Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

There are practically no other cars going down the residential streets other than Frankenstein's glossy black Mercedes.

As they drive, the street lamps flood and unflood the car with yellow light. Strips of it land on Frankenstein's face, flowing off him again and again and again, like a classroom projection going idle into a screensaver. There is a strip of uncovered skin where Frankenstein's gloves end and his sleeves start. Raizel watches the tendons there move and flex when steering the wheel, making turns and roundabouts without so much as a thought.

Frankenstein doesn't slow down when he gets to a turn or roundabout, he simply rotates the wheel and makes it. The speed limit is 50, but Frankenstein doesn't concern himself with that either. He doesn't seem to Raizel to be reckless. He is simply so decisive, so exact, hypnotically sure; he knows exactly how much to make the wheel spin, how much pressure to apply on the break and how close to keep to the curb with total mastery. Like those students who wait in line to use the vending machine who never have to worry about what will come out of the door flap at the end of it, they know it will be what they want. Raizel thinks the same principles are working here.

The city soon takes a back seat to the houses, sinking back into the distance as homes rise in its place. The trees rustle just slightly outside, the only indication of movement as everything lay still. The singing insects can't be heard from inside the car. He seems so small. Cadis Etrama di Raizel, sitting in a box, watching the footpath he'd spent hours walking and walking on before, rushing past in a few blinks of an eye. Everything is so fast-paced in the world of man.

"Would you like to listen to some music, Master?" Frankenstein asks, then reaches for the buttons and dials.

Immediately, the trombones and violins and cellos of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-Flat Minor Op. 23 crescendo eight times in their faces before Frankenstein hurriedly dials it down, red faced.

"Err—I'm sorry. Perhaps — perhaps not that."

Then he presses on the buttons very violently to discharge the disk in the slot as if Raizel doesn't know he blasts classical music at full volume to and from school or the city or the grocery store every day. Sometimes, when Raizel walks by Frankenstein's office, he hears Chopin, Beethoven or another musically learned individual playing loudly behind closed doors, causing vibrations beneath his feet.

He's about to tell Frankenstein that he doesn't mind it at all, all music goes in his ears, through his head and out the other way anyway. It's like a different language — only one where osmosis doesn't work, one he regrettably can't learn by soaking it up with minor mind reading the way he picked up Korean.

But Frankenstein says, "What about something more current?" and Raizel's eyes light up, because he definitely wants to be in the loop about the cutting edge.

Frankenstein chooses the radio at random. The station they land on is in the middle of playing Kwen Hye-Kyung's Lakeside Bench. The song has that echoey quality like it was recorded in an auditorium, also from a slight distance in that auditorium. Like all songs released in 1961.

"Yes," Raizel says, "I enjoy listening to current music."

'—Is it a slender face? Or a large face? I have to go to the lakeside bench.'

Frankenstein smiles. "This came out not too long ago. I remember the lyrics, I think."

'Who are you and where are you?' the lady sings, 'I want to see what you are doing. I'll see the newspaper. I have to go to the lakeside bench…'

They drive. Out of the narrow residential streets. Out into the four-lane road. Out of the dark into the light-bathed signage of large buildings. Out into the traffic lights where they join the stream of other cars. They are going somewhere. Raizel too, is going somewhere, wedged right next to them, rolling down those tiny toy roads. They may be going home, or going far away, to locations keyed into their google maps, to where a disembodied woman's voice guides them, but Raizel has no idea where he is going, only that he hopes he will know when he sees it.

Through the windows of the red Toyota next to them, a man throws his hands off the wheel to stuff a triangle kimbap into his mouth. If Raizel had a sense of hunger, his stomach might be growling right now. Like Shinwoo's every time he skipped breakfast. Which is very nearly everyday.

'I want to see what you are doing. Is it a slender face or a large face?'

On the left-turning lane on the other side of them, a very large, pointy dog sits in the passenger's seat next to an old man. The dog, like all good citizens, has its seatbelt on. The old man has his arm wrapped around it, only half-consciously caressing its chin as the dog raises it more and more.

'Will he go to work or go to school? I have to go to the lakeside bench.'

In the rearview mirror, a young couple are chatting. The man makes large, exaggerated gestures before hitting his head back on the seat hard, falling into laughter. The woman leans forward instead, resting her head on the wheel. When she recovers, there are tears in her eyes like a leakage, and Raizel's heart takes a plummet. But to his befuddlement, the woman is not sad at all. She resumes laughing and crying like nothing at all is wrong, a contradictory sun shower phenomenon.

Raizel watches all of this happen with utter fascination. Seeing people do things people do, in quiet moments to themselves, in live snapshots of their ever-interesting lives. Going about their day, living throughout their night. Raizel watches them from behind glass. He has always been a voyeur, a watcher of extraordinary things, of trees and birds and wind, but now of art project toting students and pizza delivery drivers and late night movie goers. Of street-side buskers playing traditional zithers, fisherman stocking their catch at the bay, young kids climbing jungle gyms. He sees them, and it fills him with unspeakable enchantment, to be so close among everything he has so secretly yearned. But now he wants to be them, be the one to live a thousand ordinary ordeals, ride a thousand car rides to do run-of-the-mil errands, dream a thousand wild dreams.

The driver in the rearview mirror breathes through her mouth, eyes creased from laughter. The man leans over and helps the driver tuck her long hair back behind her ears. All the laughing had made it fall forward onto her face, and he gently fixes it for her. This seems to be an important moment. A little thing that will not be forgotten among the large expanse of other little things that are mundanely and routinely forgotten. Raizel cannot put to words why he believes this.

"—Who are you, and where are you?"

Frankenstein's voice makes Raizel turn back to him.

For a few seconds he thinks he asked him a question. But he hasn't. Frankenstein's eyes are plastered forward, watching cars drive past in front of them. Light stripes across his face like a black and white noir film, the same shadows rove over his arms continuously. It makes him look like an actor in one of them.

"I want to see what you are doing. Will he go to work or go to school?" Frankenstein sings, his voice much lower than the lady in the song, "I have to go…to the lakeside bench."

Raizel opens his mouth. "I…have to go…to the lakeside bench."

It doesn't sound nice. He doesn't believe he's ever sung before. But that is certainly for the best. His singing is ugly and broken, nothing like the control Frankenstein has. But Frankenstein's face brightens like a bulb. His eyes shine and his mouth beams into probably the largest smile Raizel has ever seen him make since awakening.

"Who are you and where are you?" Frankenstein sings, with renewed vigour.

"I want to see what you are doing," Raizel accompanies.

"I'll see the newspaper."

"I have to go…to the lakeside bench."

As Frankenstein sings, some of his hair falls forward into his face. Raizel reaches out and, just like in the rearview mirror, tucks it behind his ear. The song draws to a close, and Raizel hums it clumsily to the end, but Frankenstein is quiet.

Then, the sound of a car horn blares into Raizel's skull, causing him to flinch. Frankenstein flinches too, an angry spark of purple going up his neck. When Raizel looks out, he realises the old man with the dog, the man eating his kimbap — and even the young couple behind them, have all manoeuvred themselves around them and left.

They are holding up the entire road.

Frankenstein parks the car and goes around the other side to open the door for Raizel. Raizel is completely capable of opening his own doors by now. He even knows to wait for double glass doors to open by themselves. Even though he stood in front of Yuna's glass sliding door at home for ten minutes to open before Ikhan told him he had to do it manually, that was an outlier and Raizel had largely mastered the intricacies of different doors. But Raizel stays seated to wait for Frankenstein to open it for him, because he once saw him yell at M-21 for not doing that.

Then Frankenstein leads Raizel to Bamdokkaebi Night Market.

Beneath the eaves of a long, winding street were stalls and stalls of all sorts of strange and wonderful things bursting with colour, fragrance and barbecue flavoured smoke. People yell out order numbers and slam down on call bells as people squirm through packed lines to get their food. Under a brightly lit table, people take turns looking in compact mirrors, holding glittering jewellery up to their ears. A man on a microphone speaks in the demeanour of popular game show hosts, "—and if Wellbeing Massage Machine doesn't take away your fatigue and stress after a thirty day trial you have your money back guarantee! This is a limited offer, it's up to YOU to make the best of it!" A sea of people, all busying themselves with the market, chatting about the goods and complaining about the price of overripe avocados, of last-season sport shoes, roll out in front of him.

The sights and sounds overwhelm Raizel for a moment; he has no idea what to look at, everything going into a blur. Despite how late it is, how narrow the street, how barbecue-smokey the air is, the place is alive. This is where people are gathering, buying knick knacks, eyeing trinkets and buying bargain cooking pots, trying on stylish clothes. This is what people do at night when they don't have school the next morning, or when they have missed dinner and don't feel like cooking. Things are happening here.

"You must be hungry," Frankenstein says apologetically. "You haven't had anything since lunchtime, have you?"

