Game - Oneshot
Title: GAME
Pairing: KyuWook
Summary: Kyuhyun walks through life with his eyes shut until he meets Ryeowook, who is both his savior and his doom.
Genre: sci-fi!AU, allegorical, romance, slight angst
Rating: pg
Word count: 1 800
A/N: It's been a while. I'm trying to write a sequel for Tower, but it doesn't come easily. I wrote this after having played Super Junior Shake for far to long. At 6AM. Also, I should get a beta-reader, but I'm not sure how it works. And they would most likely be disappointed with me D:
It was a grey day, like any other days. Rain didn’t fall in the polluted city but the air was damp and foggy, making people easily fall sick on cold days when their heater failed to warm up their frozen bodies and the hot water had been long gone.
Inside an old factory, half-hidden by dark grey smoke, Kyuhyun's mind was blank as he was playing, his hands acting on their own. Whenever Kyuhyun thought that he ought to be thinking, he found himself losing points and therefore always went back to his blank state.
It was a game as much as it was work. Kyuhyun couldn't tell you what exactly he did, or why, only the rules of the game. He couldn't tell you the names or faces of his co-workers either.
The only thing he knew about this game, or job, or whatever you might call it, was the company's name: SME. And even those letters meant nothing to Kyuhyun who didn't even care what they were an abbreviation for.
The old metal rustled and Kyuhyun checked the screen, differed the setting slightly and watched himself bring awarded with several points. He felt joy, but no smile came to his face. He often won a lot of points - he was excellent at this game.
When you had enough points you would receive a ray of light so bright that you could feel your mood go up instantly. In a world where fog and smoke covered the city in a constant grayish-brown half-lit light that award meant the difference between getting by and suicide.
There was no artificial lightening in the factory. Only the lights from the screen lit up the big, hollow room, with machines that had once been shining steal but had long since been covered in red rust.
A tear of dim golden sunlight peeked through the high windows and landed on Kyuhyun's screen. The young boy turned around to watch a black acid cloud hide it, earning an angry hissing from his screen, telling him that he was losing points.
Kyuhyun tried to keep playing, but his mind was working now and as a consequence he was playing worse than ever.
He turned the screen off and left for the day. The dim grayish sunlight wasn't enough to light his way; it wasn't even enough to tell him what time of the day it was. The streetlights governed by the state were hanging too high and giving too little light on foggy days and Kyuhyun always felt uneasy and scared as he went home. He would usually pick up his MNET-Game from his pocket and immerse in the music-oriented game with his headphones on while walking.
Everything he did and said and most important of all, played, was being watched through the all-over wifi and when Kyuhyun did it well enough he was awarded with more brightness from the streetlights in front of him, even if only for a little time.
Kyuhyun had no idea why the games were so important and he had never thought to ask. All he cared about was enough light to find his way home safe.
But one day he couldn't. He couldn't think, or rather, he was thinking too much, for the game to go well. Determined to drown his thinking he went into one of the few pubs, ordering a malt beer - which was a queer thing to do, actually, since there was never anything else to order and everyone got the same no matter what they asked for.
He paid with his sun-card; same as what decades ago had been referred to as a credit card, except this one was trading minutes and seconds of light instead of useless money. Trading hours of sunlight (which it was called, though everyone knew it was artificial) was completely unthinkable for the likes of Kyuhyun, who could hardly find his way home on bad days like this one.
When he was handed back his card he noticed a soft hand with long fingers holding it and he curiously looked up to face the most beautiful angel he had ever seen. He stared in disbelief as the angel leaned in closer.
"If you come back tomorrow. And if you can tell me the colour of the building you work in. I'll give you another beer for free."
And then the angel, short and slender, went to serve someone else, feign ignorance at Kyuhyun's eyes following him everywhere.
The next day Kyuhyun did stop in front of the building he worked in. He thought it was impossible not to know, but he hadn't; now that he looked at it, it was made of bricks, brown, maybe once red. But most of all they just looked grey.
Everything looked grey though.
Kyuhyun went in and played until the bell was ringing.
It was ringing for all of those under the age of 25. The government had passed a legislation that forced everyone under 25 to go home at least every 48 hours to eat and sleep, or they were afraid that you would starve yourself to death while working.
Those over 25 years were thought to be able to manage themselves, but for all the ambulances Kyuhyun had seen picking up dehydrated and fainted co-workers, he figured it might be better if the law were to apply to everyone. To him, no one seemed able to take care of themselves.
