Chapter Text
Standing up with a deep sigh, Hyunjin stretched, lethargic, noting the stiffness of his neck and the slight swelling of his muscles, knowing he'd wake up sore the next day.
It would hinder his performance in the cult, his parents wouldn't like that.
God wouldn't like that.
Even though he'd already seen the keys suspended in the lock, he walked through the sacred bookstore slowly.
He aimed at the minutiae of the shelves, the ornaments of the columns, the frigid floor that reflected the satellite shining in the sky.
It was all white, white and pure, pure and divine.
The scent of the books was the only mundane component of the establishment, reminding Hyunjin of where he was. The pristine covers and the lack of dust, even in the earliest pages, made the place seem like a piece of Heaven on Earth.
Hyunjin would never admit it, but it was there where he felt closest to God — even more so than in His house. It was where he felt most worthy of His observation. Where he felt he had the chance to be a heavenly boy, someone who deserved divine salvation.
Revering the environment, he took the keys in his hands. Cold, cold and golden, golden and silvery.
Heavenly.
Divine.
Finding the correct key, Hyunjin turned off the lights. The change of atmosphere was easily noticeable in the absence of the pale beam of light from the chandelier on the ceiling. Especially on nights like this, when he was the last one to leave the place.
Believing that silence made the place even more sacred, the boy opened the wide transparent door without making any noise.
The door.
It was the only part that bothered him.
When he was in the bookstore, Hyunjin imagined himself in heaven, accompanied by other angels and books with records of the pure believers of the earth.
However, a mere glance at the door and, consequently, at the outside world, and the boy remembered: he was in Daegu, surrounded by sinners and books with records of the few souls who would have his salvation.
Glass. Glass and screams. Glass, screams and heat.
As soon as he left the library, Hyunjin felt chills. The sounds were disturbing. He checked the time on his wristwatch: two in the morning. I should have been home six hours ago.
Unacceptable.
He'd missed dinner. He wasn't hungry, but how would he feel? He knew his parents had said their prayers at the table.
They had communicated with God and Hyunjin was not there.
What if the deity didn't think he was worthy anymore? Could He, with all his kindness and compassion, forgive a sinner like Hyunjin?
Feeling a knot at the pit of his stomach, he walked in the direction he thought was opposite to the commotion in the streets. Meeting those lost in God's way was the worst that could happen. He shouldn't associate with them. Hyunjin was a good boy.
Glass. Glass and screams. Glass, screams and heat.
The Moon bathed the streets as if it were a spotlight, all of Hyunjin's steps captured by the immensity of the great white. The bright colors of the traffic light, dimmed and the screams, a forgotten memory in the boy's mind. A nightmare, an invitation to the putrid side.
Hyunjin liked to imagine himself up there, controlling the brightness of the Moon, directing it towards another lost apple amid the horde of spoiled fruits. The moonlight was purely majestic.
Ethereal.
Everything was so ethereal up there.
So, he fixed his feet in the middle of the street. Standing in the crosswalk, he turned his gaze completely and solely to the Moon. To God.
He was seeking peace. He wanted to be able to focus on the star so intensely that God would feel compelled to bring Hyunjin with Him. To heaven, eternal and ethereal.
His focus, however, kept Hyunjin from listening to the growing whirring of the engines until they were too close.
Closing his eyes, Hyunjin threw himself against the ground. He felt numbness of his whole body in the absence of pain from the shock.
Glass. Glass and screams. Glass, screams and heat.
A loud horn made itself present and, with it, the squeaking of wheels and the invasive odor of gasoline.
At that moment, about to die, Hyunjin expressed something similar to a smile.
He hugged his body in his chest, feeling the presence of his Bible next to his chest, even if it wasn't there.
No time for prayers, as he waited for the inevitable, Hyunjin had a single recurring thought in his mind: God. Your son is ready.
"Holy shit!"
God?
"Are you trying to kill yourself, blondie?"
