Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He remembered when the Smear showed up. Sort of. 

He was still building his Tall Rocks then, trying to reach the source of the Different. It wasn’t tall enough yet, though, so he had to travel further and further into the dark corners of his world to find more rocks. The big ones were so hard to move, but he had realized that if he put big ones on the bottom and smaller ones on top, then his Tall Rocks wouldn’t fall down and he could climb higher. 

He had been away from the Different for some time, searching, and whenever he was away from the Different, it was much harder to see details. When he got back after finding some nice big rocks and stepped into that strange, beautiful place where everything looked Different, he was surprised to notice a dark smear on his chest.

It was just a smudge on his ribs and side, about the size of his palm. He thought it was dirt at first, or maybe dried stuff from a hurt he hadn’t noticed, but it didn’t wipe off, and it was too dark, anyway. Darker than anything he had seen before. Maybe a bad hit mark? Like when he fell down or bumped into something, and his skin turned dark from the hit. It didn’t hurt when he touched it, though. If it didn’t hurt and wouldn’t wipe off, there was nothing he could do about it, was there? It became unimportant, and he quickly forgot about it.

Time passes. He builds his Tall Rocks taller, and a miracle drops from the Different. The Smear becomes Important.

When Rachel shows up, he learns that the things around him all have names. After he has accepted the miracle of another creature just like him existing in the world, after he has learned that the noises he can make from his mouth can be used to communicate, after he has learned he can express his thoughts and describe the world around him, he learns that his own name is the Twenty-Fifth Bam. 

He learns that the world around him is called a cave. The stone below him is called a floor, and the stones around him are called walls, and the stone above him is called a ceiling, or a roof, and there are other places in the world that do not have these things.

(Bam does not understand this. What exists there, then? Nothing, says Rachel. Bam does not think he likes that).

His Tall Rocks is actually a stack of rocks, or a pile of rocks, but it is so tall it is also called a tower.

(Bam is proud of this. He learns that this is called an accomplishment, or an achievement. He whispers these words and many others to himself, in those cold and quiet times when Rachel is not there, to make sure he does not forget).

His Different spot is called a ray of light, and it comes out of a hole in the ceiling called a circle. 

Hit marks are called bruises. The red stuff that comes out of him sometimes and dries on his skin is called blood. 

And his Smear is called a Soulmark.

It means that there is another person in the world who matches him perfectly, Rachel says. Bam thinks this must be Rachel herself, but she says no. If it was her, his Smear would have changed color, but instead it stays black.

Bam learns that this is the name of the darkest color. He learns the names of all of them, even the ones he hasn’t seen yet, the ones Rachel promises to show him one day. He wonders what color his Smear would become if he ever met his soulmate.

Rachel tells him not to get his hopes up. No one ever gets to meet their soulmate. There are too many people in the world, living too far apart for it ever to happen.

(Bam thinks this is sad).

“Haa~ah,” Aguero sighs, collapsing back onto his bed. It was one of those rare occasions that he had been coerced into participating in class, and he got a damn practice spear to the ribs for his effort. He hadn’t even been in the fight! That moron from the Muret branch had picked a spear too long to control, and as he rushed his opponent, he overbalanced, drove the spearpoint into the ground, and sent it flailing wildly through the air until the shaft struck Aguero where he’d been doing warm-up stretches the next field over.

(The Muret idiot had been marked down for inexcusable ineptitude. Aguero had been marked down for failing to dodge. He hadn’t. He just hadn’t felt like staying in class any longer).

He peels up his shirt with a wince. It had smacked him on the hip, right over his soul mark, and a reddish-purple bruise was already swelling beneath and around it. It almost looked like one of those embellishment tattoos people got sometimes.

It was funny, a bit. For a phenomenon with such astronomical chances of ever happening, the tower was uniformly obsessed with soulmates. Innumerable movies and TV dramas about hope and betrayal and lovers fighting against fate and each other. Thousands of blogs and forums where desperate romantics posted pictures of their marks in hopes of their other half catching a glimpse. Celebrations of soulmate birthdays, commemorating the appearance of a mark on a person’s skin. Soulmate memorials, mourning a dead stranger on the day a mark faded to the greyed-out scar of a lost chance.

(Aguero was born with his mark. His mother was disappointed, because it meant she couldn’t throw a soulmate birthday party for him later on like she had for his sister. Those were great for networking, and for getting nice gifts out of people who secretly hated her. Her pettiness and spite had carried her far in her husband’s family).

Even fake soul mark tattoos weren’t uncommon. Brilliant bursts of color blooming across the jaw, curling behind ears, wrapping around wrists. Fashionable. Alluring. And superficial. A washed out mimicry of the beautiful truth. Rumor had it that real marks were unmistakable, after all. Far more than just a flat splash of color, those lucky few who had seen a real one had spoken of an indescribable depth and ethereal shine to the color, as though rather than a mark on the skin, it was window peering into the vibrant soul of its bearer and their partner. 

(By Khun Family standards, fake soul marks were pretty plebeian. If you’re going to fake something, it should at least be indistinguishable from the real thing).

Embellishment tattoos were fair game, however, and were even almost as popular as earrings in his family. Patterned outlines against the matte black of unrealized soul marks had been in vogue a few decades ago, but now watercolor backgrounds were all the rage.

That’s what Aguero’s looks like right now. A bloom of red-purple-blue fanning out from the edges of his black mark. It looks pretty good that way, actually. Aguero likes the shape of his mark - like an asymmetric splash of ink across his hip - and he thinks a little color could make it pretty sexy. But, it wasn’t like he was planning on going around with his hip bared to the world, so there wasn’t much point. Maybe someday, when he had someone to impress. 

Not his soulmate, of course. That was impossible.

As far as popular history in the tower was aware, maybe one in a billion people were lucky enough to meet their soul mate. Restrictions on travel between floors, oppressive political situations, and the violence and betrayal inherent to the tower prevented such meetings of fate.

So Aguero knows as much about soulmates as the next person. He knows they are basically a fairy tale, and even if they ever meet, as far as Aguero is concerned, the danger of having such a person in his life outweighed whatever benefit could come from it. In the best case scenario, his soulmate would be a weakness he couldn’t afford, a precious jewel he couldn’t possibly hide away. 

In the worst case, his soulmate would be an enemy, looking to use their connection against him. Just because God or destiny or simple biology thought they suited each other, didn’t mean their personal circumstances would be aligned. After all, the most famous soulmates in history despise each other. Po Bidau Gustang and Eurasia Blossom had a famously contentious relationship, and after their first — and last — joining to bring a child into the world, they had pulled away from each other with such ferocity that their families were banned from marrying.

Aguero sighs again and tucks his shirt back in to his pants. A glance out his bedroom window tells him it would be dinner time soon, and Mother would be expecting a report on his classmates then. It wouldn’t do to disappoint her.

Years pass. Aguero fucks up his life and saves it in the same stroke. He gets an invitation he can’t refuse.

(He goes by Khun, now).

When he’d broken into his father’s treasure room, Khun had had his pick of the most precious jewels in the tower. The most powerful weapons, the sturdiest armor. Exotic shinheuh, compliant and ready to be used. 

He left with a bag.

Oh, he hadn’t been able to resist a few other little oddities as well, but the real steal was Manbarondenna, because he was losing his home soon and he needed to keep his belongings on him at all times. Headon would be visiting him soon, after all. Khun knew he was exceptional; it was just a matter of time before the Fairy of the Tower noticed it too.

When Khun is deposited into the golden fields of the Floor of Test, he has all his worldly possessions easily in hand. 

(He is not the only regular to claim this achievement. It is fairly common, in fact. After all, so many regulars can only claim to own the clothes on their backs and the weapons in their hands).

The point is, Khun has an extremely valuable bag packed full of extremely valuable items, and it is a pittance compared to the singular possession of the soft, vulnerable regular sitting beside him as they hide from a gigantic talking alligator, of all things. 

“You… Where did you get that?” Khun breathes. The Black March. All of his planning could not have prepared him to make such a find within the first twenty minutes of climbing the tower.

…Part of him wants it for himself. The greedy, grasping creature wearing Khun’s skin as a gossamer suit wants to take it and covet it and hide it away from the world.

A larger part of him wants more, wants to learn every facet of the defenseless dark-haired boy who holds it. He leans into this side of himself, and ducks in close to the increasingly alarmed boy.

Khun grabs his hand to keep him from moving away, utterly intent on the rare treasure laid out before him. Not quite so intent, however, that he fails to notice the sudden burning pain in his hip.

Khun lurches back with a hiss and grabs his waist. He glances around wildly; they might have been well hidden, but this is still a battlefield, after all. Has he been shot or something?

“Did that hit you too?” Khun asks sharply, seeing that the boy had slapped a hand to his ribs at the same time as Khun had felt that throbbing burn in his hip. “Did you see what it was?”

“No, I- no. I just felt it on my chest…” the dark haired boy pulls at the collar of his shirt to glance down at his chest, and freezes. His face falls slack. “My mark…”

Khun’s mind goes blank. “Your soul mark?”

“Uh-huh.” 

“It’s there, on your chest?” 

“Un.” 

“And it hurt just now?” 

“Yeah.” 

Khun swallows tightly. “…Is it- different, now?” His voice comes out hushed and hoarse. The boy across from him nods slowly, shallowly. He has not yet looked up from peering down his shirt.

“…Mine hurt too. Just now. When I… touched you…” 

They stare blankly at one another. “Would you like to see?” The boy whispers.

Khun nods, almost imperceptibly. The boy swallows audibly, then lifts the hem of his shirt up to reveal his ribs, where a familiar array of small splotches and strokes stretches across the disturbingly prominent bones and curls around his to brush his back. That pattern- it is indisputable. Flawlessly identical. And it is exceptionally beautiful.

Sprays of goldenrod and cornflower blue arc across each other, utterly radiant. And the rumors are true. It looks deep, somehow, like those vibrant colors are seeping straight through flesh and bone to bare the very core of him to the world.

“Is it..?” The boy whispers hoarsely. In response, Khun jerks his hands to his belt, fingers fumbling over the buckle as he scrambles to leverage his waistband down over his hipbone. The boy watches raptly with no sign of embarrassment and then gasps as Khun finally tugs his clothes aside enough to show his matching mark, gold and blue and glowing with life. 

His soulmate stares, enraptured. Seemingly mindlessly, his fingers stretch out to graze the mark. Khun flinches back at the sudden touch, but the boy follows him, smoothing his hand flat over the curve of Khun’s hip to frame his soul mark. Khun shivers at the touch, and then again at the sight; it is entrancing, to see his soulmate’s hand curled around the fully realized evidence of their connection. A thumb presses harder against Khun’s hipbone and okay! That’s enough of that. They’re in the middle of a test. He grasps the boy’s wrist to pull the hand away.

His soulmate complies with some reluctance, slowly drawing his hand back to himself. He glances up and catches Khun’s eye, and finally seems to return to his senses; he jerks upright and flushes red, coughing uncomfortably into his fist.

“S-sorry… that was, uh, not polite of me.” 

“It’s fine,” Khun mumbles, straightening his clothes. He takes a bolstering breath, then holds out his hand. “I’m Khun. Aguero. Khun Aguero Agnes.” 

“I’m the Twenty-Fifth Bam. Please just call me Bam. It’s nice to meet you.” 

“Bam…” Khun murmurs. “I can’t believe-“ 

“Are you really-“ 

They speak at the same time. Stop at the same time. Stare again. Khun’s lips twitch up into a wry smile. Bam matches him with a slow dawning grin that grows into a burst of bright, joyous laughter. It’s as though the sun had risen twice. Khun watches in awe, feels it blooming in his gut. This boy is his.

“I can’t believe I met you. I can’t believe you’re here,” he says, breathless with laughter. 

“This kind of crazy situation…it’s just unreal. It’s like a fairy tale,” Khun chuckles, before his countenance turns serious. 

“But we shouldn’t tell anyone. This kind of thing, if people knew about it, they could use it against us.” Bam looks at him blankly. 

“What do you mean? Why would someone…” 

“It just- isn’t safe, Bam. If we have something someone wants, or if either of us is an obstacle to someone, and if they knew about us…They could use us against each other. This tower is a desperate place, full of ruthless and cruel people.” 

(Khun would know. He is one of them).

And there are rumors, too, about the value of soulmates in the deepest, darkest depths of the tower, its black markets and its trafficking cartels. He’d only heard them after he’d been expelled from his family. Rumors that matched soulmates were maybe not quite as rare as everyone seemed to think. Rumors that the unspeakable beauty of fully realized soul marks made them - and their bearers - extremely valuable to the right buyer. Now that he has seen them for himself, Khun can understand the allure. He has never seen anything so beautiful in his life. And, he thinks with smug giddiness, it is his.

He just, you know. Couldn’t ever let anyone see it, lest he be snatched up and sold to some perverted collector or bored, ancient warlord sitting fat and lazy half-way up the tower.

Meanwhile, Bam is quiet, his gaze turned down to his hands. His knuckles clench white where they grasp the fabric of his pants. 

“That seems very sad to me, Mr. Khun.” Khun shrugs. 

“That’s the reality, unfortunately. And it’s especially true of us. I have some…valuable items with me. And you do too.” 

He looks pointedly at the Black March, tucked close to Bam’s thigh. Bam follows his gaze. 

“Ah, that’s…” Bam bites his lip, appearing indecisive. Khun waits expectantly, but when Bam’s hesitance becomes clear, he sighs.

“Ah, I get it. You don’t have to tell me.” He tries not to let his disappointment show.

“No!” Bam blurts out. “That’s not- I was told not to tell anyone, but you are not just ‘anyone,’ right?” Bam smiles tentatively at him. “So. That weapon was loaned to me when I entered the tower to help me pass Headon’s test. A woman named Yuri let me use it, but I need to return it to her.” 

“Yuri,” Khun says dryly. With growing incredulity, “Yuri? Ha Yuri Zahard? Zahard’s Princess Yuri?!”

Bam shrugs sheepishly. Khun sighs mightily, dropping his face into his hand. “Okay, fine. We can deal with this. We can deal with Yuri Zahard giving you the Black March to… help…” He looks up.

“…”

“Bam?”

“Yes, Mr. Khun?”

“Why did Headon give you a test?”

“Ah. He called me something like an Irregular.”

Chapter Text

So the Floor of Test both meets his expectations, and it doesn’t. On the one hand, the tests are about as ruthless as he was expecting. He has minimal trouble parsing them out and presenting himself for success, watching impartially as opponents fail in droves.

On the other hand, he meets his god damn soul mate, who happens to be a god damn Irregular, in possession of the god damn Black March, which he got from a god damn Princess.

Khun’s having a little more trouble dealing with that. Particularly since Bam seems destined to be a standout, no matter how unobtrusive he tries to appear. A ranker’s shinsu apparently has no effect on him, for starters. Khun himself is pushed back just by the suddenness of the attack; when he goes to inspect the barrier, he finds that the density is fairly low.

He doesn’t particularly want to make a spectacle of himself this early on, but a strange feeling begins to well up from inside. Sort of uncomfortable. Embarrassed. It’s strange, because he has nothing to feel uncomfortable or embarrassed about.

And then he sees Bam, standing all alone on the other side of the barrier, with the eyes of rankers and regulars alike bearing down on him.

Oh, Khun thinks blankly. Is that a thing?

