never close our eyes ; part three
Title: Never Close Our Eyes (part three)
Pairing: Yongguk/Himchan
Rating: R
W/C: 6.8k
Warnings: Violence and mentions of blood (nothing too extreme), eventual character death (not BAP)
Summary: Dystopian AU | All music has been outlawed, except for approved performances by the Ministry's Orchestra. A small clandestine movement aims to share music with the world. Invited to join by a friend, apathetic Kim Himchan, one of the Ministry's Orchestra's favorite violinists, meets the resistance's leader and is swept into a reality that flips his world upside down.
A/N: I think, after disappearing for what, seven/eight? months, I owe anyone who was remotely interested in this story an explanation. I'll make it simple: I suck, and I'm sorry for the long wait! While I doubt that'll ever happen again, I just want to make it clear that I'll never give up on this fic. taehyuks would kill me if I did, anyways. ━Σ(ﾟДﾟ|||)━ (and i like living, thank you very much!)
Part Two
Wired’s is oddly quiet tonight. It’s usually pretty busy, but today the only people there are Daehyun, himself, and a small group of patrons in the opposite corner. The lack of business is nice; it provides a sense of privacy, which Himchan will always appreciate. He’s been so busy with practice, concerts, and practice for his own concert that he’s barely had time to himself for the past couple of weeks.
Himchan is taking a sip of his usual order when he notices someone come out of the backroom. “Has Jongup always worked here?” He asks when he sees the brown haired boy hastily pulling an apron over his clothing. “I didn’t think I was that oblivious to things.”
Daehyun shakes his head. “He’s staying with Youngjae and his family right now, and Youngjae just got him the job.”
“How come he’s staying with Youngjae?” Himchan asks, stirring his coffee.
Daehyun swallows a mouthful of tea before answering. “He and his family live in the Slums. Both of his parents just lost their jobs, so Youngjae offered to let him work here. He sends the money he makes back to his parents.”
Himchan hums, because he doesn’t know what else to do in response. “He seems like a good kid.” That doesn’t even begin to cover it though. Jongup has done something far more honorable as a teenager than anything Himchan’s done his entire life. “Did his parents work in the factories?”
“Yeah.” Daehyun nods. “Did you hear about all of the lay-offs?”
“Mhmm,” Himchan answers. He vaguely remembers someone talking about it in passing during practice. The factories in the Slums were overfilled, with more workers than there were actual positions, and, most importantly, than there was enough money to pay them. “It’s ridiculous. Most of those people won’t be able to find work again.”
Daehyun heaves an exasperated sigh. “Something has to change, and soon.”
Himchan thinks that’s unlikely, what with the way Hyosung seems to be tightening her rule on the city. He needs to practice not being such a damn pessimist though, so he keeps his mouth shut and just nods. “We can hope.” Except Himchan doesn’t think there’s much of a place for hope in a world like this.
Youngjae slides into their booth then. He leans over to plant a kiss on Daehyun’s cheek, an obnoxious smile on his face. “Hey guys.”
“You know,” Himchan says slowly, watching them. “You never did tell me how you guys got together.”
Youngjae’s eyes widen and his cheeks darken. All Daehyun does is laugh. “It’s... not really that great of a story,” he says, and Youngjae makes an exasperated noise and collapses against his boyfriend’s shoulder. “Youngjae here is an incredibly clingy drunk. Emotional, too. You can probably put two and two together.”
Himchan snorts, shaking his head at the pair. “Youngjae looks like he wants to die,” he says, tapping on the table, “so I think it’s time for a topic change, yeah?”
“Yes!” Youngjae says, sitting up straight. His face is slightly red - either from blushing or pushing his face against Daehyun’s shoulder. “That’s a great idea. A really, really great idea.”
Daehyun chuckles, nudging Youngjae with his shoulder. “You know what’s not a great idea though?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just sends a poignant look in Himchan’s direction. “A concert in the middle of the Slums.”
“That’s this week, isn’t it?” Youngjae asks.
Himchan sighs, dropping his forehead to his palm. “Yeah,” is all he has to say. He’s not exactly excited for the concert, especially since it’s been taking up all of his free time. “I can’t wait until it’s done with.”
Youngjae quirks his head. “Not excited?”
“For a concert I was forced into? No, not really.” He picks his head back up and brings his drink to his lips. To his dismay, it’s almost all gone. Fortunately, when he looks up from his mug, there’s a hand reaching across the table to place another drink in front of him.
Jongup’s standing next to their both, a wide smile on his face. “Figured you guys could use more,” he says, sliding a mug in front of Daehyun.
“Giving away my products?” Youngjae asks, a lilt in his voice.
“Nah,” Jongup says, shaking his head. “Just tricking them into paying double.”
Both Daehyun and Youngjae laugh at that, and even Himchan’s lips pull upwards into a smile.
Daehyun gestures at the table. “Sit down with us for a second!”
Jongup glances around the shop, and, upon noticing that there are no new customers needing help, slides into the booth, next to Himchan. “You know,” he starts to say, looking up at Himchan. “Yongguk has been wanting to talk to you.”
“What about?” Himchan asks, looking back at the boy who is, mostly, a stranger to him.
“Your concert,” Jongup says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “He wants you to meet up with him.”
“I don’t have the time visit the-” Himchan starts to say, but stops when he remembers that they’re in public. “I don’t have time to visit him,” he corrects. “I’ve been so busy with rehearsals and prepping for this event.”
Jongup frowns. “He says it’s important, though. I don’t think he thinks the concert is a very good idea.”
“That’s true,” Daehyun pipes up. “When it got announced to the public last week, he was pissed. Said it was the shittiest idea he’s ever heard.”
“Yeah, well,” Himchan says, rubbing a hand across his head tiredly. “I don’t like it very much, either. At least he’s not the one performing. He doesn’t even have to go.” He pauses for a second, a new thought occurring to him. “You guys... you guys aren’t going right?”
Three sets of eyes look back at him. “No,” Daehyun says, shaking his head. “I mean, we’d go if we could but... Yongguk doesn’t think it’ll be all that...organized, and then there’s the fact that it’s...” He trails off, sending a significant look in Jongup’s direction.
“You can say it, you know,” the younger boy says, after a beat. “That it’s because it’s in the Slums. No one willingly goes to the Slums. That’s a fact. Facts aren’t offensive.” He pushes himself up out of the booth, grabbing the empty mugs on the table after he’s standing. “I have to get back to work.”
It’s quiet for a moment after Jongup’s departure. “He’s not upset or anything,” Youngjae says, breaking the silence. “He’s just... he’s embarrassed about his living situation. That the Slums are where he comes from.”
“He shouldn’t be,” Himchan says, shaking his head. “He’s a kid. It’s not his fault that’s where he was born. Hell, it’s not even his parents fault. It’s the government who’s at fault here, not the citizens.”
Youngjae blinks up at Yongguk, surprised, but Daehyun just snorts, shaking his head. “Words of anti-establishment wisdom from the poster boy of all things Ministry.” He turns to Youngjae. “You see why I keep him around now? He’s one big walking contradiction. All you need in life is Kim Himchan and you’ll never be unamused.”
“He’s lying,” Himchan says, shaking his head. “He keeps me around for my face. Walking contradiction? I believe he means I’m a piece of walking artwork.”
“Both of you are real pieces of work, that’s for sure,” Youngjae mumbles before stealing Daehyun’s drink. “The real question is, why do I keep you guys around?”
The week crawls along slowly, Himchan juggling Orchestra practices in one hand and concert preparations in the other. He’s been waiting for this day for so long that it feels like it’s come both too quickly and yet not fast enough.
“I won’t be accompanying you there,” Jieun says, after they’ve finished all of the last minute concert preparations. “I have other matters to attend to. I’m sure you understand.”
Himchan nods. “Of course.” He hadn’t expected her to come along in the first place. Someone as high-class as Jieun wouldn’t willingly enter the Slums, probably out of fear that poverty is an infectious disease.
“But I’ll still be watching!” She smiles, probably thinking she sounds encouraging. She doesn’t. “It’s being broadcast live, remember.” And how could he forget? Everything he does is broadcast for the whole nation to see.
He slides into the back of the sleek, black SUV that’s going to bring him to the venue. “Good luck!” Jieun says, and then she’s shutting the car door behind him. He leans his head against the leather seat and shuts his eyes.
The car’s engine roars to life and they’re on the roadway. Himchan stares out the window as he watches the scenery change when they transition from Skyline Town to Midtown. The buildings are less flashy; in Skyline Town the buildings are made of polished chrome. Here, though, they’re standard brick and cement.
The farther they drive into Midtown, the less cars there are on the road. They’re close to where Midtown bleeds into the Slums now. The apartments are starting to look more rundown now, a bit like the appearance of the resistance's headquarters.