Hyunjin opened his eyes.
The noisy vehicle was a motorcycle, laying about two meters away from him. In front of him, he could see the rubber tracks of its tires, covered in smoke.
The most compelling, though, was a boy, holding his recently removed helmet in his hands and smiling in a completely relaxed manner.
Disoriented, the smile and red locks were the only characteristics of the boy that Hyunjin could absorb.
He sought to get up, head bowed, trying to move away from the other promptly. However, with all his limbs trembling, Hyunjin fell to the ground almost immediately.
Preparing to try again, with some urgency, Hyunjin turned his eyes even further to the ground, barely too late to ignore the boy's hand in his field of vision.
It was extended. The stranger slightly bent over, staring at him with what seemed like curiosity and lightness.
"You're not gonna take it?"
Hyunjin promptly took the other's hand. It was warm, contrasting with his own, frosty thanks to the ice-cold asphalt.
From the vehicle, the clothes and hurriedness, Hyunjin assumed that the boy was participating in a street race, probably the cause of the screams, drinks and engines of before.
He tried to get untangle his hand from the other's, being surprised when the stranger only intensified his grip.
"Let me get you up first, then you can run."
That smile again. He smiled as if he had no worries, no doubt. Hyunjin found it terrifying.
He wasn't intentionally silent, if he trusted himself to formulate a coherent sentence, he would have done it by now. His brain felt like clay, Hyunjin only processed words, loose and tangled.
Fear. Surprise. Punishment. Sin. Danger. Glass. Brightness. Despair. Death. Sky. Purgatory. Hell. Gasoline. Heat. Red.
What about God?
The boy wanted to punch himself for forgetting about Him for a mere second.
Amidst your greatest doubts, God shall be your only certainty, his father used to say.
"Leave." It was the first thing he said, facing the biker with some caution. "...Want to leave."
He noticed the other's eyebrows arching in confusion and tensed his body when the redhead approached him.
"I think you might be in shock, blondie..." He tilted his head subtly and ran his eyes through Hyunjin's body. Then he widened his eyes, dropping the calm look for the first time since they'd met. "... Oh shit, and bleeding."
Hyunjin snapped out of his trance.
Bleeding?
Where his hands had rested after the fall, there was a scarlet and viscous liquid, blood.
In the center of his chest, stains formed a red-rose and chaotic. They spread through the rest of his white robes like in a Pollock painting.
He became aware of his previous torpor when, upon discovering the origin of the wound—a parable-shaped cut in his left hand—he started to feel burning, pulsating pain in the wound.
His whole body burned.
I need to go home.
It was intense. Hyunjin was aware that, to heal the pain, the wounded must pray. Pray that He heals you.
I really need to go home.
He began to walk, stumbling and shaking, seeking to calm his rapid breathing. He brought his hand to his chest again and screamed when he felt something pointy pierce her.
Glass. Glass and screams. Glass, screams and heat.
No shouting, the commotion of before was gone. No heat, Hyunjin felt frigid, frozen. Just glass. A piece of glass shoved deep in his flesh.
He didn't even realize he'd stopped walking until the stranger was pulling him back to the crash site.
"What...? " The rest of the phrase joined the small hours' breeze, floating in the air, far from Hyunjin's reach.
The stranger then lifted his previously down motorcycle, inclining it towards the ground with its small metal support.
"Sit."
Hyunjin didn't want to.
He wanted to run, come home, ask his parents for help. Staring at the glass stuck in his palm, however, he realized he didn't have this option. His parents would be disgusted. Disgusted by their son. The son who comes home at 2:00 in the morning with an alcohol bottle shoved into his skin. If he let them down, he'd be letting God down.
Hyunjin could not disappoint God.
He sat down and reflected on his current situation as the boy opened a compartment attached to the side of his bike. When he got up, he was carrying some items in his arms.
Bandages, antiseptic and sterile gauze.
