GOLDEN // BOY

“why, you don’t want me here? should i go?’ she half-teases. she wants him to ask her, stay. she wants him to need her. the way he had once. the way she still needs him, fierce like the ache of stifled lungs. 

in the fringes of his mind, there remains some familiarity. it’s like taste and habit, something you’ve witnessed before. sungki can always just barely reach yani among the canvas of his memory, thoughts skimming the idea of them yet never able to entirely realize it. they’re twin flames, caught in one life after the next, chasing down something that can end the mystery behind their bond. (except this time, he’s the only one unaware that they’ve previously been together before; that part of so-called destiny already fulfilled.)

he turns his wrists out, hands empty. sungki’s eyes curve downwards at his mechanical cognizance and then shift to bore up into hers. her touch is smooth, and confident and skims over everything that aches in him. like she knows him better than he knows himself. 

being tethered to someone comes at a cost. tethered bonds can snap, they can always be stretched thin and cut. yet sungki has never put the cost of loss above the experience of attachment. it’s what’s led him to be burned many times before, and what could cause him to be hurt again. could, because he’s not sure if this time with yani is definitive and timed to end with pain, or if it’s something he’ll actually be able to hold onto. 

and yet, despite the uncertainty, his hopes for this exceed all other prior. 

(but does she realize that former recognition cannot be afforded to them? is she aware that his eyes cannot glimmer with a sameness coherent to her love? does she know that her presence in his life was vandalized by envy and robbed unfairly, without choice? he’s speaking a different language now, but all language is broken so none of this should matter, yet it does, doesn’t it.)

“no,” he rasps. “no, i need you here.”

he’s forcefully handicapped to her assistance. needing her almost feels like an understatement. 

[ sent : sungki ] i need you [ sent : sungki ] outside the casino

rage comes as a cyclical investment. the routine of it rises and falls like the air in his lungs, breaths choked in the dissonance in-between. really, he likes existing plainly, to stretch the routine of it out into a spectrum and dance along the line as if it isn’t tilted downwards. 

rage. its utility is maximized in the ring, the glare of ambrosia lights and the sound of the crowd reverberating through the still beats as he awaits the announcement of his name. (it makes it easy to fight, though he doesn’t know where this rage exactly stems from. it just is, like him, existing without cause.) 

and then there’s peace and silence on the other end. it’s where he feels the most like himself. when he’s high off his mind and his back is arched to the ground. his hands raised towards the sky as if he can plant them against the blackness and feel the coolness of space and the heat of burning stars. 

(in the middle there’s greed, and envy, and the litter of all those alike. there exists what tames him from rage, simmers him down from a thunderous calamity into the kind shell of a boy. then there also persists that which takes him out of it. the need for more. augmentations or anything else that’s powerful. the build-up is quick, to be honest. calling it a perfect circle would be a lie.) 

somewhere along it all falls yani, and jinsol, and gun, and also, of course, saeyi. but she encompasses many parts of this trajectory. a fit for all, such as the moments quickly after a fight when the flames of adrenaline are diffused by her visit, or even the instances prior when he’s just starting to ignite. 

she’s the kind of friend he knows he can call on at any time (even if she finds it a hassle, and even if their endeavors dip beyond the realm of ‘friendship’ at times). this goes vice versa, except, sungki likes to think he comes with a few more benefits than just sex and pillow-talk. 

his fingers grasp the shoulders of the man towering over saeyi. they curve and tighten until he grunts and strains in pain. the next movements are quick, reflexive as he is shoved into the wall and dragged upwards, toes skimming the ground, and jaw caught above sungki’s arm as it pushes into his throat and collar bones.

she calls it a survival tactic. she looks at him from over the edge of her glass, amber liquid swirling within. “taking advantage of the chaos sungki?” she drawls, in an idle question meant to do little beyond break the silence, fingers tip toeing up his arm, wondering at the steel beneath, an intrusive thought bubbling to the surface of her brain. what would happen if she unfurled one of the razors beneath her nails and dug down to the metal she knows must be housed there?

sungki lives by modern example. when shit goes south, you seek out comfort in booze and lousy late-night entertainment fuelled by olympian propaganda. and what better place to find a bottle and a dance-partner than the afterlife. 