The left lane is entirely clear - there’s no one driving up to Midtown from the Slums. And why would there be? Few people can afford cars down there, and people rarely make trips to visit. The handful of other cars on the road with them make turns onto different side streets and, soon enough, they’re the only car on the road.
“We’re in the Slums now,” the driver says unnecessarily. Even without the introduction, Himchan knows that they’re there. The road beneath them is no longer smooth pavement, but gravel. Metal shacks line the road, their owners sitting outside them. He remembers living in a place like that, but somehow, everything here looks worse than he remembers. Or maybe he never realized just how bad his circumstances were when he was a kid.
They drive past all of this to the center of town, where the venue for the concert has been set up. The center of the slums is a large, open square between two of the larger factories. A makeshift stage has been set up, and a crowd has already formed in front of it. The car comes to a stop behind the stage and Himchan sighs, unbuckling his seat belt. Time to get this over with.
Himchan doesn’t know how it happens. One minute he’s playing in front of a hushed crowd, and then there’s a faint rustling in the crowd. The people are shifting, some of them rummaging through knapsacks or purses. There’s a low murmur that gets louder along with the climax of his song, and then the crescendo is punctuated with a rain of bullets.
It happens so quickly that he doesn’t know what to do. The crowd is in utter chaos. Screams echo through the air. Masked men in black hoods wave guns through the air, and it’s when Himchan sees them that his fight or flight response kicks in.
One of them is pushing his way through the crowd, until he’s right in front of the camera man who was meant to be recording the audience’s reaction to Himchan’s playing. He aims his gun at the camera lens, and Himchan doesn’t stick around long enough to see how that plays out. He scrambles off the stage, his violin crashing to the floor and splitting in two in the process.
A bullet grazes his arm as he runs down the steps of the stage, and the pain makes him freeze. All he can focus on is the burning sensation. He barely registers the arm that wraps around his shoulders and pulls him down the rest of the steps.
“Time to go,” the owner of the arm says. Himchan knows that voice anywhere. He looks to his side, and sure enough, Yongguk is there. His brows are knit together in concentration. Yongguk pulls him to the area behind the stage where they are, momentarily, shielded from the chaos. “We have to get you out of here. Just follow me, okay?”
Getting out of here, away from the near constant chorus of screams and mass hysteria, would be wonderful. It’s just about the greatest idea he’s heard in his entire life, actually. Himchan nods distractedly, dazed from the pain in his arm. Yongguk nudges him forward a little bit, to get him moving, and then breaks into a run, Himchan trailing not too far behind him.
“Where are we?” asks Himchan as Yongguk pushes him into an armchair. The house Yongguk had pulled them into is small and dingy. The main room is half living room, half kitchen, and Himchan can see bedrolls folded up in the corner of the room. There’s a shuttered door on one end that leads to what he assumes is the bathroom. The entirety of the house is smaller than his living room. He bites his lip, feeling incredibly guilty.
“Junhong’s,” Yongguk says. “Let me see your arm.”
“It’s fine.” The pain is mostly gone now. An intense numbing feeling has taken its place. He can’t feel from the middle of his bicep up, but at least it doesn’t hurt as much.
Yongguk rolls his eyes. “Take your jacket off.”
A surface wound to his arm is the last of his worries at the moment. “I’m fine,” he repeats, shaking his head. “It just got grazed.”
Yongguk tugs at his sleeve, an expectant look on his face. Dejected, Himchan helps him peel it off. Blood makes the fabric stick to his skin, and he winces when the fabric brushes past his wound. The adrenaline is starting to wear off, and the numbness goes with it. The returning pain hits him like a freight train.
“You see that hole?” Yongguk asks. “You didn’t just get grazed. It went through.”
Himchan glances down and sucks in a breath. There’s blood, a lot of blood. The top of his arm is stained a sickly red color, and in that moment, he thinks he just might be sick. “I need to go to the hospital, get this checked out.” He pushes himself off the chair with his good arm, only to have Yongguk’s hand on his chest, pushing him back down.
“There’s a terrorist group out there who wants nothing more than to see you dead,” says Yongguk, blunt as always. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Himchan wants to ask why they want him dead, because it’s not like he’s the one who’s oppressing them. Before he can, though, the front door slams open. Junhong steps into the room, his eyes wide.
“Holy shit,” he says, staring at Himchan. “You gonna fix him?” The question is directed at Yongguk, but he doesn’t tear his gaze away from Himchan’s arm.
Yongguk nods. “I’m about to.”
Red flags fly up in Himchan’s head. Yongguk’s going to remove the bullet from his arm? Yongguk? “Do you even know how to fix my arm?” He doesn’t mean to snap at Yongguk, honest, but the pain coupled with the confusion of what just happened adds a harsh edge to his voice.
Yongguk seems to understand, because his expression softens. “Just let me fix your arm, and then we can talk.” He looks Himchan directly in the eyes. “Trust me. Please?”
There’s a sincerity in the other man’s eyes that’s unfamiliar. The please at the end of his phrase surprises Himchan. It makes everything a question, not a command, and that Himchan appreciates. “Okay,” he says, nodding. “Okay. I trust you.”
Yongguk instructs Junhong to stop standing around and retrieve supplies from his bathroom. In a few moments time, Himchan has a towel stuffed between his teeth, and he bites down as Yongguk tries to fish the bullet out. The pain is excruciating. Even with the towel in his mouth, his muffled scream is still audible.
“Don’t get any blood on that chair,” Junhong warns them from where he eyes the whole procedure wearily. “My mom will be pissed.”
If Himchan knew the boy better, he’d reach out to slap him.
Yongguk, apparently, shares his sentiments. “Shut the hell up. Some of us are trying to perform surgery here.” He squints in concentration, his brow furrowed. Himchan doesn’t know how long removing the bullet actually takes. His sense of time is skewed by the fire blazing in his arm. After what feels like an eternity, Yongguk pulls it out and deposits it in a small dish.
“I just have to clean it up now,” Yongguk says, shuffling around in the first aid kit Junhong brought from the bathroom. “The worst is over.”
Himchan removes the towel from his mouth. The metallic smell of blood taints the air, and Himchan is grateful that it’s the taste of cotton that lingers in his mouth instead. “Who were they?” he asks as Yongguk busies himself with wiping the excess blood off his arm.
“Terrorists,” Yongguk says, using the term from earlier. “Extremists. Whatever you want to call them.” He dabs at the wound with disinfectant, and Himchan winces. “They had nothing to do with us though, I can promise you that.”
“Didn’t think they did,” he replies, not daring to glance at his arm. “But why... why go after me? I don’t have anything to do with politics.”
Yongguk stops his ministrations to stare at Himchan. “You really don’t understand how important you are, do you?”
Himchan blinks at him. “I play music. I don’t make laws.”
“Junhong.” The boy snaps to attention at the sound of Yongguk addressing him. “Name a member of the Ministry’s Orchestra. Besides Himchan.”
Junhong squints his eyes in concentration. “Um,” he says, chewing his bottom lip. “Song Jisun? Er, no, wait. Song Jieun. The conductor.”
“Anyone else?”
Junhong thinks for a moment longer before shaking his head in defeat. He slumps back against the wall, looking thoroughly upset with himself. It’s almost as if he thinks not being able to answer will disappoint Yongguk.
“See?” asks Yongguk. “It’s you who people know. It’s you who’s on commercials, whose face is on billboards, who opens the concerts. No one gives a damn that you don’t make laws. The only thing that matters is that the people see you everywhere. You’re a household name, not some nobody.”
Yongguk fishes a roll of gauze out of the first aid kit and gets back to tending to Himchan’s arm. “I think you’re on TV more than the Minister.” He wraps the gauze around Himchan’s arm. It’s tight and uncomfortable, but rather than protest, Himchan bites his lip. “It doesn’t matter that you’re not a political leader. You’re one of the few prominent public figures we have, and your death would make pretty big waves.”
It’s quiet as Himchan lets that settle in. He knows there’s animosity towards the orchestra, knows that some of the more aware citizens of the city know that what he does is nothing more than propaganda. Still though, being at the center of some political assassination plot is beyond what he would have ever expected. He’s not surprised to find out that he has enemies and people who dislike him - that much he already knew. He’s just never thought of himself as being all that important. Nothing he does comes from himself. All of his orders, every single thing he does for the Orchestra, comes from someone higher up, someone far more important and informed than he is.
“I’d guess this was a spur of the moment thing, though,” Yongguk says, tucking the end of the gauze underneath itself to make a bandage. “Hey, Junhong? Can you get me some medical tape? My hands are kind of...” He wiggles his fingers, and the tips are stained red with Himchan’s blood.
