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“You’re going to get in trouble,” Suraj said blandly, picking at his nails with the metal nib of his pen. “Interns aren’t allowed up on the balconies the Astronomy Department use for their equipment.”
“Can’t get in trouble if you don’t get caught,” Komui sing-songed, shedding his lab coat and tie as he hunted around under the bed for his casual tunic and pants.
“He’s always saying not to talk to him during work hours but I can never find him once he leaves the labs. So I thought, well one of us has got to take the initiative, and that’s why I asked one of the CROW where the young master heads off to after dinner.”
Suraj raised his eyebrows at Daiyu, who was sitting at the desk in the corner and rubbing at her shaved head as though she wished she still had hair in order to pull on it.
“I don’t know if anyone’s told you this,” she drawled as Komui started fishing socks out and throwing them to the side, “but that wasn’t exactly an invitation to chat after work hours either.”
“Well of course it wasn’t an invitation,” Komui scoffed, sticking his long skinny legs in the air as he found the pants he was looking for and started wriggling into them. “He’s far too proud to even admit he likes me.”
“Right, because you’re such a catch,” Suraj muttered, frowning at a bit of ink on his fingertips and finally putting his pen down on the bedside table.
“Great date idea by the way, being hauled off by the guards when they inevitably catch you. That ought to pique his interest. Why are you so hung up on the Director’s son anyway? There are loads of other guys in the Branch who aren’t so – so …”
“High maintenance?” Daiyu put in, her lips crooking up a little wryly at one corner.
“I was going to say high voltage,” Suraj retorted, shaking his head. “You’re playing with some seriously dangerous fire here, Komui. What are you gonna do if you – you try to kiss him or say something he doesn’t want to hear? Bak Chang has booted interns out of the Science Division for less.”
“He’s not going to kick me out of the Science Division,” Komui exclaimed, laughing a little as he pulled his tunic over his head and adjusted the buttons, as though that were the most ridiculous thing he had heard all night. He picked his slippers up and headed for the door.
“Besides,” he added, grinning a little giddily at them, “He didn’t look overly bothered the last time I kissed him, and that’s got to count for something, right?”
Suraj’s eyebrows climbed to his hairline.
Komui saluted them. “Well I’m off!” he said cheerfully. “Don’t wait up!”
“… He’s going to get burned,” Suraj said at last, when the door closed with a snap and they could hear Komui making his way down the corridor.
Daiyu shook her head. “Oh, there’s no doubt,” she chuckled. “Have you seen him in the labs after an experiment blows up in his face though? That shiny-eyed wonder? He’s going to pursue this until he succeeds or it kills him.”
“Yes,” Suraj said, grim-faced, “that’s the problem.”
Looks like rain tonight, Bak thought, as the distant rumble of thunder made him lift his head and peer over the top of a celestial globe as clouds rolled in over the mountains.
He rubbed his knuckles over his tired eyes and stood up to stretch, pushing his long blond hair out of his face as he did so.
It was getting late, and the senior astronomers would be resuming their posts as soon as Logistics sent someone up to douse the lamps for the night, though there wouldn’t be much to see once the clouds settled overhead.
Truth be told he did not see how celestial records coincided with the finding of Innocence but he supposed that it made as much sense as the attempts being tested out by all the other divisions.
The view of the mountains and little waterways surrounding the Branch was stunning from this vantage point and so Bak had taken advantage of the fact that hardly anyone was allowed up here to make a little niche for himself to do his research notes in peace.
His parents hardly ever seemed to leave Lab 6 these days. He didn’t know too much about what had happened, except that a miracle had taken place after years of no results and that Renee always looked unbearably smug whenever she saw him, as though daring him to demand why her father had allowed her to work on important Order projects while his own mother had expressly forbid such a thing.
Bak sighed, blowing his bangs out of his eyes as he rested his elbows on the balcony railing and carefully steepled his fingertips together, thinking.
Headquarters would be scouting the Branch offices for new blood again soon, looking for researchers with fresh ideas and the smarts to ascend to senior positions within their ranks. It might be early days yet but perhaps the next time one of their scientists came around he could present them with his thesis and try his luck.
It was, he felt, a much better alternative to trekking back to the family wing after dinner and holing himself up in his room every single night where anyone and everyone who didn’t matter could ask after him if only they knew where to look.
There is so much more to me than this, Mother, he thought, his fingers curling tight around each other and into the knuckles of his hands as he stared hard at the dark shapes of the mountains in the distance, the noise of crickets and water pouring out from the aqueducts and back into the rivers thundering in his ears.