Apparently so, because the feeling grows stronger the longer Bam stands there isolated and exposed, and then subsides as the ranker comes over to talk to him.

Well. That just won’t do.

Khun elbows past that annoying alligator and steps through the barrier. Manbarondenna snags a little, but it’s of no consequence. He walks up to Bam and the ranker with a smile.

“It looks like you win, Mr. Bam,” the ranker smiles. Lero-ro, Khun remembers. He has an unfortunate soul mark. A round dot on each cheek? Not pretty at all. Unless- ah. Not a soul mark, but rather, a lightning user. That makes him a bit more interesting, although not as much as that keen look in his eye. Test Administrator Lero-ro is someone to watch out for.

“Well, Mr. Bam?” Lero-ro asks. Khun looks at them questioningly.

“We made a bet, Mr. Khun. Mr. Lero-ro said that the green girl would come over first, but I thought that you might,” Bam chirps.

Khun smiles agreeably. “Is that so? I’m flattered.” He casts a look at the lizard who had passed through the barrier moments after he did. “She’s no joke.”

“Yeah,” Bam says. “She looked really close. I was going to pick her, but I suddenly got a feeling that you would make it here first.”

The test administrator is Looking at them again. He really is canny. Khun keeps smiling blandly.

“Anyway, what was your bet about?”

“I owe Mr. Bam a question now,” the ranker says. He’s smiling now too. All three of them are just standing around smiling forcefully at each other. It’s not quite the weirdest thing Khun has ever experienced, but it’s close.

“Ah- did you happen to see a girl with blonde hair and freckles pass through here recently?” Bam asks.

What. What. Why is Khun’s soulmate asking about a girl? This is critical, need-to-know information. Khun has never needed to know anything so critically in his life.

The ranker doesn’t know, of course. He offers Bam another question, and Khun is starting to get a little jealous. He’s never had a ranker practically throwing information at him.

Bam opens his mouth, then snaps it shut and sends a considering glance Khun’s way. An innocent smile lights up his face but there’s something a little…sly in Bam’s eyes. A curl of interest and anticipation sparks to life in Khun’s gut.

“Then… Mr. Lero-ro, can you please tell us how to pass the next test?”

Khun can’t hold back his burst of laughter, and is gratified when the ranker lets out his own amused huff.

“I suppose I should have seen that coming!” Lero-ro says. “All I can say is, don’t overthink it. Good luck, Regulars.”

Khun overthinks it.

Khun gets over it and focuses on the next game. His team hasn’t even gotten to start yet before it all goes to hell.

But damn, that lizard might as well have held a gun to her own head. She thinks she can come in here and threaten Khun’s soulmate right to his face? She can think again, and she can take her bet and her threats and shove them up her scaly green ass. Maybe Khun can’t beat her head on, but he won’t lose in a long game.

“When the game is over,” she says to Bam, “I wouldn’t mind killing you to get the Black March. I think it would be smarter to take the bet rather than lose both the Black March and your life. Well, it’s up to you.”

There’s frustration and helplessness that isn’t Khun’s building in his throat and he speaks before he can stop himself.

“No,” Khun says flatly. The lizard looks at him coldly.

“I wasn’t asking you, Ten Families brat.”

“You misunderstand me. If Bam wants to accept, that’s his decision. But I’m telling you, you’re wrong if you think you can kill him for refusing. I won’t let that happen.”

She stares at him, unblinking.

“No,” Bam says, and the lizard’s eyes slide blankly over to him. “If you know what this weapon is, then you know who the owner is. She’s coming back for it. If she learns that you killed me for it, I don’t think she’ll go easy on you.”

…That’s a little more successful than Khun’s, as far as threats go. Test Administrator Lero-ro seems to agree, given the twist of his mouth.

“Your proposed rule is rejected, Anaak Jahad, and your team has lost the round. Return to your cell.”

In the silence of their cell after the trespassers leave, Khun hopes he made the right decision. Honestly speaking, he wouldn’t have minded playing her bet. He found her entitlement galling and he would have liked to walk away from this game with her Green April.

A burst of frustrated remorse tears through Khun unexpectedly and he looks sharply at Bam.

“I’m sorry,” Bam gasps out. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know why I said that, I was going to agree, but I felt so angry at her all of a sudden! She’s going to target us because of me, and now there won’t be a rule to protect us later! I’m not- I’m not even a little bit strong, and I just made this decision without having any way to keep you both from being hurt!”

“Don’t be silly, Bam. No matter what she says, the test administrators won’t let regulars hurt each other outside of tests, not on this floor.” Khun pauses. That doesn’t mean they’ll stop her from stealing it later, though. “But just to be on the safe side, let’s win this game so we can hurry on to the next floor, alright?”

The alligator puffs up and releases an earsplitting war cry. “Of course! I’ll skewer these scrawny turtles, and if that lizard turns comes back, I’ll skewer her too!”

Khun learns that his soulmate is reckless and self-sacrificing. That’s unfortunate. It makes things harder on Khun to keep him safe.

(The desperate, clinging creature lurking in the darkest corner of Khun’s cold heart whispers good. If this is how he is, the type to eagerly use his own body as a shield, then he’s not the type to use Khun to advance his own agenda).

After the Crown Game comes to its unfortunate end and Khun has squirreled the Black March away somewhere that damned lizard can’t find it, Khun sits at his unconscious soulmate’s bedside and thinks.

He has a bad feeling this will be his life from now on, existing in a constant state of concern for someone else. It’s not particularly conducive to his own welfare. It’s…weird. After Maria, he swore that he himself would be his number one priority. He can already feel his priorities shifting now, though.

“Well,” Khun hums to himself and says a swift farewell to his plans of solitary advancement. “That didn’t last long. But…” he leans forward and brushes a lock of hair away from Bam’s forehead. “…I don’t think I’ll regret it.”

He does regret letting that girl from the Crown Game into the room. He doesn’t like the way she looks at Bam; there isn’t anywhere near enough affection for a relationship that was supposedly strong enough to warrant self-sacrifice. She tells him her story. Khun couldn’t care less about her goals, except for what it reveals to him about Bam.

It’s easy enough to agree to lie to Bam.

It’s even easier to break that promise.

“Um… How’s Rachel?” Bam asks, after Khun and the gator welcome him back to the world of the living.

“She’s fine,” Khun says.

“She’s a banana thief,” the gator grumbles in the same moment. Khun shrugs; he can’t argue that. She took, like, three of them.

“She came to see you,” Khun continues. “But, Bam… She asked me to lie to you. She asked me to tell you that you were mistaken about her identity. She said that she wants to climb the tower alone, and she’s afraid that you might stop her.”

Bam is silent for long enough that Khun prompts him.

“Bam? Can you tell me who she is?” The boy finally looks up. He’s troubled; Khun doesn’t need to feel it roiling in his gut to know that. It’s clear enough on his face.

“I lived alone for a very long time, trapped in a dark place. Well, I only realized I was trapped after Rachel found me. I had no idea there was a world outside my cave before then. She taught me to speak, and how to read and write. She brought me clothes to wear and strange food to eat, and she taught me how to be a person. All I want… is to be with her forever.”

Fuck. It’s even worse than he thought.

“But she wants more than that,” Khun finishes. Bam looks at him. “She told me. She wants to find the stars.”

“Yes,” Bam says. “She would often tell me about the stars, enough that I was sick of hearing about those silly, worthless things.”

“…What are you going to do, then?” Khun asks. He feels sick down to his very core. He wonders if Bam can feel it.

“I… I will respect her wishes. If she wants to pretend not to know me, then I will stay away,” he whispers. His lips pinch together, bloodless.

This is apparently more than the gator can take. “You idiot TURTLE!” he explodes. “Did that thieving yellow turtle steal your banana too?! If you want that turtle, and that turtle wants the stars, then you hunt them down and take them, so she can only turn to you!”

Bam looks up at them with wide eyes. Khun grimaces internally. He doesn’t exactly want to encourage Bam’s continued association with Rachel, but that particular tumor isn’t one he can excise without isolating Bam, at this point.

“The gator’s a little misguided, but he’s got a point. You’re here in the tower, now. Find something to climb for, because I intend to drag you along with me. I’ll take you all the way to the top, quick and dirty.”

Khun grins at him devilishly. Bam’s shocked look melts into a grin and he laughs. He’s still uncertain, Khun knows. It’s fine, for now. Now that he’s heard a bit about Bam’s past, he understands that Bam just hasn’t experienced enough of the world to know what he wants, except to be with that girl. Khun is bound and determined to find an alternative for him to chase after. He just has to get to know his soulmate first.

Khun gets to know his soulmate. In the month that follows, he learns that Bam knows shockingly little about the world. He learns that Bam finds his new surroundings beautiful and strange and intriguing, but he is only mildly curious about them. He’s not ambitious. He’s not covetous. Material things have little value to him except as curiosities. He’s happy to look but not touch.

But people. When it comes to other people, Bam is endlessly appreciative. He is thrilled to make new friends and listen to any stories they are willing to tell. He isn’t particularly interested in learning about the world, but he loves to hear people talk about it and their experiences around it.

(And everyone is thrilled to meet him, too. Khun watches over their interactions with a gimlet eye, ready to pounce on anyone looking to take advantage of him, but Bam’s earnestness is infectious. He even has his own competitors giving him helpful tips, of all things).

Bam is- strange, though, sometimes. He vacillates between staring too long and not making eye contact. He takes every word he hears at face value. He doesn’t understand jokes. He laughs too long and hard, or not at all. Khun comes to memorize the look on Bam’s face that means he is feeling lost.

It becomes second nature to precisely explain whatever situation has tripped him up. Khun starts getting weird looks for it. Isu calls him a buzzkill for explaining jokes instead of letting them land, but he couldn’t care less about that. It’s worth it to see the light of understanding come to life in Bam’s eyes.

In a complete reversal, he learns that Bam is apparently a prodigy when it comes to shinsu. He’s so damn excited about making lights bloom between his hands that no one can even be mad at him about it.

(Well. That’s not strictly true, but Khun is handling that).

Everything about him is just so bright. It would be so easy to be blinded by him. He can see the others falling one by one to his charms, like particularly fleshy dominos. This is the person that fate has declared to be his other half, his perfect foil, his equal and opposite in all things.

Khun doesn’t feel like he matches up. If he parsed them out, broke them down into their basest components, placed an itemized list of everything “Khun” and everything “Bam” in a scale and weighed them to see which was heavier, Khun knows that despite his skills and smarts and fortune and connections and looks, there would be no contest. There is an indescribable purity to Bam that makes Khun feel dirty by association.

But knowing that Bam is his other half? Well, it gives him hope for his own future. Someday, Bam and Khun will meet each other in the middle, perfectly balanced. It sends a thrill shooting through him.

It thrills him further to find all the little ways they already reflect each other. For instance, he learns that Bam can be a little sly, when he makes Khun fall for the oldest trick in the book.

They’re sharing a chocolate bar out on a balcony. Bam looks up and points at someone’s open window. “Mr. Khun, what is that thing?”

Khun follows the finger with his eyes. “It’s a fan. When you’re hot, you turn it on and the blades start spinning to make wind that cools you off.”

When he reaches for a piece of the chocolate bar, he finds it entirely gone. Bam is smiling widely. Khun’s eye twitches.

“Bam. I have something new to teach you. It’s called a noogie.”

For someone with such mediocre combat experience, Bam has the roughest hands Khun has ever encountered. They’re as calloused as elephant skin, with scarred knuckles and jagged, split nails and skin that’s dry enough to crack. It hurts Khun just looking at them.

“Geez, Bam,” Khun says, exasperated when the rough edge of one of Bam’s nails catches his skin as they grapple. “Trying to grow claws or something?”

Bam looks at him blankly. Sarcasm is something they’re still working on.

“Your nails. Do you need clippers? And maybe some lotion?”

Bam looks down at his hands, then looks back up at Khun helplessly. Khun waves a hand to guide him into the room and points out one of the many bottles on his dresser.

“That’s hand lotion, Bam,” Khun says. “Squirt a little in your palm and rub your hands together. It soothes your skin.”

Bam is simultaneously amazed and a little grossed out. Khun knows because he tells him so. “This is really weird stuff, Mr. Khun,” Bam says. His expression is complicated.

“Well you better get used to it!” Khun retorts. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you take some skin away with you the next time you shake someone’s hand. What happened to them, anyway?”

This is how Khun learns that in the years Bam spent trapped alone in a dark cave, he occupied himself with building a giant pile of rocks to investigate his only source of light, and that he just laid down and cried when he reached the top and found he couldn’t get out.

Khun wants to punch himself in the dick.

The tone of the evening shifts, after that. He sits Bam on his bed and shows him how to trim his nails and file down the rough edges of his calluses, and how to lotion his hands and face. The lesson stretches on, as he unearths more and more and more gaps in Bam’s hygiene education.

He teaches him that clothes should be changed daily. Shows him how to brush his teeth. How to wash his hands, and how often, and why it is important.

Bam soaks it up like a sponge. He is astonished by the concept of plumbing and running water. He is astonished by the mere existence of water in such high volume.

Khun is horrified to learn that Bam has never had access to a source of water large enough to bathe in. He’s never experienced the satisfaction of a mouthful of water, or the refreshment of a splash of water on his skin.

There were trickles running down the cave walls in some places, Bam says. He learned to lick them to drink. The small growing things in the cave gave him water, too, the fuzzy green ones that grew where the water met the ground and turned it soft and muddy would squish and dribble out drops of sweet, clean water when Bam chewed them.

(Khun cannot bring himself to ask what else Bam had to eat there. He tells himself it doesn’t matter. It’s in the past, and Bam will never be in that situation again).

He makes him shower, and this turns into an adventure.

Bam has no idea how to handle being wet.

“Mr. Khun,” Bam calls from behind the bathroom door. His voice is strangled. “How long do I have to stand here?”

“What, you don’t like it?” Khun calls back, unsympathetic. Bam will have to deal, because Khun won’t compromise on hygiene.

“It’s- warm?” Bam sounds tentative, like he’s struggling to find something nice to say. “And, uh. Tickle-y.”

“Try the shampoo!”

“The…what?”

“The shampoo! In the gray bottle?”

“You made that word up!”

As it turns out, though, Bam is very scent oriented. He loves the shampoo. He has never smelled anything so interesting before, and he loves that afterwards, he smells like it, too.

He spends the next hour smelling all of Khun’s lotions and shampoos and conditioners, meandering in and out of the bathroom as he douses himself in each, then rinses off and repeats until he has settled on his favorite. He makes Khun try them all on as well; Khun allows it, but only because he’s planning on taking a shower later, after Bam leaves. His nose is burning.

He introduces Bam to the wonder of a hairbrush next, and Bam tells him that his hair used to hang all the way down past he knees. He cut it not very long ago, just before he entered the tower, in fact. His head still feels weirdly light, like it’s about to float away off his shoulders.

(Khun shudders to think of the state of such a head of hair without access to water or shampoo or a brush).

Bam likes the brush. He huffs a laugh at the feel of bristles on his scalp and insists on brushing Khun’s.

He doesn’t end up taking a shower later. This is because Khun falls asleep as Bam gently drags the brush through his hair, slumping backwards against his chest. There is something inexorably soothing about the careful, repetitive motion and the warm, clean scent of a freshly bathed Bam wrapping around him. His heart is full to the brim with careful, new affection, his own and his partner’s. Khun has never felt so safe in his life. It should be terrifying, but, well. He’s too tired for that.