“At least the blood is all over you, not the chair,” the younger boy says as he rummages through the first aid kit. When he finds the roll of tape, he tosses it to Yongguk.
Yongguk catches the tape in one hand and laughs, short and airy. “I don’t want to deal with the wrath of momma Choi right now.”
“Damn right you don’t.” Junhong nods. “You probably need some painkillers, don’t you?” It takes Himchan a few awkward moments of silence to realize that Junhong is addressing him. Sure enough though, the younger boy is squinting up at him from where he’s sitting next to the first aid kit.
Himchan scrambles for words to make up for the uncomfortable silence. “Yeah, please,” he says quickly. “That’d be really great, actually. Thanks.”
“I think I have some left over from when I-” He trails his sentence off and clears his throat. “I think they’re in the kitchen.”
Having finished taping up the bandage, Yongguk excuses himself to the bathroom to wash off his hands. Himchan sits awkwardly in the armchair, watching as Junhong shuffles through shelves in the kitchenette. The air isn’t tense, per se, but Himchan still feels uneasy. While Junhong is being nothing but amiable to him now, he had been standoffish when they first met.
When Junhong finally finds the bottle of painkillers, he makes a soft noise of excitement. He stretches to reach the top shelf they’re on and staggers a bit, banging into the counter.
“Are you okay?” Himchan asks immediately. He starts to get up but Junhong waves his hand, shooing him.
“I’m fine,” he says, shaking his head. He places both of his hands on the counter for support. “It’s not a big deal, it’s just because I-” He stops his sentence abruptly once again, like he’s only just realized that Himchan is a stranger, not someone familiar. Himchan furrows his eyebrows, knowing that he’s missing something here. And even if that something is none of his business, he can’t help but be curious.
Yongguk walks back into the room then, patting his hands on his pants, and the moment is brushed aside. Junhong reaches up for the bottle again, and this time he grabs it without incident. He tosses them into Himchan’s lap. Picking the bottle up, Himchan studies the label. They’re prescription only, the sort of strong painkiller you’d only be able to get from the hospital. Junhong’s name is on the bottle, though the part that says what they were prescribed for is worn off.
Himchan shakes two pills into his palm and swallows them dry. They slide down his throat uncomfortably, but he chokes them down anyways, grateful to have something to help with his arm.
“Anyways,” Yongguk starts to say. “I don’t think the attack today was carefully planned. Pretty sure they heard about your concert, decided to find some guns, and showed up.”
“What makes you think that?” Himchan asks.
“Nothing they did was organized,” Yongguk says. “Who opens fire in the middle of a crowd when your target is on stage? I, for one, would go from behind if I had to assassinate someone. Be sneaky and all that shit.” He crosses his arms, leaning against the wall near the door. “They caused a scene, sure, but it wasn’t professional. I mean, you are alive after all.”
Himchan’s not really sure how Yongguk can find anything to criticize about the attack. It seemed pretty well organized to him, but then again, Yongguk was not the one getting shot at. He’s able to have an objective view, something that Himchan can’t. All Himchan can think about the way time seemed to freeze when the first shot was fired.
“‘Dunno,” Himchan says, looking down at his arm. “They didn’t do too horribly.” His arm pulsates painfully, and he wonders when the hell those pills Junhong gave him will kick in.
Yongguk’s lips pull up into a slight smile, and he crosses the small room to pat Himchan on his good shoulder. “You should be glad that’s all they managed to do to you.”
“I know,” he replies quietly, because it’s true. His arm hurts like a bitch, but that’s far better than being dead. That, he thinks, is a weird thought. He’s not quite sure when it’ll sink in that he could’ve died today. He’s not sure if it ever will.
“It’s getting late,” Junhong says, staring out the window, where the sky is getting dark. “My mom is going to be home from work soon. I don’t think she’d mind if you guys stayed but... we don’t really have the room.” He turns his gaze away from the window and back to Yongguk and Himchan. “Plus, I don’t really know how to explain... him.”
“The Slums are going to be locked down until the police clean everything up. No one in, no one out.” Yongguk rubs his forehead with his hand. “It’s okay though,” he says, nodding. “I know where we’ll go. Come on,” he says, nodding towards Himchan.
Himchan takes that as his cue to follow Yongguk out the door. “Hey,” he says to Junhong as he passes the younger boy. “Thank you.”
Junhong shuts the door behind them, but not before telling Himchan that it was “no problem, really.”
“My guess is that the Ministry... took care of those terrorists, but we should be careful anyways,” Yongguk says as he walks away from the house, hands in his pockets.
Himchan follows after him, taking wide steps to keep up with Yongguk’s brisk pace. “Where are we going, anyways?”
The city is quiet around them. No one else, it seems, is crazy enough to roam the streets after a terrorist attack. Yongguk keeps his head up, one hand resting on what Himchan assumes is a gun holstered at his waist.
“You’ll see,” Yongguk says, still keeping at his pace. “Keep an eye out and don’t talk too much until we get there, okay?”
The atmosphere around them puts Himchan on edge. Instead of screams and chaos, the city around them is silent. It’s eerie, the way the air is so still. He’s not sure which journey is worse - this, or running away from the concert.
They walk a few minutes longer, and Himchan, who’s too busy looking from left to right, doesn’t realize they’ve stopped until his chest collides with Yongguk’s outstretched hand.
“Keeping an eye on your surroundings doesn’t mean losing sight of what’s in front of you,” he says, letting his hand fall back to his side. “We’re here.”
Here is an alleyway between two defunct factories. Himchan furrows his brows at Yongguk. He’s about to ask what the hell Yongguk’s talking about when the other man crouches down, next to what looks like the covering to a tunnel. He pulls at the edges until he’s lifting it, revealing the entrance to some underground structure.
“Down here,” Yongguk says, dusting off his hands.
Himchan peers down the hole and doesn’t see much of anything. “What is that?”
“A tunnel,” Yongguk says, pushing himself off the ground. “It’ll take us where we want to go. C’mon, you first.” His hand is on Himchan’s back, coaxing him towards the opening. “There’s a ladder on the side, see? Follow it down.”
Himchan kneels next to the hollow and, after a beat, climbs down. His injury pulses painfully when he grips the side of the ladder too painfully. Gritting his teeth, he drops his injured arm to his side and hauls himself down the ladder, rung by rung, one-handed. When he gets to the bottom rung, he hops off and moves to the side, making room for Yongguk.
Yongguk shuts the opening to the tunnel before climbing down after Himchan. The loss of light from outside darkens the tunnel and oh, this is what pitch black looks like. Himchan blinks, once, twice, three times, but this is nothing like walking around his house at night. There’s absolutely no light for his eyes to adjust to, and the feeling of complete darkness is stifling.
“Hold on,” Yongguk says when he reaches solid ground. “There should be a switch around here somewhere.”
“You couldn’t have asked me to hit it when there was still a bit of light?” Himchan asks incredulously. On a whim, he brings his hand right in front of his face, close enough that it touches his nose. He can’t even see the outline.
“Calm down, princess,” Yongguk says, and Himchan is willing to bet that he’s rolling his eyes. There’s a faint rustling of clothes and then Yongguk is pointing his lit-up phone at the wall. He flicks an industrial switch. One by one, the row of lights lining the walls of the tunnel turn on, illuminating the space with a dim orange color. Yongguk turns around to face Himchan, his eyebrow quirked. “You good now?”
Himchan chooses to ignore him. “What is this place, anyways?”
“An old utility tunnel,” Yongguk says. “There are miles and miles of these tunnels under the city. A lot of the bigger ones, like the old subway system, got sealed up when the Ministry first took over. Smaller ones like this were forgotten about, though.”
They keep a steady pace as they walk, remnants of fallen bricks crunching under their feet. “So where does this one lead to?”
“It’ll take us out of the city,” Yongguk replies, hands shoved carelessly in his pockets. “This one was used for transporting waste out of the city way back when, so it’ll take us to what used to be a landfill.”
“The landfill isn’t our final destination, right?” Himchan asks, following Yongguk. “Camping out under the stars on top of rolling hills grown from garbage. Doesn’t sound that great to me.”
Yongguk laughs. It’s loud and genuine, and Himchan decides that it’s a nice sound. His heart has been working on overdrive since the shooting, but Yongguk’s laugh is somehow relaxing. Himchan lets his lips quirk up into a smile.
“I don’t know,” Yongguk shrugs. “I’m sure there’s some sort of poetic meaning to be found in there. But no,” he shakes his head, “we’re going to the headquarters.”
Himchan clicks his tongue. He should have figured. The club is a literal safehaven, and it makes sense that that’s where they’d be heading.
