Chapter Text
The world is a deaf machine
Without sense or reason
Sometimes you wait and wait and wait and wait and wait and wait but nothing ever happens —
[]
And the day seems to end the way it began
But suddenly there it is right in front of you
Bright and vivid
Quietly waiting —
—The Red Tree, Shaun Tan
/
Yoongi works in a tall building.
The sort of building that has too many floors, where he never bothered to find out how many.
He walks into the grey elevator, and keeps his head low.
The elevator buttons stretch for a kilometer, so high up that he doesn't think to check where they end. He's too busy keeping his head down.
Yoongi used to think about what would happen if the elevator stopped. He used to worry that he'd suffocate to death, trapped forever.
He hasn’t worried about that in years. He could probably suffocate now and wouldn't notice the difference.
Yoongi works on the seventh floor. It's the only number he needs to know.
He presses number seven.
The other grey people next to him brush shoulder with him, and it doesn't mean anything to any of them. No one stops to apologize. Or to make eye contact. They stare straight ahead, waiting for the elevator to go up.
Yoongi stares straight at the ground.
The elevator doors open.
Yoongi steps outside.
/
The office is quiet.
The only noise is the gentle hum of the air conditioning, and even that is barely noise and more just a part of themselves at this point.
Yoongi walks straight to his desk, and takes a seat. His PC is sectioned off from the coworkers next to him, lest they have to see each other's faces and forget what they're here for.
It's very hard to forget what they're here for. The company's vision statement is carefully pasted, in black and white, behind each of their work stations.
Predicting consumer needs and maximizing long term value.
Yoongi used to think it was a shitty vision statement.
Now he doesn't think much of it at all.
It's odd to stress on the long term. It's almost like the board knows that the people who work here aren't going to see any value in their work. All the value is waiting for when they're gone and dead.
Yoongi boots up his PC, and for a second, the light flashes blue. A moment where it almost looks like the world could have colour in it.
And then it disappears to his login screen, dead and grey, and Yoongi types in his password without a thought.
/
Yoongi has worked here for three years.
Three long years.
He doesn't know the names of the people on either side of him. He doesn't think they know him either. It's too late to try to ask.
When they need to speak to each other, they do it with averted eyes. Yoongi keeps his eyes on his grey screen, or on his coworkers' grey shoes. They nod respectfully and bow and tell each other everything they need to know, and turn away without another word.
To be honest, Yoongi doesn't know if he even sits next to the same people every day. He wouldn't know if it changed. He can't recognize faces.
He hasn't really looked at them.
For three years, Yoongi has worked in this building.
For three years, his boss has shot up steadily, gaining more and more investors and selling more and more shares.
For three years, Yoongi has sat behind a screen and coded programs that do nothing for the world except transfer money from one black hole to another.
Sometimes at the end of the year, each of the workers get an email.
The email says, we did it.
We've expanded further, for another year.
We've reached places that our competitors swore we'd never go.
We're following our dreams.
We, we, we.
Grey, grey, grey.
The photographs in the email are of his superiors, in their black and white suits at their black and white parties, without a single tie askew. Practiced smiles, trimmed joy.
We, we, we.
They carefully never elaborate on who we is.
/
Yoongi drinks his coffee black.
It's not because he likes it. To be honest, Yoongi hates coffee altogether.
But the first day he worked here, the temporary worker had asked him how he took his coffee, and Yoongi, who never drank coffee in his life, said black.
Because that's what everyone else said.
Now the cup that the temporary worker leaves on his desk is black coffee, and Yoongi has learned to drink it.
Black, black, black.
He can never finish it though.
He always leaves a little, at the bottom of his glass. With the ugly dregs that look like the leftovers of someone's dead soul.
He wonders what it would taste like with milk in it. Sugar. Cream? Is that what most people add? Yoongi doesn't know. He doesn't care enough to bother ever trying it out.
At 11AM, while Yoongi is typing away at his desktop, lines and lines of code that will make money and nothing else, a cup of coffee lands on his table.
Yoongi doesn't look up. He doesn't say thank you. Any moment spent looking away from his screen is a moment lost.
A moment where he fails to maximize long term value.
A moment where he fails to make money for the we that somehow manages to leave him out.
But then — the temporary worker steps past him, and with him there's a flash of colour.
Colour.
For the first time, in years, Yoongi startles and looks up.
/
The worker is wearing red.
Bright, cherry, blood red.
/
Yoongi doesn't recognize him.
He doesn't recognize anyone in this building, but he has a feeling he'd remember someone who wears red.
