Whatever religious or psychiatric interventions the Accuser has been attempting to increase their patience seem to be successful, because they tolerate almost three minutes of silence after the laptop gets brought out before they snap. Ramon would’ve set the over/under at one: maybe less. That was sort of the plan. It turns out that their ability to be an irritant is dynamic, shifting with whatever would be the most inconvenient. Well played, he thinks.
“What are you even doing?” Sammy asks disdainfully. They’re a little bit sweaty and a little bit cold; Ramon turned the thermostat down to almost unlivable levels, which only has a minor effect on demonic creatures. Worth a shot anyways. They’ve been debating putting their shirt back on, which has probably taken up most of their active ability to think in the last three minutes. Sunk cost fallacy. They’ve already sunk a great deal into this poorly-conceived enterprise, and they’d rather not be the one to admit defeat. They are cold, though.
“Just another minute,” he hums.
“I d-didn’t ask how long it would take,” they huff. “I asked what you’re doing.”
“Do you have to know everything that’s going on? You’re so nosy.” Ramon keeps typing, not even bothering to look up. “Haven’t you heard that saying about curiosity and the cat?”
“No,” they answer flatly, moving to look over his shoulder.
“Well, what about Eve? You remember Eve, surely. Isn’t information bad sort of your whole thing, as an ideology? Stop seeking information out. You’re usually so very good at that.”
“Shut up,” they say, squinting at the screen. “Are you on AIM?”
“Am I—” He laughs. He can’t help it. “You’re not that old. I mean, you’re older than that, but—”
“Who are you t-talking to about this? Are you out of your mind?” They mouth along the words as they read them, expression only getting more sour. “Who is that?”
“Weren’t you a college professor? You’re behind the times,” Ramon tsks.
“I—I was, until someone kidnapped my son and I ended up d-doing all sorts of stupid shit at my current job,” they say pointedly.
“If that was actually a problem for you, we wouldn’t be here, would we? Don’t pretend.”
They don’t have a good counter to that, which pisses them off. They sulk for a moment before looking back at the screen.
“Seriously, who is that?” they ask. “I don’t like that. Stop telling people that.”
“Relax. It’s a computer. Just getting some ideas. Is it against the law to get some ideas?”
“Maybe. Why do you need ideas? Do you not know how to do this?” Sammy asks, tone mocking.
“It’s really more about getting a more diverse perspective. You know, with a broader info base, it’s much more effective to synergize different concepts together into an action plan. Consider it a growth opportunity. It brings something new to the table, if you will.”
“I won’t. I’m not doing that,” they say sternly, pointing at a line item with enough force that it leaves a fingerprint on the screen. “That’s sacrilege."
“And the rest of this isn’t?”
“Or that one,” they decide. “Or…that one. All of these are—they’re bad. W-what’s your problem?”
“I can tweak the prompting. You know, the models are getting better every day, so if you want, let’s circle back at a later date—”
Sammy closes the laptop, fast and forceful enough that it catches Ramon’s fingertips right at the edge, making him yelp. It gets an honest-to-God smile out of them, pure and satisfied. It’d make anyone feel like prey.
“Severed ear turned up in Hongdae,” Su-chang says conversationally, and Do-yoon groans into his cereal.
He’s seriously very grateful. If not for them, he would’ve gone out of the hospital and straight into a jjokbang or worse. The compensation suggested by WBS still hasn’t quite materialized beyond covering the basic costs of medical care, and even before the show, living with four other people in a glorified single-room, he was barely scraping by. This buys him time to get back on his feet, especially while he’s in physical therapy—and it helps to have someone to do it with. He does like both of the Ha siblings. They’re generally a comforting, warm presence he’s unused to having. It’s just…
They’re weird. He feels bad, but there’s no other word for it. Suyeon is a kind of weird he’s at least used to, after months of adapting to Phater, however poorly, but even the way she approaches it is weird compared to everyone else. She’s meticulous and organized in her behavior. When she gets into arguments online, she brings citations. She says she’s shy, but she’s also invasive and blunt to the point of forcefulness at times. She can be shockingly cold to Do-yoon on occasion, considering the rest of her life. There’s a poster in her room of him. He isn’t really sure what, if anything, he can do about that.
