THE END!

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aaaaandddd re-presenting minseo, local gorgon who wanders around blinded but is a v adept clockmaker & general gadgeteer. his gorgon origin means he used to be able to (and did) petrify people into stone when he looked into their eyes. thankfully(?) his parents had him blinded via a witch's hex several years ago, so they didn't have to deal with the problems that came w/ having him as a kid once again, these are more details under the cut, but like this if u'd like me to come and plot out a thread !

[...] and if they were here for minseo and they were clueless enough to bring blade along, for minseo--- sangwon would burn the whole city down, fuck the rest of it, maybe that would finally make a good news report, the emptiness of his apartment, that desk he used to be so proud of, it was about time, anyways, for sangwon to see it all turn to ash, wasn't it?

his body wakes before he does, pulled towards the voice before he can think of whose it is. body lolling forward, he might've stayed in the dark if not for the cold, abrupt weight of a chain around his wrists and a voice that says, wake up for me.

for sangwon. of course. for sangwon, he lifts his eyes open. there's barely any light and yet his vision spasms, bright flashes dancing in his periphery, and it's only when the flashing becomes stinging that he realizes there's something wrong with his optics. "sa---" for sangwon, he remembers their cover at the last second and the imperative that no one else can know, but it's not fast enough to keep the whimper from the back of his throat. "hyung?" he jerks forward again, a blind but instinctive animal that wants--- needs to see sangwon, needs to feel him the way he was before all of it went to shit.

"there's something wrong," he mumbles, vision swimming with light. he doesn't remember what happened but it doesn't take much to piece it together, and it has to have something to do with the chemical taste on the back of his tongue and the heavy weight in his limbs. had they drugged him? cut into his optics? it explained the pain in the back of his eyes.

it takes just a split second longer to finally realize the worse problem the link he'd placed between his vision and sangwon's, and how could he have been so stupid, so fucking oblivious, felt so safe within their private link that he forgot he'd just created something that the world could finally wrap its greedy hands around.

he doesn't even wonder who it is this time. this isn't the first time he didn't make it home and it's not a concern, whatever they think they can do to him, whatever these hounds ever think they can change when all of their money is sitting on the ocean floor with the wreck of his parents' flight. sangwon is. sangwon still has things to lose.

"are you hurt?" he tries to blink away the tears gathering in his eyes, feeling one spill but doing absolutely nothing to ease the stinging. "i can still feel them. they're in my eyes." it makes his skin crawl, that feeling of an unseen pair of eyes watching behind his. if they were still tapped in, how long until they noticed they were awake and came for them again?

his vision is inconsistent, at first sangwon slumped across him, before cutting into a reflection of the room and his own body sitting across from him, his own sightless eyes. minseo struggles to adjust to sangwon's field of view. he sees that he's bound to the base of an old radiator, precariously close to some jagged edges of broken pipes. beyond that, he thinks he sees a staircase that leads somewhere up and out of sight. then the feed cuts, and he's staring blearily at sangwon again.

"you have to cut off the link," he rasps. "i think they're still connected to mine. i think--- they can get to you like this, you have to keep them out." snap the tether. let it go. there's fear in his voice as he says it, but sangwon should know it's for the best, that they need at least one working pair of eyes between them if they want a chance of getting free, and that minseo trusts him with his life. with everything else he has.

[ . . . ] With the raising of a brow, he chuckled; discarding the wrapper into the bin and popping the candy tongue into his mouth, standing to his feet. "I'm in. As long as you promise not to shove me in front of you should the killer appear to us." He brought out the palms of his hands and spread his fingers beside him. "Good as new. Sometimes you just need some glucose to feel the buzz without sinking into a stupor. Let's go." He grabbed his bottle and chugged the rest. "I'll throw this out once we're off the premises. No evidence."