“I hope you’re not too tired,” Yongguk says. “We’ve got another hour or so left of walking.”
When Yongguk said old landfill, he meant very old. There are no traces of garbage anywhere, no lingering smell of trash. There’s only a large, green hill. The grass is wild and overgrown, but it’s nice up here. Peaceful, even.
It was early evening when they set out from Junhong’s, but now the darkness of night has overtaken the sky. The moon paints the landscape a pearlescent color, and the air is still. It’s different from the stillness in the Slums, though. Out here in no-man’s land is true tranquility, not the eerie forced calm that comes from the aftermath of tragedy.
“Look,” Yongguk says, breaking the silence around them. He puts a hand on Himchan’s shoulder and turns him around, facing the way they had come to climb up the hill. “You can see the city from up here.”
The city is massive and sprawling in front of him. The closest part of the city to them - the Slums - should, in theory, be its largest point. Everything about the city, though, is backwards. The buildings in the foreground are small and puny in front of them, and instead the city increases in size the farther away it gets. Slums, Midtown, Skyline Town. Minimum, moderate, excessive.
“It’s so bright,” Himchan says, blinking. It’s the only source of man made light for miles upon miles. The capital city is the center of the country, and there’s not much outside of it. There are a few settlements in the South, near the ocean, but they’re not as heavily populated. They are, however, just as guarded. The only access to them is through government run trains. There are no public roads out here - at least not official ones.
“Isn’t it?” Yongguk replies, sinking to the ground. He stretches his legs out in front of him. “It almost looks pretty like this.”
Himchan settles down next to Yongguk. “If you don’t think about the corruption and awful shit that happens in there on a daily basis,” he says quietly, “then yeah, it’s almost pretty.”
“I like it better like this,” Yongguk says, putting his hands behind him to support his weight. “If you look at it like this, from the outside, it just looks like an ideal. Like it’s some beautiful metropolis that the old leaders built.”
Himchan hums. He pulls at the grass. It’s cool and soft beneath his fingers. “Do you think utopias are actually possible, though?”
Yongguk tilts his head. “I think,” he starts slowly, “I think if you have the right leaders, with the right intentions, then yeah. I’m not saying a perfect city or country will ever exist, but a fair one that tries to do the right thing for its people? I think that could happen.”
People like Yongguk are rare. People like Hana, with her idea of pushing boundaries and leaving the orchestra, are rare. There’s something to be admired about them, about the way they find a purpose, but Himchan finds himself scoffing at their naivety. He’s never been much of an idealist.
“I don’t,” Himchan disagrees, after a lapse in conversation. “I think if you give anyone power, it’ll corrupt eventually.”
Yongguk pulls his eyes away from the cityscape to look at Himchan instead. His look is searching and there’s something like sadness - or is it pity? - in his eyes that makes Himchan look away. “How do the other countries do it, then? How are they all functional?”
“We don’t know very much about them, do we?” Himchan asks, staring at the cityscape. A red light blinks on top of a communication tower. It glows, high in the sky, like an eye watching over them. “I’m sure they have their problems, too.”
“Not problems like ours, though.” Yongguk shakes his head. “My grandad... He used to tell me stories about Exo when I was younger. They’re free over there. There are these huge airports, and they’re open to the public. They can can come and go as they please. They’re not trapped there like we are here.”
Himchan doesn’t know much about Exo or any of the other nations. He knows it borders them on the North, knows that they have a different, more organized form of government, but that’s about it. It’s not like they were ever taught much about the world in class. School had just been twelve years of rehashed Ministry propaganda.
“They’ve got access to music, real music, over there. The television isn’t censored and the internet isn’t policed.” Yongguk falls back against the grass and sighs. “And there’s no caste system in place. It sounds too good to be true to us, but it isn’t. It’s real. It’s possible.” He turns his head in the grass, facing Himchan, who’s still sitting upright. “Have a little hope.”
Himchan can’t help it; he laughs. “I used to have hope,” he says. “When my dad was still alive, the Ministry was still in the process of rooting out rebel musicians then, and a lot of people stopped playing out of fear. He didn’t.” Himchan doesn’t know why he’s talking about this. It’s mostly out of exhaustion, he thinks. He’s worn out, his bones weak and his muscles aching. After everything that’s happened today, he’s too tired to care about walls and inhibitions.
It’s the atmosphere, too. Daehyun has told him - jokingly, of course - that he can be a little uptight sometimes. Out here, though, they’re removed from the city, from everyone and everything, and the cool of night relaxes him. “I thought he was so brave for what he did, thought maybe he’d be the one to end up saving the world, or something dumb like that. I don’t know,” he shrugs, ripping a handful of grass from the ground. “I was a dumb kid.”
Quietly, Yongguk says, “I don’t think that’s dumb. Your dad was brave and worthy of admiration.” He’s silent for a little while until he asks, cautiously, “How old were you?”
“Six,” Himchan says without thinking about whether or not he should answer. Yongguk already knows nearly as much about him as Daehyun and Hana, and it can’t hurt to let him know a little more.
For a minute Himchan thinks Yongguk is going to say something dumb like “I’m sorry” but, thankfully, he doesn’t. They sit in a comfortable silence, nothing but the wind rustling the trees in the forest that borders the eastern side of the city and the low hum of nocturnal insects as their soundtrack.
“Hey,” Yongguk says after a considerable amount of time, trying to catch Himchan’s attention. Himchan glances down at where he’s laying in the grass. “You’re still alive. That should be reason enough to have some hope.”
Yongguk is right and Himchan knows it. When he closes his eyes, he can see the crowd breaking apart into chaos, can hear the sound of the gunfire crystal clear. He could have died today. He could be six feet under the ground instead of a hundred feet high on this hill. He’s been given a bigger chance than either of his parents were.
Pushing himself off the ground, Yongguk wipes the grass stains off his pants. “C’mon,” he says, offering a hand to Himchan. “Break time’s over. Let’s get moving.”
His throat feels tight. “Thank you,” he says, swallowing the lump in his throat. “For today. You saved my life.” He grabs Yongguk’s offered hand and lets the other man help pull him to his feet.
“You don’t...” Yongguk starts to say, shaking his head. “You don’t have to thank me,” and then he drops Himchan’s hand and starts down the other side of the hill.
Being inside the club is odd when there aren’t crowds of people or loud, pulsing music. It’s desolate, far too big for just the two of them. Their footsteps echo off the walls as they walk through the main room.
“I come here sometimes when I need time to myself,” Yongguk says. “I live alone so it’s not like space is an issue, but I can’t play music in my flat, so.” He leads them down the same hallway that his office is located in. They bypass that room, though, and Yongguk opens another door located at the very end of the hallway.
It’s pretty empty, save for a bed pushed against a wall on one end of the room and a tall bookshelf perpendicular to it. “Here you have it, my home away from home,” Yongguk says, rubbing at the back of his neck.
Himchan peers up at the bookcase, and it certainly isn’t conventional. There are CDs and records, and, even more interesting, a number of banned books. “These are contraband,” he says sliding his finger along their spines. “How’d you get them?”
“They were passed down from my grandparents,” answers Yongguk. “Here, you can take the bed,” Yongguk offers, shrugging his sweatshirt off. “Just let me grab one of these blankets, and I’ll be good.”
Himchan shakes his head. “No, no,” he refuses, tearing himself away from the bookshelf and pulling one of the blankets from the bed so he can set up on the floor. “I’ll take the floor.”
Yongguk rolls his eyes as he snatches the blanket out of Himchan’s hands. “Hey, remember how you got shot today?” He drops the blanket onto the carpeted section of the floor. “I think you deserve a comfortable place to sleep.”
Eyeing the bed wearily, Himchan replies, “I don’t want to put you out though. You’ve helped me out way more than necessary already.”
Yongguk snorts. “Take the fucking bed, Himchan.” Then his hands are on Himchan’s shoulders, pushing him gently - because of his wound, and because Yongguk always seems to be considerate - onto the bed.
Reluctantly, Himchan pulls off his shoes and flops back against the bed. He pulls a blanket up over himself and settles his head into the pillow. His tired muscles sing for relief when he finally gets comfortable on the bed and stills.
A clock on the wall ticks, and after a minute or so, Himchan mumbles out, “Hey, Yongguk?”
Yongguk, who’s sprawled across the floor, grunts in reply. “What’s up?”
“I think we can cancel that truce now,” he says, looking down at Yongguk. “Call ourselves real friends, and all that.”
Chuckling, Yongguk mumbles out, “Goodnight, Himchan.”
“Night,” Himchan replies, pulling the blanket tighter around himself. The last thing he sees before falling asleep is Yongguk, covers pulled up to his neck in attempt to cover the small, involuntary smile that spreads across his face.