Su-chang is weirder. Like Suyeon, he never really stops talking, and the two of them together really never stop talking, always arguing or conspiring. Do-yoon isn’t sure he’s ever thought of anyone as conspiring before he met the two of them. Plotting, even. They both have minds that seem to eat themselves alive if unoccupied, and Su-chang far more so. He’s always doing something. He says he’s lazy, but his laziness is proactive and productive. His idea of relaxing is reading at a worrisome pace, or also getting into arguments online, or…doing this.
“Dude, stop,” Do-yoon says, queasy already.
“Isn’t it interesting, though!? I mean, you don’t lose an ear on accident,” Su-chang hums, scrolling his phone. Even eating breakfast, he can’t seem to stop doing things. Right now, he’s contributing to what Do-yoon privately thinks of as a murder board in their office, now converted to a guest room of sorts. They moved Suyeon’s desk and some of the bookshelves, but not the murder board. Su-chang says it’s not a murder board, because not all mysteries are murders, so it’s reductive, okay?
“Don’t the cops figure this stuff out?” Do-yoon asks.
“Things fall through the cracks. That’s why people hire private detectives.”
“Well…” Su-chang makes a stupid expression, pouting at Do-yoon. It’s entirely ineffective. “We have to build up a reputation to get clientele to come to us! That means doing some pro-bono, independent stuff first.”
“Ha and Han. Isn’t it cute? I can’t decide whether to go with Investigators, or something more original like Problem Solvers. There’s always the classic Detective Agency, but that almost feels too limiting…”
“I’m not a part of this,” Do-yoon protests.
“Of course you are! We’re a team. You’re my brilliant assistant with a perfect track record,” Su-chang says. “Not many people can say they’ve solved an actual murder.”
Do-yoon looks grieved, and only then does Su-chang seem to realize that it may perhaps be insensitive. His expression softens.
“Sorry,” he adds, a little awkward but perfectly genuine. “I know it’s rough. But I don’t want to treat you like you’re special and fragile, either. You’re a really capable guy, you know? Like anyone else.”
For every time he pisses Do-yoon off, he’s capable of doing this. It’s kind of maddening.
“Right,” Do-yoon sighs, looking away. “Thanks. But…I don’t think you should say this kind of thing to anyone else, either.”
Su-chang laughs loud enough that Suyeon knocks on the wall from her adjacent room and tells him to keep it down, it’s way too early for this, so on.
“Touché, my dear Watson,” he says, adjusting his glasses. “Okay, no murders. Hm…someone posted earlier on the community board that they lost their dog?”
“Isn’t that a step way down from a missing ear?” Do-yoon asks, through a bite of cereal. “What’s your standard?”
“Hey, Yoonie…” Su-chang deflates, sighing. “My confidence! You’re undermining my confidence! Besides, if it was your dog, wouldn’t you want someone to care as much about it as some crazy high-level crime? Here, look at it and pretend it’s your dog,” he adds, holding his phone out for Do-yoon to see.
He looks. His eyes widen after a moment.
“It’s so crusty, though…”
Gabriel is a team player, bioengineered to be such. It makes more sense for the survival of a colony: there’s no such thing as a one-man operation when the scale is that large. He’s meant to prioritize group safety over his own. To him, unaware of the programming that makes him the way that he is, it only seems reasonable. Crises can only be weathered together or not at all. Survival is a team sport. Nobody else seems to share his priorities.
Well, not nobody else. Though his memories are hazy (but what else is new), he knows there should be some people who know exactly what they’re doing. This isn’t an unsolvable problem. If they all just keep their cool and work together, it can be successful.
Instead of anyone with a soul, he has Lee Yun-jin, Ace Visconti, and Taurie Cain.