Raizel briefly flashes back to the lecture Frankenstein gave him a few weeks ago, "Please refrain from consuming too much 'junk food,' Master. Processed or sugary food is not good for humans in large amounts, and I doubt it could be good for you — especially since you have just awoken, and especially since you're not used to it in these quantities. Your health is of paramount importance, and I'm making you one hundred percent organic, home-cooked meals you can trust. You won't accept the 'junk food' your friends offer you, will you, Master?"

Then Raizel's mind beams him an image of everything he's consumed since going to school. Fizzy drinks. He'd shared a sip of everyone's since they wanted him to know what the ones he hadn't tried tasted like, or forgot what they tasted like. Sprite tastes like being doused in cold water. Fanta tastes like the colour orange. Burger King. Fries. More fizzy drinks. Spicy ramyeon with extra vege flakes. Seaweed snacks. Short-rib-galbi flavoured chips. Fizzy drinks. Tteokbokki spicy crackers. Lotte's Anytime Candy. Choco pies. Pocky sticks. Kit Kat.

When Raizel's mind floats back to the present he finds that Frankenstein is still waiting, respectfully, for his answer.

"No," he says. "I have not had anything to eat since lunchtime."

Frankenstein wobbles on his feet like he is short of breath. Raizel worries if he should catch him, never mind that he hasn't the hand-eye co-ordination to catch a ball.

"Please…sire..." Frankenstein says weakly, leaning on a pole, "let me remedy this."

Raizel isn't really hungry, but his body and mind deceptively is. He has decided to be hungry. It is a completely psychological phenomenon, something he has realised when arriving in this present. A world where there are food trucks, coffee shops and beef jerky tasting stations at every corner, enticing him endlessly; where the day is split into breakfast, teatime, lunch, dinner, supper, and so on, and he looks routinely forward to consuming nutrients like everyone does. Raizel hasn't stopped for food or drinks, or used of the facilities in hours, and his stomach was not physically made to rumble and ache, but there will be no poor bodily performance if he continues like this. His physical form is merely tupperware for his soul, entirely secondary to the noble entity that fills it, moves it.

Yet, he has adopted these carnal needs. Raizel thinks he feels wrongness where his stomach doesn't ache, feels the desire for satisfyingly flavoured liquids sliding down his throat in lieu of thirst. He does not experience the mood swings or tightness of the chest people ought to feel, nor do these result in pain and cramps, but he recognises these phantom symptoms in himself when Frankenstein brings it up.

"Yes," Raizel blinks. "I am starving."

Frankenstein sprints.

He goes to the first stall and speaks with an aproned woman stirring a large, bubbling red pot and comes back with a plate of food. It's rice cake slathered in chilli sauce. Frankenstein passes the plate to Raizel and then presents the disposable chopsticks with both hands. Then he goes to the back of the next line, and the next and the next.

As Raizel goes from stall to stall tailing Frankenstein, his hands pile up with more food than he can balance. Frankenstein buys him the top block of a tower of sushi-shaped kimbap. He gets him a paper cup of glass noodles with a ton of sesame seeds sprinkled on top, and a fishcake kebab, and fried cheese on a stick. Raizel inwardly wonders if this is truly healthier than what he has been eating all day, but shrugs it off. Frankenstein knows better, anyway. He bites into his deep fried cheese and yanks a long, stringy line of it out, so long that Frankenstein feels he has to step it and help him rewrap it around the kebab stick.

"Allow me, Master," Frankenstein says, and dips the cheese in the spicy rice cake sauce that has no more rice cakes in it. Instantly more flavour on the cheese, and instantly less waste of spicy sauce. Raizel looks at the improved kebab with stars in his eyes. There was simply no way he could have come up with such a fine combination by himself.

"Thank you, Frankenstein."

They finally reach a large van serving frosty desserts, and Frankenstein quickly lines up without prompting. After deliberating with the server for some time about what temperature the frosty desserts are served at, Frankenstein comes back holding two cones of rainbow shaved ice.

"Master." Frankenstein offers him the dessert. He offers it to him like a squire to his king.

"I cannot eat that," Raizel tells Frankenstein earnestly.

Frankenstein's hand snags back from offering it to him, causing a back-splatter of rainbow shaved ice all over the white shirt beneath his suit. He brings it to his face next, inspecting the the food as if he is trying to discover a new species of bacteria on it. The same way Rai stares at fine print instructions on microwaved food.

Then, seriously, he asks, "What is wrong with it?"

"Yuna told me I am not allowed to eat food from vans," he says regrettably.

Frankenstein stares at him, backed by the white cinder block of the dessert van, speechless.

"Even if it's Kit Kat."

Frankenstein takes turns licking each of his two shaved ices as they reach the end of the street. Just like the ways of the school cafeteria, Frankenstein also abides by secret rules and saves him a pink plastic seat at their pink, low-lying plastic table. He watches over Raizel as Raizel waits in line to get a pearl milk tea for himself before congratulating him upon his return.

"I have never been to a place such as this," Raizel says between bites of food.

"The Bamdokkaebi Night Market is often referred to as the market that 'opens at night and disappears by morning.'" Frankenstein says, between licks of ice. "Bam is 'night' in Korean. And I believe 'dokkaebi' refers to a mythical being in folklore that appears at night to trick humans before disappearing in the day. Thus the name."

"Trick humans?"

"Yes. A trickster goblin of sorts," Frankenstein explains, "or so I hear." Though the shaved ice has every colour in the rainbow, the blue food colouring is the strongest. Frankenstein's tongue is completely blue.

Raizel smiles. He shifts in his seat, which makes the plastic creak. "Is this a trick?"

"Pardon?"

"A trick. To make me stay."

Frankenstein continues eating his ice. It's not really even a finely shaved dessert anymore, just a big block of melting ice. He stares at the table apprehensively, his thoughts carefully guarded. "I don't care if you leave or stay. Only that you take me with you."

Raizel feels another figment of his imagination, a metaphor come alive of a lump in his throat that is not food. It is uncomfortable the way being illusorily hungry is uncomfortable, the way not reaching out for something you want right in front of you is uncomfortable. At this moment, a lady in an apron struts to their table and bobs down to place Raizel's drink in front of them, not sure who it's for.

"Here you are, Mister!" she says sunnily.

"Thank you," Frankenstein replies.

"And there are straws at the self service table if you need them!"

Frankenstein slides the milk tea to Raizel, then gets up to go find him a straw. Raizel watches him pay an extra few cents for a thick, curly straw. When Frankenstein comes back with it, he looks up him tentatively, then back down at the table. "…If this is a trick. Is it working?"

Raizel takes a sip.

"Yes."

Frankenstein huffs. He smiles in smugly. Then he starts chuckling, his slightly blue teeth in full view. He laughs and laughs, like he can't believe this is all it takes for Raizel to walk willingly into this trap, and tries to shut himself up by eating more ice until suddenly his face falls, a look of fear and confusion and shock overtaking it.

Raizel's smile falters. "Frankenstein?"

"What's happening?" Frankenstein says, his voice joined with what sounds like a hundred more.

Frankenstein blinks hard, lifting a hand to his hide face. Almost like he's trying to cover it because someone he doesn't like is coming towards them and he is desperately trying to avoid them. "Calm down," he says to himself. But his lips move again on its own accord.

"What's happening to us!" Frankenstein shakes, and his fingers jump and scuttle like the resident level eight pianist in Raizel's class, popping and clicking, His elbows shake the little plastic table.

Then Frankenstein suddenly stops shaking altogether and clasps the sides of the table to steady it. But all it does it cause both cups of shaved ice to tumble to the floor.

"We're—we're getting brain freeze," he whispers through gritted teeth. "Don't talk through my mouth. Cold! You're making me look bad in front of Master."

"Frankenstein?" Raizel reaches out to touch Frankenstein's forehead, something the school nurse does during health checks, but Frankenstein's head feels fine to him. "What is Dark Spear feeling? Should I open our bond?"

Frankenstein's eyes go wild and wide. "No!

"—Yesss."

Raizel opens their mental link. If he can find what part of his head is hurting he can ease it. It can be a very fragile operation. But as the link flies open Raizel's milk tea goes tumbling to the floor after the other cups, his arms jumping to protect his head. All of a sudden, it's like the shaved ice Frankenstein has been consuming has transported straight into Raizel's cranium, shaken up like a snow globe.

"Cold!" Dark Spear and Frankenstein say.

Frankenstein angers, slapping a hand over his mouth.

"…Cold," Raizel echoes, holding his head.

The people who shuffle around their little table give them weird looks.

They take a stroll on the boardwalk at the Han River.

Frankenstein doesn't lead the way. He walks by Raizel's side, going only where Raizel chooses, and says nothing to voice his objections if he has any. So Raizel led them across a park, to a pretty fountain, past memorial statues, before finally getting to this boardwalk. There are a number of picturesque pedestrian walkways, bicycle paths where cyclists zoom past with flashing lights, public parks with neatly cut grass and restaurants near the river.

Raizel eyes them all fondly, looking into the closing shops with lights still on as a few straggling workers wipe the tables and put the chairs up. A few late night joggers pass them on the boardwalk, but otherwise there is no one else around.

"Have you been here before?" Raizel asks Frankenstein.