Part Four
Pairing: Yongguk/Himchan
Rating: R
W/C: 6.8k
Warnings: Violence and mentions of blood (nothing too extreme), eventual character death (not BAP)
Summary: Dystopian AU | All music has been outlawed, except for approved performances by the Ministry's Orchestra. A small clandestine movement aims to share music with the world. Invited to join by a friend, apathetic Kim Himchan, one of the Ministry's Orchestra's favorite violinists, meets the resistance's leader and is swept into a reality that flips his world upside down.
A/N: I think, after disappearing for what, seven/eight? months, I owe anyone who was remotely interested in this story an explanation. I'll make it simple: I suck, and I'm sorry for the long wait! While I doubt that'll ever happen again, I just want to make it clear that I'll never give up on this fic. taehyuks would kill me if I did, anyways. ━Σ(ﾟДﾟ|||)━ (and i like living, thank you very much!)
Part Two
Wired’s is oddly quiet tonight. It’s usually pretty busy, but today the only people there are Daehyun, himself, and a small group of patrons in the opposite corner. The lack of business is nice; it provides a sense of privacy, which Himchan will always appreciate. He’s been so busy with practice, concerts, and practice for his own concert that he’s barely had time to himself for the past couple of weeks.
Himchan is taking a sip of his usual order when he notices someone come out of the backroom. “Has Jongup always worked here?” He asks when he sees the brown haired boy hastily pulling an apron over his clothing. “I didn’t think I was that oblivious to things.”
Daehyun shakes his head. “He’s staying with Youngjae and his family right now, and Youngjae just got him the job.”
“How come he’s staying with Youngjae?” Himchan asks, stirring his coffee.
Daehyun swallows a mouthful of tea before answering. “He and his family live in the Slums. Both of his parents just lost their jobs, so Youngjae offered to let him work here. He sends the money he makes back to his parents.”
Himchan hums, because he doesn’t know what else to do in response. “He seems like a good kid.” That doesn’t even begin to cover it though. Jongup has done something far more honorable as a teenager than anything Himchan’s done his entire life. “Did his parents work in the factories?”
“Yeah.” Daehyun nods. “Did you hear about all of the lay-offs?”
“Mhmm,” Himchan answers. He vaguely remembers someone talking about it in passing during practice. The factories in the Slums were overfilled, with more workers than there were actual positions, and, most importantly, than there was enough money to pay them. “It’s ridiculous. Most of those people won’t be able to find work again.”
Daehyun heaves an exasperated sigh. “Something has to change, and soon.”
Himchan thinks that’s unlikely, what with the way Hyosung seems to be tightening her rule on the city. He needs to practice not being such a damn pessimist though, so he keeps his mouth shut and just nods. “We can hope.” Except Himchan doesn’t think there’s much of a place for hope in a world like this.
Youngjae slides into their booth then. He leans over to plant a kiss on Daehyun’s cheek, an obnoxious smile on his face. “Hey guys.”
“You know,” Himchan says slowly, watching them. “You never did tell me how you guys got together.”
Youngjae’s eyes widen and his cheeks darken. All Daehyun does is laugh. “It’s... not really that great of a story,” he says, and Youngjae makes an exasperated noise and collapses against his boyfriend’s shoulder. “Youngjae here is an incredibly clingy drunk. Emotional, too. You can probably put two and two together.”
Himchan snorts, shaking his head at the pair. “Youngjae looks like he wants to die,” he says, tapping on the table, “so I think it’s time for a topic change, yeah?”
“Yes!” Youngjae says, sitting up straight. His face is slightly red - either from blushing or pushing his face against Daehyun’s shoulder. “That’s a great idea. A really, really great idea.”
Daehyun chuckles, nudging Youngjae with his shoulder. “You know what’s not a great idea though?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just sends a poignant look in Himchan’s direction. “A concert in the middle of the Slums.”
“That’s this week, isn’t it?” Youngjae asks.
Himchan sighs, dropping his forehead to his palm. “Yeah,” is all he has to say. He’s not exactly excited for the concert, especially since it’s been taking up all of his free time. “I can’t wait until it’s done with.”
Youngjae quirks his head. “Not excited?”
“For a concert I was forced into? No, not really.” He picks his head back up and brings his drink to his lips. To his dismay, it’s almost all gone. Fortunately, when he looks up from his mug, there’s a hand reaching across the table to place another drink in front of him.
Jongup’s standing next to their both, a wide smile on his face. “Figured you guys could use more,” he says, sliding a mug in front of Daehyun.
“Giving away my products?” Youngjae asks, a lilt in his voice.
“Nah,” Jongup says, shaking his head. “Just tricking them into paying double.”
Both Daehyun and Youngjae laugh at that, and even Himchan’s lips pull upwards into a smile.
Daehyun gestures at the table. “Sit down with us for a second!”
Jongup glances around the shop, and, upon noticing that there are no new customers needing help, slides into the booth, next to Himchan. “You know,” he starts to say, looking up at Himchan. “Yongguk has been wanting to talk to you.”
“What about?” Himchan asks, looking back at the boy who is, mostly, a stranger to him.
“Your concert,” Jongup says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “He wants you to meet up with him.”
“I don’t have the time visit the-” Himchan starts to say, but stops when he remembers that they’re in public. “I don’t have time to visit him,” he corrects. “I’ve been so busy with rehearsals and prepping for this event.”
Jongup frowns. “He says it’s important, though. I don’t think he thinks the concert is a very good idea.”
“That’s true,” Daehyun pipes up. “When it got announced to the public last week, he was pissed. Said it was the shittiest idea he’s ever heard.”
“Yeah, well,” Himchan says, rubbing a hand across his head tiredly. “I don’t like it very much, either. At least he’s not the one performing. He doesn’t even have to go.” He pauses for a second, a new thought occurring to him. “You guys... you guys aren’t going right?”
Three sets of eyes look back at him. “No,” Daehyun says, shaking his head. “I mean, we’d go if we could but... Yongguk doesn’t think it’ll be all that...organized, and then there’s the fact that it’s...” He trails off, sending a significant look in Jongup’s direction.
“You can say it, you know,” the younger boy says, after a beat. “That it’s because it’s in the Slums. No one willingly goes to the Slums. That’s a fact. Facts aren’t offensive.” He pushes himself up out of the booth, grabbing the empty mugs on the table after he’s standing. “I have to get back to work.”
It’s quiet for a moment after Jongup’s departure. “He’s not upset or anything,” Youngjae says, breaking the silence. “He’s just... he’s embarrassed about his living situation. That the Slums are where he comes from.”
“He shouldn’t be,” Himchan says, shaking his head. “He’s a kid. It’s not his fault that’s where he was born. Hell, it’s not even his parents fault. It’s the government who’s at fault here, not the citizens.”
Youngjae blinks up at Yongguk, surprised, but Daehyun just snorts, shaking his head. “Words of anti-establishment wisdom from the poster boy of all things Ministry.” He turns to Youngjae. “You see why I keep him around now? He’s one big walking contradiction. All you need in life is Kim Himchan and you’ll never be unamused.”
“He’s lying,” Himchan says, shaking his head. “He keeps me around for my face. Walking contradiction? I believe he means I’m a piece of walking artwork.”
“Both of you are real pieces of work, that’s for sure,” Youngjae mumbles before stealing Daehyun’s drink. “The real question is, why do I keep you guys around?”
The week crawls along slowly, Himchan juggling Orchestra practices in one hand and concert preparations in the other. He’s been waiting for this day for so long that it feels like it’s come both too quickly and yet not fast enough.
“I won’t be accompanying you there,” Jieun says, after they’ve finished all of the last minute concert preparations. “I have other matters to attend to. I’m sure you understand.”
Himchan nods. “Of course.” He hadn’t expected her to come along in the first place. Someone as high-class as Jieun wouldn’t willingly enter the Slums, probably out of fear that poverty is an infectious disease.
“But I’ll still be watching!” She smiles, probably thinking she sounds encouraging. She doesn’t. “It’s being broadcast live, remember.” And how could he forget? Everything he does is broadcast for the whole nation to see.
He slides into the back of the sleek, black SUV that’s going to bring him to the venue. “Good luck!” Jieun says, and then she’s shutting the car door behind him. He leans his head against the leather seat and shuts his eyes.
The car’s engine roars to life and they’re on the roadway. Himchan stares out the window as he watches the scenery change when they transition from Skyline Town to Midtown. The buildings are less flashy; in Skyline Town the buildings are made of polished chrome. Here, though, they’re standard brick and cement.
The farther they drive into Midtown, the less cars there are on the road. They’re close to where Midtown bleeds into the Slums now. The apartments are starting to look more rundown now, a bit like the appearance of the resistance's headquarters.