They all scatter and split off, making the generators take an unbearable length of time even for an engineer like him. It’s safer in some ways, but more dangerous in others. It isolates them all. Even when he can tell that someone is hurt, he can’t immediately discern what did it. In this place, it seemingly can be anything. It can be anything, but…
Maybe it’s meaningless anthropomorphism to call the Singularity anything but it, or maybe that fucking thing, but it feels right, another one of those half-remembered dreams. He’s definitely sentient: that’s for sure. Despite all appearances, he’s probably smarter than all of them put together. It’d be incorrect to call him human, but he’s some kind of individual. He has a personality. Gabriel really, really wishes that he didn’t.
For one thing, he’s vindictive, for all he talks about the pragmatic need for better genes. He tends to target those who hinder him first, even those that aren’t particularly threatening. Irritants, in short. (Goodbye, Visconti.) He’s petty to the point of inconvenience. It makes sense. He’s a guy who was practically born yesterday; he hasn’t gotten used to being provoked. It hits all the same synapses as an actual obstacle to be dealt with, and he’s vicious in his response.
He also can’t resist knocking people down a peg if he detects cockiness. That grudge against humanity is the strongest emotion Hux has. (It’s definitely meaningless anthropomorphism to call him Hux, but it rolls off the tongue easier than the alternatives. Gabriel was doing it long before Hux was a unique unit at all.) He despises them. If any of them express that they’ve gotten one over on the master of all sentient life, he doesn’t hesitate to target them. (There’s Taurie.) It’s tempting to talk back to him, because he himself provokes reactions, but it never goes anywhere good. Gabriel knows that personally.
Perhaps Hux’s worst trait is exactly that: knowing Gabriel personally. There’s an almost childish embarrassment to it, like it’s somehow his fault they’re all in this mess just because he knows this guy. Worse than that, Hux tends to toy with him. It supersedes his other impulses, no matter how much Gabriel inconveniences or humiliates him. He likes to save him for last. Sorry, Yun-jin. He really, really means it.
There’s certainly no way out by the doors at this point, so he ignores them for now, creeping through Dvarka to find the backdoor. He feels like he can hear it, sometimes, like a cool wind. He wonders why it’s there at all. That sort of philosophical bullshit is way above his paygrade, so he tends to ignore it. It’s just a distraction.
He finds the hatch in short order, drenched in sweat and blood, panting from exertion and pain. He’s shocked he hasn’t been found yet. There’s a lot of ground to cover, though, so it makes sense—it’s the same reason the hatch hasn’t been found, either. He collapses on the ground next to it, taking deep, wheezing breaths. He hasn’t caught a break all along. That’s the only reason he isn’t leaving: who knows where he goes after this? May as well rest while he can.
Who the hell is he fooling?
He can hear his heartbeat in his ears, uneven and faster by the moment, and it’s followed in short order by the noise of that huge, malformed monster that knows his name, tearing through the alien underbrush. Hux’s claw cuts through vines that stick to the blood coating his forelimb, and by the time he reaches the clearing where Hux is, he seems just as bedraggled as any of the survivors.
“Hey, man,” Gabriel rasps. “Come here often?”
“Is this r-r-really necessary?” Hux asks, voice jittering out the question in fits and starts. The modulated tone can’t express emotion, but Gabriel thinks he can hear irritation. He swears to God the fucking thing sighs.
“Yup. Rude to leave without saying goodbye, right?”
“What’s that make you, then?” Gabriel feels himself smiling, blood on his teeth, a gruesome grimace of an expression. “If you can’t catch me.”
He sees the Singularity start to dart forward, the bare hint of a movement before it happens, and tosses himself down the hatch. Gabriel makes sure to flip him off before he goes.
It’s a cakewalk for Juyoung. It was always going to be, even with her difficulties. Sure, she has plenty of detractors, both in the industry and on the other side of the screen, but plenty of people love her. They relate to her. She was already a fan favorite before everything happened, and being open about her side of the story only worsened her reputation with people who already disliked her. The other members of her group speak up. Other people do, too. She would’ve always been in first place, if not for—
Well. Inha tries not to think about him.