"Of course. The Han River is one of the longest rivers on the Korean peninsula, a very scenic place. You've chosen an excellent location for a walk, Master," Frankenstein praises.

Raizel smiles a little. Even if he chose to take a walk at the city dump, Frankenstein would probably have found some nice words to say about that too. That is the kind of mastery Frankenstein has over his words.

"It's lovely, isn't it?"

"Lovely. Yes." Raizel goes on.

The boardwalk is one long, gliding line to the end of the road. Mesmerisingly unbroken. There is nowhere to go but forward.

Frankenstein isn't like Raizel's friends. Raizel's friends say, 'Hi ugly.' 'Up high, too slow!' 'Haha, I insta-killed you.' They call him "Silly." "Player-three." "Rai~"

Frankenstein says, "Good morning, Master, how are you?" "Is there anything I can get for you." "Did you enjoy your day?"

He calls him "Master," "My Lord," "Sire," and means it.

Frankenstein was there when Raizel was forced into his computer sleep mode, Frankenstein was there when he woke up, and Frankenstein will be here waiting on the side of the road, spot of tea ready and a dutiful smile on his face. He is the only person in this world who has remembered Raizel for who he is, the only thing that is constant in Raizel's reality, new and former. Out of nowhere, one bubble popping at the surface after floating up the Mariana trench, it all comes crashing down on Raizel at once: Frankenstein has lived every single second Raizel has spent asleep. He isn't like Raizel. He didn't just hang around in some invisible vacuum all the while Raizel was away and the world ticked on. Frankenstein had a life.

Frankenstein goes to work at school, comes home to manually hang up the laundry he did in the morning, because the drier creates crinkles and wrinkles, but then irons them for good measure anyway. He goes down to sub level four to agonise over fabric types and leather softness and colour threads, sewing and creating the clothes on Raizel's back, his shoes, his cravats. He stays for long hours in the kitchen testing the best temperature to cook the best food for Raizel to taste, spends hours and hours on perfecting the art of the instant ramen. He does it all for Raizel. He seems to do nothing else.

Even now, walking along the Han River in the dead of the night, he does for Raizel.

What did Frankenstein do before this? Before Raizel woke up in that one room apartment, inserting himself back into his world without a spare thought. Where does Frankenstein like to go? What does Frankenstein like to do?

Is Frankenstein happy?

A few branches of a tree jut out into the space of the boardwalk, and Frankenstein takes the moment to step in front, gently pushing them away to allow Raizel safe passage.

"Frankenstein," Raizel starts, and Frankenstein waits for him patiently through another one of his long, drawn-out pauses.

"…Are you homesick?" he asks.

"Pardon?" Frankenstein blinks, but he has heard what Raizel said very clearly.

He stops a moment, looking thoughtful, lines resting and tightening on his face, a silent battle being fought. After a moment, he looks up, calm as ever. "I don't know what the feeling means anymore. I've been everywhere. Done everything. Everyone ages. I don't. It all feels…very transient."

Raizel walks and walks, Frankenstein's words weighing on him, squeezing the air out of his chest.

What if it is all a trick. Eating nice food and drinking milk tea and wearing this uniform, the uniform of Yeran High. The humans had built that beautiful market, like they have built this city, from nothing, but Frankenstein built Yeran High school for him, Raizel knows. He built an empire of teachers and administrators and librarians, he built gyms and classrooms and courts. All so one day Raizel could enjoy it. Enjoy the life he has constructed for him in his absence.

Is it a trick? Of course not. Of course not. But for a split second, Raizel thinks — no, he just imagines — no, he wishes it should be — that Frankenstein was angry — he did all this for him — he did all these things for him — and yet Frankenstein still had come to the immediate conclusion that Raizel would walk away in the night, into the silence, alone, without ever telling him. Without a goodbye. In light of Raizel's long disappearance, this is a logical conclusion.

Why isn't he angry, like the rest of the Lukedonians? Why didn't he leave like Roctis and Zarga and Urokai and the rest. Like everyone else he left behind.

"Well, we've reached the end of the boardwalk, I'm afraid." Frankenstein turns around, craning his neck around to see a way out. "Where should we go next?" he smiles politely.

Raizel doesn't know. He never knows.

Frankenstein drives. Outside, the trees and lights and unending river zooms past so fast Raizel has trouble parsing them. They all turn into one monolithic blob. The radio is on, playing music Raizel cannot hear right now.

Were they…always this lukewarm? He and Frankenstein.

But — nothing's changed. This is how it always was with Frankenstein back in Lukedonia, back in the mansion. At arm's length. He has never tried to say something more to him, tried to be more to him. He never tried to be Frankenstein's companion the way Frankenstein tirelessly works to be his. It's always been Frankenstein that tries to speak, tries to get him to divulge his feelings — but Raizel didn't understand back then. Even if he did, he had nothing noteworthy to say. He is a pixelated being, with only limited options of dialogue available.

He's afraid. He's frightened — frightened Frankenstein is just like Ha-eun. And he is like that noble. Making him take a piece of glass, and put it through his own throat. The only difference between them is that if Raizel wanted Frankenstein to do something, he doesn't need to compel him. Frankenstein will pick up that glass. Smile. And put it willingly through his own oesophagus. Then he will thank him for the instruction.

Raizel twists his hands into a knot, looks out the window, and asks, "We are friends, are we not, Frankenstein?"

There is a long, stagnant pause.

"I am whatever you wish for me to be."

Frankenstein says it like it he hasn't paid the least attention to what Raizel was saying, just blithely agreeing with him, except he was not even agreeing; Frankenstein's eyes were fixed on the road, the lights on it reflecting in them harshly. He is not all there. Dark Spear has been invited to sit in more prominently than usual.

They rush past a dark, rectangle blob, and Raizel, spotting something that he recognises, that focuses sharply from the mist, sits upright in his seat. "Stop the car."

"Pardon?"

"Please, stop!"

Frankenstein stomps on the break.

They come to a screeching, rubbery stop, smell of hot tyres wafting into the air. Raizel jumps out of the car with so much energy Frankenstein doesn't even find it in him to park at the curb, just leaves it in the middle of the road to chase after him.

"Master? Master?!"

What if he is the trick? Raizel. Because he has gone to school and met new people, good people, good friends — Raizel knows just how lacking he is. How he is just three states of mind balanced in a trench coat. Unknowing, unthinking and unbecoming. What if he has tricked Frankenstein into living out the rest of his life revolving around Raizel like he is the centre of his solar system? Now that he knows what a friend is supposed to be, he knows he's never been one to Frankenstein, and thus he doesn't deserve his continued devotion. He is a player with a chess piece. A master with a pet. A lord with a servant. 

Frankenstein acts like that is still exactly how it's supposed to be. It's like he wants to press play and resume exactly where they were before the pause, but reality does not allow for pause, Raizel knows this well enough.

"Master? Master, are you listening? I didn't mean it," Frankenstein calls after Raizel.

He finds Raizel standing before an old, graffitied bench.17/3/2019. Cho waz here. Andy Heart Suyin. Gas price too fukin high. Your high. After a moment of Frankenstein staring at Raizel staring — Raizel turns around, looks up at him. "…It's…it's," he says breathlessly. Unable to articulate the largeness of his feelings.

"…It's the lakeside bench."

"Oh," Frankenstein utters. His panic washes off his face like an outgoing tide. Like an erased human memory. He takes in a stressed breath, brushing back his hair to make himself presentable again. "So it is."

After Frankenstein moves the car, he goes back to sit on the bench where Raizel is waiting. There is more silence between them. They used to be such comfortable silences, where Raizel was secure in the thought that Frankenstein knew this was companionship, that this was enough for him. But now these lingering silences feel so suffocating. Like they are no longer his because he has simply risen and calmly walked away from wallowing so long in it, a man who cannot hold his breath as he could before. A man who has no longer the tolerance for something he was imbued in. Raizel never knew what to say, he never did; only now, he wishes he does. What do people say, when they want to comfort their good friends, their family, or to strangers who look in need of comfort? What do people say, when they need a good ice breaker, something to banish the silence?

A deep, vibrato sound captures Raizel's attention away from his thoughts.

Frankenstein is humming again. It's a new side of him that Raizel has never seen. The years have indeed changed him, softened his rough edges to the point where he is comfortable enough to sing in front of Raizel.

'Will he go to work or go to school? I have to go to the lakeside bench,' he hums beside him, eyes half-lidded, looking at the curved and jagged horizon of the unending city-line. 'Who are you and where are you? —I want to see what you are doing.' After a while, his voice grows smaller and smaller until it fades away.

"You want to know why it felt so empty, having gone everywhere, done everything?" Frankenstein pipes up.

Raizel looks at him, looks at his forlorn face staring out into the dark river, as if the world were against him.

"I did it all alone."

He sighed, like an old, old man. Tired beyond even his years. Then, with a tone of vitriol, of absolute, viscous hatred, and with his face contorting, eyes popping mad like the monster his people once called him, he says, "I'm sick of doing things. I'm sick of everything…So ask me anything. Make me do things for you instead."