there are very few flaws to this plan, except one: do jaein. 

their history may be a tad bit complicated, and sure a whole lot angsty. it’s generally supplied with cocktails and aggression and some form of sexual tension underlying the entire platform. still, despite its turbulence, he finds their endurance rewarding and the chase a little exciting. 

especially tonight when the atmosphere is bleak in the wake of olympian retaliation against the revolution. or so he’s heard. it’s not something he’s invested in. still, the results of it produce minor inconveniences he wished he could avoid. 

this included.

the only real issue with jaein is the lack of understanding in where he stands. it’s karma since it’s the same confusion he employs in other relationships. so she remains colored in grey, lingering in-between. 

“i didn’t think it was that bad,” he huffs, not like he’d notice societal abnormalities. “i’m just here to get my drink.”  he shifts his weight against the top, arm planted upon the surface as her fingers trail upwards. 

her stare is judging, but he’s never known it any other way. sungki responds similarly, but with greater indifference, and a gaze that’s more narrow; ebony eyes scheming hatred and flirty chicanery. there’s no preference for it to exist otherwise. this feels more natural to them than pointless formalities since they’re beyond that now. 

“it is still winter you know, lights or not. you can’t just sit outside in the dark. snow’s in the forecast. you’re gonna rust up, tin man.” she mumbles, knocks her knuckles lightly against his chest. 

as much as he wishes to deny it, his feelings for lee yani exceed a friendly basis.

it’s not something he entirely regrets. although the dependency is definitely new. his habits tend to lean on mechanical and augmented realities than the presence of a warm body with the same emotional depth as him. for once, there’s reassurance in a friend, in a bond, instead of a technological, single-lane of thought. 

the unpredictability of it all is thrilling, yet his fingers dance along her skin through a fixed routine. 

they’re the kind of habits he doesn’t recall acquiring, despite their presence. 

such as the following examples: like tracing the edge of her collar bone, hearing her sigh, letting the weight of her head against the nook of his neck. their closeness a fixture understood like second nature between the circadian rhythm of life and the daily metamorphosis of mundane reality. sure he’s been in relationships before, he’s been in love too, but this has deeper roots, and he’s dead sure of that. 

but just as he is connected to her, he is distant. it’s probably why he’s not in a rush to define anything. who knows what this actually means to her. 

he’s kind of delirious now, anyway. overthinking things is just common at this stage as he leans into her and stumbles onto his couch. it’s justified, even as the weight of her hands join his; unfeeling, and yet still consumed with emotion. 

“yeah, i know. i was trying to close it.” 

his head lolls against the back of the couch. at this angle, his field of vision is reduced to darkness and a glimmer of moonlight in the peripheral. the ceiling looks like it’s lowered, almost as if he can touch it. 

sungki bows his head to catch her stare again. she looks like she’s going a hundred miles an hour, and there are some things reflected in her dark orbs that he doesn’t wish to dig into. still, he allows himself this slight indulgence and ponders out loud the meaning behind it all.  

it’s the first time divide between man and machine has been so stark and unavoidable, and she finds it frightens her. 

when the blackness hit he felt nothing. and then he tried to move.

at first, it felt sluggish, like heavy beats of exhaustion weighing down on him to the count of seconds. but then he attempted to stand and his chest seemed like it was caving in. his knees throbbed and his hands felt empty. his shoulders shoved into the wall, mechanical fingers crooning and then stiffening as he tried to grasp onto the table.

it all tipped over instead, the items atop it tumbling off and shattering, and among them, a vase.

sungki sighs, gaze slanting to briefly glance at the mess. he’s cold to his bones, the metal in him still and sensitive to the frigid air. “it was my favorite. and now i can’t even pick up the pieces.”

he tries to listen to anything. without the hefty modifications, he’s reduced to a skull full of thought and a deadweight mechanical scheme of greed clinging on. in an instant he’s demoted from technological god to the remains of a boy he’s bruised up and beat. all in the efforts of choking down a divinity not manufactured for human flesh and bones.

in the end, he can only hear the clock ticking in the absence of her words and nothing else. 