The left lane is entirely clear - there’s no one driving up to Midtown from the Slums. And why would there be? Few people can afford cars down there, and people rarely make trips to visit. The handful of other cars on the road with them make turns onto different side streets and, soon enough, they’re the only car on the road.
“We’re in the Slums now,” the driver says unnecessarily. Even without the introduction, Himchan knows that they’re there. The road beneath them is no longer smooth pavement, but gravel. Metal shacks line the road, their owners sitting outside them. He remembers living in a place like that, but somehow, everything here looks worse than he remembers. Or maybe he never realized just how bad his circumstances were when he was a kid.
They drive past all of this to the center of town, where the venue for the concert has been set up. The center of the slums is a large, open square between two of the larger factories. A makeshift stage has been set up, and a crowd has already formed in front of it. The car comes to a stop behind the stage and Himchan sighs, unbuckling his seat belt. Time to get this over with.
Himchan doesn’t know how it happens. One minute he’s playing in front of a hushed crowd, and then there’s a faint rustling in the crowd. The people are shifting, some of them rummaging through knapsacks or purses. There’s a low murmur that gets louder along with the climax of his song, and then the crescendo is punctuated with a rain of bullets.
It happens so quickly that he doesn’t know what to do. The crowd is in utter chaos. Screams echo through the air. Masked men in black hoods wave guns through the air, and it’s when Himchan sees them that his fight or flight response kicks in.
One of them is pushing his way through the crowd, until he’s right in front of the camera man who was meant to be recording the audience’s reaction to Himchan’s playing. He aims his gun at the camera lens, and Himchan doesn’t stick around long enough to see how that plays out. He scrambles off the stage, his violin crashing to the floor and splitting in two in the process.
A bullet grazes his arm as he runs down the steps of the stage, and the pain makes him freeze. All he can focus on is the burning sensation. He barely registers the arm that wraps around his shoulders and pulls him down the rest of the steps.
“Time to go,” the owner of the arm says. Himchan knows that voice anywhere. He looks to his side, and sure enough, Yongguk is there. His brows are knit together in concentration. Yongguk pulls him to the area behind the stage where they are, momentarily, shielded from the chaos. “We have to get you out of here. Just follow me, okay?”
Getting out of here, away from the near constant chorus of screams and mass hysteria, would be wonderful. It’s just about the greatest idea he’s heard in his entire life, actually. Himchan nods distractedly, dazed from the pain in his arm. Yongguk nudges him forward a little bit, to get him moving, and then breaks into a run, Himchan trailing not too far behind him.
“Where are we?” asks Himchan as Yongguk pushes him into an armchair. The house Yongguk had pulled them into is small and dingy. The main room is half living room, half kitchen, and Himchan can see bedrolls folded up in the corner of the room. There’s a shuttered door on one end that leads to what he assumes is the bathroom. The entirety of the house is smaller than his living room. He bites his lip, feeling incredibly guilty.
“Junhong’s,” Yongguk says. “Let me see your arm.”
“It’s fine.” The pain is mostly gone now. An intense numbing feeling has taken its place. He can’t feel from the middle of his bicep up, but at least it doesn’t hurt as much.
Yongguk rolls his eyes. “Take your jacket off.”
A surface wound to his arm is the last of his worries at the moment. “I’m fine,” he repeats, shaking his head. “It just got grazed.”
Yongguk tugs at his sleeve, an expectant look on his face. Dejected, Himchan helps him peel it off. Blood makes the fabric stick to his skin, and he winces when the fabric brushes past his wound. The adrenaline is starting to wear off, and the numbness goes with it. The returning pain hits him like a freight train.
“You see that hole?” Yongguk asks. “You didn’t just get grazed. It went through.”
Himchan glances down and sucks in a breath. There’s blood, a lot of blood. The top of his arm is stained a sickly red color, and in that moment, he thinks he just might be sick. “I need to go to the hospital, get this checked out.” He pushes himself off the chair with his good arm, only to have Yongguk’s hand on his chest, pushing him back down.
“There’s a terrorist group out there who wants nothing more than to see you dead,” says Yongguk, blunt as always. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Himchan wants to ask why they want him dead, because it’s not like he’s the one who’s oppressing them. Before he can, though, the front door slams open. Junhong steps into the room, his eyes wide.
“Holy shit,” he says, staring at Himchan. “You gonna fix him?” The question is directed at Yongguk, but he doesn’t tear his gaze away from Himchan’s arm.
Yongguk nods. “I’m about to.”
Red flags fly up in Himchan’s head. Yongguk’s going to remove the bullet from his arm? Yongguk? “Do you even know how to fix my arm?” He doesn’t mean to snap at Yongguk, honest, but the pain coupled with the confusion of what just happened adds a harsh edge to his voice.
Yongguk seems to understand, because his expression softens. “Just let me fix your arm, and then we can talk.” He looks Himchan directly in the eyes. “Trust me. Please?”
There’s a sincerity in the other man’s eyes that’s unfamiliar. The please at the end of his phrase surprises Himchan. It makes everything a question, not a command, and that Himchan appreciates. “Okay,” he says, nodding. “Okay. I trust you.”
Yongguk instructs Junhong to stop standing around and retrieve supplies from his bathroom. In a few moments time, Himchan has a towel stuffed between his teeth, and he bites down as Yongguk tries to fish the bullet out. The pain is excruciating. Even with the towel in his mouth, his muffled scream is still audible.
“Don’t get any blood on that chair,” Junhong warns them from where he eyes the whole procedure wearily. “My mom will be pissed.”
If Himchan knew the boy better, he’d reach out to slap him.
Yongguk, apparently, shares his sentiments. “Shut the hell up. Some of us are trying to perform surgery here.” He squints in concentration, his brow furrowed. Himchan doesn’t know how long removing the bullet actually takes. His sense of time is skewed by the fire blazing in his arm. After what feels like an eternity, Yongguk pulls it out and deposits it in a small dish.
“I just have to clean it up now,” Yongguk says, shuffling around in the first aid kit Junhong brought from the bathroom. “The worst is over.”
Himchan removes the towel from his mouth. The metallic smell of blood taints the air, and Himchan is grateful that it’s the taste of cotton that lingers in his mouth instead. “Who were they?” he asks as Yongguk busies himself with wiping the excess blood off his arm.
“Terrorists,” Yongguk says, using the term from earlier. “Extremists. Whatever you want to call them.” He dabs at the wound with disinfectant, and Himchan winces. “They had nothing to do with us though, I can promise you that.”
“Didn’t think they did,” he replies, not daring to glance at his arm. “But why... why go after me? I don’t have anything to do with politics.”
Yongguk stops his ministrations to stare at Himchan. “You really don’t understand how important you are, do you?”
Himchan blinks at him. “I play music. I don’t make laws.”
“Junhong.” The boy snaps to attention at the sound of Yongguk addressing him. “Name a member of the Ministry’s Orchestra. Besides Himchan.”
Junhong squints his eyes in concentration. “Um,” he says, chewing his bottom lip. “Song Jisun? Er, no, wait. Song Jieun. The conductor.”
“Anyone else?”
Junhong thinks for a moment longer before shaking his head in defeat. He slumps back against the wall, looking thoroughly upset with himself. It’s almost as if he thinks not being able to answer will disappoint Yongguk.
“See?” asks Yongguk. “It’s you who people know. It’s you who’s on commercials, whose face is on billboards, who opens the concerts. No one gives a damn that you don’t make laws. The only thing that matters is that the people see you everywhere. You’re a household name, not some nobody.”
Yongguk fishes a roll of gauze out of the first aid kit and gets back to tending to Himchan’s arm. “I think you’re on TV more than the Minister.” He wraps the gauze around Himchan’s arm. It’s tight and uncomfortable, but rather than protest, Himchan bites his lip. “It doesn’t matter that you’re not a political leader. You’re one of the few prominent public figures we have, and your death would make pretty big waves.”
It’s quiet as Himchan lets that settle in. He knows there’s animosity towards the orchestra, knows that some of the more aware citizens of the city know that what he does is nothing more than propaganda. Still though, being at the center of some political assassination plot is beyond what he would have ever expected. He’s not surprised to find out that he has enemies and people who dislike him - that much he already knew. He’s just never thought of himself as being all that important. Nothing he does comes from himself. All of his orders, every single thing he does for the Orchestra, comes from someone higher up, someone far more important and informed than he is.
“I’d guess this was a spur of the moment thing, though,” Yongguk says, tucking the end of the gauze underneath itself to make a bandage. “Hey, Junhong? Can you get me some medical tape? My hands are kind of...” He wiggles his fingers, and the tips are stained red with Himchan’s blood.