He’ll consider it in the morning.

(He reeks in the morning).

So they get to know each other, but they never talk about it. Not about what they are to each other, what more they might one day be. Bam tries to bring it up, once, when they are alone together in the privacy of his room; Khun cuts him off so fast the boy gets whiplash.

A burst of hurt that does not belong to him burns up his throat like stomach acid. Khun presses a sense of reassurance outwards, and the burning hurt subsides. Khun smiles at Bam gently, and Bam returns it tentatively, but he can tell confusion remains.

An hour later, in the cafeteria, Khun sits beside Bam and initiates a conversation with someone else. It is uncharacteristic of him, and his breath catches when he sees Bam realize it and sit up attentively.

(They are learning each other).

He casually asks Shibisu if they’ve gotten to use observers yet in the scout classes. If they’ve gotten any hints on how to plant them in hidden corners, invisibly watching. Shibisu whines that they haven’t, but Khun tunes him out. He’s made his point. He watches, gratified, as Bam meets his gaze and nods once.

There is Intrigue afoot on the Floor of Test. Khun has a sixth sense for these kinds of things. Also? Test Director Yu Hansung is too sketchy to be real.

Khun isn’t strong enough yet to just take Bam and run away with him, so he has to play by the rules. But, Khun grimaces, he doesn’t much like playing by the rules.

He’ll just play with the rules instead.

They pass the final test. Of course they do, it’s his plan, after all.

All of them except the only one who matters.

“Where is Bam,” Khun asks flatly. Rachel says nothing, just sits silently in her chair, hunched over her useless knees.

“Rachel,” he hisses instead of stabbing her. “Where is Bam? Where the hell is he?”

Something has happened, he knows. He felt Bam’s horror and confusion and fear. The force of it had almost knocked him flat on his ass half an hour ago.

“Khun,” Shibisu says nervously. “Look at her- she’s distraught. Give her a minute, okay?”

“A minute?” Khun spits incredulously. “Maybe Bam doesn’t have a minute!”

He wants to shout himself hoarse. He wants to grab the girl and shake her and shake her until her head falls off and Bam emerges from her sunken flesh, safe and sound. He thinks about showing them the mark, shoving it in their faces until they accept that Bam is still alive and waiting to be rescued.

He doesn’t.

(He learns, much, much later, that this paranoia saves his life today).

“I’m so sorry,” Rachel chokes out. She sounds just like Bam. Khun wants to strangle her until she stops.

“I couldn’t help him,” she cries.

“I felt him die,” she sobs.

“He was my soulmate,” she wails.

What. What.

She has proof, she says. She lifts up her skirt to show her calf, where a grey-white scar shaped like Khun’s soul mark is pressed into her skin. It looks like the real deal, real enough that he can see the team deflate with misery.

Khun’s heart drops like a stone, then leaps into his throat the next moment. Because he knows Bam is alive, but someone has gone to a lot of trouble to make them think he’s dead. Rachel couldn’t have pulled this off on her own. Faking his death, maybe. Faking a soulmark? Faking Bam and Khun’s soulmark and twisting the life out of it? Someone is keeping Khun’s soulmate away from him. Someone has found Bam to be Important enough to hide away.

(Khun would approve of this, would approve of hiding him away from this awful, covetous world, if only Bam wasn’t being hidden away from him).

There is so much more going on here than Khun realized, and he is going to get to the bottom of it.

He could use a little help, though.

“Hey, you.” The sharp female voice draws Khun’s attention, and he looks up to find someone he hadn’t expected to encounter for at least a couple hundred years, if ever. Ha Yuri Zahard stares down at him. “I hear you might know what happened to the Black March.”

Khun stares at her despondently, then nods. He stands up, hands shoved in his pockets, and starts to head down the hallway. “It’s this way.”

It’s not this way.

This way leads to Lero-ro’s room, where he can pull out a noise scrambler without suspicion to thwart any eavesdroppers. It’s convenient, anyway. He has something to tell both of them.

Maybe in a few weeks or months or years, Khun will be able to look back on this day and laugh at the face Lero-ro makes when he opens his door and finds Yuri Zahard standing there. For now though, there is work to do.

The moment Khun brings out his noise scrambler, there’s a variety of reactions. Yuri raises a brow. Lero-ro sighs and drags a hand down his face. The silver dwarf generates a lighthouse field to completely block sight and sound. He’s a useful one.

“Here’s the Black March,” Khun begins. He calls up his lighthouse and withdraws it from inside, where it has been safe from Anak’s snooping for the past month. It buzzes in his hand, but remains dormant. Yuri takes it from him and Khun is surprised by the sense of loss he feels. It’s Yuri’s, but it was also Bam’s. “There’s more, though. The test director has reported that Bam is dead. He’s not.”

“Mr. Khun,” Lero-ro sighs. “I know the circumstances are suspicious, to say the least. You know about that girl’s legs. But I looked for him, too. I couldn’t find any trace of him. I’m sorry, but he’s gone.”

“Shit,” Yuri hisses. “Shit. That kid… he was something different. He was going to be someone.”

“He’s not dead,” Khun insists. “I would know better than anyone. He- Bam, he’s.” He takes a deep, fortifying breath. Khun has never taken such an outrageous risk in his life. “Bam is my soulmate.”

The shocked silence is gratifying, in a way. But it’s mostly terrifying.

The rankers all exchange looks.

“…Rachel showed us a dead soul mark,” Lero-ro said slowly.

“It was fake. A tattoo, or plastic surgery. Just- look.” Khun lifts his shirt and wiggles down his waistband just enough to show the top of his mark. Someone gasps. Khun isn’t sure who.

“I’ve never seen a real one before,” Yuri says quietly. Lero-ro nods, but the dwarf speaks up.

“I have. That’s definitely a real one. But how do we know that Bam is the person on the other side of that mark?”

“Why would I lie about it?” Khun snaps angrily, jerking his clothes back into place. “It doesn’t matter. Whether you believe me or not, I can feel him, and he’s alive and he’s scared. I’m not giving up on him, and if you are, then what the hell good are you?”

Miraculously, Khun makes it out of the room alive. He doesn’t see any of them again for many years.

Chapter Text

So his soulmate was kidnapped. 

Bam seems to be doing okay. Not well, but okay. Khun frequently feels bursts of unhappiness and remorse and loneliness, but just as often, he feels a sort of sharp, grim determination. A sense of accomplishment. So Bam is in an unpleasant situation, is probably being made to do things he doesn’t want to, but he’s making it work. 

Khun is so proud of him it hurts. He hopes Bam can feel it. 

Because that is all he can do. The frustration eats him alive. If he lets on that he knows Bam is still out there, whoever has him will just squirrel him away even deeper and Khun will lose any chance of ever finding him. 

As far as he can tell, there are two possible leads: Yu Hansung, and Rachel. As much as Khun would like to rip Yu Hansung down from his pedestal, he is beyond Khun’s abilities to outmaneuver. For now, at least.

Rachel, on the other hand, he can handle. He’ll stay with her, under the guise of honoring Bam’s last wish. He’ll worm his way into her trust, he’ll weasel out any tidbits she fails to obscure, and when the time is right, he will thoroughly enjoy stripping her flesh from her bones.

He tells Shibisu. Not everything. Not about being soul mates. But he tells him about Rachel’s legs and the note and the contention between the test director and the test administrators. Unsavory things were happening just out of view on the Floor of Test. Turns out, Shibisu knew most of it. Not about Rachel, but he had his own suspicions about that sketchy floor director.

He tells Shibisu he is convinced Bam is alive. The scout accepts it, and doesn’t ask how he knows that Rachel’s mark is fake. Khun thinks he could come to trust him in time, but not yet. Shibisu is a good man, but he’s also a smart man, and smart men can become very dangerous if they get desperate. Khun can’t take that risk.

He tells the gator, too. Not everything. He’s an alligator of action; he doesn’t need the little details, just point him in a direction, wind him up, and watch him go. It’s enough to tell him that Yu Hansung played them like puppets and he’s raring to go.

Khun tells him about being soulmates, though. However annoyed he and the gator are by each other, he has no doubts that Rak cares for Bam, and he deserves to know for certain that Bam is okay. Khun doesn’t know what the future holds, doesn’t know if he and Rak might one day point their weapons at one another, but he’s confident in Rak’s affection for Bam and in Rak’s utter incapability to act with deception. He knows that Rak will never use Bam against him.

(As a one-time courtesy, he pretends to ignore the gator’s sobbing when he relays the news).

Years pass. Khun makes contacts to serve as his eyes and ears across the expanse of the tower. He hesitates to call any of them friends or enemies; they’re just people he knows, forming one huge amorphous bubble around him, endlessly shifting in usefulness, teeter-totting the line between hostility and cooperation.

They climb, but they’re careful about it. Khun and Shibisu both agree that someone powerful wanted Bam for something dangerous. Khun loves him, he does, but the only thing interesting or dangerous about Bam right now is his status as an irregular. Anyone in a position to use an irregular is someone they can’t take lightly.

Rachel has connections, he knows. Khun’s not the only one hauling her deadweight up each floor. In such close proximity to her, it’s only a matter of time before he clashes again with whoever took Bam from him, so he leaves Bam’s team to Isu and starts a new one, just himself and Rachel and his handpicked pawns.

Ran is his first choice. Novick falls in next. They’re both straightforward enough for Khun to be relatively confident in their motivations.

(Battle maniacs. They’re battle maniacs).

Gyetang… Khun’s not sure. He’s simple. Friendly. A little cowardly, but not so much that it impacts his performance. A talented enough spear-bearer to have earned a place on Khun’s team. Khun hopes he’s not a plant, because he’s enjoying being teamed up with someone he never has to worry about. 

Apple - and Michael, soon after - is a stroke of luck he does not trust, all things considered. They’re good, but they’re convenient. They appeared out of nowhere and offered themselves up on a silver platter, perfect matches for the positions he was trying to fill. He doesn’t know what they want, not like the others. He’s happy to use them for now, but he’ll take his time confiding in them.

Edin Dan is easy. He put up enough of a fight joining the team that Khun is 99% sure he doesn’t have any nefarious intentions, as far as Rachel is concerned. He still has a way to go before Khun can call him trustworthy, though. He wouldn’t be surprised if the scout is harboring an angry little core of dislike for him.

Overall, they’re an excellent team, and they have the potential to be exceptional; Khun won’t settle for less than the best. Khun pushes them hard, and they whine and complain but they rise to the challenge again and again and again. Pride begins to unfurl, slow and steady within him. He’s building something, here. Something important.

Rachel sours the accomplishment, of course. Every moment he has to see her awful face and hear her awful voice and pretend he doesn’t want to break her into tiny pieces takes a toll on him, mentally. Khun committed to playing the long game with her, though, and he intends to follow through. He intends to carry her all the way to the top, and he can’t fucking wait to tear the floor out from beneath her.

But she doesn’t make it easy. Every time she cries to him about seeing Bam in her dreams, every time he overhears her telling feeble, melancholy tales of her lost soulmate to his teammates, she takes her life in her hands. She’s lucky Khun has such exceptional self-control.

The point is, Khun is stressed. He can’t afford to appear anything but perfectly poised, perfectly comfortable, perfectly confident. He’s rubbing elbows with at least one snake, and he fears there may be more. He needs to train, but he can’t let them see his struggles. 

Lightbearing is fine; he can just ensconce himself within his lighthouse and broaden his range of control. His calculations get better, his shields get stronger, his teleportation gets faster and further. Progression is easy.

But it’s not enough, not when he feels Bam struggling every damn day to fight his way back to him. Khun needs his arsenal of skills to be as sharp and copious as possible, because when he and Bam find their way back to each other, he’ll be damned if he lets anything tear them apart again. 

So he tries wave controlling. It’s…a work in progress. He has, like, a bang and a half. By normal standards, for a regular at his level, it’s quite good. A few floors up and a few years away, the really excellent and talented wave controllers might start showing up with three bangs. But as far as Khun’s concerned, he’s either excellent or a failure. Since he is not excellent, he’ll focus his efforts elsewhere and come back to this when he’s mastered everything else.

What he needs, he thinks distastefully, is spearbearing. 

Khun hates it. It’s just not ‘him’ at all. He’s a prodigy, he knows, and it makes him sick to his stomach. Khun intends to steal all the recognition the name of Khun has earned right out from under his asshole womanizing father, and that won’t happen if he makes his name as a spearbearer like him. But, lately, it seems that everything he’s good at makes him sick to his stomach:

Walking away from the Floor of Test without his soulmate. Breaking away from Bam’s team. Holding Rachel’s hand and hugging her and commiserating with her. Simply existing with the knowledge that his soulmate is unhappy and there’s nothing he can do about it.

And now, spearbearing. The only problem is, he’s reached the limit of what he can do on his own. He needs…help, he grimaces. For once, help falls into his lap.

“What exactly is going on here, A.A.?” Ran finds him one night shortly after they’ve filled the team and begun training for the next test.

“We’re climbing the tower, Ran,” Khun says blandly. Ran rolls his eyes so loudly Khun can hear it from across the room.

“I mean Rachel. I know what you said. She’s your dead friend’s soulmate. But she’s not up to your standards, and I’m not just talking about her legs.”

Khun turns fully in his chair to regard Ran. The younger Khun is hovering over near his closed door; there’s something almost insecure in his stance. He doesn’t know yet where he stands with Khun. Doesn’t know how far trust extends between them. Khun’s not sure either.

It’s something Khun has been thinking about lately. So far, he’s kept Rachel’s secret, but there’s a cost. The only way he can keep playing this game with her is if he keeps his walls up all the time, and he can see the impact it has on the team. There’s growing camaraderie among the rest of them, but Khun is held apart; it’s not bad, not yet, but it has the potential to widen into an insurmountable chasm. He keeps telling himself- just a little longer observing them, checking their histories, and he can be confident in their trustworthiness.

He thinks about Bam. Bam would have been all in right from the get-go, earnest and hopeful. Maybe it’s time to take the plunge.

“There’s nothing wrong with her legs.”

Ran stares at him. “What?”

“There’s nothing wrong with her legs,” Khun repeats patiently. He fights to keep a straight face as he sees the moment Ran’s annoyance meter vaults over the line from ‘bothersome’ to ‘kill it dead.’ Ran sees his amusement, though, and rolls his eyes even louder than before.

“A.A., just tell me already.”

Khun huffs a laugh. “Okay,” he says, becoming solemn. Ran stands alert, ready. “You know about Rachel’s soulmate, my best friend.” Ran nods. “He was supposedly killed by a monster on the Floor of Test, and she was the only witness. But she’s lying about her legs. I think- no. I know she was part of the plot to kill him, and I want to know why and who helped her.”

Ran nods slowly. “If you acknowledged him,” he tests, “then he wasn’t weak. Someone like her couldn’t have taken him out easily, right? So someone must have helped her, and whoever that was, they’re strong enough to deter you from just pulling the information out of her.”

Aww. Khun is flattered. This cute relative of his has such a high opinion of Khun and his abilities.