Red, in the sea of greys.
Yoongi doesn't even own anything that isn't grey.
The worker doesn't turn back at him, pushing his cart along the rows of cubicles and placing cups of coffee on each person's desk. No one else looks up at him. No one else thanks him.
A red shirt, an earring on one ear. Sparkling silver, catching on the light.
The dull lights that this building has, which make sure that Yoongi never wonders what the world might look like outside.
He watches until the worker finishes his rows, and then turns around and heads back. He catches the wheel of his cart on the leg of someone's chair, and apologizes hurriedly. The man at the desk doesn't seem to care, just frowning a little and taking another sip of his coffee.
When the worker crosses back past Yoongi, he catches him staring.
"Is there something wrong with the coffee?" he asks.
His voice is soft.
Colourful.
Yoongi shakes his head no and turns back to his screen.
/
He spots the boy all over the place.
At the break room, that Yoongi can see from his seat, pouring coffee for everyone.
At the printer, kicking the machine with a foot to make it work, startling everyone enough to get a number of head turns.
At the fax machine, tearing out papers and carrying them over to whoever he needs to give them too.
He wears a different colour every day.
One day he wears yellow, and smiles at someone when they nearly crash into him.
One day he wears blue, and stops to ask someone if they needed another copy of the material he printed out for them.
One day he wears pink.
Violet.
Green.
All solid colours, formal shirts. He should blend in just right, he sticks to the dress code — plain, formal, shirts.
He would have blended right into the world if the rest of it hadn't been grey.
Like he was everything that belonged, but somehow not what everyone else was.
/
The thing is — they were never told to wear grey.
Yoongi doesn't remember it, at least.
There wasn't anything said, about the lack of colour, about how essential it was that they all bleed out their souls and have nothing left to show.
No one told Yoongi that he should only wear grey.
No one said it out loud.
But somehow it's been burned into him, day by day, month by month.
Year by year.
Three long years.
/
Yoongi takes the subway home.
The subway line is always crowded, dead faces staring absently through the window. Sometimes there's a child, crying in the distance, the only sound besides the dull hum of the train.
Yoongi holds on to the railing, and stares absently through the window, alongside all the faces next to him.
Sometimes, Yoongi has nightmares.
He dreams that all of their faces are the same.
He dreams that they go home to whichever house is closest and it doesn't make a difference, because they're never going to recognize their family, and their families would never recognize them.
In a way, life is easier when no one has a face.
You can never get their names wrong when they don't have one.
In Yoongi's nightmares, the subway passes through a tunnel, and Yoongi catches sight of his own face in the reflection. A face he doesn't recognize, the same face that's on everyone next to him. They all stare, in the same muted horror.
They wonder which of them is real and none of them know.
When Yoongi steps off of the subway line, and turns to go home, he brushes shoulders with the hundreds of people around him. They speed past, off to die their own little deaths.
Yoongi doesn't rush towards his.
He walks slowly, through the perfect streets, every corner cut at a right angle. The shops glisten, with light and attempts at colour, to say
Come here.
Come inside.
Take what nothing else in life could give you.
Yoongi watches, as people flock to the stores, tempted by the colours painted to lure them in.
He thinks about the boy in red.
He wonders if Yoongi is any different, from the people rushing into the stores — when all he thinks of is a boy who wears colour.
/
The boy who wears red stops by Yoongi's desk.
Yoongi tenses, fingers freezing over his keyboard.
It's one of the first things they teach you at university — to never stop typing in the middle of a line of code. To never stop in the middle of a sentence.
It's been burned into him that if he does, he'll lose his train of thought, waste more time than he should.
So Yoongi doesn't look up, at this boy full of colour. He flexes his fingers and finishes his code.
The boy waits patiently for Yoongi to finish.
When Yoongi finally looks up, he's holding a cup of coffee suspiciously.
"Do you not like black coffee?" he asks.
Yoongi stares at him.
He doesn't.
He never has.
Black, black, black, like the leftovers of his soul.
But Yoongi doesn't know how to say that he doesn't like it.
He's never been asked. He's never been asked anything.
When someone asks him is everything alright Yoongi-ssi, it's with the practiced smiles, all teeth, framed as a smile because it's frowned upon to bare your teeth.
But the boy looks honestly curious, his crisp orange shirt the colour of madness and youth.
"You don't, do you," he answers for Yoongi. "You never finish your cup."
Yoongi keeps staring at him.
The boy lowers his head a little, half bowing. "I didn't mean to intrude," he says, but there's no apology in his voice or in his stance. "But I could bring you something else if you want."