“At least the blood is all over you, not the chair,” the younger boy says as he rummages through the first aid kit. When he finds the roll of tape, he tosses it to Yongguk.
Yongguk catches the tape in one hand and laughs, short and airy. “I don’t want to deal with the wrath of momma Choi right now.”
“Damn right you don’t.” Junhong nods. “You probably need some painkillers, don’t you?” It takes Himchan a few awkward moments of silence to realize that Junhong is addressing him. Sure enough though, the younger boy is squinting up at him from where he’s sitting next to the first aid kit.
Himchan scrambles for words to make up for the uncomfortable silence. “Yeah, please,” he says quickly. “That’d be really great, actually. Thanks.”
“I think I have some left over from when I-” He trails his sentence off and clears his throat. “I think they’re in the kitchen.”
Having finished taping up the bandage, Yongguk excuses himself to the bathroom to wash off his hands. Himchan sits awkwardly in the armchair, watching as Junhong shuffles through shelves in the kitchenette. The air isn’t tense, per se, but Himchan still feels uneasy. While Junhong is being nothing but amiable to him now, he had been standoffish when they first met.
When Junhong finally finds the bottle of painkillers, he makes a soft noise of excitement. He stretches to reach the top shelf they’re on and staggers a bit, banging into the counter.
“Are you okay?” Himchan asks immediately. He starts to get up but Junhong waves his hand, shooing him.
“I’m fine,” he says, shaking his head. He places both of his hands on the counter for support. “It’s not a big deal, it’s just because I-” He stops his sentence abruptly once again, like he’s only just realized that Himchan is a stranger, not someone familiar. Himchan furrows his eyebrows, knowing that he’s missing something here. And even if that something is none of his business, he can’t help but be curious.
Yongguk walks back into the room then, patting his hands on his pants, and the moment is brushed aside. Junhong reaches up for the bottle again, and this time he grabs it without incident. He tosses them into Himchan’s lap. Picking the bottle up, Himchan studies the label. They’re prescription only, the sort of strong painkiller you’d only be able to get from the hospital. Junhong’s name is on the bottle, though the part that says what they were prescribed for is worn off.
Himchan shakes two pills into his palm and swallows them dry. They slide down his throat uncomfortably, but he chokes them down anyways, grateful to have something to help with his arm.
“Anyways,” Yongguk starts to say. “I don’t think the attack today was carefully planned. Pretty sure they heard about your concert, decided to find some guns, and showed up.”
“What makes you think that?” Himchan asks.
“Nothing they did was organized,” Yongguk says. “Who opens fire in the middle of a crowd when your target is on stage? I, for one, would go from behind if I had to assassinate someone. Be sneaky and all that shit.” He crosses his arms, leaning against the wall near the door. “They caused a scene, sure, but it wasn’t professional. I mean, you are alive after all.”
Himchan’s not really sure how Yongguk can find anything to criticize about the attack. It seemed pretty well organized to him, but then again, Yongguk was not the one getting shot at. He’s able to have an objective view, something that Himchan can’t. All Himchan can think about the way time seemed to freeze when the first shot was fired.
“‘Dunno,” Himchan says, looking down at his arm. “They didn’t do too horribly.” His arm pulsates painfully, and he wonders when the hell those pills Junhong gave him will kick in.
Yongguk’s lips pull up into a slight smile, and he crosses the small room to pat Himchan on his good shoulder. “You should be glad that’s all they managed to do to you.”
“I know,” he replies quietly, because it’s true. His arm hurts like a bitch, but that’s far better than being dead. That, he thinks, is a weird thought. He’s not quite sure when it’ll sink in that he could’ve died today. He’s not sure if it ever will.
“It’s getting late,” Junhong says, staring out the window, where the sky is getting dark. “My mom is going to be home from work soon. I don’t think she’d mind if you guys stayed but... we don’t really have the room.” He turns his gaze away from the window and back to Yongguk and Himchan. “Plus, I don’t really know how to explain... him.”
“The Slums are going to be locked down until the police clean everything up. No one in, no one out.” Yongguk rubs his forehead with his hand. “It’s okay though,” he says, nodding. “I know where we’ll go. Come on,” he says, nodding towards Himchan.
Himchan takes that as his cue to follow Yongguk out the door. “Hey,” he says to Junhong as he passes the younger boy. “Thank you.”
Junhong shuts the door behind them, but not before telling Himchan that it was “no problem, really.”
“My guess is that the Ministry... took care of those terrorists, but we should be careful anyways,” Yongguk says as he walks away from the house, hands in his pockets.
Himchan follows after him, taking wide steps to keep up with Yongguk’s brisk pace. “Where are we going, anyways?”
The city is quiet around them. No one else, it seems, is crazy enough to roam the streets after a terrorist attack. Yongguk keeps his head up, one hand resting on what Himchan assumes is a gun holstered at his waist.
“You’ll see,” Yongguk says, still keeping at his pace. “Keep an eye out and don’t talk too much until we get there, okay?”
The atmosphere around them puts Himchan on edge. Instead of screams and chaos, the city around them is silent. It’s eerie, the way the air is so still. He’s not sure which journey is worse - this, or running away from the concert.
They walk a few minutes longer, and Himchan, who’s too busy looking from left to right, doesn’t realize they’ve stopped until his chest collides with Yongguk’s outstretched hand.
“Keeping an eye on your surroundings doesn’t mean losing sight of what’s in front of you,” he says, letting his hand fall back to his side. “We’re here.”
Here is an alleyway between two defunct factories. Himchan furrows his brows at Yongguk. He’s about to ask what the hell Yongguk’s talking about when the other man crouches down, next to what looks like the covering to a tunnel. He pulls at the edges until he’s lifting it, revealing the entrance to some underground structure.
“Down here,” Yongguk says, dusting off his hands.
Himchan peers down the hole and doesn’t see much of anything. “What is that?”
“A tunnel,” Yongguk says, pushing himself off the ground. “It’ll take us where we want to go. C’mon, you first.” His hand is on Himchan’s back, coaxing him towards the opening. “There’s a ladder on the side, see? Follow it down.”
Himchan kneels next to the hollow and, after a beat, climbs down. His injury pulses painfully when he grips the side of the ladder too painfully. Gritting his teeth, he drops his injured arm to his side and hauls himself down the ladder, rung by rung, one-handed. When he gets to the bottom rung, he hops off and moves to the side, making room for Yongguk.
Yongguk shuts the opening to the tunnel before climbing down after Himchan. The loss of light from outside darkens the tunnel and oh, this is what pitch black looks like. Himchan blinks, once, twice, three times, but this is nothing like walking around his house at night. There’s absolutely no light for his eyes to adjust to, and the feeling of complete darkness is stifling.
“Hold on,” Yongguk says when he reaches solid ground. “There should be a switch around here somewhere.”
“You couldn’t have asked me to hit it when there was still a bit of light?” Himchan asks incredulously. On a whim, he brings his hand right in front of his face, close enough that it touches his nose. He can’t even see the outline.
“Calm down, princess,” Yongguk says, and Himchan is willing to bet that he’s rolling his eyes. There’s a faint rustling of clothes and then Yongguk is pointing his lit-up phone at the wall. He flicks an industrial switch. One by one, the row of lights lining the walls of the tunnel turn on, illuminating the space with a dim orange color. Yongguk turns around to face Himchan, his eyebrow quirked. “You good now?”
Himchan chooses to ignore him. “What is this place, anyways?”
“An old utility tunnel,” Yongguk says. “There are miles and miles of these tunnels under the city. A lot of the bigger ones, like the old subway system, got sealed up when the Ministry first took over. Smaller ones like this were forgotten about, though.”
They keep a steady pace as they walk, remnants of fallen bricks crunching under their feet. “So where does this one lead to?”
“It’ll take us out of the city,” Yongguk replies, hands shoved carelessly in his pockets. “This one was used for transporting waste out of the city way back when, so it’ll take us to what used to be a landfill.”
“The landfill isn’t our final destination, right?” Himchan asks, following Yongguk. “Camping out under the stars on top of rolling hills grown from garbage. Doesn’t sound that great to me.”
Yongguk laughs. It’s loud and genuine, and Himchan decides that it’s a nice sound. His heart has been working on overdrive since the shooting, but Yongguk’s laugh is somehow relaxing. Himchan lets his lips quirk up into a smile.
“I don’t know,” Yongguk shrugs. “I’m sure there’s some sort of poetic meaning to be found in there. But no,” he shakes his head, “we’re going to the headquarters.”
Himchan clicks his tongue. He should have figured. The club is a literal safehaven, and it makes sense that that’s where they’d be heading.