“That’s part of it,” Khun concedes. “It’s true that there are powerful people backing her. I don’t want those people to realize that I’m aware of them, because that friend of mine is alive. I know it, and I don’t want them to bury him even deeper.” Khun is silent for a moment. “But more than that, I want to help Rachel climb the tower. I want to bring her inches away from her dream, and then I want to rip it out from underneath her.”

Ran sighs. “How bothersome. Has anyone ever told you that you’re a little extra, A.A?”

“I’m afraid you have the honor of being the first to survive it,” Khun says dryly. “Anyway, keep an eye on her. Be polite, be friendly, but don’t trust her. She’ll use you as a footstool and stab you on the way up just for the fun of it. And keep this quiet from the rest of the team, okay? I can’t tell yet who might be planted from Rachel’s supporters.”

Ran ruffles a hand through his hair. “What a pain,” he mutters. “… thanks. For telling me.”

Khun expects him to leave, but Ran stays, hands shoved in his pockets, eyes on the floor. 

“Something else, Ran?” Khun asks pointedly. Ran averts his eyes.

“…You’ve been watching me practice my throwing,” he says. Khun smiles tightly.

“Is there something wrong with the team leader evaluating his teammates’ abilities?” he asks primly.

“That’s not-” Ran starts. Stops. Starts again. “Look, don’t bite my head off, A.A. If you want to practice, I’ll stay late a couple times a week.”

Look. Khun has this thing, okay? When people tell him not to do something, it really makes him want to do it. He valiantly resists the urge to bite Ran’s head off.

Instead, he scowls and scoffs and huffs a little for flavor, but then he nods. Ran snorts at him and leaves him to his sulking.

Their first session leaves him heaving into the bushes. Khun thinks he might be in a little over his head.

The next one is a little better. His arms and hands and fingers definitely feel like they’re about to fall off. But they don’t! That’s a silver lining if Khun’s ever seen one.

Weeks pass. Khun’s spear-throwing gets much, much better, in the way only a direct descendant’s can. Ran starts trying to strong-arm him into making shinsu spears. This becomes frustrating. Ran keeps talking about shinsu manipulation in terms of electricity. Khun’s shinsu keeps vociferously refusing to crackle or spark. 

The frustration comes to its inevitable conclusion; that is to say, they work things out like the civilized, level-headed Sons of Khun they are and mutually body slam one another into a river.

As they slog back to the apartment, dripping wet and horrifyingly muddy, Ran mutters to him in an undertone, “What do you think about Novick?”

“I think he’s too old for you,” Khun says promptly. Ran jabs him in the ribs.

“…He’s probably fine,” Khun concedes, rubbing his side. Ran nods. “The others?”

“Dan’s a pain,” Ran says. “But he’s not with Rachel. He might resent you, though. I don’t know.” Khun nods. He feels the same.

“Gyetang, maybe. If he wasn’t before, he might be now. He listens to Rachels stories. It’s pretty bothersome.” Khun has noticed that, too. Gyetang doesn’t seem duplicitous, but he’s also a literal bird. 

Khun is not an expert in bird body language. For all he knows, Gyetang could be flipping him off every time he clicks his beak.

“Apple’s annoying. Always crunching on stuff,” Ran grumbles. Khun’s mouth quirks up in a grin. If that’s all Ran has to say, it’s an endorsement if Khun’s ever heard one. He’s inclined to agree. His faith in Apple has been growing stronger by the day.

“Michael…watches you,” Ran says uncomfortably. Ugh. Yeah, Khun knows. He’s tried to play into it, just a little. Maybe Michael is a plant, maybe not, but if can pull on Michael’s attraction enough, he can cement him into Khun’s team and away from any split loyalties. 

So when Michael walks by, Khun will stretch his back a little, or he’ll arch his neck, or he’ll take a pen cap between his lips and suck and chew while staring thoughtfully out the window, pretending not to feel Michael's subtle gaze.

(It makes him sick to his stomach, but Khun has never let something like that stand in his way before).

“…Yeah,” Khun acknowledges. “It’s useful, for now. So is he.” Ran scoffs. They keep walking.

“I don’t disagree with your assessments,” Khun says finally. “But I don’t want to act on anything yet. Maybe in a few floors. It’s hard to tell who might be watching.”

FUG, he doesn’t say. Khun doesn’t believe in superstitions like ‘speak of the devil and he shall appear,’ but Khun also doesn’t believe in taking stupid risks, and this seems like one. 

He’s thought about it a lot. He’s talked it over in hushed tones with Shibisu. He’s researched on the sly.

What makes an irregular, an irregular? They come from outside. Why is that dangerous? It means they’re powerful. Why is that so? Because the tower’s power restrictions don’t apply to them. What else doesn’t apply to them? The tower’s contracts with others. Like the King’s immortality.

It’s a bit of a stretch, Khun admits. But he prefers to plan for the worst, and the worst case scenario is that FUG is in league with the Floor of Tests and kidnapped Bam to turn him into a king killer.

A few years into his climb, Khun had started hearing talk of a new slayer candidate. A regular slayer candidate. Coincidence? Khun’s nasty, sneaky mind thinks not.

Jue Viole Grace. There’s not much information about him. No pictures that Khun has been able to verify. Reliable sources agree that he has dark hair and is climbing the tower at breakneck speed. Rumors debate whether he’s a fisherman without a needle or a prodigiously skilled wave controller. Rumors agree that he works alone, but Khun’s sources haven’t been able to confirm that. Some of the floor tests require teammates, after all. 

In any case, the slayer candidate is climbing quickly enough that he’ll catch up to Khun soon enough. Last he heard, he’d made it to the 20th floor. The answers Khun has been waiting for are so close he can taste them.

Jue Viole Grace disappears on the 21st floor.

Chapter Text

“It has been three days,” Hansung says. “Your friends think you’re dead.”

“They don’t,” Bam bites back, then regrets it. He has managed to stay mostly silent since— falling, and it feels now that he has lost ground.

(He never had it to begin with).

“They have good reason to,” Hansung continues. “After all, your own soulmate confirmed your death.”

Bam’s heart seizes in his chest. “My soulmate?” he breathes.

“Your dear friend, Rachel,” Hansung explains.

“Rachel is not my soulmate!” Bam shouts, and Hansung smiles, wolf-like.

“Your friends would beg to differ.” He shrugs and spreads his hands. “She showed them her soulmark, you know. A perfect match to yours.”

Bam does not understand. Rachel’s soul mark does not look anything like his! Not when they first met and Bam had bugged her until she showed it to him, and certainly not now, with color and life blooming in Bam’s.

This does not seem right to him. But Hansung is so confident… perhaps this is Bam again, misunderstanding the nuances of this world, lacking information inherent to normal residents of the tower. Mr. Khun taught him that knowledge is a powerful weapon, and Bam does not want to wear his ignorance more obviously than he already does.

“She— faked my mark?” Bam whispers, accepting out of hand what he wishes false with all of his being. He supposes these people must have some way to do that, although there is something deeply, intrinsically wrong about the notion. “She really told everyone we’re soulmates? That I’m… dead?”

“That’s right,” Hansung confirms. “It wasn’t hard to convince them. They didn’t even question whether the marks were a match, although we put a lot of effort into replicating yours from Rachel’s memory. You exerted such effort gaining support for her climb! Conviction like that for another person is very unusual in this tower. 

“But now they understand; you simply could not bear to part with your soulmate. It makes sense now. You make sense now. There was no need to look deeper.”

Bam stares at him, thunderstruck. He does not know the word for what he is feeling, only that it is deep and terrible. Hansung continues, viciously.

“It seems that, in your honor, your poor, distraught friends have elected to form a team and carry your poor, crippled soulmate up the tower. It’s sweet,” he smiles, below cold, flat eyes. “You don’t often see that kind of selfless cooperation in the tower. It’s too bad it’s all a lie.”

“You’re a monster,” Bam chokes out. “You can’t do this."

“The Twenty-Fifth Bam is dead,” Hansung heralds, spreading his hands, conceited as a prophet. “Welcome to FUG, Jue Viole Grace.”

The next day, after Bam still has not moved, Hansung tells him about the rings. 

Jue Viole Grace breathes.

Bam tries to keep his emotions under control. He really does. It’s just— sometimes, trapped in this awful place and bereft of his dear friends and his precious soulmate, hopelessness clings like a funeral shroud about his shoulders and he can’t help the heartache that settles deep and leech-like behind his ribs.

When that happens, he knows that he’s upset Mr. Khun, because he can feel Mr. Khun ache with sympathetic loneliness which just makes Bam hurt more, and then it just turns into one big awful feedback loop of misery and regret that neither of them recovers from for hours.

He wishes he could just— turn himself off, sometimes. Mr. Khun was so good to him when they were together, and he tries so hard to make Bam feel better while they’re apart, sending warm pulses of reassurance and affection to him when Bam is feeling down. Bam wishes he weren’t such a burden to such an incredible person.

But every once in a while, this connection is worth it. Those rare times when Bam has performed above expectation, when he can see that he’s made someone wary, made someone stop and rethink their awful plan to hold his friends hostage. 

FUG is working very hard to make him strong. Bam likes making them wonder what will happen to them when he becomes too strong to control.

Mr. Khun seems to like it, too. He sends the nicest feelings Bam’s way whenever Bam broadcasts that grim success. Fierce joy, visceral pride. Vindication.

(It is heady, this meager communication between them. I am here, it screams. I see you, I hear you, echoes back).

He’ll get there, one day. He doesn’t know when. The prospect is daunting. But now, he has a goal. Before entering the tower, and then again on the Floor of Test after finding Rachel, Bam was adrift. No plans, no objectives. Just living one day at a time, enjoying those precious moments with the precious people beside him.

Bam has learned that determination is a miraculous thing. Every accomplishment he can boast — his Tall Rocks tower, winning Headon’s test, killing the Bull — burst into the world only after he had expended his entire being. He has learned that this world will not hand happiness to him on a platter. He has to claim it for himself.

And now, he intends to claim Mr. Khun.

Ah. Bam’s face flushes. Not like that. For now? He flushes even more deeply.

The point is, Bam intends to fight his way back to Mr. Khun’s side no matter what. Everything else can come after that. Reuniting with his friends, breaking free from FUG, finding Rachel to ask her why why why— 

That can happen later, after he has earned the right to walk beside his soulmate.

In his years caught like a mouse beneath FUG’s clawed paw, Bam keeps his soul mark hidden. He is powerless, generally speaking, but in this, he can offer some meager protection for Mr. Khun.

He starts with medical gauze, always taped over his mark; insurance for the off-chance someone might catch him with his shirt off. 

In case of persistence, he’s planning to claim such deep distress from the falsification of his soul mark that he can’t bear to have anyone see it again. Bam thinks he could make it work. Mr. Khun had told him once that he had very guileless eyes.

(Mr. Khun had then had to define ‘guileless' for him. It means sincere. Genuine. Innocent. Bam likes these words. He used to whisper them to himself to remember them, although he is not sure how well they describe him now).

These particular suits of armor turn out to be unnecessary, however, because Bam ends up leaning hard on his unusual education.

“I was told that a person should never take off their clothes around other people,” he says when they bring in a tailor.

“I was told that the floor will crumble beneath me if I ever make a woman uncomfortable with my skin,” he says when they bring in a nurse.

“I was told that only perverts would ask to see me nude,” he says when Hansung finds him, fully exasperated with his stubbornness. 

Rachel had told him that lying would make his tongue shrivel up and fall out. Bam is skeptical by now about most of the things she had told him, but it still makes him uneasy to speak words that are not true. Turns out, the truth is easy enough to adjust to suit his needs. They eventually stop bugging him about his shirt and chalk it up to some weird, quirky prudishness.

(He wonders if this is Mr. Khun’s influence. He wouldn’t mind, if it was).

But, in the dark of night, in the privacy of the small bathroom adjacent to his bedroom, Bam sometimes takes off his shirt and peels off the gauze and looks deep into his soul mark. He can’t see the color of it, not really; he doesn’t dare look with the lights on, not when there could be invisible observers cataloging his every move and he can’t risk them learning about Mr. Khun.

It is almost enough just to trace his eyes and fingers over the smear in the dark of the unlit bathroom. Even now, he remembers the beauty of the vibrant color in full light. The warm golden-orange of a windswept field, stretching as far as the eye can see, set against the endless calm blue of a clear, midday sky. 

Bam wonders if it is coincidence that his soul mark is painted with the colors the world had bled around him the moment it awakened. Did it imprint with the awakening, a technicolor snapshot of serendipity realized? Or could it be fate? Perhaps he and Mr. Khun had been fated since birth to meet in that place, in that instant, and his soul mark was designed from inception to reflect that beautiful moment.

Maybe someday, he and Mr. Khun could meet another pair of soulmates. Maybe he could ask them—

Is yours the same? Is yours also dripping with the color of the most beautiful moment of your life?

In a way, Bam gets his wish.

Bam doesn’t quite know what to make of Ha Jinsung, at first. He is very strong, obviously, and Bam learns that he is very old. He is a staunch enemy of the Ten Great Families after slaughtering an entire branch of the Ha family. He is apparently Yuri’s uncle. 

He wears a soul mark like a battle scar across the side of his face, but it is the strangest soul mark Bam has ever seen. His and Mr. Khun’s are bright with their connection, but everyone else’s he has seen is flat black. Jinsung’s is a sort of muddy grey-pink. It looks sick. Bam is morbidly intrigued and horrified all at once. Jinsung catches him looking at it, once.

“What, you’ve never seen dead mark before, kid?” Jinsung asks, cool and relaxed, lighting a cigarette over Bam’s body where he is splayed out and aching.

Bam winces upright. “No,” he says honestly. “What happened to it?”

Jinsung eyes him steadily. “I guess you wouldn’t have,” he says thoughtfully. “Soul marks fade into scars when your soulmate dies.”

Bam is aghast. “Did it hurt?”

Jinsung’s face slams shut. “That’s a pretty damn impolite question to ask, Viole.”

Bam crumples, a little; Jinsung has never scolded him before. The man eyes him for a moment before his expression softens.

“It shouldn’t hurt you. If you haven’t met your soulmate, you can’t feel anything from them, not even when they die.”

Bam is— not great, when it comes to context clues. He is still learning all the ways people communicate beyond words, but even he can read between the lines here. A tight worm of anxiety wriggles through him.

He wants to ask. Bam knows the question is crass, given the circumstances. But, if there is one thing Bam can say about Jinsung, it is that he has never truly harmed him, so Bam takes the plunge.

“Will you tell me about them?”

Jinsung stares him down. His face is blocked out in incredulity. Bam supposes that no one would have had the social ineptitude to ask before, but as with increasingly many things these days, Bam can just blame his awkwardness and impolite boldness on his upbringing.

“…Hell,” Jinsung mutters finally. “Why not? Her name was…”

Bam learns that Jinsung and his soul mate met several thousand years ago. They couldn’t hide it, not the way Bam and Mr. Khun can. Jinsung’s mark is on the side of his face, and his soulmate’s was on her throat.

They were beautiful, Jinsung says.

They were coveted, the ancient beast says. Fury builds in his voice. Jinsung was protected by the strength of his body, but his soulmate was— not. Not weak, but not the inexorable force of nature that was Ha Jinsung.

She was taken and sold to the head of the branch family. It was said that for the few weeks he had her, the branch head had done nothing but stare into the depths of her realized mark. Jinsung had made sure it didn’t last long, but in the chaos of the assault, she had been mortally wounded. As she lay dying, she had made him promise to live, and to remember her. That promise was the only thing keeping him from following her.

