened his mouth. It wasn't Korean I was talking about.
Hankyung knocked his empty glass over in surprise, staring at Zhou Mi. Zhou Mi's grin grew wider, and the boy next to him realised what had just happened, and hit him on the arm. "I've told you before," he said. "Don't do that, it's so disconcerting."
"Did you just talk into his mind?" Eeteuk was frowning at Zhou Mi. "You're not supposed to do that."
"I was just reassuring him," said Zhou Mi, looking and sounding so innocent that Eeteuk's expression softened considerably. "It's not nice, coming to a new country."
"Well, I know," said Eeteuk. "But Hankyung wouldn't have known what was happening."
"So you can read minds?" Hankyung was still staring. If this boy could read his mind, and had access to his memories, then he could no doubt see the past that Hankyung was trying to hide.
"I get flashes," said Zhou Mi. "If people are screaming emotions at me, it's easier, but I'm learning to control it. It's a lot easier to talk through other people's minds."
"Was I screaming something at you?" Hankyung asked, sounding nervous.
"Fear," said Zhou Mi, simply, in Chinese. Hankyung avoided his eyes.
"So what's your power?" asked the boy next to him. Hankyung acted the foreigner and just frowned in confusion at him. Heechul snorted.
"Stop acting like you don't understand," he said. "He understands everything we say."
"You do?" Kangin scowled at him. "Why do you pretend otherwise?"
Hankyung just stayed silent. This was working out better than he could possibly imagine. Give it some time and maybe he could make it so that everyone at the table hated him, and then he would never have to interact with them ever again. He caught Heechul looking at him out of the corner of his eye, but when he looked around at him, Heechul was frowning at Kangin. "Hey," he said. "Leave him alone, he's just nervous."
"Well why didn't he just say?" asked Kangin.
"Because we're not all as much of a loud mouth as you," said Heechul. "Some of us like to keep our emotions inside."
"You're the loudest bitch in the school," said Kangin, and then added, a little snidely, "hyung."
Heechul glared at him, but Kangin just laughed at him and turned back to his meal. As he went to pick his fork back up, it moved suddenly, shooting into the air and hovering just above his head. He glared at Heechul, who laughed in a similar way to how Kangin had done it, and then tried to pluck the utensil from the air. It danced out of his reach. Kangin growled, a strangely animal noise, and tried again. The fork shot even further into the air.
"Heechul," said Eeteuk desperately, glancing between the fork hanging in mid-air, and the teacher's table. "They're going to notice, and you'll even get me into trouble."
"It's not high enough for them to notice," said Heechul. By now the fork was doing somersaults. "Anyway, you won't get wrong, you're the perfect head boy."
"Just stop it," said Eeteuk firmly, and then suddenly the fork clattered to the table and Kangin snatched it up. Heechul didn't even notice: he was too busy glaring at Zhou Mi.
"I was not showing off," he said. There was a pause, and then; "Seasoning, shut up! I do not!"
"You do not what?" asked Siwon curiously, but Heechul just ignored him and went back to his meal like nothing had happened. Siwon looked at Zhou Mi, who was just grinning. Hankyung had already noticed that Zhou Mi never seemed to not be smiling.
"Aren't you going to eat?" asked a boy down the other end of the table, looking at him with a slight amount of concern. He had delicate, feminine features, with light brown hair which had been carefully styled. Hankyung shook his head.
"I'm not hungry," he said.
Most of the other seemed to have given him up for weird, because they paid him no attention for the remainder of the meal. That was good: it meant he wouldn't have to answer any unwanted questions, such as what his power was. He was wanting to put that moment off for as long as possible. He actually wondered whether he could get through his time here without anyone ever knowing it; it seemed unlikely, but he liked the idea anyway.
Just through listening to their conversations, Hankyung managed to pick up on most of their names. The blonde boy sitting next to Zhou Mi was Kyuhyun, although Zhou Mi insisted on calling him Kui Xian, which seemed to annoy the boy who had asked Hankyung if he was eating, who was called Sungmin. The boy next to Kangin was Eunhyuk, who kept accidently putting his hand through the table. Sitting next to him was a boy called Donghae, who seemed to bolt his food down when Hankyung blinked, though he felt that that was probably just an illusion. Sitting opposite Donghae, next to Heechul, was a quiet boy called Kibum, a chubby boy called Shindong, and then Kyuhyun and Zhou Mi. Opposite Zhou Mi was a boy who looked younger than most of them, who didn't speak at all, and so Hankyung didn't catch his name, and then a boy with black hair tipped with red called Ryeowook, and a boy called Yehsung who had pierced ears.