Frankenstein swallows. His anger leaks out of him and leaves on the wind. "Anything."

"Anything?"

"Anything!"

Raizel sits touching shoulder to shoulder with Frankenstein. The bench, after all this, seems a little anticlimactic.

But his head is conveniently empty. He doesn't know where he can go, only that he wants to go places. Doesn't know what he should do, only that he wants to do things. Raizel only has half-baked pipe dreams, he wants things, but cannot put into words what things are. He wants so much to do the right things, to choose the correct choices, choices that come naturally, that come easily, that feel good and uncomplicated.

Here's a terrible secret: the only choices that come naturally, that come simply to him is deciding which souls deserve to be executed. The only easy choices Raizel makes are judgments.

But he wants to help Frankenstein. He wants so desperately to do right by him. He wants.

"Take me to a place where people go when they want to be happy."

"You must be another teacher," Raizel says soberly to the man with a shaved head, large tattoos and burly form, trying to make small talk.

"Er, no, he isn't." Frankenstein hands him two cards and the burly man squints down at them. "This is actually a security guard," Frankenstein murmurs. The security guard puts on his reading glasses to check the IDs.

His mouth twists, he hands the cards back. He points to Raizel. "Really? This boy is in his goddamned school uniform."

Frankenstein smiles pointedly. They go to the side, where Frankenstein apologises for the oversight. "Erm, we can't go in there without a change of clothes, Master. The place we're going is for…adults only. Is there something in mind you would like to change into?"

Raizel blinks as every clothing combination he has ever witnessed exits his mind at the point which he actually needs it. Luckily, Frankenstein picks up a clothing catalogue from a stand and flips through it with him.

"What about this? I recall you like the colour blue."

"I like all the colours," Raizel nods helpfully.

"Of course. Of course."

Frankenstein flips the pages until Raizel finally lights up at a shirt with birds on them. "I…I like birds," Raizel says. Without moving a single muscle, the fabric on Raizel's uniform begins to move and recalibrate, morphing from the plain white material to the one he sees on the catalogue. As per the model on the page, he changes his grey slacks into deep maroon ones that match the shirt.

Then Raizel stands straight, looking to Frankenstein for his approval. Frankenstein lowers the catalogue, seeming genuinely impressed at the pick. Shocked, even. "…A very tasteful choice, Master." He lingers for a moment, deciding to move or not. "But may I…"

Raizel lets Frankenstein undo the top two buttons, then back away to check his work. "This is how the children wear it," he says, encouraging. "Come, Master."

"You two again? Hey — are you kidding me? A change of clothes and suddenly you're an adult? You're lucky I didn't report you for that fake ID—"

Frankenstein walks forward with purpose, and Raziel can suddenly see that he has the intention to apply blunt force trauma to him. But before he can, Raizel lifts a hand, swiping it from left to right over the security guard's face. "We are not 'kidding.' As I am not a 'kid.' I am called an 'adult.' My ID is not 'fake.' You should let us in."

The security guard stands to attention. His eyes glaze over glassily. "You are not kidding. You are not a kid. You are called an adult. Your ID is not fake. Yes, I will let you in."

"…Thank you," Rai says as he dips past him. Frankenstein follows, a sly smile breaking on his face.

They enter the club. Raizel is immediately blinded by lights: flashing strobe lights, wandering coloured spotlights, a dazzling high-budget spectacle. Loud music booms beneath him so hard he can feel it creeping into the soles of his feet, many times the intensity of Frankenstein's Chopin, and he is inundated with the sudden, ubiquitous shared feeling of excitement. A hundred young people radiating euphoria, a thousand wild thoughts thoughtlessly projected into the openness of this closed in space, thoughtlessly unguarded, thoughtlessly real, pinging around the walls. It's so strong, so potent, Raizel can hear them even though he is strictly keeping his hands to himself. It's Friday! I'm so glad I got out of the house, Kim was right, this does rock. AHHHHHHHHH. Work, work, fashion, baby. This place is so fucking loud. Let's request Girl's Generation. EXO! EXO! Happy Birthday Minho! Let's drink!

A big, roaring crowd dances in the round, jumping to the beat of remixed pop songs. They are animated by the music, by the electric atmosphere, the DJ banging his head to the song. Some of them just jump and jump, some of them wave their limbs out wildly, with wild abandon, and some of them move their bodies with so much precision it is as if they speak another language of their own, purely through movement.

It's exhilarating and delighting and thrilling. Raizel stands in the doorway for some time, stunned by the display.

"Woah, hey buddy, you're kind of in the door."

"Then walk around him," Frankenstein says snidely, carefully stood at the side.

Raizel totters out of the way. "Frankenstein…what is this place?"

Frankenstein raises a hand to Raizel's back, carefully guiding him away from the stampede of people bringing their drinks back to their table. "It's a place humans come to dance and drink. A place to have fun, forget about the stresses of life."

Raizel forgets to answer him as he stares, enchanted by the people, the chatter roaring through his ears. The maroon-toned atmosphere that coloured the club like a trance lulls all under its roof into a passion, including Raizel. The black dance floor vibrates with the buzz of music, electric, thrumming, powerful. It's a strange, loud sensation, and Raizel isn't sure if he quite likes it — but he wants this so very much. To be where people are. To do what people do. To feel what people feel.

Frankenstein shifts just slightly so he comes into Raizel's field of vision, and without fear, without heed, bows. There's a strange effect that takes hold of loud, crowded places — they are out in the open, out in public with a hundred roving eyes, yet they are invisible. Small. No one can see Frankenstein's antiquity, nor Raizel's, and if they did, why should they care?

"Go on," Frankenstein says, rising, "Have fun. I'll go get you a drink. You can find me," Frankenstein lifts three fingers to his head, presses them to his temple, showing Raizel how to find him again. Then he takes his leave, disappears into the bands of moving, rocking people.

Raizel floats around, letting himself fall into a pleasant daze of other people's creation, enjoying other people's sensations, and other people's exhilarations. As people screw their eyes shut or turn their faces away from the dazzling spectacle, the overzealous, blinking lights, Raizel stares at them head on, not understanding that that's supposed to be harmful to human eyes. As people bang their heads to the music, Raizel nods along, half a second out of beat. As people dance around him, Raizel takes small side steps, spinning around in a robotic circle on the spot. He's having the time of his life.

"Hey, cool cross earring!"

"Thank you."

"Really goth!"

"Yes. Goth. That was exactly what I was thinking of when I purchased this at the store, with money."

This is where people drive, at night when they are free, with no obligations that come with sunrise, free to do as they please. This is where people go, to be with their friends, when they were 20+ and had a flap of card to prove it.

One of the patrons, a young man with a trendy haircut, accidentally bumps into Raizel and apologises profusely. "Oh! Oh shit! I'm so, so sorry, man!"

"It is fine," Raizel assures him, but his invisibility momentarily rubs off, and the man now looked at him with renewed awareness. The man's face changes from apologetic to suspicious. He screws up his nose.

"…You look really young."

Raizel blinks. A trick of the light. A trick of others having had too much to drink. When the man looks at Raizel again, Raizel's jaw is harder, his lines longer, everything less rounded, less high school boy. The features of his tupperware shift and change right before the man's eyes, until he has no arguments to be made. "Huh? I mean…sorry, never mind."

"That is alright." Raizel's voice isn't quite as youthful anymore, nor soft. "We all make mistakes," he says as the man keeps glancing back at him as he goes.

In the silvered wall behind the bar cabinets, Raizel watches his eyes glow red, his face back into the shape it was when he'd first awoken. Maybe it's the unfamiliarity that shocks him. Or maybe it's the fact that he doesn't need to hide right now. That he has stayed transformed for so long he doesn't really remember what his physical, default form is supposed to look like. What does the real Raizel look like? The boy with the soft cheeks, the shorter locks, or the man with the sharp lines, and pensive eyes? He, Cadis Etrama di Raizel, kind of looks like the secondary male lead of a crime series who's ex-wife dies and he is saddled with the responsibility of hunting down her murderer while reconnecting with his estranged teenage sons, one of which looks like Just Rai in his Yeran uniform.

Raizel has recently learned that this is a cliche, an overdone plot point that gets bad reviews on cinema analysing websites. The man looking into the mirror, not knowing who is looking back at him. Closeups pan to his face and music swells. It hits Raizel rather like a math problem revelation — like suddenly he realised no one in Lukedonia knew Raizel the person, that Raizel himself had bought into Noblesse, the invincible, infallible icon like everyone else and never considered beyond this. I don't know who I am without the Noblesse, he'd said to Frankenstein. Only now do the full weight of his words hit him.

As he thinks these inane thoughts, Raizel becomes the one to bump into another dancer. He flinches and quickly apologises. "Oh shit. I'm so, so sorry — man."

Then goes quite petrified-still, because he just said that to a woman.

A woman wearing a grey blazer, grey pencil skirt, black tights, and bright orange crocs. Do people usually go to clubs in orange crocs? Raizel assumes so, they seem comfortable, and of course one would wear comfortable shoes when dancing as hard as the woman had just been doing.

