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Throughout his ‘career’ as a villain, Chenle never imagined that he’d find himself as the mastermind of the city’s major drug rings.
He started it all because he wanted to have some harmless mischief. Maybe his night excursion might not be entirely harmless, but the point is, he wanted nothing more but to spread chaos. Be a sarcastic jerk and stroke his ego with that elating sense of being better than everyone else.
But most of all, he just wanted to have fun.
Not be in charge of the fourth biggest drug cartel in East Asia.
Yes, now he was paid to do evil deeds, but he’d gladly trade the illegal money with his meagre old sense of freedom. Let him take care of his own injuries, thankyou, no need for covers from the Evil Hospital™ health insurance.
His mind was just… a bit occupied in this past few months. What with his villain things and keeping check of his cronies and that silly purple spandex thing and his school work and worrying about his flatmate coming back to their shared place at 4 AM in the morning, ratty hair and eye bags the size of trashcans.
Split knuckles, split lips, split ends. A tragic sight.
He would smell of industrial grime and hardwork sweat and Chenle was so worried.
‘Who are you working for?’ He’d like to grab his flatmate by his shoulders and shook the sense out of him. Because even if he was so sure that this kid, only a year younger than him and barely legal himself, was working with one of the drug cartels, Chenle couldn’t really do anything about it unless the boy told him directly.
But Jisung has always been a little bit of a shy mouse. Walking home quietly at 4 AM he would wave at Chenle (who just got back home from his expedites and would usually be found in the kitchen making tea), before quietly slipping into the bathroom.
Not long after, the washing machine would run and there was the answer for why their water bill is so expensive. Jisung runs his laundry every single day.
‘Must he to hide the chemical traces,' Chenle thought, every single midnight before he donned his armour to instill a little taste of his own brand of terror on the town. His armour was more of a costume, honestly. Just a black jeans on top of a black turtleneck and a black leather jacket and a Darth Vader helmet modified far enough from the original design so that he didn’t need to pay royalty to Disney (or as he called them, the Evil Corporation™).
Every single midnight Chenle sneaked out of the secret passageway he created within the walls of their apartment that led directly to his secret underground lair, usually meeting with one or two of his cronies, waiting there if they don’t have any coding assignments to finish. And every single night for the last three months he would task his cronies to investigate on every single drug rings running in the city.
“Are we switching up to organised crime now?” Crony one spoke up when he first heard the task given to him.
“Didn’t I tell you to never question me.” Underneath the city Chenle was no longer Chenle. He’s Dr. Lechen , yes look at that name. So menacing, so sophisticated, so… clever. His reasoning was that nobody would think someone like the Honors student Zhong Chenle would be so stupid as to just switch his name around to make a villain’s name. It would be like staring at a 3D picture right underneath one’s nose and never finding out what the hidden image really is.
Underneath the city he was Dr. Lechen, and Dr. Lechen was never to be questioned.
So his cronies only shrugged and ran their tasked errands. It wasn’t a hard task anyway, sneaking around and reconnaissance.
Telling, isn’t it, of the poor state of the city’s underground crime syndicate that a 19 year old boy can suddenly overtake everything in three months time. Chenle was never much of a businessman, but even he knew everything has gone to shit. Just so many mistrust and corruption and greed and basically, all the kinds of chaos that he hates.
Even worse, now that he’d found himself mostly spending his time sitting on a desk, the damn Darth Vader helmet weighing down on his shoulder as he stared on a stack of paperwork, he couldn’t even do what he loves anymore.
As in, he couldn’t taunt and pester the purple spandex thing anymore. Captain Justice. What sort of childish garbage name is that. Captain Justice? It’s so disgustingly immature Chenle wanted to scratch that annoying itch on his brain everytime that name popped up in it.
It wouldn’t be wrong to say that he missed the guy, his arch nemesis. But you’d have to pry that confession from his cold, dead hands (and even then, probably he’ll just… deny it till his last dying breath).
But well, at least now his flatmate doesn’t go home at 4 AM anymore. In fact, his flatmate doesn’t seem to go outside in the middle of the night anymore.
They’d usually greet each other at 8 PM now, when he walked out of his room to Chenle just finishing up his dinner.
Jisung would take a seat right across from him on the dining table and they’d have a light, mindless chat about their day. Chenle pretending that he’s working so much on his thesis project when Jisung asked him ‘why does your room always smell like it’s on fire’ (instead of the truth that he’s constantly trying to make a better version of his clunky Darth Vader helmet). And Jisung would nervously laugh when Chenle jokingly ask him ‘why do you always go home at 4 in the morning?’