He tried instead to imagine the sounds of the bustling ports of Shanghai, to picture the hills as the white sails of ships bound for England that would spirit him away from this cloistered place. Perhaps then it would take him somewhere that, maybe, he could feel like he was actually making a difference instead of going through the motions in the desperate hope that someday soon his mother would think him ready to take over some of her duties as Director and clan head.
The stairs behind him gave an ominous creak.
Bak hung his head, his hair cascading over his cheeks and over the railing as he bit his lip and composed himself. Reality, it seemed, had come knocking.
“You’re early Sung-ki,” he said, far more irritably than he meant to as he heard the door slide open and turned around to acknowledge the chief astronomer.
“You probably want to get some readings done before the rain comes down. I understand. Thank you again for letting me use this space when you’re not occupying it. Just give me a minute to gather my things and I’ll be out of your …”
He stopped, the words dying in his throat as the lantern light flickered in the wind, illuminating the figure in front of him.
“Hair,” Komui breathed, his clever eyes glittering as though he had stumbled upon a beautiful jewel in the dark. He cleared his throat.
“Er, your hair I mean. It’s … down. I didn’t think you ever … that’s, wow. Just, wow. It’s a good look. I like it. Not that you don’t always look amazing, um … I’m sorry, you were saying?”
Bak frowned, suddenly deeply conscious of the fact that he had left his hair ornaments and spirit stone on the desk with his paperwork. He pulled his hair over his shoulder and started twisting it into anxious knots between his hands.
“What are you doing here?” he hissed, baffled and mortified in turn. “You’re forbidden from … Where is Section Chief Yoon?”
“Who?” Komui asked, looking genuinely curious now, although he was still gazing at Bak like his very existence was far more interesting than all the astronomical instruments surrounding them.
“Interns aren’t allowed to wander around the astronomy levels!” Bak blustered, scowling when Komui finally tore his eyes away and started looking around like he had just realized where he had ended up.
“Who did you bribe to let you up here?”
“I didn’t bribe anyone!” Komui exclaimed, snatching his hand away from an armillary sphere and looking wounded at the suggestion. “The levels underneath the astronomy tower are hardly Lab 6. The patrol rotation pattern wasn’t exactly hard to figure out. If you had really wanted to keep people away from here that badly you would have posted CROWs at the entrance instead of the usual guards.”
“I’ll make a note,” Bak said savagely and turned his back on his infuriating guest, tossing his hair back over his shoulder so he wouldn’t worry it into knots between his fists.
“Is this the latest hangout among the interns then?” he demanded, staring resolutely at the impending storm clouds. “Did they send you up first to make sure the coast was clear?”
Komui came and settled in beside him, folding his arms together on top of the railing.
“Hangout? You sound like an old man,” he teased, studying Bak’s frowning face in the lantern glow a little longer before craning his neck down and peering over the side of the cliff face, at the straight drop down into the darkness and the little rivers meeting in the middle to form a quiet lotus pond alight with fireflies.
“This is a nice place.”
“It was,” Bak muttered mulishly.
“Is this where you always go after dinner?”
“As if I’d tell you,” Bak replied shortly, his nails dragging against the wood grain as his fingers curled into fists in a bid to keep his temper in check. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“Not particularly,” Komui said cheerfully, propping his chin up in his hand and watching the fireflies dance around the pond in fascination. “I was looking for you, and I found you, and now here we are.”
“Here we are,” Bak echoed, heaving a great sigh. Apparently his hiding place wasn’t as great as he had assumed it was and people were still going out of their way to find him after all. He dragged his hands back through his hair.
“Well out with it then,” he said sharply, rapping his hand down on the balcony in a business-like manner hard enough that Komui startled and looked at him in alarm.
“Did you want to ask me something about one of the equations in today’s lesson? Has something blown up in the labs again? What have you done this time? Because I keep telling you lot that you need to take these things up with your lab supervisor, not with me.”
Komui goggled at him. “Nothing’s blown up in the labs!” he said incredulously, “I just wanted to spend some time with you!”
Bak opened his mouth and then closed it again when no sound came out. He blinked.
“I see you every day in the labs,” he said at last, when no other response was forthcoming.
He immediately regretted the words as soon as they came out of his mouth because Komui looked at him with such incredible fondness that he felt his cheeks flush.
“Surely you have a life outside of the labs?” he asked Bak kindly.
“Not really no,” Bak replied and frowned, not sure if he liked where this was going.
Komui seemed undeterred.
“Oh come on,” he said bracingly. “Your family name is huge here! I bet your social calendar must be loads of fun.”
Bak pressed his fingertips together and willed himself to be patient.