"Something else?" Yoongi asks.
"As long as it's coffee," the boy says. "Is there anything else you like?"
The question isn't one that Yoongi is familiar with.
Maybe the boy seems to realize it, because something about him softens.
"I'll bring you something different, is that okay?" he asks. "I'll let you know what it is."
Yoongi stares, and stares, and then nods at him.
/
The first day, his coffee has milk in it.
The boy leaves it on his desk with the hint of a smile, something like pride in his eyes.
Yoongi drinks it, and to him, it's less a cup of coffee —
More a cup of wonder.
/
The next day, his coffee has sugar in it.
The boy is wearing pink.
"It's sweeter today," he says, before he moves on to the next desk.
Yoongi doesn't taste it for a long time, stuck on his block of code. When he finally brings it to his lips, something lurches in his heart, and from far away, he can feel the boy watching him with knowing eyes.
/
The third day there's something added to it that Yoongi can't identify.
He stops, holding his cup with both hands as he brings it up.
His entire focus is on the warmth, on the gentle brown, on the swirl of cream at the top.
He looks up, and the boy in his red shirt is smiling, his eyes crinkled in something that looks too much like honest happiness.
Something that Yoongi doesn't know how to look at.
/
The boy's name is Jungkook.
Jeon Jungkook.
It's written on the ID card hung around his neck.
Yoongi doesn't see it for days, because the boy walks with the ID card flipped over, his photograph hidden from view. Like he'd rather not be identified in this tall grey building.
Yoongi spots it in a split second, when the ID card flips when Jungkook leans over his cart to get something stuck off the wheel.
Jungkook is fast, catching it and stuffing it into his breast pocket, but Yoongi is faster.
The boy's name is Jeon Jungkook, and he doesn't want anyone to know it.
But he wears blood red and sunshine yellow and walks down the hall like he's the only one of them who's alive.
/
When Yoongi first learned what it meant to be alive, he was disappointed.
He doesn't remember a lot from his life as a child, but he remembers this —
Staring through a microscope, in the biology lab, at a bunch of cells that barely moved.
And the voice of his teacher, droning on behind him, that this was life.
Yoongi doesn't remember much, but he remembers his classmates being awed by it. They looked at it, and marveled that such a tiny thing could be alive, that life could always find a way, that there was so much more to this world than they thought. They took down notes and diagrams and talked in hushed whispers about how isn't this so cool.
But Yoongi didn't feel any of that awe.
He looked through his microscope, at the pitiful group of cells under his eye. Barely twitching, almost motionless. Existing.
And somehow as alive as he was.
He wondered if there was something else looking down at him, too, with its own microscope. Maybe it looked at Yoongi and thought pathetic.
Maybe it looked at him, and was disappointed that something like Yoongi was also called alive.
The worst part was — Yoongi would never know. If there was something looking at him or not. But he could never get the idea out of his head.
The only thing he learned in that biology class was —
Life was a lot smaller than he expected, and —
The division of power amongst the alive was too extreme for Yoongi to wrap his mind around.
/
When Yoongi steps out of the tall grey building, it's raining.
He watches people run to catch cabs, run with bags held over their heads. The cracks in the sidewalk are filling with water, the place glistens with hints of yellow and white light in the darkness that hangs over it all.
It's only when it rains that, for a moment, the order of the world blurs.
Where there were usually people walking carefully, brisk and listless, on their way to the subway station, answering business texts as they go — now there's only frantic escape of everyone trying to stay dry.
Yoongi's clothes cost a lot.
A sizeable amount for the greyness, a sizeable amount for the dullness. A fair bit of money for the way it hides him underneath the layers and layers of cloth.
So he steps out of the building, and clicks open his black umbrella, and keeps himself out of the destruction of order.
It's then that he spots Jeon Jungkook.
The boy is standing at the end of the street, his backpack held over his head. He's drenched, the red of his shirt clinging to his frame.
Yoongi has the sudden urge to call his name.
He's supposed to be leaving in the opposite direction, but his feet carry him to where Jungkook is standing.
The rain is the only break from what should be. The only moment where nothing goes as it should be determined.
He stops in front of Jeon Jungkook.
The boy has made no move to leave, no signs of needing to go home. He stands, in the pouring rain, watching the cars rush by, splashing puddles behind them.
For a few minutes it's a world where everything gets to remember that it still exists, that it takes up space. That it feels things, that it can fall apart.
Yoongi tilts the umbrella, to hold it over Jungkook's head.
Only then does the boy look at him.