It’s functionally impossible to do that. It’s impossible not to hear about any of it, because of the new season and the ongoing litigation and the diary and the network and the funerals. Inha despises it. She wants to cover her ears with her hands until it all goes away. She’ll go away, if that’s what it takes. A new city. A new country, even. She has to fight the instinct viciously. It comes and goes.
Having something to do helps. It was something more than a whim that led her to going to school, despite how sudden it seemed. Maybe she’d always wanted to do it and needed an excuse. Maybe something changed in her. She doesn’t know herself well enough to tell anymore. Shin Seungyeon is still in the news, her horrific past being dissected in gruesome detail by her family and the press, and Inha feels sympathy for her, despite everything she now knows. Maybe it’s awful. She doesn’t tell anyone. But if it was her…
If it was her, and she was the producer, she’d listen to what her performers wanted. She’d build a design perfect for their needs. She’d lift up exactly who they were, or who they wanted to be—and how much of a difference is there between the two besides resources? That’s the legacy she wants to carry from Seungyeon. She can’t tell anyone. It makes her sick to her stomach sometimes. She hates how much she understands the impulse to make new worlds out of nothing. She keeps a photo of the five of them in her desk to twist the knife whenever it needs twisting. She gets rid of the version with Seil.
Classes are fun, but exhausting, and between recovery and the show and university and performances, Inha and Juyoung are relegated to talking over the phone, but really mostly under text. As shitty as the not-so-new WBS management is, they’re way less strict about who the contestants can communicate with. It wasn’t that way to begin with, but Juyoung did her thing. Everyone’s in for a rude surprise when they realize she isn’t who she used to be. Inha’s so proud of her.
There’s a tiny gap between finals rounds where Juyoung can breathe, and she pretty much demands to meet Inha, not that Inha would ever refuse her anything, especially not something she also wants so badly. They set a time and a date. Inha should have expected Juyoung to show up practically covered head to toe, with sunglasses and a scarf over most all of her face, but it still makes her laugh when she sees her.
“Unnie! It’s April, aren’t you hot?” Inha asks urgently, jogging towards her at the park, though it’s undermined by how she can’t stop giggling.
Juyoung shushes her, just as urgent, though then they’re together and Inha’s arms are around her and she can’t think of anything to say suddenly. She can’t think of anything to say for a long time. Inha holds her tightly, steadier than she’s ever been, and Juyoung sniffles into her shoulder, trying not to get snot everywhere. She’s a pretty undignified idol, isn’t she? It doesn’t matter.
“I missed you,” Inha says, and Juyoung makes a choked noise.
“Me too,” she answers. She takes a deep breath before pulling back, keeping her hands on Inha’s shoulders to look her over, smiling wide. “Inha-ya, you’re looking so good! You seem healthy!”
Inha laughs, her face going pink. She looks different, and that’s all she’ll agree to. The bleached hair is going to take a long time to fully grow out, though she’s itching to cut it down to the roots as soon as it’s long enough. The glasses are back. The contacts and makeup are gone. She’s unrecognizable enough that she doesn’t need a disguise. Sometimes people at school will ask her if she’s that Oh Inha, and she just shrugs, smiling.
“You look good too! Though you always do, unnie,” she praises, reaching up to flick the brim Juyoung’s baseball cap. “Even though you look like some punk teenager.”
“The press is so bad,” Juyoung protests, letting go of Inha to adjust her hat back down over her face. “I don’t want them to harass you because of me!”
“Yeah, I guess that never goes away, huh?” Inha sighs. For a moment, the distance and darkness threatens to overtake them both, but she fights through it, offering Juyoung a beaming smile. “Do you want to go to that cafe I told you about?”
After a second, the storms clear on Juyoung’s face, and she smiles back.
Riley obviously has known about the way Lucy lives. To put it charitably, it’s minimalistic. It remains minimalistic despite their interventions, which kind of worries them about what she must have been doing before someone started making her “eat meals” and “take the trash out on a regular basis”. She seems to have only recently developed an awareness that she’s a living human being. It’s like watching a baby deer try to walk on ice: adorable, concerning, and a little embarrassing to behold.