“i cant fucking lift anything, yani. i can’t even lift myself.”

he feels pathetic. he knows he looks worse.

in the darkness, she looks too much like the hope he thought he’d never have. and it’s tempting to be allured into its false sense of security, but yani has never been wrong on her word and that makes it all the harder, doesn’t it? she’s always been there. it’s hard for him to not count on her anymore.

he dreads a time when he’ll come to regret it, but for now, he sinks into her touches as he always does and pulls his lip in. it trembles like the apprehension in the air, and he spares a shuddering sigh before abruptly turning away.

“we’re so far gone. all of us.”

“or wait,” her words drip with a certain sarcasm she knows grates on his tense technological nerves, “did you just miss my incredibly charming company? i know it’s hard to keep away from me.”

he thought he knew honoka. she looked and acted like the basic olympian and he had encountered them on various occasions before. with their big egos and their bigger money. she was nothing special, but somehow she’d become a friend (kind of), and they’d been close (almost). he hadn’t assumed among other things that her heart and her tenderness would be just as big too, and that’s what caught him off guard. she was generous, genuinely.

but this is honoka now: something lingering from the past with a diluted taste of sentiment scattered in her stare (or at least that’s what he thinks is there). the feelings are never strong unless it’s in rage. the methods are never soft unless there’s something to gain. the encounters are brisk and mean and only relevant to the topic of money. he didn’t realize how much it’d suck to fall back on this; to turn from friend to client to pestering annoyance. 

the reality is that sungki didn’t know honoka’s worth until they resorted to this. he didn’t know he was lonely until he had something to lose and then lost it. foolishly, one might add, through entitlement and a sore attitude. 

he huffs and thinks he can’t help it. he’s wired for this. blood and vessels detailed to focus only on what someone can provide. he doesn’t blame her for this habit. he only blames himself, and yet he still dips his toes in and plunges whole each time. 

(there should be a plan here on how he’ll rectify this. how he’ll make amendments and promises to himself on becoming a better person and then how he’ll likely succeed. but that’s not him. he’s got more people waiting on being repaid than he has years to his life, and that can’t be resolved.) 

honoka, though, is an exception. despite the anger she includes in every interaction, she deserves better, and even if he can’t extend these changes to everyone, he can at least try to extend it to her.

“don’t do that,” she chides, “if you build a tolerance you won’t need to see me anymore,” she teases, cups his cheek in her hand and turns his head to look at her. her gaze is seeking, searching, critical. he doesn’t look so good. he surely doesn’t look tolerant. if anything it looks like the dazed edges of withdrawal, and her lips pull together, pressed to a thin line.

“tolerance?” she repeats back at him, prodding, an unspoken plea for him to open up a little.  

tolerance? 

his heart stutters when she cups his cheek. she touches him like he’s something worth remembering — as if her fingers trailing across his cheek and along the cut of his jaw is worth her curiosity and care. as if he, sungki, fucking sungki, deserves it. 

(for once there isn’t guilt. he relishes. he leans his face into her hand and he relishes.) 

the way she questions him with such tenderness makes sungki momentarily melt into her palm and part his lips to confess: god no, you know me, it’s not tolerance. instead, he softly exhales into her skin, eyes flickering shut for a moment. its brief, near gentle. so delicate and yet so wretched. nothing with them or him can ever exist in the mundane in-between, so either sungki is that jovial boy full of life or the boy decaying from the rotten design of his own ambition. 

“yes,” he chuckles, eyes blinking open to lazily stare up and match her gaze. blackness pools into the center. she looks right back at him. maybe he should’ve tried to be as better as he liked to believe instead of playing into this lie. “yes, tolerance.” he presses into her palm a bit further, the warmth of it alluring, and then he pulls away. “besides, i don't need you just for the drugs, you’re a friend, remember?” he teases.

there are two parts to him. at least the two that yani has seen in the span of months she’s known him: there was the resurrection of a mechanical man who nearly inhaled the drugs he received as he settled into his new, drug-induced routine. he thought gullibly, in the first couple of weeks when yani made her rounds, that he'd live forever. the second is this. a robotic entity (not deserving of existence) weaning off of the very thing that gives him life, that gave him the thought that he could live this gladiator lifestyle forever. he’s shriveled up, and in the night he startles awake, doubling over with pain rushing down to his legs. it’s thoroughly electric and leaves him in a cold sweat. 