"oh. then that's kind of pessimistic. if things didn't feel different for you out there, what are the chances for the rest of us in here?" clicking his tongue, he finally turned to find the right shelf.

the archive sometimes resembled a maze, but it was a sensible, logical maze. each film was indexed like the print libraries of the old world, a system that looked like hieroglyphics until he finally learned what they meant: three numbers, each for a section, a row, and an order, clear instructions. he was good at instructions.

the movie was the first in its row, easy to spot by the spine. he glanced back curiously at irin before beckoning him back over to the viewing room. "i know i'm not a ghost. ghosts have reasons for existing." he shook his head. "i like the poetry though. the idea --- it'd be nice to be a ghost if that meant knowing why i'm still here. or being tied to something or to someone. that'd be comforting, right, knowing you're exactly where you belong?"

he motioned irin to go ahead while he loaded the movie in. his eyes had already lost all the tolerance they'd built for the dark and now it looked like a void again, illuminated only by the half-open door they'd left behind them. he kept an eye on irin to make sure he wouldn't stumble in the dark. four of the seats were rescue projects from traditional theaters, big and velvet and sanguine red, reclinable if the guest felt daring enough to try popping it out. the others were sad little folding chairs.

he slipped the movie in, then went back to close the door. the warm square light from the main room disappeared, washing the room in a cool, murky darkness. then there was a click as he locked the door.

"it's okay, i wouldn't shove you. it would be better to have a shield." he was curious. "you think the killer would really come looking in a place like this?"

he took the recliner at the end of the row, the one that made the least noise when he curled in it sideways and tilted one cheek towards the screen. the piracy screens came up first. then the production screens. the sound wasn't impressive, but in a small room, each thrum felt like it ran through the walls and the floors.

🡦 sent, " you don't look so good. "

he's staring at his hands when jaehyun's voice comes to him. minseo blinks, looks up, and feels a distant pang of confusion when he sees jaehyun there again, under plain light. jaehyun. of course.

"i think i'm fine," he says, just moments before another trill of warmth runs through him again. it feels a lot like getting flustered, his face reddening with it, but he's not.

a passerby has him instinctively stepping closer to jaehyun. something about this feels familiar --- the people in a rush around them, the way the rain had fallen in sheets the last time minseo remembers properly seeing him. the store's packed today, an odd occurrence when it's one of the smaller places he knows. he's not sure why everyone's panicking or why, when he really looks at their faces, some of them look a little worse for wear too. why people keep talking about the water.

cw. themes of depersonalization / derealization

SCRIPT.

a nightmare devil seeks you out in your sleep. fed by the sweet fear of bad dreams, it twists your senses, distorting the room and its form to become your greatest fear. what do you see?

SCENE.

the devil looks like a devil, which is to say that it looks like the devils in the movies he's seen in mise-en-scène's backroom. it sits at the side of his bed, comprised of scars and features that are too sharp to be human, with horns that curl out from their temples and twist back over long and haggard hair. their eyes are glittering, their teeth sharpened.

"i need your help," it says, leaning in. it has the voice of thousands. "i'm hungry. i'll fade if i don't feed. but no one has been kind to me, to even spare a scrap."

"i'm sorry for that," minseo murmurs, sympathetic. "most people aren't kind."

"they are heartless." it nods, then sighs. "will you help me?"

minseo only needs to think about it for a few seconds before he nods too. "what do you feed on?"

[ - - - ] He took another look at the shelf. "On second thought - Got anything red-apple flavored?"

minseo observed the bottle distantly in the corner of his eye. he almost said something for a moment, a maybe you want to slow down. but when he considered where they were, and when he then pulled back that looking glass even further to really see where they were, stranded in a small dark building in a city in a world that was going to keep turning whether one or both of them got shitfaced tonight, he almost wanted to ask for a drink too.

"both of those sound too far for me, but at least they were different. it must've been nice to have other places to compare to all of this. sometimes i feel like i just moved from one corner of the same box to another." all the same things, just different angles to see them from. different ways the corner felt against his back.

he hummed obligingly and pulled the candy drawer back out, picking a box of fruit-flavored hard candies. "here, but you'll have to pick them out. i'll eat whatever you leave behind, so don't go throwing it away." it was the closest he sounded to chastising him when he handed the box over. minseo kept part of his attention on him as he scrolled further down, wary about the way irin was leaning.