"Under 25, are you?" the angel asked Kyuhyun as he sat down. Kyuhyun looked closer and thought that the other might not be an angel, but rather light. Something so pure and untainted that it definitely didn't belong in the slum of Seoul 2.1.
Kyuhyun noodled as an answer.
"Me too," the bartender answered, "but I'm on a different shift. I'm Ryeowook by the way."
Kyuhyun nodded again.
"I don't think they care about us at all, you know? I think they just figure we are too young to die just yet. We can still work, we're still pretty, we haven't gotten any offspring yet, yeah?"
The boy was talking the local slang, but awkwardly, like it wasn't his habit. Kyuhyun smiled at that. You only talked slang with people who were your friends.
"Have you ever seen any of those being picked up by an ambulance return to a game?"
To Kyuhyun it seemed like this other boy was asking him to see a lot of things.
Since then, whenever Kyuhyun went to work, he would never score as high as before.
The sound the machine made when he got a bunch of points reminded him of Ryeowook's voice and then he started to really look at the game. And that was when he was playing the worst.
"I can’t play anymore." he told Ryeowook one day as he was sitting at the bar.
"None of the games are made for the people with brains," Ryeowook answered mildly.
"But I don't get any light!" Kyuhyun was panicking now. He had become more and more desperate as his scores went more and more downhill.
"Find another job then. Like mine. One where you won't be punished for thinking. We might even be able to hire you here!" Ryeowook gave him a reassuring smile, but Kyuhyun just stood up and put on his coat. "I can't. I work for SME."
Several days later when Kyuhyun finally swallowed his pride and went back into the bar, Ryeowook didn't look like he had had any sleep at all.
"JYJ did it."
‘But JYJ are legends!’ Kyuhyun wanted to yell back at him.
The only three men, merely boys, who had ever escaped quitting the game. No one knew what had happened to them, but Kyuhyun was sure they would know, that SME would boast widely about it, if they had caught them.
Ryeowook noticed Kyuhyun's resigned look and went out to the other side of the bar between them to take his hand.
"Look at those two," he said, pointing to a couple on a date.
"The government set them up, because not enough people are having children these days. But look at how they interact. He's just playing, trying to earn some more light for their date, so she might be impressed. But they're not talking. This stupid game keeps them from talking. Talking, thinking, saying, doing, meeting people, making friends. None of it can be done while playing this game. They're controlling you, far more than you know. Come on,"
Ryeowook gave Kyuhyun's hand a pull and he followed him curiously onto the roof.
From there he could see an orange glow in the distance, making everything it feel only seeming golden and beautiful.
"This is what I live for," Ryeowook confessed, looking at the setting sun, "not some stupid game."
But Kyuhyun's problem was urgent and a romantic dreamer as Ryeowook didn't seem to understand that.
"I think I'm drowning in darkness," Kyuhyun told him, no emotions in his words.
"This looks pretty, but the kick you get from the game, Ryeowook, it's like nothing else and I need it, but I can't, because you're clouding my mind and I lose whenever I hear your voice in my head or see your face for my eyes or-" he was cut off by Ryeowook's lips pushing gently against his own and for a second everything was so beautiful and perfect and he could breathe, he was no longer drowning and he had something better than the kick he got from winning the game.
As Ryeowook’s smell hit Kyuhyun’s nostrils it was like being able to smell for the first time. It was sweet and subtle, a fruit, but Kyuhyun couldn’t tell which because no one of his status had ever held, let alone eaten, a fruit in their lifetime. It was mixed with the smell of bar; tobacco, alcohol and old men, but Kyuhyun found comfort in these smells as well.
His lips were chapped and had a faint taste of blood and beer covered them. His cheeks were dry and red, rough to touch and Kyuhyun had never found this light in front of him more imperfect or more beautiful. He just stared at him, content, with the sun setting in the horizon, refusing to let go of Ryeowook who was bathed in the faint golden light with him.
But everything good must end and just so everything went into darkness.
In the far far distance the sun was still glowing a faint gold, surrounded by grey and black clouds, but the light was dwindling by the second. All the streetlights, all the lights from the nearby buildings, all of the artificial lightening was gone, except from the spotlight coming from one of the helicopters always doing patrols above them.
"This is SME," a robotic voice announced, "and you've violated our laws.”