"It's okay, man," the woman says, pushing her hair out of her face, and Raizel's mouth drops like a potato that is hot.

"Ha-eun?"

"Huh?"

Ha-eun stops. Her mouth drops open stupidly too, and she grabs Raizel's wrist as if she's afraid he will bolt from her. "Wait! Do you know me?! Do we know each other?! Do I know you?!"

Now that Raizel is tall, it is kind of strange that Ha-eun has to look up to see him. Raizel looks down at her. Her chest rises and falls from exertion, but there is a tinge of desperation tied to it, of sudden adrenaline she doesn't know she had already maxed out earlier this night. She doesn't remember anything, her pain and anguish simply vacated from her, but now she was left with nothing in its space to replace it. She looks lost and adrift and fighting herself and her worse conclusions.

"…No…" Raizel says. "No. Not really."

"Oh…oh, sorry…" She lets go of him in a faraway, detached fashion. "Sorry. It's just…my brain sort of, uh, short-circuited a while ago, haha. I don't…remember some things. Recently, you know? There's some, uh, blanks. Kind of blanked a while ago and I — did I — I might've gotten tied up with things. Bad kinda things. You know? Like, what have I been doing for the last 6 months, you know? Haha!"

She laughs artificially again. Hahaha. Her familiar, broken laugh from the lotto booth. Like something dropped down a long, winding pit.

"…We met at a convenience store," Raizel says. "That is where I know you from." He says it with careful conviction, with meaning that he wills into existence — just as good as any person with a script, any student of the theatre.

"You chatted with me. You said something about…" he pretends to ponder back on it, catching a forgotten memory, recalling the dotted lines of a too-casual encounter, "…about going back. Back to the way things were."

Ha-eun's shoulders un-sag and her whole form perks up. "Oh! Oh, I see." She beams, all the relief in the world crammed into a single set of eyes. She taps him playfully on the shoulder.

"Cool. Cool. Thanks. I dunno if…if things are going to get back to normal or, or whatever, but…but I called my sister! She's coming to get me, and I'm going to slack off for a bit and stay at her place, I've already posted my resignation for my job…I have no idea why or how I got a job at a blood bank in the first place. I'm an environmental science major! Isn't that wild? I collect mosses from streams! I'm supposed to be fixing climate change!"

"That is indeed, very wild," Raizel remarks.

Ha-eun huffs sunnily, shaking her head. "Haha…yeah…" She sighs with both great relief, and great confusion. "What am I doing?"

Raizel's heart jumps to his throat. What is she doing, if not coming to a nightclub after waking up amnesic to dance? She might have come here to forget bad things, but then she asked after them anyway. This surprises Raizel. It is like he suddenly realised he knew nothing about Ha-eun at all, that he's bought into the fact that she is a normal human like everyone else, and never considered beyond this. Humans do things. They know what they want, and they go out and do it. They yearn for strength to go on, and power they do not have, and make contracts they don't understand. Ha-eun's dilemma resonates startlingly with Raizel, because he, too, hasn't much of an idea what he is doing in this existence.

That is a strangely reassuring thought, Raizel thinks. That no one really knows.

That everyone is an ant in a farm, moving chaotically. A leaf in the wind, drifting endlessly. A living thing, existing. Maybe…maybe it's not that deep.

Ha-eun stands around awkwardly with Raizel, head nodding in beat with the music. She does it effortlessly.

"Do you — do you want to dance?" Her shoulders go up-down, and she gives him a spontaneous smile.

Raizel's heart jumps. "…I don't know…"

"Oh, everybody knows," Ha-eun says, and holds our her hands for him to take. "Look at them," she points to a couple going particularly buck-wild in the round, "you don't have to look good at all. Just move. Just feel."

She does just that. Arms sailing gracefully through the air, hair tossing side to side, swaying. Raizel joins her in the middle of the dance floor and whacks his arms around, she laughs at him, then with him, and then tries to emulate him. They dance and sway. Ha-eun's smile is infectious, spreading to Raizel from his face to his fingertips to his toes.

"Can I tell you something real? Something I haven't told anyone else?" Ha-eun asks. Her voice breaks again, mesmerising in its sincerity, on the verge of pure emotion. Raizel nods.

"I'm not a good person," she breathes, unguarding her truth. For a moment, a deep, dark moment, Raizel believes her. He is primed to believe everything people say when they are speaking to him alone, trusting to divulge themselves to him. He thinks she's going to follow up with telling him she's hurt people. Killed people. Hid their bodies in the back yard. Framed their friends.

But instead she just says, with the same kind of heaviness, "I get jealous. I get envious. I feel like — everyone is already where they want to be, good house, good job — but I'm still here. I'm still — floundering."

She thinks she's a bad person. Because she was worried she wouldn't measure up to nonexistent, self-inflicted, ephemeral standards. Standards that are fleeting, inconsequential. It's strange. Aren't they the same standards Raizel so desperately wants to fit into?

"You're not a bad person."

"How do you know?"

"Because, then I'd be a bad person, too."

Ha-eun tips her head to one side. "How so?"

"…I'm jealous of you right now." Raizel smiles lightly. "I'm envious."

Ha-eun laughs in his face. "What of?"

"For a start. You can dance."

Ha-eun's smile widens.

Raizel stops swaying, powers down like he's run out of batteries. "…Can I tell you something I've never told anyone?"

This time, Ha-eun nods.

"I want…to be normal."

"Ew," Ha-eun says. "That's weird," she adds, and Raizel is quite hurt. "…The rest of us want to be different."

Ha-eun pokes a finger to his face. "…But you are normal."

Raizel looks away. He has learned all by himself what this means. That he cannot face her. "Hey," Ha-eun, pressing his chin down to look at her, tells him, "You're the most normal man I've ever met. Happy now?"

They dance and dance, until finally, one of the club's security comes by and taps Ha-eun on the shoulder.

"I'm sorry ma'am…but crocs are not appropriate dress code," he says, like her office getup is any better, and Raizel is shocked.

Ha-eun shrugs it off. As Raizel escorts her to the edge of the dance floor, she turns around, grins infectiously, and without warning, hugs him. Raizel gasps. He pats her back like he does Frankenstein, with minimal touch.

She whispers into his ear, "Don't feel bad, I had to bribe the door security to get in wearing these orange abominations. Brought them at the corner store for $3.50."

She laughs again, but this time there is a healthy ring to it, an actual exhibition of happiness. Frankenstein was right. This is the place where people go to be happy. She's happy, and that makes Raizel very, very happy too.

"I thought about getting your number, mister convenience store man…" Ha-eun mumbles, and Raizel goes into a brief panic because he doesn't know numbers, "But sorry again. I'm leaving tonight. This is my farewell party."

"Then, farewell," Raizel says.

Ha-eun doesn't know the horrors she's endured for the past 6 months, or how Raizel had failed her once as the Noblesse, or who had brought the 6-pack instant ramen she will eat for supper, and breakfast, and even lunch the next day; but even if she doesn't, she knows she has her life back in her hands, and she can do whatever she wants. She doesn't even ask for Raizel's name, and that's okay.

She leaves.

Her departure leaves him standing in the still-toiling club, alone and lonesome. Something aches in his chest, and he feels the absence of frivolous laughter, of meaningless small talk so largely it disorients him. Is he lonely? But he is not alone in this room filled with people. Is he sad? But this is a house of happiness. A hall of hedonism. How can he feel like that? That is not how a club works. But he feels it, slick in his chest cavities, coating his tongue, large, empty pits enlarging in his stomach. What do people do, when there is nothing to do? Who do they call for for comfort? Who can they go to, when alone, and sick of the fact?

These thoughts fester. Like extrapolating Russian dolls. Endless, unanswerable questions. 

Raizel opens his mind, reaches out to his bonded. Immediately, he is bombarded with two images in his mind: one of the people jumping in the round, what is before his eyes, the other of Frankenstein hunched over a bar table, his fingers going through his long hair repeatedly. There are a lot of empty glasses gathered around him, like moths to a flame, like kids to the cafeteria slurpie machine. He drags through his hair continuously even though he doesn't need to, even though he has a comb that Raizel knows he has.

"I think you've had enough, Mister."

"Isn't it your job to ply patrons with liquor at a bar?" he says snidely. He slaps a wad of cash onto the table. "I'm plenty liquid."

"Yeah, and it's also my job to cut alcoholics like you off before you get poisoned."

"I haven't drank like this in a hundred years," he slurred, grinning largely, "and I certainly cannot die from ordering the likes of one more gin."

As Raizel walks towards him, the sixth sense tied to Frankenstein flares, guiding him to his location like a homing beacon. But as Raizel turns accordingly, he slams straight into a man carrying two bubbling drinks in his hands, spilling them everywhere. The collision is hard, head-on. There is liquid in Raizel's clothes and all over the other man's clothes.

"I'm sorry, man," Raizel says. He has correctly gauged this indeed is a man. "I did not mean to bump into you."