It’s still somewhat shocking to see it in real time.
It doesn’t help that Lucy’s newfound being alive has imbued her with a staggering amount of confidence considering the circumstances. She seems to have designated herself as the most appropriate person to care for Riley’s needs in the immediate aftermath of a personal tragedy. Riley isn’t sure of the best way to communicate to her that it’s a lot of wasted effort. He’s been through this before. It really does just happen. Eventually, he’ll have to get back to work, or something will happen, like the world ending or Chicago sloughing off into the lake or him getting hit by a car, though how that would happen when he can’t leave his second-floor apartment is a mystery that will surely compel whoever has to deal with it.
Lucy doesn’t take no for an answer, and Riley doesn’t have the willpower to fight it. She doesn't stir from the couch when Lucy lets herself in. She can’t move at all.
“Riley?” Lucy calls, slipping her shoes off by the door (something else she was definitely not doing six months ago). “Riley, are you dead? You have to tell me if you’re dead.”
“Yep,” he answers, muffled by the couch cushions. “Dead.”
“Oh, damn,” she says flatly. “I was hoping you weren’t. Thanks for letting me know.”
Riley doesn’t laugh. After a few seconds, she huffs about it, before continuing to move through the apartment.
“I called Darcy,” she says, raising her voice the farther away she gets from them, setting a bag down on the kitchen counter. “To get groceries. I got some groceries, but I came here on my bike, so I didn’t have a ton of room. Pretty sure I broke like half of these eggs.”
“I’m gonna pay him back,” she says defensively, like she was accused of anything at all. “Obviously. I don’t know when he’ll be by, though. I mean, he works for his mom, so what’s he gonna do? Say he can’t find the time off? Definitely not. Especially not for you.”
Riley doesn’t know what to make of that. She wouldn’t say anything even if she did.
“Oh, only two of them are broken!” Lucy exclaims, though it’s subdued as many of her reactions tend to be. “Nice.”
The two of them lapse back into silence, though Riley can hear her banging around the kitchen, making more noise than seems possible for one person. The stove clicks on. Oil sizzles. Eggshells crack. She swears under her breath. The sink runs a couple of times, and Riley can picture her puzzled face seeing the amount and quality of the dishes inside of it. He drifts in and out of awareness. Nothing may as well be happening. Maybe he’s still at the ski lodge. He’ll wake up, and James will be there, and he’ll feel the more palatable kind of nothing he was experiencing before it happened. He just wants things to stop getting worse. Nothing has to get better. Isn’t that a reasonable ask?
Eventually, she hears Lucy’s socked tread come over to the couch, and the clunk of ceramic on wood. She cracks open an eye to see a steaming plate of yellow on the coffee table, framed on one side by Lucy’s stupidly long legs, hands on her hips.
“Hurry up,” she orders. “If it gets cold, it’s going to be gross.”
“I’m really not hungry,” Riley protests, voice rough from crying.
“Tough shit,” she replies. Riley recognizes it. It isn’t unkind, and it isn’t even particularly tough, despite what’s actually being said. It’s firm, though. It’s heavy with care. Riley can hear it in his own voice. He sighs, slowly pushing himself to sit up. Lucy sits down in the newly unoccupied space.
“Your hair’s a mess,” she observes. Riley stares down at the plate.
“What is this?” they ask.
It's what he made for her. It doesn’t look that way. Again, she should’ve expected this from Lucy.
“Seriously, I mean it,” Lucy stresses.
“You seriously mean that my hair looks like shit?” Riley asks, picking up the fork to prod at the food. Their body is reacting to the smell in a way that doesn’t connect to their mind. They can’t tell if they’re hungry or not; nothing agrees.
“I mean, do you need to do something to it? Put it up, or whatever? So it doesn’t get messy.”
“Are you offering?” Riley asks, taking a bite. They chew slowly. The idea of swallowing somehow seems hard.
“I mean, I can look up a video on Youtube. But you’re probably better at it than me. You definitely are better at it than me. You can do that, and I’ll do the dishes.” Lucy sets her jaw, looking away. She’s embarrassed, he recognizes distantly.