"Lend me your hand, blondie?"
Blondie.
The redhead kept calling him that and Hyunjin didn't understand the use of the diminutive. He was clearly taller than the other, if he was "blondie" the boy should be "little redheadie".
The other boy grabbed his hand before he could offer it.
"Will it hurt?"
It was the first coherent sentence that came from Hyunjin in that whole conversation. The boy smiled, looking pleased with the development.
"Yeah." By impulse, the blonde tried to remove his hand from the grip of the other. To no avail. "So, while I take care of this holey hand of yours, why don't you tell me a bit about yourself?"
At that moment, in the midst of so much pain and despair, Hyunjin almost laughed.
A loud laugh, the one that bothers everyone around you, the one that leaves you with tears in your eyes and entirely flushed, not able to breathe for a long time. It was a ridiculous and terrifying situation. He was sitting on a questionable teenager's bike at the height of the night with a bottle of alcohol stuck in his palm. It was simply surreal.
Hyunjin felt that, maybe, it was all just a dream. Not exactly a nightmare in its pure nature, but a slightly dystopian dream.
"About me?"
"Yeah, your name, for example." The redhead moved his gaze from Hyunjin's hand to his eyes. "Or do you prefer blondie?"
The way the boy was talking was exotic. Hyunjin thought he was too informal, too calm.
"Hyunjin." Answered almost without realizing it, correcting himself as soon as he noticed the informality the name gave to their relationship. "...Hwang Hyunjin. Call me Hwang Hyunjin."
The redhead had already turned his attention back to the other's hand, measuring how much gauze he'd need. Still, Hyunjin, staring at him, was able to notice a smile forming in the mouth of the unknown boy.
"Too long." He grimaced in forced disappointment. "I'm sorry, blondie."
The redhead laughed.
Hyunjin did not know if he understood the hilarity, if he didn't, or if, by chance, he himself was the joke. He knew only that the boy found his own speech quite comical, still laughing as he cut the bandage using his teeth.
Resisting the urge to rebuke him for the act, Hyunjin turned his gaze to the streets.
Your body is a temple, a divine temple that must be treated with respect, for it was He who gave you this flesh to sustain your soul as you pass through the stage of life on Earth.
But Hyunjin couldn't interfere with the other's decisions.
He was afraid that, in praying for him, God would judge them related in some way. Of course He was omnipotent and present, but under the possibility that this level of proximity was enough for Hyunjin to be associated with the redhead, he would avoid him.
Hyunjin should not associate with those lost in God's way.
But maybe he was getting ahead of himself.
Maybe the boy was a good man, there at that time, by chance. Gentle enough to help Hyunjin with his bruise even if he only wanted to go home after a tiring day of hard work.
Hyunjin didn't quite believe that.
The Moon, once so bright, appeared to be matte, and Hyunjin felt that God had stopped supervising him.
Have I let you down, Sir?
"I'm seventeen."
He should reflect on his mistakes and apologize to God, but he was distressed, he needed a distraction, and the red-haired boy was his best, and only, option at the time.
He didn't receive a verbal response, but by the expression on the redhead's face, Hyunjin assumed he was listening.
"I've lived in Daegu since I was born. I don't like it here."
Opening up was not the right option, Hyunjin did not know why such need had arisen. It was rare that he expressed his opinions, perhaps the discomfort and shock made him more expressive than normal.
Feeling the other's eyes on him again, he turned his face to the faulty traffic light on his left. The pain of whatever the redhead was doing in his hand increased rapidly.
A warm chuckle broke through the cold breeze of the night.
"Noted."
The blonde forcibly coughed, he didn't know quite how to respond.
He didn't even know if he was supposed to.
"My favorite color is white, I have a dog and my purpose in this world is to serve God as best as I can."
In the middle of the sentence, Hyunjin felt the glass being pulled from his skin. The pain narrowly didn't get him to give up the DIY operation. It didn't matter. What kind of devotee would he be if he couldn't take a tiny bit of pain like that? Jesus had suffered much more for Hyunjin's sins.