Raizel smiles apologetically. But the man drops the half-empty cups, splashing the rest on the floor. He stares accusatorially at Raizel.

"Did you look where you were going? Or were you goddamned daydreaming?!"

Raizel's smile wipes off his face, like a noble dying in a parking lot.

This time, the one on the other end of the collision is not so forgiving. "Hey, Minho, come on," a woman says, pulling the man away. "Forget it, forget it."

It clicks for Raizel. Minho. Happy Birthday Minho. Let's drink Minho. The man celebrating his birthday right now. It seems half a dozen of his friends come to crowd around him, all of them pawing Minho on the back and dragging his shoulders and whispering calming words to his ear. One pats his chest soothingly. "C'mon, not now," "it's not worth it, Minho," "let's get more drinks, it's on me," "let's apologise and go." But the attention seems to create the wrong effects because Minho angers, gripping the first woman by the arm and dragging her violently to the side.

"Apologise? It's this guy's fault he spilt all this shit on me. He should apologise!"

"I did," Raizel says.

This is not the smart kind of thing to say, but with just the motion of Minho's arm, of him sweeping his friend out of the way like a rag doll, his voice cutting the atmosphere of the club apart, breaking the pleasant trance, trembling his friend's lips, Raizel has made a value judgement of him.

"Look at him," Minho sneers, alcohol on his breath. "He didn't mean it."

Lying, even white lies, don't always come easy to Raizel. They don't usually flow out of his mouth without due thought. He did meant his apology, but if he could unmean it right now, he would.

"That was unkind of you." Raizel's eyes dart to the friend who is currently being held up by other friends.

"You're a pretentious little shit, aren't you? What's it to you?" Minho looks back to his pack of friends, who are all aware of his swing of the mood, all aware of the rise in his voice. "Are you a cop? Getting all up in my case?"

"Lower your voice. You're disturbing the other patrons."

"You disturbed me first!"

"I think…you should cool down."

"Shut your face. I'm completely cool!"

"Please. Be cool."

At that, Minho takes his advice and snatches a margarita with a miniature umbrella in it, but erroneously, he pours it in Raizel's face. But things all of a sudden felt the opposite, felt unbearably hot, his face flushed with alcohol, the music thrumming in his ears, vibrating through the grounds, tensions running unbelievably high as Minho's anger mounts and he raises his arm.

Which is caught by Frankenstein, mid-strike.

In one hand, Frankenstein holds a gin and tonic, its contents perfectly level. In the other hand, he holds Minho's wrist above his head.

"What the hell?" Minho cries, but as his eyes lock onto Frankenstein's his conviction seems to slide out of him at once, like a child in ill-fitting trousers. Frankenstein begins to squeeze, and Minho's expression changes instantly —godouchwhatfuck?

"Stop, Frankenstein."

Frankenstein stops. His eyes are poised on Minho, his own anger boxed in his tall frame and broad shoulders and still bursting at the seams. The agony and rage of a hundred thousand other people all tightly wound up and contained in the shape of a man. But Frankenstein simply releases him.

"It's his birthday," Raizel tells him.

Maybe it was the inanity of that admission that stumped him, but Frankenstein frowns and looks back at the man. Minho takes back his crushed wrist, nursing it like a wounded animal.

Frankenstein goes to Raizel, produces a handkerchief, and begins patting Raizel down. "Your drink, Master."

Minho seems to get riled up even more. "Oh, rich boy are you? Got a big bad bodyguard here to save you?! Why don't you face me yourself!"

"Frankenstein," Raizel says, and Frankenstein stands to attention like his strings had pulled taut.

"What will you have me do?"

"Cool him down."

Frankenstein blinks. Then, deftly, he turns, pours the drink into Minho's face. Minho growls and is actually, physically restrained by his friends. Both Frankenstein and Raizel ignore this.

"Why didn't you call for me?" Frankenstein asks.

"I was coming to find you."

"Hey!" Minho shouts, "Let's take this outside!"

"No. You should have called for me," Frankenstein says a little acerbically. "Are you hurt?"

Raizel's eyes narrow. "I have not deteriorated to that end."

It's then that Frankenstein actually looks at him. His line of vision rips from far below eye level to at eye level. Raizel's shifted, he can see Frankenstein recording the new dimensions of his face, his jaw, his neckline, seeing something new yet familiar at the same time. He must look like the Raizel he spent ten years alone with in a mansion, the Raizel who'd awakened him, the Raizel he'd pledged to. Frankenstein's lips quirk up, unusually slow. He defers. Raizel wonders if he defers because he is, in human terms, intoxicated.

"Yeah?!" Minho keeps hollering, "Gonna hide behind Daddy's bodyguard?! Let's take it outside!"

Frankenstein looks to Raizel for instruction. "Let me take care of this."

"No," Raizel nods towards the glowing exit sign. "I accept."

They take it outside. Behind the club, insulated by a ring of rubbish dumps, Minho and his friends who failed to talk him down stand and deliberate. Minho strips his outer shirt, starts to pump his fists. He demonstrates his power punching air.

Frankenstein and Raizel take another corner and talk in soft tones. "I don't understand…I could have him removed. I can do this discreetly, Master. I won't hurt him."

"No. I want," Raizel says, shutting his eyes, "I want to try something."

"Try something?"

He doesn't feel like explaining further.

"He has challenged me openly." Raizel steps into the dumpster round. "So I will accept."

Minho steps up to him. They circle each other like desert eagles to prey. Being in the club was like being inside a firecracker, a hot pit of change and movement. In there, a maroon safe haven, a place for letting go; Raizel could understand why people could find joy in the feelings it elicited. Now it has leeched onto Raizel too, a film of instantaneousness, of fight or flight, of thinking things and doing them. People, and their feelings, and their stupid ideas, their little notions they can't get out of their head, they blare out to Raizel like faulty radio signals, make him want to be shaped by stupid little decisions too; spontaneous whims, risky choices, original thought.

"Please," Frankenstein starts.

Raizel shakes his head, silencing him. 

"Do not interfere. That is an order."

Frankenstein is human. Like Ha-eun. Like Minho. Like Shinwoo, Ikhan, Yuna, Suyi. He is not human in the way that allows him to be intoxicated consuming a certain amount of ethanol, C2H5OH. He, too, has these whimsies, where he flips a switch to let the alcohol bypass his soft, internal, physical systems, and go straight into his bloodstream. Now his eyes are strained, laying bare every emotion on his face he would never convey so freely if sober.

"No rules," Minho spits. "Fight until one of us is knocked down."

"I, Cadis Etrama di Raizel," he states, "consent to these terms."

Frankenstein stands by helplessly.

Minho, his head full of hot air, strikes with the confidence provided by pride and liquor, and Raizel turns away to let him stumble before he lurches back to create momentum. Raizel has no idea what he is doing. He could take Minho's arm, feel bone made of calcium and collagen and with just the slightest nudge of power, reduce it to molecules. Raizel could press down on Minho's shoulder, cause his vessels to rupture like balloons filled with water, or he could do nothing at all, just look him in his eyes and convince him he does not want to fight anymore, does not want to breathe anymore, does not need the gas exchange in his lungs to continue anymore.

But Raizel does none of this. Raizel has seen the schoolyard and after-school scraps Shinwoo often rolled around in, beating his fists on bullies' chests, kicking rude boys in the crotch, hair-pulling, back-biting. Shinwoo has no power, he is a powerless boy who jumps into fights to fend for the weak and abused, and he does it because his critical thinking is laced with an incurable sense of justice and righteousness only possessed by kids in school, and because he is Shinwoo and he can. Raizel thinks of his friend, and wonders if he can survive without his powers. If he is suddenly stripped of them, really human.

Can he win?

If he had faced Ha-eun's contractor without blood sphere, without blood control, could he do it the way Shinwoo doles out justice to bullies?

Minho dips and bobs, pushing left and right spastically. Raizel walks backwards, stays out of his range. The truth is, Raizel has utterly no discernible, no justifiable reason to fight Minho, for celebrating his birthday too loudly, other than that he has a low opinion of Minho, and he wants to do something stupid. Something he'd never do.

Raizel knows this is childish. But that does not stop him from proceeding.

Minho rocks forward with a harrowed battle cry, until he actually lands. But his human hand hits the brick wall that is Raizel, who had steeled for impact, and without moving a single feature on his face, Minho shatters his third and fourth knuckles on it. It will take weeks to notice the fracture because he is prideful, and weeks more for it to heal.

Minho cries out in pain.

Raizel grips his shirt, the way he'd seen it being played out, and curls his fingers uncharacteristically into a fist.

All he has to do is hit back, right? Just once. Then he wins.

"No!"

"Minho!"

The wind is knocked out of Raizel's lungs as someone grabs him from behind, throws him to the floor. Someone else runs towards him, kicking him in the teeth hard. Raizel has not expected this, so his teeth chatter, and he shuts his eyes involuntarily; he rolls onto something sharp on the ground which accidentally slices his shoulder.

Then another presence explodes, turning the atmosphere into static, heating up the ground like a lingering thousand volts of electricity.

People are screaming. People are running for their lives. Minho is screaming.