His lips part in surprise, and for a moment, Yoongi is terribly ashamed that he won't remember who he is.
To Yoongi, he's the boy in red.
To Jungkook, Yoongi is just another one of the grey faces.
Neither of them says anything, for a moment too long.
"Thank you," Jungkook says, still surprised. From up close, his eyes are wider than Yoongi had thought.
He wonders when the last time that he did something nice for someone was.
Does this count as nice?
Chasing this hint of colour — it isn't nice.
It's just curiousity.
It's wonder, the urge to see if there are still things that haven't become a part of the world.
"I'm going to the subway station," Yoongi says. "What about you?"
"Me too," Jungkook says.
"Come on, then," Yoongi says.
The umbrella isn't as wide as he would have liked. He can feel the dampness start to sink into his clothes, he should have thought this through better before he went about and did it.
It isn't like Yoongi to do things on a whim.
But Jungkook looks so cold, so wet, that Yoongi doesn't have the heart to leave him like this either.
/
When they're safe at the subway, under the station roof, Jungkook starts rummaging around in his bag.
He finally pulls out two flasks of coffee.
Two flasks of coffee?
"Here," he says, handing one to Yoongi. "A thank you for the umbrella."
Yoongi stares at the carton in his hand.
He opens the cup, taking a sniff, and — it's the same blend that Jungkook hands to him at work each day. Sweet and soft and everything good.
Jungkook takes the coffee home? Is he even allowed to do that?
"Is this from the office?" Yoongi asks.
"Mm," Jungkook says easily. "I make some to take home."
"You aren't allowed to do that," Yoongi says.
He's just repeating words that he can't identify the source of. Just things that he knows. Things that everyone knows.
Nothing in the building is theirs. Not even themselves, for the duration that they're indoors. The only thing that they deserve is the paycheck at the beginning of each month.
Jungkook looks amused. "I'm not allowed to do that?" he repeats, but it sounds like he's making fun of Yoongi.
Yoongi doesn't like being made fun of.
"You aren't," he repeats, more annoyance in his tone.
He should have known, by the red in his shirt.
These damned free spirited men. Desperate to tear down rules just to make their own lives easier.
"I make the coffee," Jungkook says, voice clipped. "I make the coffee all day, for all of you. I don't deserve a cup at the end of the day?"
The thing is — it doesn’t matter whether Jungkook deserves it or not.
All that matters is that he didn't earn it.
He picked up something that wasn't his, and took it, because he felt like something in his life gave him the right to.
"You aren't the one paying for it," Yoongi quips back.
"Oh?" Jungkook says, and now he looks even more amused. There's something that shifts in the air between them, something crazed in the way Jungkook looks at him. "You think the ugly boss man who sits on top of it all would notice that he lost a couple of cups of coffee?"
To be fair — Yoongi doesn't think he would.
The problem is, when everyone thinks like that, if no one's left to follow the rules — then everything falls apart.
Then everything is meaningless.
Then it's all grey because it's grey, not because they're working to maximize long term value.
Jungkook reaches out, and takes the flask of coffee that he's handed Yoongi back.
Yoongi stares at him in shock, fingers poised around nothing.
"You don't want it," Jungkook says flatly, and then he turns and he's gone.
Where he's gone, when the train is just slowing to a stop in front of them — Yoongi doesn't know.
/
The next day, when Jungkook leaves a cup of coffee on his desk —
It's black coffee.
Yoongi doesn't like black coffee, but he's learned over the years to drink it.
/
Yoongi leaves his cup unfinished, the dregs like the remnants of his soul.
Jungkook wears purple, the colour of the gods.
/
"I'm sorry," Yoongi says, when Jungkook passes by his table.
The office is quiet around them, the only sound the whirring of the aircon. Jungkook has just placed another cup of black coffee on his desk and is moving on to the next table.
Yoongi's words disappear into the space between them, like they don't even matter.
And maybe they don't, because Yoongi isn't sorry.
He doesn't think he said anything wrong.
Yoongi works here all day, he doesn't take home the codes he writes.
He spent the years before delivering takeout on his bicycle, and he never got to take any food that wasn't spoilt.
There are rules. There are laws.
Yoongi is being paid to make someone else's life easier. All he deserves is what they give him for it.
The same goes for Jungkook.
So he isn't sorry. He probably won't ever be. What he means to say is —
I'm sorry that you haven't figured out how to fit in yet.
I wish you'd stop being mad at me for being right.
I don't like anyone being mad at me.
I'd rather be no one instead.
It's why Yoongi does so well at being invisible. The trouble only starts when he exists.