"I did think you looked like an actual angel."
Nausea.
Hyunjin wasn't an angel, he wasn't even worthy enough to be called a disciple.
Angel... It was disrespectful to God. Abandoning his previous ideology, he began to beg forgiveness for the sins of the redhead at his side; only the most recent, of which he was aware, and in which he could end up mentioned in the reports up there.
The redhead continued:
"Your dog," began, grabbing Hyunjin's attention again, "what's its name?"
"Kkami." the redhead arched his eyebrows, encouraging the other to continue. "Oh, okay. He... He's a good friend. The best I could have, the greatest companion I've ever had my whole life. I'll never be able to thank him enough for everything he does for me. Not in a way he'd understand, at least."
"Done."
Hyunjin turned his eyes to the other boy's little medical demonstration.
His hand was bandaged and the redhead had put the bloody bottom of the bottle next to him, on the badly paved street of a suburban neighborhood in a dirty corner of Daegu.
At some point, without Hyunjin noticing, the pain had ceased.
Noting the boy's surprise, the stranger inched his face close and, a few centimeters from Hyunjin, started speaking again:
"The dog was the only thing that could distract you, not even I could!" He approached a little more, minimally shaking his head, without ever letting the plastered smile on his face fade. "If you weren't so handsome I would've been really hurt, blondie."
Without a word, Hyunjin pulled his face away with desperation, barely managing to stay on the motorcycle. In the absence of the other's mint breath directly on his face, Hyunjin felt his mind clear and frowned, closing his uninjured hand in a fist.
"I appreciate the help." He said, between short and accelerated breaths, turning his back towards the redhead. "Goodbye."
He expected the other to complain, yes, but not to sit on his bike and, with the deafening engine cutting through the reasonably mute air, honk, and look at Hyunjin with certain incitement.
"Want a ride, blondie?"
The tone. It was a challenge.
It was childish and ridiculous. Maybe even offensive to the divine forces, but Hyunjin couldn't lose.
He needed to prove his courage. He had to be the best at everything.
To be God's favorite, his father had taught him, you must work for it.
He stared at the redhead:
"I want a helmet."
Clearly, that wasn't the expected answer. With wide eyes — briefly, before returning to his usual expression of tranquility—the boy laughed, incredulous.
Then, still smiling, he reached out to Hyunjin, offering the helmet he wore when he nearly ran over the blond mere minutes ago.
"So?"
Hyunjin swallowed dry, he'd accepted the ride on a whim, wanting — irrationally, He was no longer watching — to prove his courage, to prove himself, to God.
He was going mad, certainly.
He took advantage of the madness. With his long fingers, Hyunjin took the protection of the other's hand, receiving a lopsided smile in response.
As he put on the helmet, he heard the redhead ask:
"So, are you gonna tell me where you live?"
No way.
Hyunjin was determined, yes, but he wouldn't tell a random boy he met on the street at 2:00 a.m. his address, especially when he, most definitely, had just gotten out of an illegal motorcycle race.
"What about your race?" Hyunjin reminded him, remembering the, now missing, noises, in an attempt to escape the previous question. "Don't you want to finish it?"
The redhead shook his head, pointing to a sleek trail of gasoline further down the street.
"The other guy was right next to me." Hyunjin hadn't even noticed the presence of another driver with the redhead, punishing himself mentally for the lack of attention he'd shown earlier. "But it doesn't matter, I think I've found something far more fun than doing wheelies."
Hyunjin rethought his choices, maybe it would be better to go alone. The kid was a racing biker after all, how safely could he drive?
"I like speed, not hospitals." The redhead pulled him out of his thoughts. He seemed to have read Hyunjin's mind, and if he wasn't so overwhelmed, the taller boy would have found the energy been frightened by it. "If I'm not wearing a helmet I'll have to be even more careful. You're not gonna die now, blondie."