“I hope you’re not too tired,” Yongguk says. “We’ve got another hour or so left of walking.”
When Yongguk said old landfill, he meant very old. There are no traces of garbage anywhere, no lingering smell of trash. There’s only a large, green hill. The grass is wild and overgrown, but it’s nice up here. Peaceful, even.
It was early evening when they set out from Junhong’s, but now the darkness of night has overtaken the sky. The moon paints the landscape a pearlescent color, and the air is still. It’s different from the stillness in the Slums, though. Out here in no-man’s land is true tranquility, not the eerie forced calm that comes from the aftermath of tragedy.
“Look,” Yongguk says, breaking the silence around them. He puts a hand on Himchan’s shoulder and turns him around, facing the way they had come to climb up the hill. “You can see the city from up here.”
The city is massive and sprawling in front of him. The closest part of the city to them - the Slums - should, in theory, be its largest point. Everything about the city, though, is backwards. The buildings in the foreground are small and puny in front of them, and instead the city increases in size the farther away it gets. Slums, Midtown, Skyline Town. Minimum, moderate, excessive.
“It’s so bright,” Himchan says, blinking. It’s the only source of man made light for miles upon miles. The capital city is the center of the country, and there’s not much outside of it. There are a few settlements in the South, near the ocean, but they’re not as heavily populated. They are, however, just as guarded. The only access to them is through government run trains. There are no public roads out here - at least not official ones.
“Isn’t it?” Yongguk replies, sinking to the ground. He stretches his legs out in front of him. “It almost looks pretty like this.”
Himchan settles down next to Yongguk. “If you don’t think about the corruption and awful shit that happens in there on a daily basis,” he says quietly, “then yeah, it’s almost pretty.”
“I like it better like this,” Yongguk says, putting his hands behind him to support his weight. “If you look at it like this, from the outside, it just looks like an ideal. Like it’s some beautiful metropolis that the old leaders built.”
Himchan hums. He pulls at the grass. It’s cool and soft beneath his fingers. “Do you think utopias are actually possible, though?”
Yongguk tilts his head. “I think,” he starts slowly, “I think if you have the right leaders, with the right intentions, then yeah. I’m not saying a perfect city or country will ever exist, but a fair one that tries to do the right thing for its people? I think that could happen.”
People like Yongguk are rare. People like Hana, with her idea of pushing boundaries and leaving the orchestra, are rare. There’s something to be admired about them, about the way they find a purpose, but Himchan finds himself scoffing at their naivety. He’s never been much of an idealist.
“I don’t,” Himchan disagrees, after a lapse in conversation. “I think if you give anyone power, it’ll corrupt eventually.”
Yongguk pulls his eyes away from the cityscape to look at Himchan instead. His look is searching and there’s something like sadness - or is it pity? - in his eyes that makes Himchan look away. “How do the other countries do it, then? How are they all functional?”
“We don’t know very much about them, do we?” Himchan asks, staring at the cityscape. A red light blinks on top of a communication tower. It glows, high in the sky, like an eye watching over them. “I’m sure they have their problems, too.”
“Not problems like ours, though.” Yongguk shakes his head. “My grandad... He used to tell me stories about Exo when I was younger. They’re free over there. There are these huge airports, and they’re open to the public. They can can come and go as they please. They’re not trapped there like we are here.”
Himchan doesn’t know much about Exo or any of the other nations. He knows it borders them on the North, knows that they have a different, more organized form of government, but that’s about it. It’s not like they were ever taught much about the world in class. School had just been twelve years of rehashed Ministry propaganda.
“They’ve got access to music, real music, over there. The television isn’t censored and the internet isn’t policed.” Yongguk falls back against the grass and sighs. “And there’s no caste system in place. It sounds too good to be true to us, but it isn’t. It’s real. It’s possible.” He turns his head in the grass, facing Himchan, who’s still sitting upright. “Have a little hope.”
Himchan can’t help it; he laughs. “I used to have hope,” he says. “When my dad was still alive, the Ministry was still in the process of rooting out rebel musicians then, and a lot of people stopped playing out of fear. He didn’t.” Himchan doesn’t know why he’s talking about this. It’s mostly out of exhaustion, he thinks. He’s worn out, his bones weak and his muscles aching. After everything that’s happened today, he’s too tired to care about walls and inhibitions.
It’s the atmosphere, too. Daehyun has told him - jokingly, of course - that he can be a little uptight sometimes. Out here, though, they’re removed from the city, from everyone and everything, and the cool of night relaxes him. “I thought he was so brave for what he did, thought maybe he’d be the one to end up saving the world, or something dumb like that. I don’t know,” he shrugs, ripping a handful of grass from the ground. “I was a dumb kid.”
Quietly, Yongguk says, “I don’t think that’s dumb. Your dad was brave and worthy of admiration.” He’s silent for a little while until he asks, cautiously, “How old were you?”
“Six,” Himchan says without thinking about whether or not he should answer. Yongguk already knows nearly as much about him as Daehyun and Hana, and it can’t hurt to let him know a little more.
For a minute Himchan thinks Yongguk is going to say something dumb like “I’m sorry” but, thankfully, he doesn’t. They sit in a comfortable silence, nothing but the wind rustling the trees in the forest that borders the eastern side of the city and the low hum of nocturnal insects as their soundtrack.
“Hey,” Yongguk says after a considerable amount of time, trying to catch Himchan’s attention. Himchan glances down at where he’s laying in the grass. “You’re still alive. That should be reason enough to have some hope.”
Yongguk is right and Himchan knows it. When he closes his eyes, he can see the crowd breaking apart into chaos, can hear the sound of the gunfire crystal clear. He could have died today. He could be six feet under the ground instead of a hundred feet high on this hill. He’s been given a bigger chance than either of his parents were.
Pushing himself off the ground, Yongguk wipes the grass stains off his pants. “C’mon,” he says, offering a hand to Himchan. “Break time’s over. Let’s get moving.”
His throat feels tight. “Thank you,” he says, swallowing the lump in his throat. “For today. You saved my life.” He grabs Yongguk’s offered hand and lets the other man help pull him to his feet.
“You don’t...” Yongguk starts to say, shaking his head. “You don’t have to thank me,” and then he drops Himchan’s hand and starts down the other side of the hill.
Being inside the club is odd when there aren’t crowds of people or loud, pulsing music. It’s desolate, far too big for just the two of them. Their footsteps echo off the walls as they walk through the main room.
“I come here sometimes when I need time to myself,” Yongguk says. “I live alone so it’s not like space is an issue, but I can’t play music in my flat, so.” He leads them down the same hallway that his office is located in. They bypass that room, though, and Yongguk opens another door located at the very end of the hallway.
It’s pretty empty, save for a bed pushed against a wall on one end of the room and a tall bookshelf perpendicular to it. “Here you have it, my home away from home,” Yongguk says, rubbing at the back of his neck.
Himchan peers up at the bookcase, and it certainly isn’t conventional. There are CDs and records, and, even more interesting, a number of banned books. “These are contraband,” he says sliding his finger along their spines. “How’d you get them?”
“They were passed down from my grandparents,” answers Yongguk. “Here, you can take the bed,” Yongguk offers, shrugging his sweatshirt off. “Just let me grab one of these blankets, and I’ll be good.”
Himchan shakes his head. “No, no,” he refuses, tearing himself away from the bookshelf and pulling one of the blankets from the bed so he can set up on the floor. “I’ll take the floor.”
Yongguk rolls his eyes as he snatches the blanket out of Himchan’s hands. “Hey, remember how you got shot today?” He drops the blanket onto the carpeted section of the floor. “I think you deserve a comfortable place to sleep.”
Eyeing the bed wearily, Himchan replies, “I don’t want to put you out though. You’ve helped me out way more than necessary already.”
Yongguk snorts. “Take the fucking bed, Himchan.” Then his hands are on Himchan’s shoulders, pushing him gently - because of his wound, and because Yongguk always seems to be considerate - onto the bed.
Reluctantly, Himchan pulls off his shoes and flops back against the bed. He pulls a blanket up over himself and settles his head into the pillow. His tired muscles sing for relief when he finally gets comfortable on the bed and stills.
A clock on the wall ticks, and after a minute or so, Himchan mumbles out, “Hey, Yongguk?”
Yongguk, who’s sprawled across the floor, grunts in reply. “What’s up?”
“I think we can cancel that truce now,” he says, looking down at Yongguk. “Call ourselves real friends, and all that.”
Chuckling, Yongguk mumbles out, “Goodnight, Himchan.”
“Night,” Himchan replies, pulling the blanket tighter around himself. The last thing he sees before falling asleep is Yongguk, covers pulled up to his neck in attempt to cover the small, involuntary smile that spreads across his face.
Part Four