sungki’s grip on the vials tighten. as of late, his interactions with people have been kept brief, and it’s because of the sudden and paralyzing manner his chronic condition sneaks on him. he can’t guarantee that it won’t happen in the day as it happens in the night. he can’t promise as he sits here staring at a barren river, talking about trivial things, that it won’t just horrifically reveal his fraudulent side-hustle. 

it’s what pushes him to keep this interaction curt, and yet, he is so greedy for more that he can’t find his tongue tracing the words of goodbye. 

“fighting again soon?” he asks, props the cigarette back between his lips and nudges his chair back with a heel. leaves it balanced on the back two legs. jinsol’s built up some amount of interest in sungki’s lifestyle, even if he hadn’t cared all too much at the beginning. maybe it’s the thrill, or the fact that he can see how his supply blooms and comes to life inside of sungki in the ring. or maybe it’s that primitive sort of human nature that pulls people to seek out entertainment in the form of violence. 

everyone replicates each other. parallels are common in elysium, they’re colored in neon hues; any difference is scarce, and the depth of this inevitable fact pools into an abyss. jinsol and sungki exist in the same way, and yet the need to be something different (something more, greater) keeps him from accepting what's already obvious. so when he looks at jinsol smoking a cigarette (his grim stare, his lips peeling apart into a teasing smile), sungki still thinks he’s somewhat better. isn’t that exactly the kind of selfish greed that gives relevance to living? 

(people in elysium don’t live, however, they hardly survive. people in elysium just hope and play pretend. their reality is littered with this humiliating decency. they can only be good enough, and never perfect. that’s just how they’re created. tldr: no one escapes their destiny, not even sungki in all his mechanical glory.) 

he seats his heel against the edge of his chair, his chest pressing into his knee as he reaches forth to grab a cigarette. it hangs between sungki’s lips, and with a flicker, it ignites. “fucking awesome,” he retorts. his gaze catches jinsols before he huffs a single laugh, “that drug you have me on is amazing, i can’t feel a thing.” the chuckles continue. it’s funny 'cause it’s a lie. in a world where people can’t reach perfection, neither can their fucking drugs. 

he hums, black stare flickering to the wet pavement and the glow of lights burning neon in their reflection. he sometimes thinks jinsol cares, that he revels in the passion and heated nature of his fights just like he does, but his investment runs deeper than that. it’s not for him, exactly, it’s for what sungki can become under the design of jinsols innovative tastes. he fields all his endeavors into the body of one technological idiot and makes him run his tests in situations far too real and uncontrolled. it’s dangerous, but sungki chases after it like a moth to a flame and doesn’t focus on the risky consequences. 

in his case, that’s always been dogged, anyway. 

“i want to.” his leg falls and he leans forward, subject changing as his elbows find purchase on his knees. 

jinsol wears the skin of someone beyond reach. in hindsight, it should’ve made him feel insecure and drove him away from whatever chaos cooked under. it should’ve kept him from intrigue and inviting himself into a conversation and transaction that’d never end. but he justifies those feelings easily: the pros outweigh the cons.

she takes a place beside him before her feet have registered their own movement, settling into place with a sigh that settles softly from her lips. “idiot,” she tells him, fishing in overlarge, hidden pockets in her coat, “you can’t go forgetting about deliveries.” as if a mother scolding a child for not taking his medicine, she hands it over. as if it is not as much his undoing as anything else. as if she is not just as responsible for the dimming of the light in bright eyes. “it’s hours overdue, you must feel like total shit.” her fingers skate the back of his hand, half in reverence and half in remembrance of the lattice work of metal that lives beneath.

thrill seeks him in novel ways. how sitting by a dormant river makes his stomach wind and stir. it’s childish mirth; wandering off, knowing that if you go too many steps you’ll get lost (and he did, he is — lost), yet she finds him.  