“I don’t know what you consider fun,” he said at last, when he felt like sarcasm wasn’t going to pour off his tongue like poison, “but believe me when I say I would rather be arms-deep in the metallic guts of Lab 3’s perpetually fritzed turbine engine than holding a tiny champagne flute at a party while listening to Salinz Epstein droning on about all the changes he’s made to the Science Council for the umpteenth time.”
“You’ve got a turbine engine in Lab 3?” Komui asked, perking up immediately. “Can I see it?”
Bak forced down the smile that he knew was fighting to bloom on his face and massaged his temples.
“Listen, Lee …”
“I told you, my name is Komui. There must be hundreds of Lees here.”
“286 actually, and don’t try to be cute Komui Lee. I know what your game is.”
Komui grinned at him brilliantly, his mouth curving wickedly sharp at the corners. “You think I’m cute?”
“I think you’ve got selective hearing because you clearly didn’t hear me the last time I said this,” Bak snapped, pointing at his pink-cheeked face as though Komui wasn’t already looking at his lips and needed to be reminded he was speaking.
“I do not date interns.”
Komui shrugged. “I won’t always be an intern,” he said earnestly.
“But at the moment you are,” Bak shot back, the thunder rumbling in the skies as the clouds closed in reflecting his mood, “and you’ve got another thing coming if you think I’m going to wait around until you aren’t.”
“Then I guess I’d better get a move on,” Komui replied, the fire in his eyes somewhat unnerving now. Bak gaped at him.
“You can’t just … there is no express lane, crash course to becoming an Order scientist!”
“Says you,” Komui continued in that quiet sing-song voice that set Bak’s teeth on edge.
The wind was picking up now, making the lanterns shake on their tethers and casting his scowling face in and out of shadow.
“I’m leaving within a year,” he said flatly, the desire to draw up his case and present it to the visiting HQ researchers burning inside him stronger than ever. “Even you won’t be able to make it before then.”
Komui’s expression fell. “You’re leaving?” His voice was hushed, as though he couldn’t believe his ears. “But I thought … your parents …”
Bak shook his head and laughed. It was an ugly sound. There was a thunderclap overhead.
“Why so surprised?” he demanded, turning to face Komui fully. “Did you think that because I was a Chang I was going to spend my whole life here in the Asian Branch just waiting around to take up my mother’s mantle?”
“No of course not!” Komui exclaimed, flustered at Bak’s suddenly aggressive tone. “I had no idea … I didn’t think …Where are you going to go?”
“Out!” Bak snapped, throwing his hands up and pacing back and forth, his blond hair billowing about his head like golden fire in the lantern light.
“Out?” Komui repeated, looking incredibly worried now.
“Away from here! Over those mountains! Across the sea! Somewhere I can make my own discoveries and be treated like a scientist on my own merit, not like a stepping stone on the corporate ladder or the Director’s son, a place where I can just be…”
He stopped abruptly and turned, smacking right into Komui who had moved to follow him and nearly tripping over his own feet had it not been for warm hands gripping his forearms.
There was a serious, searching expression on his face that Bak had never seen before, as though Komui were carefully dissecting him with his eyes and judging each little piece he found.
The tiled awnings clattered as the clouds finally burst, a torrent of rain pouring down the roof. The lantern flames flickered.
Bak felt his face grow hot with shame at his outburst and curled his fingers tight into Komui’s tunic. He chewed the inside of his cheek, gathering his thoughts.
“I … apologize,” he said stiffly. “That was very unprofessional. I … it’s been a tiring night and I have no excuse for …”
Komui kissed him, his hands cupped tight around Bak’s elbows.
Bak inhaled sharply in surprise. The warm press of Komui’s body was a comfort against the rainy breeze now wafting through the balcony.
There was a lingering scent of cedar on his clothes from the standard issue trunks given to all new recruits when they joined up with the Order, which when combined with the smell of cool, wet earth made Bak think of the forests beyond the Branch. His heart suddenly ached.
Komui pulled way slowly, as though letting go of Bak was the last thing in the world that he wanted to do. The rain continued to beat down around them, lit up only by the reflection of the lantern light on the water.
Some of the fireflies had moved under the safety of the awning at this point, and were now hovering around the lanterns and the balcony railing, like so many tiny green lights in the gloom. Bak could see their faint glow reflected in Komui’s dark, searching eyes.
“You are so much more than just another Chang,” he said at last, his voice barely discernible over the downpour as his nose brushed against Bak’s cheek.
“You’re amazing and gifted and I don’t know why you can’t see that.”
Bak swallowed hard at that, a sudden uncomfortable lump sticking in his throat as clever fingers carded through his hair, cupping the back of his head.