"i don't know much about being a woman," he said, nodding faintly. "or a man. i guess i've been worried about too many other things to think about things like that." he trailed off. felt an uncomfortable turn in his stomach. pivoted: "i think. it'd be nice to just have anything in the same corner as you, is what i think. but i wouldn't worry if i were you. you don't sound like someone who'd have a hard time finding that, unless you're really good at hiding it."

his attention drifted at the thought. a brief lull later, his optics urged him to refocus again, and he blinked himself back to awareness and clicked on the movie closest to the cursor, taking note of its filing number.

[ - - - ] “ – just tell me what to do.”

like with most things, minseo couldn't say how this began. what he remembers most is aquatica's soft darkness, blurry hours of floating in it like the fluorescent creatures that stared back at him where he stood in the exhibition halls, which were usually empty because he moved slower than the other guests and they didn't think twice about that world on the other side of the glass. they didn't feel, he supposed, thin enough to just pass through that glass and sink with the billowing jellyfish until that was the only existence he had to worry about, just floating and sometimes thrumming with light whenever biology told them to.

empty until it wasn't and iseul was there, with his voice like a hand that kept him from really passing through the glass. iseul had a lot to say about the fish and the fauna. minseo can't say he knows why iseul came to begin with or why iseul stays or why iseul lets him follow him past the end of his lunch breaks back into the lab, where there's too much light to say that it's just the dark making them melancholy for conversation.

iseul knows a lot too, and not just about the fish. minseo knows how it is, to put his hands on something and make something, but iseul's creations feel more visceral. digs down, into the source: if minseo shaped matter, then iseul seemed to shape the existence of matter itself. minseo, fascinated, can't look away when he does.

later, he'll say that's why he doesn't notice the slowdown in his chest.

the device, which sat snug in what a nice doctor used to call his heart chamber, has been running on its magnet for only three weeks and four days. like with his tapes, minseo knows best about and what to do with what he's already got: one, that a magnet could last for at least five or six months before it needed replacing, and two, that the process of replacing it isn't any more difficult than popping out discs from the player at work.

but this time was a little different. well, evidently. his body noticed it first, his fingers spasming over the screwdriver he was using to tune something for iseul. he wasn't sure how iseul noticed next, before his own brain fired off the right synapses and said, there's something wrong with your heart and you're not in the right place for it.

the panic's faint. like a small dog whining for attention at the curb that he would pet absently---minseo pats over iseul's wrist and mumbles for iseul to look at him. "i know," he says, "i know, it's going to be okay," because it sort of sounds like iseul needs to hear it more than he does.

he eases his weight back against the table, one hand gripping the edge for balance and knees barely keeping his body upright. the air's chilly on his skin. he hates the device to be out so openly, the clear case allowing a glimpse into the cold, cycling machine that hooked into his organic heart, but he can feel his breaths beginning to turn shallow, which means right now he doesn't have the time, or the choice, or anyone else to ask.

he just wishes it wasn't iseul.

"put your fingers here. press and twist," he mumbles, aligning three fingers over three familiar grooves along the rim. he tries it himself first, but the slightest pressure on his hand sends a ripple of vertigo through him. this must be how the jellyfish feel, pulsing in the water.

"okay? now you try." playing it off as a demonstration, he grasps for iseul's wrist again, coaxing his fingers into the right spots for him. "just like that, you're doing fine. it doesn't hurt, so it's okay."

one, two, three. minseo helps him push until a latch releases, his vision blurring through a second, stronger rush of vertigo. a quiet sorry falls out of him as the cover finally begins to unwind, exposing the protective chamber that housed the magnet underneath.

[ - - - ] Of course, these were simply speculations. Irin figured Minseo would care for the public to serve the public, and he never heard a peep out of Minseo as far as complaints. It was rather exhilarating, knowing someone so couth.

minseo tilted his head. "he doesn't?" he looked up where the sole security camera blinked away in the corner of the room, mulling over the likelihood that they were being watched right now. he assumed that owning a business was important enough to want to keep an eye on it, but what did he know? he supposed that the archive wasn't exactly rife with crime, if he didn't count the late fees from people who held onto rentals too long before trying to return them anonymously or the occasional weirdos who thought that the little theater was the perfect place to do illicit things. and it had been a while since he actually talked to his manager face-to-face.