Bam is silent after Jinsung finishes. He is terrified. He hears the story play out with himself and Mr. Khun as the main actors. It would be so, so easy for it to happen to them. 

Bam’s resolve solidifies; he will find his way back to Mr. Khun, and he will never let him go.

(He does not dare ask Jinsung what color his mark used to be).

After four years of training, Bam is commanded to begin climbing the tower. He is told that if he ever fails, if he ever even hesitates, his friends will pay in blood. Bam swallows his outrage and lets it simmer deep within himself. One day, he tells himself. One day.

On the whole, his climb is uneventful. It is amazing to see so many different kinds of people doing so many different things. The Floor of Test had taught him that people came in all kinds of shapes and sizes and personalities, but he had not realized exactly how many different shapes and sizes and personalities existed until he was released from his cage.

He doesn’t struggle with the climb, exactly. After being ground into the dirt by Hansung and Jinsung and his other trainers, Bam has no trouble with the physical aspects of the tests. 

He is— distressed by the psychological. Bam wins, always, but he has sworn to win alone, because anyone he associates with comes under FUG’s scrutiny and Bam does not wish that on anyone. But it means that Bam learns to betray as easily as he breathes.

Bam tries to work alone as much as he can, but a great many tests require cooperation between contestants. When there is no other recourse, he consents to the minimum required alliance, and then without fail he tears them down and steps upon their successes and their dreams before he proceeds upwards.

The guilt eats him alive.

(And. FUG tells him to…do things, sometimes. Just rarely. Special tasks during tests to prove his obedience. Bam obeys, always. More than the betrayal, more than the crushing of hopes, it is these awful tasks that gnaw at his insides the most. He tries very hard not to think of them, after).

The 20^th floor is— different. The tests are not beyond his ability to handle, not even the duel with the ranker, but this is the first time his fellow competitors are so determined to form a team with him. Perhaps it is a function of the nature of this floor; it is a cruel place, where the hopeful and the hopeless are preyed upon equally by the scum of the earth.

Bam’s new teammates have spent so long in this place that they carry the stench of it with them, reeking of desperation. They are not strong. But they can be. 

Wangnan is admirable. His body is weak, his skills unrefined, but to hear him speak is to be filled with hope for the future. Bam does not have to know him, to know him. He will shine, someday, a beacon in the dark for the lost and despairing.

Yeon is... complicated? Her infamous flames have great power, but she fears them so desperately. She will be great, Bam knows, but for now, her confusion holds her back. Confusion over her powers, over her responsibilities, over her person. Her confusion even spills into her opinion of Bam himself, he thinks wryly. 

Horyang is staid. There is great strength in his body, and his mind is tempered by hardship. He is restrained and quiet, placid and stolid, but Bam senses a deep well of motivation within him. Bam does not know what he seeks in the tower, but he hopes it brings him peace when he finds it.

Arkraptor is sad. He hides it well, but he and Bam are cut from the same cloth, in some ways. Their intentions are— misunderstood, at times. But Arkraptor is settled and sure of himself in a way Bam hopes to be, one day. His steadiness and maturity is reassuring (particularly given the present company).

Prince is young. He has the cruelty and selfishness of a child who has never borne responsibility, but he is also learning to be different. Horyang may be silently exasperated by his attention, but their bond will do great things for both of them.

Miseng is young as well, but not in the same way as Prince. She has the fears and insecurities of a child, but her determination is remarkable and will carry her far, Bam thinks. She seems— incomplete, right now. She needs time to find herself, and grow. Bam intends to make sure she has it.

Goseng is an enigma, to Bam. She is protective and kind to the team and to Miseng especially, but she does not seem to have a goal. Bam does not understand why someone would subject themselves to the horrors of climbing the tower if there is not a great treasure waiting for them along the way. She just seems to exist, right now. Maybe she is searching for something to live for. This, Bam understands.

They are all very, very lost. In that way, Bam fits well among them. In other ways, he tries to stay apart. His presence makes them uneasy, understandably. Bam prefers to exist on their periphery, anyway. It has been a long time since he was in the presence of people who are, well. Happy. And carefree. Their laughter flows freely. Bam enjoys the sound of it, but he is unsure how to react in its presence.

In the wake of their celebration, they rest in the room behind him. Bam hopes they sleep well.

This test was difficult on all of them, for different reasons. He hopes the 21^st floor is not so trying.

This man is stronger than his Master, Bam realizes.

This man will kill him, Bam realizes.

He steps forward anyway. If he runs here, his friends will die. Bam could not stand to live in a world where he has caused their deaths. Bam would not stand to live in a world where he caused their deaths. If he is going to die either way, then the least he can do is disincline FUG’s retribution against them with his passing. He only hopes it is not too painful for Mr. Khun.

Bam eyes his opponent skeptically. That shinsu is terrifying. He doubts his imminent death will be painless, but maybe it will be quick, at least.

“Are you ready, baby?” The man grins. It is a feral thing. “I’ll even be nice and give you a head start.”

Bam will take what he can get and drops down the hole, for what it is worth. There is no way he can outrun this man, and he won’t, regardless. At least now, in this moment, he can die with dignity and with some facsimile of strength in his heart. He gathers shinsu in his fist. Doesn’t bother reinforcing his body; it won’t do much.

Miseng is a surprise.

The pain is not, but damned if it doesn’t hurt like a bitch anyway.

Afterwards, Bam lies prone on the ground, barely conscious, oozing blood. He registers his opponent approaching casually and he grasps weakly at Miseng, trying to shift his body to cover hers. 

His shirt slips. 

Someone gasps.

Bam sleeps.

Bam wakes up.

This is a pleasant surprise. 

He’s laid out flat on his belly, surrounded by warm, clean-smelling sheets. The fabric is luxuriously soft on the bare skin of his cheek and chest.

His eyes snap open. There’s a strangled noise building in his throat as he tries to leverage himself up off the bed. It’s— much harder than it has ever been. His head feels loopy. His arms feel flabby. His back is sore and tight, like it’s been replaced by a board. All told, he is floppy and brittle at the same time.

Bam has become a poorly cooked pasta noodle. This is terrible.

“Sup, baby,” someone says casually. The strangled noise in Bam’s throat bursts free and he falls right back on his face.

His opponent is sitting in a fold-up chair at his bedside, reclining with his shoes propped up on Bam’s mattress. He’s clutching a handheld video game, burning red eyes focused intently on the screen. Bam hears a miserable beepbeepbeep, a groan from his opponent, and then a more mechanical groan as the game console crumples in his hands. Rest in peace, little guy.

“Shit,” the man mutters, brushing plastic fragments off his lap. “Hachuling’s never gonna let me live this down.”

“…Wha-?” Bam rasps. The man’s eyes flick up to him.

“Take it easy, baby. I did a real number on you. Need another painkiller?”

Bam is higher than God. He does not need another painkiller. He tells his opponent this, and the man cackles.

“Okay, buddy, fair enough,” he chuckles, wiping a tear away from the corner of his eye. The motion draws Bam’s attention to the small, powder blue bandaid on the man’s cheek. It has a teddy bear face on it. It is very cute. “Go back to sleep, yeah? We’ll talk again when you’re back on solid ground with the rest of us mortals.”

Bam has no idea who this man is. This is becoming increasingly upsetting. He says as much.

“What, too stoned to read? It’s written right here on my back,” he grins, sharp and expectant. As he gets up and walks away, Bam sees it. Mazino.

…He might be higher than he realized.

Some indeterminate time later, Bam is pleased to learn that he was not that high. On the other hand, it turns out he picked a fight with Urek Mazino. You win some, you lose some.

“FUG!” Ehwa gasps, lurching out of her seat as he stumbles through the bedroom door into an unfamiliar living room. “You’re awake! I mean— damn it! Go back to sleep, you criminal scum!”

Bam is tired enough that when he collapses into a chair at the table and drops his head into his arms, he lets himself roll his eyes. He likes her, despite himself, but she is exhausting.

“Stop yelling at him, flamethrower!” Wangnan yells. “Can’t you see he’s tired?!”

“You’re yelling too!”

“You’re both yelling, you idiots!” Goseng snaps.

“Listen to those bickering morons, Sir Devil,” Prince snickers. Loudly. Arkraptor sighs, with feeling.

“How are you, Viole?” Mr. Horyang asks quietly. Bless this man.

“Better,” Bam says. “What happened?”

The team trades glances, and Bam swallows down a knot of anxiety. This doesn’t bode well.

“You were hurt. Bad,” Wangnan says solemnly. “Well, but you know that already. It turns out, that man you fought? That was Urek Mazino.”

A disbelieving hush settles around them.

“It’s unreal,” Goseng mutters. “I mean, he’s here. I’ve seen him and talked to him. He’ll be back soon. But still, it’s Urek Mazino.”

“I know,” Bam acknowledges. “I woke up once and he was there. Why did he stay?”

The team trades glances again. He wishes they would stop doing that.

“Uh,” Goseng says, biting her lip. “When you were— injured… I mean, that is to say…”

“Your shirt fell off,” Arkraptor says bluntly. “We all saw what you have on your side.”

Bam goes still. 

“Urek saw it too,” Miseng whispers. “He grabbed you. I thought he was trying to finish you off, so I—”

“You should have seen it!” Prince bursts in. “She kicked his shin! She bit him! He screamed!”

“It wasn’t funny!” Goseng shrieks. “He could have killed her!”

“He didn’t, though,” Wangnan says firmly. “He’s helping us now.”

They finally settle down and tell Bam what he needs to know. As he lay bloody and broken in Zygaena’s body, Urek had approached. The tattered remains of his shirt had slipped off his side and laid his soul mark bare for all to see. 

Urek had seen it too. He’d cursed and lifted Bam off the ground. But, well, Urek Mazino has something of a reputation in some quarters. Miseng had launched herself at him, but he batted her away, gentle and easy. The rest of the team had arrayed itself around him, tense and ready, and he paused. Chuckled. Told them to come along. 

They followed.

Outside Zygaena, Urek had bade them all to wait in the shadows, except Miseng. They approached the test administrator and his ranker bodyguards and Urek expressed his displeasure at them for sending regulars to attack him.

He’d accidentally killed them, he said, thinking they were rankers. Not cool, guys. Just wait ’til the tower learns that not only was the Yeon family inflating the value of the Jewels of Zygaena by poaching infant Shinheuh, but they’d even interfered in a Floor Test and sacrificed a team of regulars to keep the secret, including one of their own precious children. For shame.

This poor kid was the only survivor. What did they have to say for themselves, huh?

Not much, apparently; the rankers had attacked, and Urek was all too happy to retaliate. 

In the end, they found themselves ensconced in a Wolhaiksong suspendiship, with Team Tangsooyook registered as passing the test on Miseng’s shoulders, but also, regrettably, passing from life. 

Urek had told them they weren’t prisoners, but he wanted them to stay until Bam healed and had a chat with him. Apparently, they had a mutual acquaintance. Bam could not fathom who that could possibly be.

He does not have to wait long to find out.

Urek Mazino joins them for dinner. This is clearly the most surreal thing that has ever happened to Team Tangsooyook.

Bam thinks he likes him. He’s laid back. Effusive. He’s…kind of cool. And kind of dorky? But he seems like a good man. He tells them funny stories about amazing places all throughout the tower. Contrary to some unsavory rumors, he does not seem creepy at all, and Bam is happy to talk with him. And then he asks to speak to Bam in private.

(Bam wonders if he spoke too soon).

Instead, Urek tells him that Yuri is looking for him.

“She’s…what?” Bam breathes, wide-eyed. “But. I am supposed to be dead?”

Urek leans back and stretches out his legs. “I don’t know the whole story. She told me she met some kid on the Floor of Test that she had a good feeling about, and that someone faked his death. She’s been raising hell these last few years trying to find you. I haven’t exactly been looking for you, but I’ve kept an eye out.”

Bam does not understand. 

“But how did she know? And how did you know it was me?”

Urek watches him solemnly. He drops his chair onto all four legs. The sharp click makes Bam flinch.

“Look. Full disclosure? I saw what’s under your shirt.”

No.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Bam lies. It’s embarrassingly flimsy. His team told him Urek saw it. 

Urek sighs gustily. “I get it, baby. I get why you don’t want anyone to know—”

(Don’t lie! You can’t possibly get it. Distress fills him like a million tiny worms writhing beneath his skin. Not just for the danger of it, but because:

That mark is his, his and Khun’s, the only thing they have of each other. It is not for others’ eyes).

“—but the way I hear it, your, uh, other half was pretty distraught. He showed Yuri proof that you were still alive, back then. She’s been looking ever since.”

Bam wants to rage, so he does. He launches up out of his chair. His back disagrees with this course of action and he collapses right back down, but this does not deter him from airing his frustration.

“And she told you?! Who else has she told?! What gave her the right—!”

“I know, kid, I know,” Urek placates. “For the record, she’s not exactly spreading it around. She told me because lots of interesting information finds its way to me through Wolhaiksong, and word of some kid with a live soul mark definitely qualifies as interesting. She was just looking for news.”

Bam trembles. He is so angry, and so scared. All these years, he had thought his greatest secret was limited to two. Meanwhile, people have been looking for him, and looking for his mark. He has not been protecting Mr. Khun at all.

Mr. Khun feels his distress and sends soothing brush of affection to him. Bam tries not to cry.

Bam is not successful.

“Fuck,” Urek says emphatically. “Oh my god. I’m sorry, please don’t—!”

“No,” Bam gasps wetly. “I’m sorry. I’m okay. These last few days have been… trying. Can I please have some water?”

Urek springs away from him in a panic and reappears moments later with a glass of water, astonishingly fast. Bam takes it gratefully.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Urek,” Bam says hoarsely. He takes a sip, then presses the cool glass to his temple. It throbs. “You’ve been very kind to my team, and I’ve been very rude to you.”

“Don’t sweat it,” Urek rushes to say. “Seriously. We cool?”

Bam nods, drooping. He is so tired.

“So here’s the thing. I already told Yuri I found you. She’s on her way. I would really appreciate it if you would stick around until she makes it here. If you disappear on me, that crazy woman will really find a way to kill me. Okay?”

Bam nods again, silent. His head starts to slump towards the table. Urek is looking increasingly perturbed.

“Shit,” he mutters. “How about you get some sleep? We’ll talk more in the morning.”

Bam goes.

He is better in the morning. His back still hurts, his mouth is cotton-dry from medication, and everyone on this god damn ship knows he’s met his soulmate.

Otherwise, he’s doing alright.

True to his word, Urek comes to find him again. He has swapped out the blue bandaid on his cheek for a lavender-colored one with a smiling sun on it, and he is bearing a peace-offering in the form of a warm, oven-fresh chocolate pastry. Bam snatches it from his hand and stuffs his face. All is forgiven. God bless.

“So what’s your story, baby?” Urek asks. “Why FUG? You said something before about protecting someone.”

Bam licks the chocolate from his lips and makes a thoughtful noise. “When I first entered this tower, I was lucky enough to find everything I ever wanted. My soulmate. Precious friends. If I could have stayed on the Floor of Test for the rest of my life, I could have died happy. But there are many people in the tower who have not found their happy endings. Like FUG. They seem to think I’m the key to making their dreams come true at the expense of my own.” Bam pops the last bite of pastry into his mouth. “Back then, I was not able to protect my own happy ending. But I am learning to fight for it.”

