#lovelyable

Ok, so pretty much everything she posts I fall in love with *(^.^)* This is no exception.

Preview:  

92037 is told he was born on a stormy Sunday in the middle of November. He doesn't remember much of it - except for a distant pounding noise that he later learns is the sound water droplets make when hitting solid objects - but he does end up with a weird affinity for rain, which Seunghyun attributes to the conditions of his birthday.

For two amazing hours, he is alive and perfect and marveling (with the limited means he has) at his face and his arms, his stomach, and just the thought of himself lying on a conveyer belt and breathing, aware. He can feel things, taste things, hear things - in that order, as hands and a tongue and ears are fitted onto various parts of him - and it's all so fantastic that he doesn't even realize he's broken until a buzzer sounds somewhere in the distance. Instead of getting packed into a box and shipped off to his new life, he is pulled out of the assembly line and tossed down a chute.

He lands in a large box full of crooked limbs and twisted bodies, all sighing noises without any meaning because none of them have learned language. A sudden lurching movement and a squeaking noise below him signify that they, in the box, are moving; then after a while, they stop. He is untangled from the others, pulled to his feet, and given a ticket stub with a number he can't read.

"Don't worry," he hears. "You'll be fixed soon."


It takes 92037 a while to walk from his bunk to the mechanics, so he always gets up a little earlier than the early morning rush of bodies so he can take his time to get there. By the way he continually bumps into the wall - even with his hand pressed against it - makes him think he might not be an early bird by choice. And then he thinks, I must be getting better at this if I'm blaming it on lethargy instead of my eyes.

Despite extra efforts, there's always already a line when he arrives. Most of these puppets will be more severely handicapped, like him, the ragamuffin procession made up of ones with only half a leg, or no bones in the left side of their body, or hair that feels more like needles. They all clutch tickets in their hands, told they're going to be fixed soon, don't worry. 90237 doesn't know why it only takes a few hours to put them together the first time, but if something's wrong, why it takes infinitely longer to fix. (Or what they're even going to do with the girl whose body hair can poke through things.)

90237 stops at his usual spot on the ledge, pulling the unreadable ticket from his back pocket, and listens to the other puppets around him talk, most of them still riding on the high of learning how to even pause for breath.

"Can I sit here?"

92037 tilts his head in what he hopes is the right direction. Unfortunately, he's not too good at figuring out which way sound comes from yet, which - in the best case scenario - makes him look a little like a curious puppy.

"Uh - I mean, sorry," he - whoever he is - says, "it's just everywhere else is kinda taken," and 92037 realizes he's interpreted his hesitation as a reluctance to share the space.

"You can sit," 92037 says. He quickly scoots over, sees the few shadows he can shift as the stranger eases down next to him.

"Thanks," the other puppet says, and wastes no time by proceeding with, "so what's wrong with you?"

This is the conversation everybody has when they first meet. Because only the broken ones are left here.

"Eyes," 92037 says. "Can't see. Apparently that's not right." And he's not yet entirely convinced that that's true, but what does he know? He's only about five days old. "You?"

"My heart doesn't work or something. Insert obvious joke here. I didn't really pay attention to the specifics." The other puppet doesn't sound all that concerned. "So you can't see, like, anything? What about how many fingers I'm holding up?"

"Seven," 92037 picks at random.

"Nah. How about now?"

"Thirteen," 92037 says. He stopped playing the finger game two days ago after he realized there wasn't really a point except to amuse someone else.

As if on cue, the other puppet laughs. It's a nice sound, cracked and smooth at once, different from his gravelly voice; it somehow makes him less like a douchebag, 90237 decides.

"Sorry, that was dumb. What's your name?"

"I don't have one," 92037 frowns. "I thought our humans name us."

"Well, I named myself," and the stranger sounds way too smug about it. "Seunghyun. Nice to meet you." He takes 92037's hand from his lap and shakes it rather jerkily a few times.

"Hi," 92037 says. The other puppet's hand is cold - but physical contact is something 92037 has been fascinated with since birth - so he doesn't pull away immediately.

"So they just call you 92037, right?" Seunghyun says, and 92037's eyebrows knot.

"How'd you know that?"

"Your brand," Seunghyun says, like it's obvious. When 92037 doesn't respond, Seunghyun makes a noise of impatience. "The one on your neck? What, you haven't seen - I mean - oh wait, shit," he stammers, and backtracks. "We, um - sorry. What I mean is - we all have our serial numbers on our necks. Right here," he says, and then his cold fingers are on the right side of 92037's neck, grazing just against his collarbone.

"Oh," 92037 says, and suddenly feels, under the goosebumps where Seunghyun's fingers touch, supremely stupid. He should have known - it's why the mechanic always holds something to his neck after every exam - why the lady in the mess hall always greets everybody by number when they get their food. He'd always thought she just had a spectacular memory.

"Wow, hey, I'm sorry," Seunghyun says, genuinely sounding it even through his laugh. "I'm just messing up all over the place."

92037 just shrugs, because he's been taught that's one of the more polite gestures in awkward situations.

Seunghyun lapses into silence. 92037 concludes that he's made the situation sufficiently sad enough for Seunghyun too look for somebody less nerve wracking to talk to, so he stops paying attention.

