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They were off to celebrate their win against the world awakeners academy students. All of them in a good mood, even Sucheon joining in on the festivities, ribbing Subin with Jisuk a little and claiming he could have won the fight in a second.
Jiwoo trailed along behind them, body growing fatigued, limbs weighing him down, chest tightening. By chance only did Sucheon look around and spot Jiwoo falling behind and rubbing at his chest, faced pinching as a sharp ache picked up inside him.
“Jiwoo?” He doubled over and Sucheon backtracked to his side, calling for everyone’s attention. “Oi Jisuk, something’s wrong with your friend.”
The group spun as one and descended upon him, rife with worry and fear as he wheezed through the pain and his knees gave out beneath him. Sucheon caught him and lowered him to the ground, in the same instant Subin was off like a shot in the direction they came from to alert their teachers.
“Jiwoo!” Jisuk was with him a second later, pushing Sucheon away and letting Jiwoo collapse against his side.
“I knew you shouldn’t’ve used your ability! You’re not healed yet.”
“S-sorry, thoug- ought it would, be fine.” He squeezed out between wheezes, curling in on himself as his power scorched inside him, crawling all over his body. Blue tendrils like veins creeping up his flesh. Jisuk saw them first, noticing them crawl up his neck with dread growing deep roots in his heart.
“What the fuck is that?” He said, pulling the back of Jiwoo’s collar to get a better look. Sucheon leaned over, took a peak and all the blood drained from his face.
“I’ve seen this before,” he said, “his core is disintegrating and pushing all the energy into his system.”
Jisuk shot him a look of horror.
“What!?”
“Move.”
Sucheon pushed Jisuk out of his way and slid in behind Jiwoo and placed his flattened palm against the middle of his back.
“What are you doing?” Jisuk demanded, and Sucheon frowned at the distraction.
“Force control.” He snapped, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. He took deep breath, focused his mind and his energy and pushed a piece of it inside Jiwoo. It was almost ripped out of his grasp in the scorching whirlwind that was Jiwoo’s energy running rampant inside him, but he buckled down and held steady as Jiwoo’s energy started to turn on him as Jiwoo started to panic, noticing the intrusion.
“Jisuk, make him stop fighting me.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be doing that.”
“Maybe he’ll die faster if I don’t! Make him relax!”
Jisuk shot him a glare and positioned himself in front of Jiwoo, pulling him up so he might catch his gaze.
“Jiwoo, can you hear me?”
Jiwoo whined in pain, tears streaking down his face, but he nodded slightly and Jisuk was relieved.
“Good, good now I need you to concentrate a little. You feel the strange power inside you?”
Another nod.
“That’s Sucheon, he’s trying to help. You need to let him work.”
“Hurts.” He gasped out and Jisuk gave him a pain filled smile.
“I know, but it’s going to be okay. Just let Sucheon guide you. You’ll be okay if you just do that. Okay?”
Jiwoo’s face scrunched in pain, body trying to squeeze into the tinies ball it could.
“Jiwoo, okay?”
He nodded and Jisuk let him curl up, head in his lap. He looked over Jiwoo to Sucheon and saw his frown weaken then fade away, his energy meeting no resistance.
Sucheon circulated his energy through Jiwoo, letting his catch up to the pace of Jiwoo’s before he pumped in more and started to forcibly guide Jiwoo’s energy into circulating normally. Needing to rush it through his system at levels dangerous in and of themselves to manuever it into pulling in to his core. One of the first exercises Sucheon had ever learned after his father had made him watch video upon video of Awakeners killing themselves by overusing their power causing it to flush the Awakener and burn them to nothing.
He’d been told if those Awakeners had known just this one, insignificant little exercise they could have saved themselves. But they weren’t in Baekdu or they weren’t yet privileged enough in the group to learn even the simplest of techniques from the main branch. Personally Sucheon thought the technique should be common knowledge, if only to avoid the needless deaths accrued from pushing ones self too hard in a system that rewarded those who were ready to destroy themselves in the name of power.
The last thing he wanted right now was to watch Jiwoo die screaming until he was nothing but a charred corpse when there was something he could do about it. So he forced Jiwoo’s energy to follow his until he could feel the energy forging its own pathways, moving with less resistance though with no less violence. He was vaguely aware of Subin returning with some of their teachers. Barely aware of being moved onto a stretcher and run off to the infirmary.
He was aware when someone took his hand off of Jiwoo’s back and before he’d even had time to figure out who it was he was slapping them away and reaching for him until he was dragged off whatever they’d put him on and forced to focus on the physical world. Jisuk had his arms around him, holding him up as he got his feet under him properly. He spotted Jiwoo being wheeled away on a bed, Kartien on the heels of the group and disappearing into a room to treat him.
“You good?” Jisuk asked, looking down at him, arm still wrapped around him. He stepped away with a frown, about to snap that he was perfectly fine, and Jisuk had to immediately lunge for him, exhaustion jumping down his throat like his father when he said something vaguely not Awakener supremacy related. He flinched away but Jisuk ignored it, held him up and helped him over to a chair then slumped in the one beside him
They waited in silence. All of the students from the Awaked Academy, sitting in silence… Until finally Kartien emerged from the room along with all the other staff and approached them, eyeing him in particular.
All of Jiwoo’s friends immediately perked up, some shooting up from their seats to stand in front of where Kartien had stopped to address them all.
“Jiwoo is resting but he will be fine so long as he doesn’t use his ability.” He said, putting heavy, heavy emphasis on the last part. Not that most of them were listening, nor that the other could. As soon as he’d said Jiwoo was fine, Jisuk and Subin had thrown their hands in the air and cheered, giving a hearty and overly loud ‘fuck yeah Jiwoo!’ that mostly downed out the last of what Kartien had said.
Sucheon had heard it though, and he would, so long as he could do it without getting caught, ensure that Jiwoo very much didn’t in general. Not to soon their cheering died down when the last of what was said actually made it to their brains and they rounded on Kartien.
“What do you mean doesn’t use his ability?” Jisuk asked, suspicion laced with fear dripping from his voice.
“Yeah, for how long?” Subin snapped, more suspicion than anything else coming from her.
Kartien gave them both a long suffering look.
“For as long as it takes for him to heal completely. He’ll need multiple check ups a week so I can monitor his progress. That means that under absolutely no circumstances is he to get in any kind of disagreement with anyone from anywhere.” He warned, then paused for a moment.
“Just keep him away from strangers.” He added, then turned to Sucheon and looked him up and down.
“What?” He snapped and Kartien raised an elegant, perfectly shaped eyebrow at him.
“Ingenious using your force control to pull Jiwoo’s energy inwards. It’s likely that that technique wouldn’t have worked with any other force control but Baekdu’s gravity control.” He said and Sucheon scowled at him, not liking the attention he was getting from everyone there.
“Whatever.” He said, like it meant nothing. Kartien gave him a sharp smile.
“He would have died without you.” And he left it at that. Spinning on his heel and gliding off down the hall leaving Sucheon to stew in the stares of everyone reevaluating their opinion of him.
He hated that, so he glared at them until they looked away or wandered off then made himself comfortable on the uncomfortable chairs and took a much needed nap.