“I know this is the probably the last thing you want to hear, but the outside world isn’t all sunshine and roses either,” Komui told him gently as his thumb stroked tender circles at the base of Bak’s neck. “You’re safe from the AKUMA here. Not many people can say the same.”
“I don’t care if it’s safe,” Bak said scathingly, the words forcing themselves out of him in a rush. “I just want to see it before I have to settle down here for the rest of my life. Can you fault me that?”
Komui hummed at that but didn’t try to argue with him. “And where will you go once you’ve had your fill of the world?”
“Headquarters,” Bak replied without hesitation, the enthusiasm making his voice brighter. “There is too much politicking at Central for my tastes but only the very best get handpicked from the Branches to work at HQ. The scientists there get to see the Innocence firsthand even if there isn’t a project in the works because that’s where the Exorcists – ”
“Exorcists?” Komui said suddenly, his tone changing abruptly as he held Bak at arm’s length with a grip like iron. His eyes were wild in the firefly glow. “There are more Exorcists at HQ?”
“What do you mean ‘more’…?” Bak demanded, curling his fingers around Komui’s wrists as apprehension and suspicion pooled in his stomach.
“But the Exorcists in the Asian Branch …”
“They don’t stay here you idiot,” Bak retorted, his voice immediately adopting that lofty sort of quality it tended to take on when he had to explain something that he thought everyone ought to know.
“Exorcists only come to the Branch offices if they’re taking part in a project or injured or in the area and need to contact HQ as soon as possible. They live at HQ because that’s where they receive their mission briefings.”
Komui stared at him, as though Bak had answered all his prayers and snatched them away at the same time. He looked like he was struggling with some internal conflict.
“Can anyone go to HQ?”
Bak narrowed his eyes, the niggling suspicious feeling in his gut deepening.
“I told you,” he said irritably, “Only the best scientists get to work at HQ. What could a troublemaking fast-talker like you possibly want to do there?”
Komui blinked, then suddenly the dark, piercing look on his face was gone and he was all smiles again.
“Hey now, you’re not the only one with dreams,” he said lightly, and Bak was acutely aware about how little he actually knew about this brilliant two-faced intern.
“I thought your dream was to get me to go on a date with you,” he reminded Komui scornfully.
Komui snapped his fingers, looking pleased that Bak had remembered. “A man can have two dreams!” he insisted.
He took Bak’s hands in his own, holding them close as though he wanted to press them against his heart. His expression was soft and wanting.
“Just give me a chance,” Komui said, “A year even. I’ll become the most incredible junior scientist you’ve ever seen. Headquarters will be dying to take me. And then we can go see what’s beyond those mountains together. What do you say?”
There was another crack of thunder. Bak’s heart thudded hard against his chest. He wondered if it was possible to see how red his face had become and whether it was noticeable in the lantern light.
“Go back to your dorm,” he insisted, trying to sound gentle and worldly even though the words seemed desperate to his own ears. “Take it slow. Both … both your studies and this desperate bid for a relationship. I can’t give you what you want, but maybe someone else can.”
“Maybe,” Komui conceded, though he sounded as though he was just appeasing Bak and had no real intention of following through with his suggestion, “but they wouldn’t be half as incredible as you.”
Heat bloomed on Bak’s cheeks in warm, blotchy patches.
“You’re crazy,” he said at last, squeezing Komui’s fingers tight in his hands to stave off the urge to scratch his hot, itching face. “You’ll never pull it off.”
Komui squeezed back sympathetically, and when Bak looked up into his face his eyes were dancing with delight.
“I’ll take that bet.”
Bak worried his lip in annoyance, scowling. There was just no reasoning with some people. He wracked his brains, wondering what else he could say that would make Komui abandon this fool idea, but he came up short. He hesitated, and then exhaled heavily, defeated.
“The guards will have just changed their shifts,” he said at last, glancing at the raindrops dripping down the side of the balcony railing to avoid having to look up into Komui’s triumphant face.
“I doubt any astronomical readings are going to get done tonight. Do you … want to stay and watch the rain a while?”
Komui fairly beamed at him. “Is this a …”
“If you say ‘date’ I’ll toss you over the side and make it look like an accident,” Bak cut him off sharply. “I would just like to go to bed uninterrupted later on and I won’t be able to do that if the guards come calling to bail you out of lock-up because you were caught sneaking where you shouldn’t.”
Komui considered this.
“I’d love to watch the rain with you,” he said graciously.
Bak ducked his head, focusing his attention on Komui’s hands. They were warm.
“Good,” he muttered disgruntledly.
“Good,” Komui echoed, and smiled like Bak had just parted the rainclouds with a wave of his hand and hung the sun up in the night sky.
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END.