Raizel feels like. Thinking out of the box is overrated.

"Please, please don't kill me, I'm sorry— don't kill me!" someone wailed. They are crying. "Don't kill me! Don't—"

"Stop," Raizel says, but his voice comes out as barely a whisper. He's so ashamed.

Frankenstein doesn't stop. Frankenstein is holding one of Minho's friends three feet off the ground. This time, he is holding them by the neck. He charges with them in his hold, all breakable bones and sloshing blood. He pins the man into the concrete walls of the nightclub alley, causing the dumpsters to spasm like startled cats to a loud sound. The rubbish spurts out, making a mess.

It is raining garbage, Frankenstein is drunk for the first time in ages, and he is about to squeeze the life out of some twenty-something human who was too good a friend for Minho celebrating his loud birthday, and Raizel is bleeding because he refused to use power that is his birthright.

All because he felt like doing something original.

Congratulations, he heard the Lord say, in his Lordly voice, on his Lordly throne. You have done something selfish. Does it feel good?

"Stop. Frankenstein, stop, now."

The man at the end of Frankenstein's chokehold gurgles, eyes turning upwards, mucus bubbling up, fingers scraping at concrete.

"They…" Frankenstein choked out, "they put their hands on you."

"I said stop, Frankenstein!"

Raizel has not had to do this for…centuries. Frankenstein must not have experienced this for near a millennia. But his hand falls away, the strength in them flowing down a river, fading away as if it were never his. His thoughts fail him, blanking, not processing sound or sight or sensation, just put on standby as his mind goes to TV static. His breath hitches, his eyes dilate, his muscles relax, his need to breathe and move and tick internally vacate him. For a second, he is a corpse. Brain dead.

Both Frankenstein's body and Minho's friend fall to a heap on the floor. Frankenstein, legs unlocking onto his knees, comes tumbling down, and Minho's friend scrambles desperately, getting away just in time before Frankenstein falls forward and knocks his head on the wall. The friend sobs, and drags one of the other downed humans away to safety while he does it. They were a good friend, truly, in the end. Raizel is a horrible one. When all the people had fled, he relinquishes Frankenstein, who comes back to leaning forehead-first on a dirtied up wall.

"Master?" he says, in a very small voice.

Frankenstein's heart seems to skip a beat as he sees Raizel sitting in a ring of rubbish. "Master! Master, are you well?" he says, his speech still affected by the alcohol, and the word sounds closer to, 'mustard.' His forehead has already darkened in colour.

"I am fine."

At that, Frankenstein removes his hands from him. His eyes dart around, fingers curling and uncurling. "Why did you do that?"

"…You were going to kill him."

He shook his head. "Why did you let him speak to you like that?!" Frankenstein yells. "Why did you take it?! Why did you—" Frankenstein's voice cracks. Through the crack, a thousand other voices come bursting to the surface, the anger of a thousand other humans weed their way to his face, "Why did you not let me take his tongue out! Let me make him swallow it — how could you not call for me! Why will you not command me!"

Raizel rocks on his knees. The world seems to spin.

Frankenstein's lips tremble. All of a sudden, his eyes go shiny-glassy as he slowly withdraws more and more. Raizel has learned from watching Frankenstein that when he turns away like this, he cannot bear to face him.

"...I beg your pardon, My Lord," he says, and means it.

He means it in every sense of the word. Begging for his pardon.

Frankenstein bows his head to the floor as trash swirls between them.

They walk. Raizel has his head down, rocking from side to side, looking at nothing and thinking nothing. He is following Frankenstein, wherever he may take him. Frankenstein, unbeknownst to him, is following Raizel, and looking at nothing, and thinking everything.

Nearby, the dead-of-night Seoul shopping malls are in full swing. Taxis are circling around the city everywhere, bringing people to their chosen destinations, their party hotspots, popular pub crawls, and their homes and apartments. There are people starting fights over nothing, saying words they don't really mean, that are misinterpreted; raising voices, getting into arguments, speaking truths carelessly between their lips. There are people begging on the streets beneath bridges, snuggling with what little possessions they have, there are stray dogs roaming the empty residential areas, picking apart rubbish bags, growling at nocturnal animals, and there are distant, ringing, piercing sirens of ambulances, policemen, emergency services that answer cries for help, answer unending calls, that never sleep.

There are ugly things in the world, just as there are ugly things in people, and even uglier things in Cadis Etrama di Raizel, his hip, unknowingly plagiarised clothes smelling of three-day old nightclub fish and chips, heart heavy with guilt so leaden he feels it weighing him down, his feet dragging behind him. But perhaps that is because one of his shoelaces are untied, and they get trapped behind a bend in a light post, which causes Raizel to trip unceremoniously.

But before he plants his face to the ground, Frankenstein's reflexes catch him. Frankenstein helps him get his bearings. He seems eager to withdraw, resisting to touch him a moment more than absolutely necessary.

"One of your shoelaces is untied," he says vacantly.

Frankenstein bends, going down to do it up. But Raizel moves efficiently, grabbing a handful of his clothes to stop him. Frankenstein freezes.

"I know how to do my shoelaces," Raizel says, with completely unwarranted triumph. "Ikhan taught me how," he supported with evidence as per Ms Minhe's wishes, to give himself credibility, to seem less lame. It does not work. He is not credible and he is, unadulteratedly, very lame.

Frankenstein just smiles in a chagrined, loving manner, and shakes his head. "I understand. But please. Let me do the things servants are supposed to do."

He crouches to do his shoelaces. Raizel has no idea what to do other than loom over him, watching him weave laces this way and that, and then twist and tuck, and then pull and pull and start again because he is still drunk.

Then he gets up and they resume.

If the silence was uncomfortable before, now it is positively bruising.

Out of nowhere, something catches Raizel's eye. His head turns and turns to follow it as his body strolls away, until he finally has to stop to keep the thing in view.

"What is it?"

"…Ducks."

"There aren't any ducks this late at night, Master."

"There." Raizel points in their direction. "Ducks."

Frankenstein follows his gesture and his brows fly up. "Oh. Those. They're little paddle boats. The Han River duck boat ride. People move their legs as if riding a bike, which powers the boat. It doesn't look like it's open…"

Frankenstein only has to take one look at whatever is painted all over Raizel's face before he smiles brightly. He bows his most servile bow, gesturing towards the boats at the same time. "That's ok. We can still pay for it."

"It is not open," Raizel deadpans.

"I can pay double."

"But it's not open," Raizel stresses, as if riding on some plastic paddle boats after hours was worse than getting into a bar fight with some humans behind the dumpsters. "It's passed business hours."

But Frankenstein stays in place. After a while, Frankenstein stops bowing, straightens his back, and just tracks past the low-lying chain railing.

"You are going off the path, Frankenstein," Raizel says this time, even though it is obvious.

"Yes. I am. Care to follow me, Master?"

Frankenstein doesn't look back. He just steps into the grass, then into the gravel, then to the docks, over towards the boats. After a while of staring, Raizel follows. Crossing the rails. Stepping on grass. Over to the docks. He can see the freshly broken chains where Frankenstein has vandalised to get inside, and nets and fishing supplies that Frankenstein has kicked aside to make way for Raizel.

Raizel finds Frankenstein undocking one of the duck boats. He's chosen a very handsome duck with a long neck, eyes creased in joy, with a painted on blue scarf.

"Is this one acceptable?" Frankenstein asks.

Raizel steps onto the boat, which wobbles from side to side. Frankenstein smiles, satisfied by his choice, and crosses over to another boat. He begins undocking it for himself. He means for Raizel to have a boat all to himself. Raizel bobs lifelessly on the water before he sucks in a breath and crosses over to the duck boat that Frankenstein is in. Frankenstein accepts this readily. He kicks them off from the dock and explains to Raizel how to operate the boat. Before long, their legs and are moving and the paddles are turning. They swish away into the river.

The boat gives off an easygoing sensation, rocking and rocking ever so slightly. The lull of the water, and Frankenstein's proximity, shoulder to shoulder, draws Raizel into a sense of security. His mind, which had been blissfully hollow, blows up like pop up tabs on the computer screen.

Raizel is guilty of playing human, playing fool too, only he wasn't aware of it. Wanting to be swashbuckling, wanting to be new. They were human people he'd gotten into a tussle with, bags full of blood, blood that yielded to him, that sang for him in their veins; he could have trapped every single of Minho's pitiable friends and drained them all without lifting a finger, without relying on something so ugly and unrefined as a punch. There was so much power inside Raizel he didn't even need to draw upon it all.

There was so much more power in Raizel before he fell, before his deep sleep.

He wanted to see if he could win, without that power. He can. And he can't. He still doesn't know for sure. Was it worth it? Worth making Frankenstein watch?

The boat rocks and rocks. Frankenstein and Raizel paddle to the middle of the river, until the other boats at the docks look roughly the size of real ducks, and the docks are dwarfed by the graceful plasticky duck head protruding from their boat.

The night is calm and his head is drowsy. He opens his mouth.

"Who are you and where are you?"