Urek watches him with an unreadable look on his pale face. “This tower hasn’t been kind to you, huh?” he muses. 

Bam thinks. A soft smile crosses his face and he brings a hand up to press against his ribs. He shakes his head.

“Kinder than most,” he says, quiet and warm. “But, no. This is not a kind place, generally speaking.”

“I won’t argue that,” Urek sighs. “This place… I would give anything to find a way out. The world outside is something completely different.” He cuts a sharp look at Bam. “If I’m not wrong, you might have an idea what I’m talking about. You ‘entered’ the tower, huh?”

Bam is quiet for a long moment, then smiles wryly. “Don’t you think you think you have enough of my secrets already, Mr. Urek?” he teases gently. “It’s probably not what you’re thinking, but I can’t say you’re wrong.”

Urek’s face lights up at the admission. “No shit? Where are you from, baby?”

“I don’t think it is a place you would recognize,” Bam admits. “Even I don’t know much about it. From my earliest memories, I was trapped in a dark cave, completely alone, for a very, very long time. Just a few years ago, not long before I entered the tower, I met another human for the first time and learned all kinds of things, like speaking! I have come a long way since then,” Bam says brightly, then deflates. “Ah- but it turns out she tried to kill me and sold me to FUG, so I guess I still have a long way to go.”

There’s a look of flat disbelief on Urek’s face. “I take it back, baby,” he says. “It’s not just the tower that hasn’t been kind to you. For what it’s worth, I really hope you get your happy ending.”

No one has ever said something so kind to him before. Bam smiles brilliantly, his chest tight. “I hope you do, too.”

Things go to hell that afternoon. A small Ha-style warship requests permission to dock and Wolhaiksong allows it, expecting Yuri. Yuri is not onboard.

Ha Jinsung is.

When he sees Urek, there is a singular moment in which it feels like the whole world is crushing Bam into the ground. He falls to his knees and his teammates follow suit. Bam has never seen his master so furious. A fell, ancient beast has come to fight. He is here to kill or to die.

That brief moment passes, because Jinsung catches a glimpse of him.

“Viole,” his master breathes. Between one blink and the next, Jinsung has appeared before him, dropping to a knee and cupping his large, calloused hand against Bam’s cheek. It is warm, and it trembles. “You’re alive.”

Bam smiles faintly. “Yes, Master. I’m fine.” He lays a hand on Jinsung’s wrist and watches the man’s expression twist with relief. He sighs mightily and groans back to this feet.

“I hope you can forgive the intrusion, Mr. Number 4,” Jinsung says casually to Urek, lighting up a cigarette. “I came here under the misapprehension that you’d murdered my favorite student.”

Urek grins. His hands are stuffed casually in his pockets, but his shoulders are tight with interest. “No harm, no foul. But maybe I won’t be so gracious next time, old timer.”

“I’ll keep that under advisement,” Jinsung says dryly. “I appreciate you not killing him, but I’ll be leaving with Viole, now.”

“Now that, I can’t allow,” Urek bears his teeth. His hands slip out his pockets. “I’ve got a friend coming to visit this baby here. She’ll be mighty disappointed if he’s not here to say ‘hi’.”

Jinsung’s expression goes cold. “Are you telling me you’re holding him hostage?”

“No more than you have for the last half decade. At least I asked him, and he agreed without me holding his friends’ lives over his head."

Jinsung stills, and his eyes slide over to Bam. “Is that true, Viole? You want to stay here and meet this friend of yours?”

This is the most loaded question Bam has ever been asked. Has Bam decided to meet friends from his previous life, against FUG’s orders? Can he admit this to Jinsung, an executive of the organization holding his friends hostage? How far does his trust in this man extend?

Far enough, it turns out.

“Yes,” Bam chokes out. “Please. Let me stay here and meet with her.” He stares straight into his master’s face, pleading. It lets him see the moment Jinsung’s face goes soft.

“Okay,” he says quietly. “Okay. Stay here and meet her. And take all the time you need. FUG has bought the rumors, largely. A hostile encounter with Urek Mazino is nothing to sneeze at. Many believe that you’re dead. They’ll learn otherwise sooner or later, but for now, if this is how you’ll find your happiness, then take this chance to meet your friends. Viole.”

“Master,” Bam says, voice wobbly. “Thank you. Thank you.” Jinsung’s hand comes down on his shoulder, and Bam’s comes up to grasp it. It is warm and strong in his grip. Jinsung chuckles.

“What kind of master would I be if I didn’t dote on my favorite student, huh? But you know, if you want to pay me back, you should introduce me to this friend of yours.”

Bam’s brain screeches to a halt. “Um."

“What the fuck,” Yuri says flatly.

Chapter Text

“What the fuck,” Yuri says flatly. “Shitty uncle? The hell are you doing here?”

Jinsung’s eye twitches. “Obnoxious niece. Fancy seeing you.”

“Oh boy,” Urek mutters. “Alright, let’s not be hasty, guys. Yuje would be pissed if you hurt this ship.”

“I’ll pay him back,” Yuri growls.

Jinsung clicks his tongue. “Young people these days. No respect for other people’s property.”

Yuri’s fist begins to glow red. 

“Please don’t!” Bam cries, grasping her wrist. She snaps her fiercely red gaze to him.

“This son of a bitch is part of the group that kidnapped you! How can you stand there and defend him?” Yuri exclaims.

Bam bites his lip.

“I cannot deny that,” he admits. “But Master Jinsung has been kind to me, and the situation is…complicated.”

“I know a nice, easy way to uncomplicate it,” Yuri says darkly, glowering at Jinsung. His master blinks back slowly.

“This won’t help anything, Miss Yuri,” Bam tries again desperately. “I am not happy about what happened to me, but it happened because there are many, many people in this tower who are unhappy with the King. A Princess attacking them will only lead to tragedy. If you must fight, then let it be for your own cause, not mine.” Bam smiles at her. “Mine does not need help. Master Jinsung is giving me my freedom, you see.”

Yuri trembles. “Aren’t you angry? These assholes took you away from your soulmate!”

Fuck. Bam glances at his master. He’s staring wide-eyed.  His cigarette has dropped out of his mouth onto the floor, leaving a soot mark on his polished shoe along the way. Bam winces. His master likes those shoes.

“Well,” Bam says dryly. “I am a bit angry now. Miss Yuri, how many people will you tell about my soulmate without my consent?”

“He didn’t know?!” Yuri exclaims, pointing an accusatory finger at Jinsung.

“He did not,” Bam confirms flatly. “I tried very hard to keep FUG from learning about that.”

“Viole, you…” Jinsung says. His shoulders shake. His lips tremble. “You - heh! - you knew exactly what you were doing when you called that guy a pervert right to his face!”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Bam says primly, over his master’s laughter.  “Like I told him, I was taught that only perverts ask others to take their clothes off.”

“Bam,” Yuri says tightly. “You are making it very hard not to be angry. What did those sons of bitches do to you?”

Ah. Yeah, he can see that.

“Miss Yuri, I’m okay,” Bam says, weaponizing his smile to be a bludgeon of sincerity. It has been a very long time since he smiled so much at once. His cheeks are starting to hurt. “Thank you for caring. But I really am okay. I promise.”

“Dammit,” she mutters, deflating. “Okay. Okay! Fine, now get over here already.”

Yuri wraps her arms around him and squeezes him with all the Ha Family strength in her body. It is…excessive. Bam wheezes in her monstrous grasp.

“Miss Yuri!” he gasps. Impossibly, Yuri squeezes tighter.

“Quit complaining!” she cackles. “Just enjoy this nice warm hug from a beautiful, unobtainable woman, okay?”

Bam resigns himself to his fate. He will not get out of this until he hugs her back, so he does. He squeezes back with all the strength he can muster. Then, he snakes a hand to her side and viciously pinches the skin of her ribs. 

Yuri shrieks, right in his ear.

“You told Mr. Urek!” Bam says crossly.

“Eh heh heh,” she laughs sheepishly, one hand rubbing her rib and the other the back of her head. “Well, yeah. But he’s the only one! And everything turned out okay, right?” She grins at him expansively. “He’s treated you just fine, hasn’t he?”

“Well,” Bam says slowly. “He did beat me up. And then he got me high, and then he made me cry.”

“Fuck,” Urek says, with feeling. He disappears in the next moment, Yuri and Jinsung hot on his tail. Bam smiles a little and laughs to himself; he has been trying to harness his inner Mr. Khun lately. With Yuri and Jinsung distracted from each other and united under a common goal, the ship will probably survive hosting both of them together. 

Rest in peace, Mr. Urek. Your sacrifice will be remembered.

They find him later, while Bam is eating lunch with his teammates. All three of them are looking a little ragged around the edges, but Bam is pleased that they have worked out their problems without major property damage. 

“Oh my god,” Wangnan whispers when Yuri plops down across from him. Ehwa goes so stiff Bam is afraid she might accidentally snap her own bones.

“So, Bam.” Yuri leans back into the sofa and snatches a slice of apple off of Horyang’s plate. A very complicated expression appears on his face. He has just been robbed by a Princess, after all. “Introduce me.”

Bam complies. He goes down the line of his new friends, and when he gets to Miseng, Urek jumps in.

“This one’s got spirit,” he grins. “How’s your tooth doing?” He means, of course, the tooth she cracked when she had lunged at him like a rabid dog and bit him, back inside Zygaena. Goseng and Arkraptor are horrified by the reminder. Urek and Yuri are positively tickled.

“Don’t tell me a little regular left a scratch on your cheek, Urek!” Yuri jokes, cackling as she points at the little purple bandaid on his face. Urek grins back sharply. There is something exultant in the stretch of his smile.

“Not that one,” he says, and Yuri stops laughing. Her eyes go wide as Urek points at Bam. Bam’s breath catches in his throat. Bam had injured Urek Mazino? It was surely not much, hidden away behind that tiny bandaid. But to know that his attack had broken through and struck true…?

“You’re a tiny fish in a big tank right now, baby,” Urek says. Anticipation weighs heavy in his words. “But only because you’re still growing. Someday, you’re going to bump into the glass and break right through into the ocean.”

Later, Jinsung takes him aside to speak privately. There is a covered balcony on the port side of the ship. Bam rests his hands on the railing and stares up into the ceiling. The fake sky on this floor is a clear, white-blue during the day, which fades to deep purple at night. Right now, as the sun sets, it’s just sort of grey-ish yellow. It is not the nicest sunset Bam has ever seen, but stars are starting to show up and this is enough to capture his attention.

It hasn’t happened yet. The epiphany. Bam stares and stares into the expanse of the fake sky every chance he gets, waiting for that fateful little click in his brain, that burst of understanding that will finally explain, well, Rachel. Everything about her. Her obsession, her motivation. Her…actions.

Master indulges him as he watches the sun set and the sky deepen to bruised purple. The stars glimmer the same blue-white as this floor’s daytime sky. They dot the sky in a pattern unique to the floor, as always. Bam has seen twenty-one star patterns, at this point. He supposes that the day will come when he has seen 134. 

(He wonders what it will take to see 135, one way or another).

The stars remain uninspired lights glinting coldly in the distance. The epiphany has evaded him again, so Bam turns to face his master. 

He finds Jinsung watching him quietly and with deep compassion.

“We were even crueler to you than I realized, weren’t we, Viole?” he says solemnly.

Bam tightens his hands on the balcony railing, watches his knuckles turn white. He doesn’t respond. Jinsung sighs.

“Will you tell me about them?”

Bam remembers asking Jinsung the same question years ago. Master had indulged his curiosity at the time, so Bam returns the favor.

“He is… wonderful, Master,” Bam breathes. He has never been able to tell anyone about Khun before. It is a little scary and a lot thrilling, and he is very suddenly so excited he could burst. He bounces a little on his heels and starts to grin widely.

“He is so kind to me! He is so smart, and- a little paranoid? And very, very sly. He can talk circles around anyone. And his plans are incredible! But he is always looking out for me. And he sends the nicest feelings to me, right when I need them.”

Jinsung inhales sharply. “I had almost forgotten about that. About…the sharing.” His voice is a little shaky. “Having that connection all the time…It’s a powerful thing.”

“It is,” Bam whispers. “I don’t— Master, you have supported me so much, but I don’t know if I could have survived these years without Mr. Khun beside me.” Well. Metaphorically, at least.

Jinsung smiles at him sadly. “I think you would have been just fine. But I’m glad he was there for you. And for what it’s worth, I’m sorry you were separated.” Jinsung closes his eyes briefly. “Viole. Was he…was he one of the ones we threatened?”

“…yes,” Bam says. Jinsung looks pained. Bam bites his lip. “Master, I am so angry about it. Just thinking about it, I—” he cuts off, chokes on a sob. “I know that you didn’t know about him, and nothing happened to him, but I—!” 

I don’t think I can ever forgive that threat! Bam is trembling. His ears are ringing. This is the first time he has ever been able to voice his anger over his circumstances, and he is barely able to keep it from exploding. 

Master Jinsung does not deserve it, he tells himself. He helped him, Bam forces himself to think. Supported him. Trained him. Took some heat off of him. Even if Master Jinsung is part of FUG, even if he never actually stepped in to tell anyone to stop, even if he is, technically, complicit—!

Bam tries to cut off that train of thought. He doesn’t want to blame Jinsung, especially not now that he is helping him escape from FUG. Bam loves him, he realizes, but he still—!

“Viole,” Jinsung says sharply. Bam jerks his eyes to him, at attention. His master is watching him steadily. “It’s okay.” His voice is achingly gentle. “You can be angry. You have that freedom, now. That, and more.”

Bam feels himself break. His face crumples and he lunges towards Jinsung, pounding his fist just once against the man’s chest before pressing his face into his shoulder. Strong arms come up to wrap around his heaving back.

“It’s okay,” Jinsung whispers. “You’re okay.”

“You’re both okay.”

The next day, his master takes him aside for a new lesson. He calls it, How to Fake your Own Death, Believably.

Apparently, this involves a haircut.

This, Bam does not mind. He had allowed his hair to grow long again under FUG’s questionable care firstly because he had very little experience with haircuts, but mostly because it was nostalgic. In the grim, lonely darkness of his cave, his great mass of hair had been a comfort to him. It was soft and warm where everything else was cold and hard. The familiarity of it was soothing.

Now, he does not need that comfort. He is free to experience other things soft and warm in the world.

So Bam does not mind the haircut. 

The wig, he could do without.

It is dark red, and it has been styled into what he is assured is a popular fashion for young men nowadays. It is also positively caked in hairspray and gel; it is hard and unforgiving as a helmet, and the weight of it tugs his scalp where it clips onto his natural hair.

Jinsung gives him slim, dark sunglasses as well, and dresses him in dark pants and a red button down shirt. He gives him a once over, twirls his finger to make Bam spin, and then says, “Aha!” He undoes the first few buttons of Bam’s shirt and rolls up the sleeves. As a final touch, he pulls out a small patch of fake hair and sticks it to Bam’s chin like a goatee.

“That’ll do it, Viole! You’re unrecognizable,” Jinsung announces. He grasps him by the shoulders and spins him around to face a mirror. Bam examines himself with a critical eye.

He looks sleazy. He wonders how to approach this delicately with his master.