He said he works as a garbage man. Garbage man. Chenle could probably pick 20 other better job to mask an involvement with the drug ring than a garbage man .
But it’s okay. He was also lying about his ‘thesis project’ so they could both live with a piece of each other’s dirty lie with little to no problem.
Although, a life as a midnight villain will never go long without having another problem.
And his problem came one night, finally , he caught himself whispering under his breath when he saw that eyesore of a purple spandex thing standing proudly in front of him on his way to his new ‘job’ . Chenle sort of missed seeing that bullseye painted on the front of his archnemesis’ costume. A circle of white border with the letters JS sewn inside it, as if he transferred his grandma’s embroidery to his hero’s costume.
“Shouldn't you be busy stopping grocery store robberies, or something.” He gloated. Oh how much Chenle missed hearing his own gloat coming out of the voice changer device, filtered and distorted so that he sounded like a robotic, chain smoking middle aged binge drinker.
“One month, Doctor.” He missed this, standing there on top of some random building’s rooftop, his blood rushing and fingers itching to pull out one of his gadgets to deal with whatever move this grape twig is gonna surprise him with. “One month since the last time we met and I’m so ready to bring you down.”
He felt slightly guilty for liking this so much, because yes, after taking up the Big Boss mantle he did manage to make his flatmate’s life a little bit easier.
But this right here is him. His life. Adrenaline rush and the pungent smell of impulsivity. Jisung, his sweet flatmate offered him fantasies of domestic life and fulfilled his desire to feel what it’s like to be a knight in shining armour. That’s boring, though. And his armour has never been shiny anyway.
It was a breath of fresh air to see the purple grasshopper being the one surprised by Chenle’s gadget. Something new, something he designed when he was too bored with dealing with paperworks. It was an air-gun, discharging rubber pellets that burst upon impact and leaving a residue that will absorb moisture from the air and grow like an annoying, stinking and heavy mold. Usually Chenle would be kind enough to let his opponent have the first move. But not that night. He was getting much too impatient to wait.
The mold grew quickly and with that, it made the grape bubblegum wrapper’s movement slower. ‘Maybe I made this weapon too effective,’ Chenle thought while dodging a few close counter sparring. The deflated violet balloon did manage to put in a hit right up his left jaw but it was nothing that his trusty helmet couldn’t handle. ‘I should probably decrease the speed of the mold growth.’
Because Chenle loves to play with his food. And what fun can he get from an immobile melted grape popsicle, lying down on the concrete surface of the rooftop as he couldn’t manage the weight of the strange growth on his body?
Not much at all.
“Well, what are you gonna do to me now,” even with his cheek pressed onto the cold floor and limbs uncooperative, the aubergine sadness still has the gall to spat some mockery to his face.
And to such lovely gesture, Chenle showed mercy. He took out a little spray can and spritzed the chemical needed to dissolve the heavy mold, letting it melt into a puddle of stinky sewage-water-like substance.
Too long was he treated as something far bigger than he really is. He kind of missed being challenged like this, makes his blood boil.
“You’re getting lazy, Captain Justice.” Chenle turned away from the pathetic sight in front of him and he was planning to do a dramatic turn with the full moon shining behind his back when he realised something very dire. His voice changer broke.
Oh shit oh shit oh fuck ok wait no wait it was the hit. His damn hit, it broke the thing FUCK ok wait no it’s ok it’s all right. Chenle, he doesn’t know you, you can use your real voice and he won’t notice who you really are. Calm… down.
During his panicked monologue, Chenle was busy tapping and shaking the device but when he tried doing a basic 1-2-mic check, it still wasn’t working.
He still did his dramatic moonlit turn though, only to see the sorry blueberry curd still sitting on that puddle of stinking piss-smelling water, looking at him with a bewildered eyes and a mouth wide open in shock.
“Ch… Chenle?”
In a split second so many things happened within his mind that Chenle still couldn’t believe how he managed to survive everything without developing a minor stroke.
That voice. The airy, light, mousy voice that he always thought as sounding very pathetic turned out to be not the purple sadness’ real voice. Of course, who’d be so stupid to use their real voice in their masked vigilante actions.
His real voice was one Chenle had heard numerous times. At those 4 AM tired ‘good mornings’ and the 8 PM chats over cheese toasties and english breakfast tea.