Frankenstein turns, as if he has asked him a question.

"I want to see what you are doing," Raizel sings, somewhat clumsily. "I'll see the newspaper. I have to go…to the lakeside bench."

"…Who are you…and where are you?" Frankenstein slurs.

"I want to see what you are doing."

"Is it a slender face, or a giant face?"

"I have to go to the lakeside bench," Frankenstein says. He looks around, suddenly, carefully, as if he is worried about being seen. Checking who can see him, who can judge him. Then he raises his hand, and as if doing something he knows to be inappropriate, he touches his hand to Raizel's face.

"…My Master. Why do you let yourself bruise?"

Has he? He has. Frankenstein's minor wound had gone the moment they'd left the alley. Raizel has kept his busted up jaw.

"I can heal myself easily."

"You can," Frankenstein agrees.

They hum the tune of the song on the radio, rumbling through their chests, into the fibreglass and plastic of the boat. Then Frankenstein stops paddling, so Raizel does too. They float freely on the river, drifting.

"Won't you even chastise me?" Frankenstein asks.

Raizel lets the pause drag too long.

"Then let me offer my penance. I will gladly welcome punishment when we get back. I've been insubordinate."

Raizel's face scrunches. "You've done nothing."

He says it like humans say that’s ok when it is clearly not ok, saying just fine when they can’t possibly be. This secret rule, the white coloured lie that he doesn’t mean, he has finally conquered.

Frankenstein chuckles humourlessly. "You knew. You knew I would have killed him. He…he kicked you." There is pain and dreadful humiliation in his voice, he swallows down his disgrace. "I'd have killed for less."

Raizel looks over the river, at the lights reflected from the skyscrapers and buildings, blinking and changing its brilliant colours. They look like silent fireworks on the water.

"No."

Frankenstein huffs, like he is humouring Raizel now. "No?"

"You only went so far because you knew I would stop you." Raizel turns to him, seeing the shock on his face. Seeing him caught red handed. Red faced, still blushed from liquor. "Why did you want me to stop you?"

Frankenstein looked away. "Is this a test? Did I fail you again? Was I supposed to — stand around watching some weakling hooligans kick the shit out of my master? Stay and listen to them insult the lord to whom I pledged with their foul, juvenile mouths? Should I have stood and stayed like a good dog while you walked into a trap and vanished without a trace for centuries because I was not there?"

Despite the physical beating he took this night, Raizel felt, for the first time, slapped.

When Frankenstein turns to him again, his face is suspiciously wet. "…I am yours, am I not? I still am, aren't I? Let me be property, let me be chattel, so long as you use me. So long as you let me fight for you." Frankenstein crudely wipes his face, reddening it even more. "You shouldn't have let them insult you. Least of all me."

Raizel looks down. "Can I tell you…a secret?"

He says it with the same depth as girls in the bathroom confiding in their closest companions.

Frankenstein nods.

"I am lacking," Raizel admits. "I wanted to do something crazy. Something I would never do. Something unprecedented. I want to learn to be spontaneous. I wanted to do something considered 'stupid.' I wanted to try…to be someone who isn't left behind in this century…someone who can be a good companion to you. Someone who can be spontaneous. Live with you. Exist with you. I never used to talk to you the way you needed it. I never could offer you warmth humans do so easily. I am not even a complete noble. I am deficient. When you could not truthfully say you considered me a friend, I realised. I am dirt."

Frankenstein breathes. "…What?" he utters, but it sounds like 'rot?' He sounds as if he wants to challenge that, but who is he to tell Raizel that he is not dirt?

Raizel, embarrassedly, fiddles with the buttons on his clothes, fiddles with his fingers. "I will be your lord. Of course I will. Of course I am…But Frankenstein, can't I be your friend?"

"…What?"

Being human is so hard. Being normal is so hard. He knows he is trying much too hard, but if he doesn't try, he'd be the same half person who stood and stood, someone who things happened to, not a person who made things happen, who waits for his cue to take part in living. It's a strange and somewhat terrible thought. That all that time he had the power to leave his self ordained post and open the door and — and just go out. Go do something. Do anything. Get lost and unlost. Make mistakes and learn.

Now he has made mistakes. But he doesn't know what he has learnt.

Finally, Frankenstein summons up his answer. "…I don't want to be your friend."

There is no harshness in Frankenstein's voice. The statement is not curt or cutting, nor is it meant to be. It is a gentle confession. "Friends come and go. I need to be by your side forever. So, it may be that I keep my distance. Because then I won't be discarded."

"What?" Raizel's hands go limp to his sides, and he stares at Frankenstein like he has grown another head.

"You think I deserve your friendship?" Frankenstein kicks his long legs, moving the paddles by himself. The boat starts tilting left, bobbing away in a circle. "I deserve to die! I always have."

Raizel reaches out. Puts a solid hand on his Frankenstein's shoulder. Frankenstein faces him.

"Do not," Raizel states, "do not question me."

This shuts Frankenstein up completely. He stops rapidly paddling. But their boat still spins, slowly.

"Do not question whether you deserve to live or die. That decision has been made for you."

Frankenstein shivers. Something akin to shaved-ice induced brain freeze. Neither of them had the courage to speak of these things since Raizel had returned. They are both stuck in limbo, between worlds. Antiquated and new. Belonging and not belonging. Alienated, but connected.

They have no easy answers for each other.

Raizel sits back. "Your reasoning is flawed."

"Is it?" Frankenstein crosses his legs. "You had a fist fight with a human because you wanted to be spontaneous."

"Do you think it worked?"

"I was shocked. Of course it worked."

Raizel laughs. Little outbursts of noise that bubble and bubble. Frankenstein huffs, a hand coming up to cover his mouth, mush at his face. They chuckle stupidly, the eternal language of children knowing they are doing naughty things.

'Maybe no one really knows what they are doing,' a reassuring thought, Ha-eun leaving to complete her life, Minho getting dragged to safety by companions, everyone caught in everyone else's crossfire. It is true that Raizel doesn't know, and neither does Frankenstein, apparently. He does not apologise, because Frankenstein is sick of them. But Raizel says to him, right now, "I will never leave you, my bonded."

Frankenstein visibly relaxes. He is visibly, so easily, in bliss.

"…Of course," Frankenstein says contradictively. "I know."

All of a sudden, Frankenstein gets up. "Master wants to do something spontaneous? Something considerably stupid? Why not hear the advice of his learned servant?"

Frankenstein unbuttons his suit jacket, throws it into the boat. Then he undoes his bow tie, wrenches it apart. Unbuttons his white shirt, and strips completely. He shivers a little at the sudden contact with cold air.

"And what is his good advice?" Raizel asks.

As Frankenstein undoes his belt buckle, he informs of what he is doing like reading instructions for a new refrigerator. "This is called 'skinny dipping.' People do this when they want to go for a swim, but failed to have the foresight to bring swimwear. Only young, idiotic friends do this."

Raizel considers this like he considers an equation. "…Do they allow people to swim in the river?"

"Oh, no, Master. Certainly not."

Frankenstein looks at him daringly. This is something completely unheard of, completely inappropriate, and completely heretical between a liege lord and their vassal. Raizel, all rational thought fleeing his mind once again, stands as if rising from a throne. The boat rocks suddenly from the shifting weight and Frankenstein unbalances, getting thrown back into his seat half dressed. Raizel huffs, helping him up. Then he begins undoing his buttons and belt and pants with the same urgency, throwing one article after the another onto the duck boat, without folding them, just like Frankenstein.

"I don't know how to swim, Frankenstein," Raizel says sheepishly.

"It's no matter." Frankenstein throws the rest of his clothes to the floor of the boat. "We'll hold the duck. And I'm here. I'll help you."

Then, with a powerful, graceful arc, Frankenstein dives off the duck boat, going deep under water. He chose the opportune moment to give Raizel privacy to drop his pants, after which he slips naked into the cold water after him. The coolness is painful. Then it is refreshing. Raizel holds onto the side of the boat when Frankenstein resurfaces. His hair sticks to his face, his smile positively infectious.

"Frankenstein, I like this," Raizel says, testing the ebb and flow of the water, of the comfortable pressure as he moves his limbs.

"This is indecent exposure!" Frankenstein chuckles. "And the most fun I've had in years." He swims in a circle, goes deep and then pops to the surface again with a gasp. "Here. Kick your legs, Master. I'll show you how to swim."

Raizel kicks, flails, floats and bobs like an apple. He is weightless, without burdens, and he lets his worries go with the current. This is an entirely new experience. This is certainly good going. He used to co-rule his homeland from a fourth storey window, and he used to go to school thinking he was past his prime, and now he is skinny dipping in the middle of a freezing river without knowing how to swim. He has no idea what he is doing, neither does anyone else. Living is terrifying, and living is wonderful. He wonders what he'd learn and do and fail at tomorrow.

"Master," Frankenstein reaches out, dipping his head just slightly, offering his arm. "We can do anything."

Raizel smiles. "Anything?"

"Anything!"

Raizel takes his hand, lets go of the boat.

"Let's."