“I look sleazy,” he says flatly.

“Exactly!” Jinsung exclaims. “If there is one thing you are not and have never been, it’s sleazy. Your own soulmate wouldn’t recognize you.”

That sounds awful. But Master Jinsung does have a point. Bam has never felt such dissonance with his appearance.

Master Jinsung appears to be really getting into it now. He goes to find Bam’s other tragically murdered teammates to give them disguise makeovers. Bam hopes they can escape in time. Godspeed.

They do not escape in time. As the most recognizable of the bunch, Ehwa is hit hard: she gets her hair cropped into a bob. This is traumatizing enough on its own, but then Jinsung confiscates all of her pretty dresses and flattering blouses and replaces them with cargo shorts and T-shirts. Her pink eyes are too distinctive as well, so Jinsung gives her contact lenses that turn her irises green.

(Ehwa’s grudge against FUG had been matter-of-course, before. Now, it is personal).

Wangnan gets the scare of his life, when Jinsung tries to take a file to his characteristic horns. As it turns out, not even his master on a makeover spree is immune to the tears of a man’s lost dignity. Wangnan is allowed to keep his horns, as long as he agrees to keep them and his hair covered. Wangnan practically dives into a patterned shemagh and swears on his soul never to remove it.

Horyang gets a topknot. “It’s the perfect disguise,” says Jinsung. “You’re so gloomy that everyone is used to seeing you with your hair covering your face. Your own face is your greatest mask.” Horyang looks…conflicted by this assessment.

Jinsung tries to take Goseng’s glasses. He gets as far as taking the arms of them in his hands to lift them off her face. A sliver of her eyes is revealed to him, and he pauses. Stares. He carefully slides them back on her face without saying a word. “Let’s just work on your hair, shall we?” he says weakly.

Prince has fun, at least. He spends over an hour trying on outfits and twirling around in front of the mirror. He eventually settles on a prim and proper comb over, an argyle sweater vest, and a spare pair of Goseng’s apparently questionable glasses with the lenses popped out. Jinsung gives him a thumbs up for being the only good sport in the group, in an absolutely stunning personality reversal.

Jinsung takes one look at Arkraptor and gives him a pass. “You’re not that recognizable, anyway.” Arkraptor looks as though he cannot decide whether to be gutted or relieved.

Miseng, as the only survivor of the horrible tragedy that befell poor Team Tangsooyook, gets to keep her look. She and Arkraptor are objects of great and terrible envy.

When Yuri finds them, she stares and stares, and then she cackles. Her shrieks of laughter echo through the ship. Like a particularly bored moth to a flame of schadenfreude, Urek is drawn by the sound of it.

“Baby!” Urek howls when he sees Bam’s new look. “What the hell is on your face?”

“It’s puberty! He’s growing up!” Yuri squawks.

“No,” Urek wheezes. “He’s growing moss!” They collapse against each other, howling, and Jinsung starts to look offended.

At least someone is amused.

As part of his training to fake his own death, Bam is not allowed to remove his disguise even on the Wolhaiksong ship. Apparently, he must become one with his disguise. He must answer only to his new name, Yoru. He must walk as Yoru, talk as Yoru, think as Yoru. 

Bam has trouble with this, because Yoru is, apparently, an asshole.

Master Jinsung instructs him to slouch around with his hands in his pockets, acting aloof and sarcastic with other men, but overbearing and overly accommodating with women. Bam is so bad at it. Rather than being offended by his new, rude behavior, his teammates have just started giving him pitying looks whenever he tries to speak as Yoru.

“Hey, Mr. Wa- I mean, uh, Blondie,” Bam says at the breakfast table. Sneers. Tries to hide a wince. “Don’t sit so close to me. You- you stink.”

Wangnan, whose hair is still wet from a recent shower, looks at him blankly. Arkraptor stares into his coffee as though it contains the secrets to the universe.

“It is way too early for this,” he mutters.

“That was…good, Viole! Er, Yoru,” Goseng offers supportively. “That definitely sounded more natural!”

“Maybe next time pick an insult that’s more believable?” Wangnan yawns. “Yeon, pass me a bowl? Wait-! Shit, no put it down! How the hell do you manage to catch ceramic on fire?!”

Useful advice finally comes in the form of Mr. Yuje.

After breakfast, Bam isolates himself in the kitchen, face dropped into his hands as he struggles to recover the utter embarrassment of his own existence. 

Bam had just— look, Jinsung had told him that Yoru is the type of jerk to be annoyingly insistent about chivalry, so Bam had been annoyingly insistent about helping Goseng scoot her chair out after breakfast. It really, really did not go well. He hopes her nose is not actually broken, but that was a lot of blood.

“Mr. Bam,” comes an unassuming voice behind him. Bam lifts his head miserably. Yuje’s face is mercifully blank. “In my experience, it is far more suspicious and eye-catching to encounter someone who is over-acting than under-acting. If you can’t speak believably, then don’t speak at all. If you can’t act believably — or reasonably — then don’t act.”

This is the greatest thing Bam has ever heard. Finally, a voice of reason! Maybe this will be enough to convince his master that Bam is better off fading into the background in social situations, like usual.

(Goseng’s nose is fine; Bam is so relieved). 

“They do know they only have to wear disguises for like, five floors, tops, right?” Evan mutters to Yuje. “They’re not exactly distinct.”

“Let them have their fun.”

Four days go by. It’s been seven days now since they were picked up by Wolhaiksong, although Bam has only been awake for around half that time. Yuri and Jinsung continue to stay on the ship along with Bam’s new team, for some reason he can’t fathom. 

Frankly, Bam doesn’t know why any of them are still here. Bam is almost back to 100%, and surely these High Rankers have their own business to take care of. He’s not complaining! It’s fun and interesting, but Yuri and Jinsung remaining together on the same vessel seems like a terrible calamity waiting to happen. 

Also, Bam is getting antsy. This is the longest break he’s taken since he started climbing again. Before, he was motivated by his friends’ lives being at stake. Now, he’s motivated by the mere prospect of eventually meeting up with them. Bam is becoming desperate to start catching up to his old friends from the Floor of Test. He’s desperate to start catching up to Khun.

But for some reason, the high rankers seem hesitant to let them leave. It’s not malicious, he doesn’t think. They just, sort of— distract Bam and his team whenever they start making noises about wanting to move on. They tell stories. The offer little training tips. They say FUG might still be watching.

Bam thinks they must be planning something, but the idea makes him anxious. It must be something extraordinary for Yuri, Jinsung, and Urek to be in agreement about it, and Bam doesn’t think he needs any more ‘extraordinary’ in his life.

On the morning of his eighth day on the ship, Bam gets his answer.

Chapter Text

Khun fucks up the test. 

Not enough that they lose or anything. God, no. It’s Khun, after all. But the win isn’t clean. It should have been easy after all the planning he put into it, but two hours in, Khun is suddenly and powerfully suffocated by the sensations of dread and terror and awful resignation, resting on a foundation of grim determination.

It is paralyzing. 

Khun freezes, ignores messages from his teammates, misses his cues. Later on, he’ll be gratified by his team’s competence without his direct guidance, but for now it doesn’t even cross his mind. Whatever is happening to Bam right this instant is truly life-threatening, and there is nothing Khun can do about it except pray to a god he doesn’t believe in.

Thankfully, it doesn’t last long. The feeling starts and stops so abruptly that Khun is left winded and gasping, and then— nothing. Not a single brush of emotion from Bam.

That lasts almost three days.

It is the longest three days of Khun’s life. He drifts around in a daze, to his teammates’ consternation. He barely eats, he doesn’t sleep. He is utterly empty.

And then, finally, relief. Khun feels— something. Something sort of confused, sort of upset, sort of shocked, but blessedly alive, reverberates within him. Khun inundates Bam with relief and concern and affection, but there’s no returning emotion; Bam’s gone dark again.

Around that time, interesting news starts trickling in, and with Bam’s return, Khun becomes engaged enough in the world to listen. The new Slayer Candidate has been killed along with a team of regulars. A ranker poaching Flowers of Zygaena on the 21^st floor killed them. The ranker hasn’t been identified, but the Yeon family is offering an ungodly reward for his head and for the return of the baby Zygaena he stole.

Then the real news starts trickling in. The Yeon family planted the regulars in an unstable ranker’s path to eliminate them. The Yeon family has been inflating the value of their signature gem by snuffing out baby Shinheuh. The Yeon family shamelessly refuses to acknowledge the alternate reports. 

There’s footage of a little girl, the only survivor of the murdered team of regulars, sobbing helplessly.

It’s a scandal. Khun loves it.

Not long after, Khun gets a message that changes his life.

It’s from some regular called Toulalan. He’s claiming to be a member of Wolhaiksong and he wants to meet. He says he has a business proposition for Khun. 

Khun is still riding an adrenaline-filled tailwind after Bam’s clear brush with death, and given he reports of that suspicious Slayer Candidate tangling with a ranker and reportedly being killed…

Khun goes. He has not been so desperate since losing him on the Floor of Test. The temptation of information is irresistible.

Toulalan, supposedly of Wolhaiksong, is despairingly forgettable. Bland of face, bland of body, bland of voice. Khun admires the sort of dedication it takes to appear so unobtrusive, when one is apparently strong enough as a D-rank regular for Wolhaiksong to take notice. 

“It isn’t especially common,” Toulalan says. “But Wolhaiksong is sometimes known to take notice of exceptional regulars. Mr. Khun, Wolhaiksong would like to offer you a deal.”

Khun hums blandly, stirring sugar into his tea. He won’t drink it, of course, but 90% of the time, a negotiation owes its success to an appropriately unaffected appearance.

“It’s a little early in my climb to be signing my soul away to someone else’s cause,” he says casually, tapping his spoon on the rim and laying it on the table. He keeps the movement light and graceful. Eye-catching. Toulalan glances briefly at the arch of his wrist, the line of muscle in his forearm. Khun buries a smirk. Negotiations also owe their success to flustering an opponent.

“That is understandable,” says Toulalan. There’s no pause in his response, despite his glance. He’s good. “There’s no obligation to join full time. The affiliation we’re proposing would offer limited use of Wolhaiksong resources on applicable floors in exchange for information and supply transport services in ranker-restricted areas, with no commitment for continued service.”

“You want me to spy and smuggle for rankers trying to stick their fingers into regulars’ business,” Khun corrects smoothly, crossing his fingers beneath his chin. This time, he’s framing the lines of his throat and jaw. Again, it works. Toulalan’s eyes linger. “That’s quite risky for me. This deal doesn’t exactly seem weighted in my favor. What resources is Wolhaiksong prepared to offer in exchange for my support?”

Toulalan clears his throat. “Compensation is available monetarily, if desired. Certain properties facilitated by Wolhaiksong could be made accessible upon request. Other regulars affiliated with Wolhaiksong could be utilized in floor advancement, as availability and clearance allows.”

“And if my preferred means of compensation is information?”

“Information of equitable value to your offered support could be provided.”

“How is equity determined, and by whom?” Khun leans forward, sharp. The collar of his shirt falls open just a little, just enough to tease at his collar bone. The regular across from him begins to look flustered, and chagrined for it.

“To be frank, Mr. Khun,” he says wryly, clearly ready to end the conversation. “I am only here to gauge interest and present the opportunity. I can’t speak to the details of your contract. Further negotiation would be handled by my supervisor.”

Haah. What a shame. Khun had been starting to make him sweat. Well, a good negotiator knows when to pull back before he loses out. Smart decision, Mr. Toulalan. 

Khun hums, reigning in his body language and drawing away from the other regular with disinterest now that the game is over.

“How does your supervisor propose to facilitate negotiations, then?”

“My supervisor prefers to arrange contracts face-to-face. He is currently stationed on a suspendiship at port on the 20^th floor. If you’re amenable, I can take you to him now.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then we both walk away from a valuable proposition.”

Khun crosses his arms and leans back in his chair. This proposal is very intriguing, and potentially very useful. A connection like this could bring him one step closer to reuniting with Bam, if it pans out.

It is also incredibly suspicious.

Khun stares at him long enough that the other regular starts to shift in his seat. It’s impressive, considering he’s a D-rank and Khun’s only an E. This is such a bad idea. Khun’s probably going to be killed or sold. But, what the hell? It’s been six years since he last took a horribly life-threatening risk. It’s a hard life, being both preternaturally driven and a raging paranoiac. 

“Okay.”

It’s not that easy, of course. Not for the Wolhaiksong regular, at least. Khun has demands.

“Ran, we’re going on a field trip,” Khun announces when he gets back to the rental he’s sharing with the team. Ran groans. So dramatic. “Novick, you’re in charge while we’re gone. Come here and let me walk you through some things.”

“You’re going to be bait,” Khun says plainly, once they’re squirreled away in his room. Novick doesn’t even have the decency to look alarmed. Khun frowns, annoyed. “What, nothing to say?”

Novick looks at him flatly. “This team is weird as hell, Khun. I’ve known something was up since I joined a team with a pair of Khun Family kids helping some girl faking a crippling injury climb the tower.”

Khun stares. “…You knew she was faking.”

Novick stares back. “I thought this was one of those things everyone knew and just didn’t talk about.”

Khun starts to panic. “Does everyone know? Does everyone know that I know? Have you talked to anyone about it?”

“In order: maybe, I don’t know, and of course not. I just said I thought this was one of those things no one talks about.”

Khun takes a deep breath. This is fine. He can work with this. “The original plan still stands, but you’re going to have to be even more careful. Ran and I present a united front within the team. With us away, if anyone has designs that, ah, exclude me in the long-term, they might make a move to turn the rest of the team against me.”

“You think that’s likely?” Novick raises an eyebrow. Khun shrugs.

“Maybe. I want you to watch the others for unusual behavior. This includes inexplicable private meetings, inexplicable public outings, unusual conversations with implicitly mutinous undertones, conversations with explicitly mutinous overtones, and attempted and/or successful murder.”

Novick looks at him dryly. “Don’t ever let anyone say you set a low bar, Khun. But don’t worry, I’ve got this.” He pauses. “Although, I wouldn’t mind knowing what this is all about, since you’re about to throw me into the thick of it.”

“That’s only fair, I guess,” Khun concedes. “Rachel tried to murder my best friend. The circumstances imply that she has powerful friends in high places helping her out. I’m trying to learn who they are. I don’t know who else on this team might be in her corner, but this is a good chance to find out.”

“I’m flattered to be crossed off the list of potential mutineers,” the fisherman says flatly.

“Uh-huh. Don’t make a liar out of me, okay?”

“You don’t need any help with that,” Novick says, dropping a hand on Khun’s head and ruffling his hair. “I’ve got your back.” Khun flails at him, but graciously allows the fisherman to keep his hand; he might need it soon, after all. 

“This better not be an excuse to skip out on training, A.A.,” Ran says to him darkly as they head for the docking bay across town.

“I wouldn’t dream of it, Ran,” Khun lies, with great dignity. It’s one thing for Khun to drive his teammates into the ground. That is fun. 

It’s something completely different for Ran and Khun to stay late at the training ground twice a week, where Ran drills Khun on spear-throwing until his fingers fall off. That is the worst.

Khun steps into the Wolhaiksong suspendiship and a bad joke at the same time, because Yuri Zahard, Ha Jinsung, and Urek Mazino are sitting around a coffee table together eating pieces of badly sliced apple. 