After the cloud of realisation has settled and he could finally see clearly once more, one second he was there and the other second Chenle found himself booking his ass out of that roof as fast as he could.
“No, wait!” Seemed that his flatmate has a faster reflexes than him, what with how quick he managed to lasso Chenle’s feet before he could jump to an adjacent building and causing him to trip and fall over the ledge, now dangling upside down with only one leg holding him up from crashing to the fire escape at the side of the building.
His helmet crashed against the brick wall and everything came apart, just like that. The chin strap disintegrating, the seams cracking, the super glue failing, everything.
It stayed on his face only because he has his hands over the loose pieces, while he dreaded the inevitable.
Captain Justice. JS. Jisung.
Of-fucking-course.
Jisung jumped down to the fire escape and he easily slapped Chenle’s hands away from his helmet, and they both helplessly watched as it revealed a very shameful looking boy underneath it.
“What the hell.” Jisung also had taken off his mask, the poorly filled in black eyeshadow around his eyes made him look like he is the most edgy kid in the block.
“I also want to ask you that same question,-”
“No, I really mean it, what the hell!” He ran his fingers over his helmet hair and Chenle finally found out why he always have the most disgusting ratty hair to ever grace the surface of this world. “All this time it was you?”
Chenle wanted to tell him everything. About how he thought that Jisung was working as an errand boy in a drug ring, about how he’s now the Number One Man in the town’s biggest drug ring all because he wanted to save him, about how he just now noticed why the washing machine is permanently tinted purple, but in the end he only blurted out the most measly confession, “yeah.”
“You’re Doctor Lechen? What the- oh god… oh god,” Chenle was slightly annoyed that Jisung could find the time to talk to himself and ponder the mystery of his villain name, and ignoring the fact that Chenle was still dangling upside down. He even dare to lean against the rickety railing with an utterly confused expression on his face, as if he didn’t mind if the railing failed him and sent him falling ten stories down to the ground.
“Can you please take me down I’m getting a bit dizzy.”
“All this time? All this time??? ”
“Jisung yo, hey, hello, let me down please.”
“I thought you work in a bakery for how weird your sleeping pattern is , for goodness sake. A bakery,-”
Tired that Jisung was too busy ignoring him, Chenle took the matter to his own hand and after a bit of struggle, managed to take out the small flip knife from his back pocket and cut himself out of the thin rope around his ankle.
“Are you gonna hand me in to the police now?” Chenle tried to lighten up the situation now that he was on his feet once more, and they were standing eye to eye (in the right orientation this time), but instead Jisung’s face shifted into one of true horror.
“You’re my friend, I wouldn’t dare… ”
And it’s amazing how 30 seconds ago they were arch nemeses.
“Then will you let me go?” I’m kindda late for my job and I’ve been trying so hard to instill a good time management in my drug ring, it would be so awful for me to set a bad example. But Jisung didn’t need to know that, so Chenle stayed silent until he next answered,
“I can’t do that either…”
Chenle gave him a smirk and he once again surprised the more than out of shape (mentally, that is) Jisung, his grape twig, with his sticky staple gun. Two clicks of the trigger and Chenle knew Jisung would have the most fun trying to pry his upper limbs away from the metal railing.
He was even kind enough to pick up Jisung’s purple mask from the floor while he was aso collecting the fragments of his helmet, and tied it back around Jisung’s face.
Because how embarrassing would it be if the old lady who lives inside the apartment in front of this fire escape bothered to see outside her window and found out the identity of Captain Justice?
“What about this,” Chenle’s proposal sounded more like a taunting while he was being so kind, trying to straighten up Jisung’s mask so that his sight was not obscured,
“Be back at 4 AM, run your laundry, because hell I will be mad if our apartment smells like sewage water for the rest of the week, and then we talk about what brand of justice you can do to me over a cup of tea. Ok?”
The look on Jisung’s face, a mix between anger and confusion, was far too adorable and Chenle couldn’t quell a loud cackle of amusement.
He couldn’t believe it himself. Who knew the same person could possibly fulfill both of Chenle’s fantasy. Of being a white knight and being a dark, edgy harbinger of chaos.
This is why he loves his job so very much.
(And why he would probably just bring down the entire city’s drug ring tonight because now that the cats are out of the bag, he can imagine how much fun he’ll have dealing with Captain Jisung compared to boring business deals. Besides, imagine how much Jisung will admire him for being able to finally crack the city’s drug problem. Shiny white knight and lord of chaos indeed.)