“Glad we got that figured out.” Riley makes a little bit of a face. “Did you put salt in this?”
“...Yes,” Lucy answers, after a moment of hesitation. “Unless you’re not supposed to.”
“People say the worst shit on Phater!” Suyeon exclaims, pushing her laptop away from her.
Her brother looks up from his book on the couch, eyes wide. It’s surprising that the outburst doesn’t wake Do-yoon, napping beside him, hair falling in his eyes. (She’d like to take a picture, but she’s been sternly forbidden as a condition of Do-yoon staying over with them. She understands it, but it’s seriously tempting when he’s being so cute. It’s fine, though, because her yucky brother would have to be in frame if she did take one.)
“Language,” Su-chang complains, before narrowing his eyes. “Sorry, you’re on Phater?”
“You said you were doing homework, Suyeon! You’ve been sitting so quietly and politely, doing your homework, but you’ve actually been on Phater all along?” Su-chang sets his book down to cross his arms judgmentally. “You really can’t be my sister…so inattentive! Didn’t I raise you better?”
“You’re always on your phone!” she protests. “Anyways, don’t you want to hear about it? My horrible Phater experience?”
“Stop getting ragebaited. Start doing your homework. Have you even done anything?” he asks.
“It’s this ex-mutual of mine,” she starts to explain, and he groans.
“They used to be a Hyesung account, but then they stopped posting about him because he, y’know, and since then they’ve gotten kind of weird, so I unfollowed them but they never unfollowed me. I think they’re a little younger than me. Maybe it’s just the way they act…”
“Somewhere out there, someone is complaining about the bratty Do-yoon account who should be in school instead of posting shit online—aah!”
He’s cut off by a pencil thrown in his direction. She ignores him and continues.
“They really hate the show, and they hate Lee Gyu-hyuk-nim because of what he did.”
“Sorry, but they don’t like Hyesung anymore, either?” Su-chang asks, wrinkling his nose, and she nods emphatically. She knew he couldn’t resist getting into it.
“Mhm! They’ve gone, like, total scorched earth on the whole show, and idols in general. So they’ve been getting into arguments with this other mutual of mine, who’s one of the only people that didn’t unstan Gyu-hyuk-nim after what happened. He’s this kind of annoying gay guy—”
“My mutual. Anyways, he’s always defending Gyu-hyuk-nim, saying how he should get a light sentence because of the circumstances. So the one who used to stan Hyesung replied to one of the other one’s posts—it was just a clip from the show. It was kind of cute…it was him and Hyesung, and—”
“Oh my god, hurry up,” Su-chang groans, though he flinches and holds his hands up when she raises her other pencil threateningly. “I’m sorry! Suyeon-ssi, please continue!”
“Anyways, they replied saying that anyone who still defends a cold-blooded murderer like that should be banned from the platform. And! Get this.”
She pauses for dramatic effect.
“He actually got banned.”
“But—yeah, but which one?”
“No, but there’s two of them! The Hyesung one—”
“I told you, they’re not a Hyesung account anymore!”
“Okay, so there’s that one, and then—”
“But I’m not following that one anymore!”
“Okay! Whatever! There’s that one, and then the Gyu-hyukie one!”
“I don’t think you should talk about him so informally,” she sniffs.
“Lee Gyu-hyuk-nim’s fan account.”
“Okay.” He runs a hand through his hair, sighing. “So?”
“So people freaked out! They thought the other guy really got him banned for just posting a clip.”
“Is that really what happened? Jeez, Phater admin sucks.”
“That’s the thing,” Suyeon says, eyes wide with excitement. “It was completely unrelated.”
“He got banned for suicide baiting someone. It was just incidentally at the same time.”
“Which one did the suicide baiting?”
They both ponder that for a moment.
“Sorry,” Do-yoon pipes up, voice thick with sleep, “Gyu-hyuk hyung did what?”
discoholicmusic
izzy806
janainaart
tangentwithtanner
titsay