He feels faint.

He feels…happy?

A pure, unfettered joy has begun bubbling up from within him, and Khun suddenly notices a fourth person in the room. Compared to his infamous company, his presence is small. His hair is brick red, and his dark sunglasses and little goatee obscure his face. He looks like a douche.

Khun is not fooled for a moment.

Smack!

Khun has no awareness of crossing the room to meet Bam, or of Bam meeting him halfway, but somehow they have collided and wrapped themselves together, like there are no ends and no beginnings between them. Just one endlessly looping being, nascent and eternal all at once.

Bam is bawling into his neck. This seems like a good idea; Yuri Zahard and Ha Jinsung and Urek Mazino are all watching them with dumb smiles on their absurd, Regular-crushing faces, but if Khun can’t see them, then they can’t see him. 

He smushes his face into Bam’s shoulder and wets it with tears and snot. He’d feel gross and humiliated in any other circumstance, but Bam is in the same boat, so. They can be gross and humiliating together.

That sounds like a pretty great forever plan.

Behind his back, Ran makes a strangled noise. “A.A?!”

Khun glances back over his shoulder to glower at Ran. “You breathe a word of this and they’ll never find your body, got it?” he growl-blubbers, jabbing a finger at him. Ran just stares, wide-eyed. 

Khun harrumphs and drops his face back into Bam’s neck, breathing him in. He’s sucked right back into that feedback loop of joy and relief and affection that flows back and forth between them. It fills him up and spills out as tears, over and over again.

An eternity and a moment later, Khun lifts his head, still sniffling. “Bam,” he says, voice wobbling. “What the hell is on your face?” He’d lost the shades at some point, but that awful patch of fur is still stuck on his chin. Khun pinches it between two fingers and rips it off.

“The perfect disguise, that’s what,” Ha fucking Jinsung mutters behind him. Khun blue-screens, a little.

“I am faking my own death,” Bam sniffles. “Again, apparently. My new name will be Yoru.”

“Your last one was Jue Viole Grace, wasn’t it?” Khun accuses. Bam laughs through his tears. Khun has never seen anything so beautiful in his life.

“I should have known that you would figure it out. How did you know?”

“Call it a hunch,” Khun smiles, finally pulling back just enough to look him up and down. He does not relinquish his hold around Bam’s shoulders. “I’ll admit that this reunion kind of came out of left field, though.”

“It did for me as well,” Bam says. He stares into his face, gold eyes liquid and luminous. Khun’s breath catches and stutters out, halfway to a sob. “How did you get here?”

“It wasn’t you?” Khun manages to reply.

“That’ll be Yuje,” Urek god damn Mazino offers. “After I picked up this baby here, I had him look you up and send an offer to bring you in. Looks like it worked!”

Well. Khun’d had a feeling it was some kind of trap. It just happens to be the nicest trap Khun has ever been caught in.

“Thank you,” Bam chokes out to Urek Mazino. He is about to start crying again. Khun can tell, because he’s almost there, too. “Thank you, so so much-“

“Do you have a room?” Khun interrupts, voice tight. He looks up at Urek Mazino, who is beginning to look alarmed by the amount of tears being aimed at him. “I don’t know why you did this, but thank you. But could we have some privacy?”

Urek obliges by sweeping a relieved hand out towards the hallway. Bam is filling him up with feelings again, so Khun is stifling sobs in his throat as he takes Bam by the wrist to drag him away. Bam is not bothering to hide it, weeping openly again as he clings to Khun. 

Together, they stumble in the direction of Bam’s room. Unfamiliar heads poke out of open doorways to watch them with unabashed curiosity as they go by, so Khun stumbles faster. 

The moment they fumble through the door and close it behind them, Khun whispers, “I can’t believe you’re back with me.”

He reaches out and cups Bam’s face in his hands, brushing his thumbs through the tear tracks marking them. Bam presses into his touch, nuzzling. His hands come up to surround Khun’s, and they lean closer together until their foreheads connect and their bangs tangle. 

They’ve never touched like this before, but somehow, it feels like coming home.

“I can,” Bam rasps. His warm, shaky breath wafts over Khun’s cheeks, over his nose, over his lips. “Knowing that you were out there, waiting for me to catch up, is the only thing that kept me going all this time. Meeting you again is everything I’ve fought for.”

Khun feels the truth of it deep in his bones and shatters.

He collapses into Bam’s tremulous grip, awash in fresh tears.

Bam meets him in the middle.

Minutes or hours later, they’re thoroughly cried out. Tender and raw and just- scooped out, completely. Debrided. Khun hopes it’s finally over. Crying like this is so not ‘him.’

They’re sprawled out side-by-side on Bam’s bed, pressed together from shoulder to thigh, legs hanging off the edge of the mattress. Khun contemplates the ceiling as his sinuses clear slowly. 

“I can’t believe I just ugly-cried in front of Urek Mazino,” Khun says, dazed. And Yuri Zahard. And Ha Jinsung, scourge of the Ten Families. Who were apparently all hanging out together on a ship on the 20^th Floor.

Bam rolls his head to look at him wryly. “I don’t think it’s possible for you to ugly anything, Mr. Khun.”

Khun can’t suppress a startled blush. Bam looks tickled.

“Mr. Khun!” he says, delighted. “That’s very cute.”

Khun scowls mightily.

“Hah? Since when did you get so bold?” He grabs Bam’s cheeks and pinches. Bam laughs and whines and bats at him until he lets go, and the grin Khun has been fighting back bursts free. They look at each other breathlessly, riding a brief high of giddiness until it settles back into vaguely sleepy contentedness.

“Bam,” he says quietly. “Where have you been?”

“With FUG,” Bam says simply. Yes, Khun knows. He needs more than that. “Because I’m an irregular, they wanted to train me to become a weapon to kill Zahard.”

Khun closes his eyes, pained. He was right, but he wishes he weren’t.

“I was training with them for four years,” Bam continues stiffly. “They ordered me to begin climbing again two years ago. They said— they said that if I ever failed a test, or ever refused a task, or even hesitated, they would kill one of my friends from the Floor of Test.”

His voice is tight, filled with anger and fear that is burgeoning within Khun as well. Khun grabs his hand, warm and calloused in his grip. Bam goes on, fingers clenching around Khun’s.

“Yu Hansung has been tracking you,” Bam says hoarsely. “He gave you rings, right? Memorial rings. Before you went to the third floor.”

Khun stares at him, horrified. “Bam,” he whispers. “We threw those away.” 

They had. Shibisu and Khun had agreed that nothing good could come from keeping remnants of that floor, and they had managed to convince the rest of the team to do the same. They’d barely waited until the third floor to throw them away.

Bam’s face cracks with devastation. All this time, and their threat was nothing but a bluff. Khun feels it ring deep within his chest and aches with sympathy. “That asshole,” Bam hisses brokenly. “That piece of—!”

“Come here,” Khun says desperately. He rolls onto his side and draws Bam flush against him. Bam comes pliantly, tucking his edges into Khun’s and clutching at his shirt. Khun holds him as he quakes, angry and hurting. He drops his face into Bam’s hair and presses his lips to his hairline, over and over, in perfect time with the metronome of Bam’s heaving breaths.

Eventually, Bam stops shuddering. He pushes back from Khun and looks up into his face. “Enough about me,” he says wetly, and Khun understands that this is not for Khun’s sake, but for Bam’s. Clearly, he can’t bare to even think about FUG any longer. “How has your climb been?”

Khun hesitates. Bam is upset. They’re both upset, and Bam would probably appreciate a distraction, but Khun thinks he wouldn’t be doing Bam any favors to keep it from him.

“We all climbed together for a while,” he starts hesitantly. “Shibisu, Rak, and I. Endorsi, Anak, and Hatz. Laure. Amigo. And Rachel.”

Bam flinches. Khun swallows, but he can’t stop now. “A couple years ago, I separated from them. I took Rachel with me to start a new team. I…I didn’t want to risk her hurting any of them, the way she hurt you.”

Bam stares at him, miserably resigned. “You know?”

Khun bites his lip. “Not— not everything,” he admits. “Not the details. But the important things? Yes. I know she betrayed you somehow during that test. I know that she was working with someone. I know that she was faking the injury to her legs, and she faked our fucking soul mark, Bam!” Khun realizes that he’s shouting and forces himself to take a deep breath.

“I’ve been climbing alone with her to keep her away from your friends, and to try to learn more about who was behind your disappearance.”

Bam looks gutted. “Khun,” he half-sobs. “Why would you do that to yourself?”

“There was—” Khun stops. Clears his throat. His breathing is getting fast again. “There was no one else.” His throat is getting tight again, his voice turning hoarse. He swallows, again and again until he’s under control. 

“But you’re here now,” Khun says, turning to Bam with smile that he hopes looks only half as anguished as it feels. “Whatever her reasons, it’s less important than— this. Right?”

Please, he thinks desperately. Please, please! Because Khun remembers, back on the Floor of Test, when Bam told him that all he ever wanted was to stay with Rachel forever. Khun couldn’t take it, if he heard those words again. 

He would stay, of course. He could never leave Bam now that he’s found him again. But staying by Bam’s side as he seeks out Rachel would mean abandoning his own hopes and dreams, his pride and his convictions. It would be the death of everything ‘Khun’ about him. 

He would do it. But there would be nothing left of himself at the end.

Bam stares at him, determination ringing in his gaze, and nods vigorously. “Right,” he says decisively, then bites his lip. “I— I want to know. Why she did that. But you’re right. I couldn’t bear to risk this just for that.”

Khun’s bated breath whooshes out, and relief fills the void it left behind. Khun must have broadcasted some of that relief, because Bam is looking at him with pained understanding.

“I pick you, Khun,” Bam says, firm and gentle. His hand is the same as it comes to rest against his cheek. “Rachel was… important to me, after everything she taught me. But you are essential, no matter what.”

Khun cracks, right down the middle. It’s his turn to be held.

Lather, rinse, repeat: they try one more time to drag themselves back to some semblance of emotional stability. 

At this point, it has probably been at least three hours of on-and-off crying, Khun thinks. He’s probably dehydrated, and his face and hair are almost certainly a mess. 

Bam’s are, but it just makes him more excruciatingly real in Khun’s eyes. Khun wonders if he should feel like this is a dream. He doesn’t, not at all. He’s never felt more firmly grounded in reality. It’s true that this is everything he’s dreamed of for the last six years, but rather than struggling to grasp the reality of it, he feels instead like every moment of his life until now has been nothing but a prelude. His path forward has never been surer, never been clearer. Bam exists, incontestably, and Khun’s place is by his side. 

Also? Well. It doesn’t get much realer than being covered in someone’s snot.

On that note, Khun heaves himself upright, bats away Bam’s greedy, grasping hands, and stumbles into the bathroom to wash his face.

He was right. It’s horrific.

Lather, rinse, repeat, this time with actual soap. Khun cleans up as best he can and bumps into Bam in the bathroom doorway.

“We should think about lunch,” Khun says, idly brushing Bam’s bangs out of his face. Bam leans into his palm, content and demanding as a cat. Khum’s lips quirk up affectionately. “I should find Ran, too. He’s probably on edge here. We didn’t exactly expect Ha Jinsung.” 

Shit. Khun’s smile drops. He’d left Ran alone with Ha fucking Jinsung. He really hopes that guy has toned down the Ten Families mass murdering, because Ran is one of the very few relatives that Khun actually likes.

“Your teammate?” Bam questions. Khun nods.

“Khun Ran Maschenny. Another direct descendant. Different branch, though.”

Bam smiles. “I’ll be glad to meet him. And I’d like to introduce you to my new teammates, as well.” His brow suddenly furrows and he checks the time on his pocket. “Ah- you’re right about lunch. If I don’t get to the kitchen soon, Miss Ehwa might try to cook.”

“That’s a bad thing?”

“Very bad thing,” Bam says emphatically. Khun snorts and makes for the bedroom door.

“Shall we, then?”

“Ah- wait, please.” Bam grabs his wrist. Khun turns to him questioningly and finds Bam watching him earnestly.

“Before we go…” he says. “May I see your mark?”

Oh, Khun thinks. A little ribbon of interest twists through him. He gives Bam his best smirk, wicked and heart-breaking and well-tested.

“Show me yours and I’ll show you mine.” 

Bam huffs out a laugh, insulting unaffected by Khun’s best, and leans back to unbutton his shirt, pulling it open to display his mark. 

It is as beautiful as Khun remembers, splashes of deep, ethereal blue twining among strokes of radiant gold, spanning across Bam’s side. Khun stares, entranced. He reaches out to lay his palm against Bam’s ribs, just below the mark. They’ve filled out since the last time he saw them, he thinks idly. He remembers them sticking out alarmingly, all those years ago. At least he’s been well-fed since then.

His fingers trace nonsense patterns on Bam’s skin, outlining that beautiful mark on the muscle that has grown in over the bones, and Bam shivers.

“Khun,” Bam says insistently. Khun blinks up at him.

“Oh!” He hurries to loosen his belt and slide his waistband down his hip. Bam takes a step closer, eyes trained down on the burst of color snaking out from behind the cloth.

“I wish I could see the whole thing…” Bam murmurs, inching nearer. Khun laughs, a little breathlessly. Any lower and he would be showing off something no one in the world has been fortunate to see before.

“You haven’t even bought me dinner yet,” Khun teases, shifting back a little. 

He’s deflecting. For all that he just spent the last few hours plastered against Bam, he’s never been this close to another person before, not like this. Not with shirts open and belts loosened. Not with the air charged and muggy between them. Not with intense, burning eyes bearing down on him, wide pools of black ringed thinly in golden-brown. This is nothing like the embrace they just shared. They’re not even touching and Khun feels more exposed than he ever has before.

…That might have something to do with his exposed midriff. He doesn’t know what we would do if Bam decided to close the distance.

“Do you want me to?” Bam asks.

“What?” Khun says, a little shrill.

“Do you want— dinner? For me to buy you dinner? On a date?”

They’ve never talked about it, about what they are to each other. Soulmates, obviously, but beyond that… Well, soulmates are rare enough that no one really knows what to expect. Lovers, platonic partners. Intimate enemies, even, the stuff of classical tragedies. 

Khun has never truly thought about what Bam means to him, other than simply his. These last six years, he’s been filled only with a desperation to see Bam again. Anything beyond that has been nothing but a fever dream. But they’re together now. And now—

“Yes.” The answer jumps out of him without forethought. Well, that answers that. Khun watches as Bam brightens before him, and feels no regret. No hesitation.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Khun grins at him. “Yeah, take me out somewhere nice. I’ll dress up for you.”

Bam laughs, light and sweet. “Please go easy on me. I’m not sure I could take it if you show up any more beautiful than you already are.”

Khun chokes. “Bam!”

“What?” Bam grins at him, sly and teasing. “Surely you know that at any given time, you’re the most eye-catching person around?”

Of course he knows that. He uses it all the time. That doesn’t mean he can tolerate hearing Bam say it out loud. He drops his burning face into his hands. Bam laughs louder.

“Just for that, I’m going to go all out,” Khun grumbles. “Just watch me.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Bam says, finally closing the distance between them. He leans forward to knock his forehead against Khun’s, then grabs his hands to tangle their fingers together. Khun raises his eyes to stare into goldgoldgold.

“Me too,” he whispers.