"hm. no, you're right, i didn't know that. if you know fancy theaters, i don't know why you keep coming here, though." didn't really know anything about irin at all, actually, and probably wouldn't have remembered his name at all if it hadn't been burned into his mind by the circumstances. but he digressed.

the way out of the counter was blocked by irin now, and minseo paused for a few seconds as he calculated what would be the most polite way to make his way out. the apartment didn't sound appealing, yes, too quiet and too still in there. if it wasn't raining, he would've swung around by the arcade instead, or maybe by the park just to pass time until his head felt right enough to finally go back.

in the end, he decided it was all too much effort --- and it was still raining --- so he tugged his stool back over with a small sigh and sat back down.

"i guess we can stay until the rain lets up. i just wish this place had better food," he grumbled, leaning down to open up the drawer of snacks they kept behind the counter. they were the same kind that movie theaters sold, his boss's desperate attempt to make a little more money when the archive offered very few advantages over just going to an actual theater. he picked a new sucker out before nodding irin towards the others on display. "you want anything too? i'd just avoid the chocolates. i don't know if they'd still mix nice with the alcohol if it's been a couple of months."

he booted the computer back up, popping the sucker into his mouth as he opened a manifest of every title they carried --- there was no way he was going to stay here without some kind of background noise.

[ - - - ] " i'm not interested in what they've done or why you're chasing them. probably deserves it. but they're likely running through that alley right now and onto the street. "

"mm. like i said, we knocked," the woman says genially. she tilts her head in the direction that deiji gestures, but she's unmoved, instead finishing her small route by the machine that she had seen deiji crouching by. she raises a silent brow at the uprooted wires and paneling and casts another long glance around, her attention lingering on the prize counter. nothing moves.

"it looks like you've been having a busy night. believe me, we are sorry for interrupting --- usually we like to keep our business off the streets, but we wouldn't have a business anymore if we let our clients think they can take advantage of us."

she turns her gun between deft fingers as she makes her way to deiji. from her coat, she produces a long, sleek silencer, fitting it to the barrel with a hum of some old astran lullaby.

"it sounds like we're on the same side," she remarks, stopping within arms' reach, "so this is the last time i hope i'll need to ask, sweetheart. where is he hiding?"

she cocks the gun.

at the same time, something clatters in the back, through the darkened halls of the vr section.

the woman's head snaps to attention. her brother moves immediately too, pushing off of the door with a grunt and lumbering towards the noise.

[ . . . ] but before long, one of the escort enforcers return to fetch the next interviewee, and the intercom crackles to life as the receptionist calls for the NEXT NUMBER, at which the enforcer crosses her arms and scans the crowd expectantly. “step forward, please. your interview will be conducted this way.”

minseo has been here before.

only once in the division, but more times he can remember before that. it was all the same, he thought, the clinical lights that were bright and sharp enough to cut and open him up, see what was inside---and, morbid and curious, he wanted to know too.

the last time he was here, here here, he had discovered something about himself. he remembers it still, a lesson that lingers in the little phantom sensations down his arms and over his hands that he feels even when he isn't being touched. he hears the couple next to him trade worried whispers about the killings. how awful, they say. can you imagine?

he can. in the dark, optics in, he pieces together the murder scene. he looks around like a detective or doctor might, but he's not interested in the who or why. he lays where he programs the body to lay, staring up at the pixelated ceilings of the old ansan observatory, until the faceless killer materializes by his cue.

without the tactile bits finished, he doesn't feel it. the illusion warps like his vision would underwater, but that's it, really. he goes under and he tries to imagine the how. how does that feel? silver, empty eyes. hands, hands on him.

it seems so intimate. probably messy, too. he thinks of the clean-cut separation of his parents, there one night and gone the next morning, and no, it would be nothing like that. it would be warmer than that.

he goes when his number's called, sniffing and wiping a sleeve under sore, tired eyes. last time he was here, he was a little high too.

he dips his head slightly in greeting, then follows the enforcer in through the doors to the interrogation room. it's a lot like walking through a glass tunnel. he pets the wall as he goes, which is the most solid thing he can get his hands on then, until they get to the room and he shuffles inside.