Then, Seunghyun snaps his fingers.

"Jiyong," he says decisively, like it's some genius idea. "I'm gonna call you Jiyong."

Weird. "Why?"

"Because," Seunghyun says, and brushes his entire hand through 92037's mess of hair - one side that won't stay flat, peach-fuzz scalp on the other. "Your hair makes you look like a dragon." A pause. "It's kind of lame," he adds as an afterthought. "But I'm not that creative yet. Sorry."

92037's stomach drops; he pulls away as far as he can - until his head bumps against the wall on the other side. "They had to shave some of it off to get to my eyes." He mutters. "I don't really like it."

Vanity makes no sense considering he can't even see himself, but he has it. Maybe it's something his human requested, though he doesn't know why they would - but he feels - he's felt - significantly lopsided, which is the last thing someone in his current situation needs.

"Oh," Seunghyun says (mumbles).

92037 can practically hear the cogs in his brain turning as he grasps for something else to say instead of 'I'm sorry' for the fourth time in ten minutes. "Well, it looks really badass," he finally offers. "Almost like you meant it."

90237 manages to make some sort of - what he hopes is a - comforting noise come out of his throat. They stop talking for good after that, but Seunghyun stays with him until 92037's ticket number is called. Then he pulls 92037 up from the ledge and walks him over to the door, even, and 92037 goes at least thrice as fast as he normally does on his own. He feels a bit like he might throw up, and at the same time, a little like he's flying.


A few more days, a few more eye exams, and 92037's sight is elevated to the point where he can see enough shapes to walk around (slowly) without clutching to the walls like a lifesaver. But he still manages to bump into Seunghyun. Of all the gin joints in the world, and all that.

But it's his fault - he must not have been paying attention - because he hits him head-on and rebounds off onto the wall, and he still doesn't realize who it is until Seunghyun speaks.

"Jiyong," he says, sounding surprised, "Hey, it's me! Don't tell me you forgot my face already."

He stops himself with a horrified, "aw, shit," at about the same time 92037 says, "you're really good at accidentally being an asshole."

Seunghyun recovers quickly. "I don't know why this happens with you. I'm not usually this bad. I'm so bad I'll probably tell you about the movie I just watched," he says, and in the next instant, trails off lamely. "I won't, though. Because I'm not an asshole."

"It's okay," 92037 says, and for once, it is. He's wanted to know what movies and television are ever since he learned the words, but is too vain - there it is again - to fumble around with the equipment by himself. Concepts like pictures and lights and colors he understands on a logical basis, but he supposes that the full perks only come with vision. As comfortable as he is in the dark, he can't help but be curious.

"So uh, I think I'll go," Seunghyun says, after a second. "Like, before I accidentally insult you again. Because I think I used up my quota for the day." He pauses when 90237 doesn't say anything. "You okay, space cadet?"

"I want to see a movie," 92037 tells him.

Seunghyun blinks. "Well, I'm sure when you're better--"

"Now," 92037 says. "Now is good."

He stretches out his hand and waits for Seunghyun to take it. And after a minute, the other puppet does indeed, his fingers cold as ever.


"So," Seunghyun says, once he's helped 92037 settle into his seat and pick a movie - which in itself takes way too long because Seunghyun keeps asking what 92037 wants to watch and 92037 has to keep saying he doesn't care, he just wants to watch something. "Are you just gonna... listen to it?"

"I can kinda see," 92037 says, not even bothering to be defensive anymore. At this point, he figures that, with Seunghyun, everything out of his mouth really is just purely accidental. He looks at the dark shape hovering over him that is Seunghyun and feels like an invalid. "So, you don't have to stay. I'm sure you have stuff to do."

Music starts playing, and 92037 draws his knees up to his chest, focusing on a light gray square he deduces is the screen, the way it keeps on flickering. A man with a rough voice - kind of like Seunghyun's, actually - starts to talk. And then 92037 realizes he has no idea what he's talking about or who he's talking to, except that it has to do with the wind, or something. But he pretends to be okay with the fact that it's twenty seconds in and he's already lost.

A few minutes slog by, and then Seunghyun sighs and mutters, "crap," and sits down.

"Okay, you're looking at some teenagers sitting on top of their cars. They're drinking beer, which means they're kinda drunk. You know what drunk is?"

92037 nods. "Okay, so they're all drunk, and they're making this other kid climb up an oil tower - you know, like, an initiation thing - wait, do you know what initiation is? This is hard," Seunghyun complains.

"Nope. You should probably stop now," 92037 says, though he does actually know what initiation is (although he isn't sure which definition Seunghyun is talking about. The dictionary downloaded into his head tells him there are a lot.)

Seunghyun manages to stay quiet for a full 34 minutes - until a part in the movie where 92037 apparently doesn't have the right audience reaction for - over which he gets frustrated enough to start up his running narration again. He doesn't bother keeping his voice down this time, and 92037 doesn't bother to actually follow what he's saying, though that means he can't follow the movie anymore, either. He imagines that other puppets in neighboring movie booths must be this close to raging into theirs and punching Seunghyun's lights out.

Or maybe the other booths are all empty. Maybe, this afternoon, it's just them.

Read the full story here: letskeepgoing