There was no proof of what the redhead said, but Hyunjin chose to believe in the veracity of the statement. If the boy wanted something tragic, he wouldn't have stopped before he bumped into him earlier.
Maybe he should accept. He wouldn't let his parents see the boy, more than that, he'd make the redhead leave him far away from his house.
The cold still hung in the air, and, along with the invasive pulse of his wound, it made Hyunjin increasingly disturbed.
He needed to go home.
"Five streets ahead, then three to the left."
The redhead narrowed his eyes.
Hyunjin transferred the weight from one foot to the other.
It wasn't where he lived, but it was close enough, a few more quarters and he'd get there. As much as he wanted to get off the streets as soon as possible, there wasn't the slightest chance he'd trust the boy enough to tell him his address.
"Are you just gonna stand there?"
Smiling, the boy indicated the place behind him with his head.
In the dim moonlight, Hyunjin saw the contours of the other's face: his lips bent, pulled to one side, and his eyes seemed to contain a joke that the blonde was not part of. He smiled like the actual Cheshire Cat, and Hyunjin came to like less and less his copy of Caroll's work at home.
The boy was strange, dangerous, and certainly the worst influence the devotee could have.
Hyunjin sat down, taking the necessary care not to touch him in any way.
Looking over the other's orange strands, he realized, for the first time, that they were still in the middle of the street. They'd never even left.
In addition to a few more pieces of glass, like the one that had entered his skin, the street was deserted. The noise of the race still persisted, but Hyunjin couldn't tell if there were actual people partying at the time or if it was all just a buzz from the past remaining in his mind.
He was lost.
"Blondie," the redhead started, turning his face halfway towards the other, "this ain't gonna work, get up."
Frowning, Hyunjin obeyed.
He wondered if the boy was toying with him. Maybe the offer of a ride was a test, a warning: don't accept rides from strangers, idiot.
Hyunjin didn't approve of the vocabulary, but he imagined that, if someone like the redhead alarmed him, it'd sound just like that.
The other boy didn't get up, dragging himself to the rear edge of the seat and hitting lightly on the free part of the leather seat.
Hyunjin understood right away.
"Are you out of your mind?! " He breathed out, incredulous. "That's dangerous!"
"First of all, you couldn't just go all loose like that, you'd have to hold onto me." The redhead then took Hyunjin's arm in his hands and gently opened his clenched fist. "Want to try it with that bloody hand of yours?"
Hyunjin swallowed, dry. His bad hand throbbed.
"And it is safe," The boy continued, smiling the way that bothered Hyunjin so much. "as long as you're facing me and holding on tight with your other arm."
Hyunjin didn't have many options. He could go with the boy, in a slightly humiliating position, or try his luck, go home alone and risk meeting someone less friendly than the smiling, inquisitive redhead in front of him.
Sighing, the taller sat on the leather seat, opposite to the other boy.
Then he directed his eyes one last time to the Moon and uttered:
"Lord, your son wishes to arrive at his home to say his prayers. He apologizes for his associations, but asks your divinity to forgive him for his sins."
In addition to a slight frown when Hyunjin apologized for the company, the redhead didn't react much to what was said.
"Closer, blondie."
Once again, Hyunjin obeyed, repeating the prayers in his mind as a mantra.
The redhead gently pulled the other's arms and placed them around his torso. Then he rested his hands on the handlebars of the vehicle, serving almost as a seat belt for the other.
"Ready?"
Not knowing if because of the cold of the night or the fear of the drive, Hyunjin trembled. He trembled more than was possible to ignore.
In silence, the redhead lifted the boy's chin with his fingers, until the blonde was staring back. He took a deep breath, as if to encourage Hyunjin to do the same. He did.
"...Ready."
The redhead's crooked smile was Hyunjin's last vision before the world became a blurry mess of lights and sounds.