It only starts when it rains, when their careful man—made world is shattered by things beyond their control.
When colours enter despite them not having a place here.
Jungkook says nothing, and keeps walking.
Maybe he can tell that Yoongi isn't sorry.
/
Yoongi doesn't often go into the printing room.
He doesn't need to. If he needs something printed out, he sends an email to a worker he doesn't know the face of.
The materials get printed out, and then the boy — Jungkook — drops them on his desk. He never has to do it himself, because any second spent away from his desk is a second wasted.
Today is the first time that this hasn't worked for Yoongi. He sent the email two hours ago, and the papers still haven't appeared at his desk.
He sends another email, just to be sure.
Did the man take off? Yoongi has never taken off.
Three years, he's worked here, and he's never taken a day off.
A single day throws the machine they're running out of order. A single day is enough chaos for him to not catch up on.
A single day means that Yoongi has spent three hours, without the papers that he needs at his desk.
Finally, he doesn't have a choice. He'll need to go over to the printing room himself.
So he puts his files on a pen drive, and steps away from his desk. The workers next to him notice but they don't look up. Yoongi is doing something unscheduled, but it is not worth looking at. Not worth wasting their time over.
Yoongi walks past the grey faces, grey blurs, and enters the printing room.
Jungkook is already there.
He's sitting in a chair, with a pen in hand, drawing something on his skin while the printer runs next to him. It prints out pages and pages, the hum and whir as the machine struggles through it hanging in the air.
Jungkook looks up at him, and then looks back down at his hand, continuing to draw.
"I sent a file hours ago," Yoongi says, even though he knows that that isn't Jungkook's job. "I haven't got it yet."
"Yongsoo-ssi took off," Jungkook says, without looking up. "You'll need to bring your files over to me or send them to a different floor."
"He's never taken off before," Yoongi says, before he can stop himself.
Jungkook looks a little irritated, but he doesn't comment. "Do you have your file?" he asks.
Yoongi hands over the pendrive. Jungkook reaches out to take it.
Yoongi sees the drawing on his arm.
It's intricate, and careful, even though Jungkook had just been drawing it casually. It swirls across his arm, magnificent and ethereal, and —
It’s a dragon.
A dragon.
/
"A dragon," Yoongi says, in awe.
Jungkook looks up at him, eyebrow furrowed. He takes the pendrive and looks like he might roll down his sleeve, to cover the dragon up, but he doesn’t.
"Do you like it?" Jungkook asks.
It's weird, because — he asks like it matters if Yoongi likes it or not. Like it means anything at all.
Jungkook today is wearing bright green.
Green, the colour of life.
There's a dragon on his arm.
"You didn't finish the eyes," Yoongi says, because he can't bring himself to say I like it.
He can't convince himself he's worth enough to say something like that, to pretend his voice means anything.
The empty holes where the dragon's eyes stare up at him, unseeing, not alive. The only flaw in a perfect drawing.
"You shouldn't finish the eyes," Jungkook says easily, like this is common knowledge.
"Why not?"
"Paint the dragon, dot the eyes," Jungkook says, and then stares him down, like the sentence is supposed to jog something in his memory.
Yoongi flips through the memories he does have. Of grey, of black, of lines and lines of code.
"But why?" he asks.
"The moment you draw the eyes the dragon comes to life," Jungkook says. "Didn't you know?"
Yoongi didn't know.
As he watches, Jungkook sets the pendrive on the table, to flip his pen back open and press it down once where the eye should be.
The barest hint of an eyeball.
Not quite an eye, but enough to show that the dragon was meant to stare through Yoongi's soul.
"You see?" Jungkook says. "Each dragon is born twice. Once when they turn into a dragon, and once when you dot the eyes. If I finish it, it would come to life. Where's the fun in that?"
/
Some dragons are born dragons. Lucky bastards, born with power.
But some of them were born imugis.
The imugi is relatively harmless.
Unmotivated.
Kind.
It lives in the water and doesn't do much at all.
If it survives for a thousand years, it will become a dragon. A bringer of rain, of storms, of power and knowledge.
But first it had to survive a thousand years.
Or — if it had the luck, and caught a yeouiju, an orb falling from the sky — then it turn into a dragon ahead of its time. But the imugi doesn't have thumbs, it's too hard to catch anything.
Yoongi thinks, really, that the imugi was set up for failure.
What people wanted to say to the imugi was you'll never be anything.
What they said instead was see if you can live long enough to be someone.
A thousand years. Grey, grey, grey.
Black.
/