he chuckles, fingers plucking at the grass like strings of a guitar. “sorry, totally forgot,” he brushes off in a composed cadence. it’s the half-truth. he’s tethered to all of this by one thing alone: a dependency, a necessary transaction; the grim future looming above him, counting down with him week by week. yani is beautiful, but she comes as this despairing reminder.

it makes him wonder about the hopeless things that he shouldn’t wonder about: like what would happen if she stopped coming. if her absence would hold greater significance than the deterioration that’d follow. how the creeping feeling of anguish would trailblaze through his spine and make him feverish. how his skin would cry, burning inside-out. 

he wonders if it’d be as miserable as he first felt it and if any of it would ever go away. (the answer is no, but he doesn’t confront that. he doesn’t know how to. so he just keeps probing, showing up at eita’s door, vision bright, ideas brighter.) maybe it’s why he doesn’t bother digging himself out of this debt, why he spends so much money on future stocks of this drug — of yani’s visits instead of saving up for removals.

because what if it doesn’t work?

what if he learns that this is it. that this is how he’ll always be until he isn’t. that his is the kind of life predetermined where destiny is driven by the lines in skin instead of the actions of one whimsical and hopeful night. predetermined, like planned out in vivid clarity; his entire narrative derived the instant he took a breath. 

he stares at the vials yani rests in his hand, how they almost glow — sneer at him. 

and then god, the most horrible thought perhaps —

what will get him first? the increased potency of a drug that eats away at his organs or the scorching hellfire of pain that’d surf the last of his memories before blackness?

these are things he only thinks of in privacy. these are things he thinks about when she comes to sit by him, their knees knocking, his smile widening, the cold air passing between as a current. however, regardless of the panic that unknots itself in his stomach amidst her arrival, he is still thoroughly enthralled by all she bares before him. not obviously of course. he has this practice in picking apart people so he sees the way her fingers curl in the pockets of her thin jacket, how her gaze dashes across him — scatters itself to not focus on his gaunt reflection that he catches in her stare before she moves away.

he knows what he looks like.

those intruding thoughts that weave into his mind and bury themselves like a treasure weigh on his thoughts and sink deeper with each tide of realization until she comes rushing in, key in hand, bringing all he wishes to contain out of secrecy. she catches him at the point where his thoughts constellate, and then dips her whole hand in — greedy, he caught that — only to pick him apart. and she does most of it just by showing up.

“but yeah, i’m fine,” he pauses, turns his hand over to catch the edge of her fingers with his.  another thought: he wonders when sometimes yani holds his hand and squeezes it if she can almost feel the abnormality of metal below instead of the comfort of grooved bone. “i guess i was curious to see how long i could go. it seems to have slowed down, though,” sungki muses, mouth curling in a cheeky grin, “i’m building a tolerance.”

bullshit.

bleached strands dangle across his forehead, their wispy nature blown against his skin as the wind turns and curves towards them. for a minute the city greets them. it’s inundated by the atrocious extravagance of the reigning olympians and the soul through which elysium seeks its revolution. he gazes at her again, the bow of her lips, the straight line of her gaze that appears stern. it reads like a prophecy and he tries to find himself in it.  

sungki inwardly sighs. he recalls a brief memory as his fingers skim hers. 

(every action has an opposite reaction and a focus enhancing drug as specifically tailored by jinsol can only fade through bouts of confusion and paranoia. sungki stares at her incredulously, eyes red, bloodshot. he doesn’t look real, but in this light he never does. 

the appearance of her clings to him like sweat to skin and he grasps her face as she approaches him with a drug in hand. he holds her jaw tightly, leaning in to stare, flesh unadorned except for the veins along his nape that grow prominent the more the details fill in. there is nothing but a racing pulse, a victory that barely skims his tongue as a waning taste, and her. yani? i know you. it’s you, right? there’s an echo in his pause. he wants to say something else. he doesn’t know if he gets too. 

the ending arrives in an abhorrent dissonance. the stars and their iridescent glow shift and roam. they’re blurs of specks in the sky and he is a limp instrument sprawled across the pavement waiting to be strung once again. he pays his penance like this. brought to life and discarded at will. an object gifted only with the feeling of indifference. it’s a consequence of seeking godly greatness.