"Which reminds me," said Eeteuk suddenly, looking down the table at Sungmin. "I heard that you and Heechul had an argument before."
"To have an argument, you have to exchange words," said Heechul. "We had a fight."
"Only with our minds," said Sungmin in a sing song tone. "You'd be impressed, hyung, it was all very intellectual."
"What happened?" asked Eeteuk with a sigh. Hankyung understood his exasperation: clearly whatever had happened between Heechul and Sungmin had become some sort of private joke.
"Hyung kept moving my book every time I tried to pick it up," said Sungmin cheerfully.
"So he teleported into the bathroom and put my toothbrush in the toilet," said Heechul, and mimed giving Sungmin a high five from across the table. Eeteuk actually looked like he wanted to scream.
"Don't worry, hyung," said Siwon brightly. "I stopped Heechul-hyung from killing Sungmin-hyung, and now everything's fine."
"Oh, well that's good then," said Eeteuk, a little faintly.
"I've got a spare toothbrush," said Zhou Mi helpfully. "You can have it if you want, hyung."
"Can do, Seasoning," said Heechul, giving him a mock-salute. Zhou Mi grinned happily.
The hour that Hankyung spent in the dining hall seemed to stretch on and on forever, but eventually Hankyung was free to go, that feeling of wanting to throw up ever constant in the pit of his stomach. He walked with Siwon and Heechul, who kept up a conversation in which Heechul stated a whole lot of things as truth and Siwon agreed with everything he said. Hankyung still didn't know what to make of them, but when Heechul turned and tried to grab hold his arm, only for Hankyung to flinch away from his touch, he knew that they didn't know what to make of him either.
"What, am I not good enough for you?" Heechul frowned at him, and Hankyung was surprised to see a touch of hurt in his features which vanished after a moment. "I wasn't going to hurt you or anything."
"I know," said Hankyung, beginning to feel a little angry at himself for his innate reaction, and angry at Heechul for not understanding. "It's not -- I just--"
"You know you never said what your power was?" Heechul was looking at him curiously. Hankyung avoided his eyes.
"I'd rather not talk about it," he said. Heechul opened his mouth, frowning, but there was a crash from the end of the hallway, and Siwon's voice saying "Oh," miserably, and they looked to see him holding the door to the room he shared with Hankyung in his hand.
"Oh, for god's sake, Siwon!" Heechul stalked up to him and hit him on the shoulder. "You're really going to have to learn about control, because I can't be around to fix your problems all the time."
"I'm sorry, hyung," said Siwon, looking and sounding honestly upset. Heechul sighed.
"It's fine. Look, just put the door against the wall." Siwon did so, and Heechul stood back, concentrating on it. It floated into the air a little, before sinking back down and placing itself into the doorway. Then, Heechul putting a hand to his head, the hinges slowly, painstakingly righted themselves and suddenly the door was fixed. Siwon went to open it, but Heechul slapped his hand away. "Not you," he said. "I don't want you touching the damn thing."
Suddenly he swayed a little, falling sideways into Siwon, who caught him, looking panic-stricken. "Hyung, I keep telling you to not push yourself too hard," he said, sounding terrified.
"I'm fine, Siwon," said Heechul, straightening with his hand pressed to his forehead. "It's just a headache, god." He caught Hankyung staring at him. "Hey, China boy. Get over here and open the door for juggernaught here."
Hanykung blinked a little at him, but after a pause came over to the doorway and put his hand on the handle. "Hey," said Heechul sharply. "Are those gloves something to do with your power?"
Hankyung glanced down at his gloves, the black having gone almost shiny with age. "Yeah," he said softly. "Something to do with it."
"Huh," said Heechul. "Oh well, I have an appointment with some painkillers and my bed. Hopefully Sungmin will not want to talk about Kyuhyun when I get there." He sauntered off down the corridor, just waving over his shoulder at Siwon's call of good night.
"I hope he's okay," Siwon said anxiously, as Hankyung pulled open the door. Hankyung, to be perfectly honest, didn't really care.