Chapter Text
Sunghoon doesn’t remember much of life before 318 Amaranth Avenue. Sometimes he thinks it’s a good thing. Sometimes he lays awake at night letting that final night play in his mind again, and for the thousandth time he wishes things didn’t have to be this way.
─
eleven years ago.
Appa hasn’t picked him up and carried him in months, but he does tonight. That should have been Sunghoon’s first sign that something was wrong.
“Sunghoon, sit tight in the car for a while, okay?” He had learned how to fasten his own seatbelt just months ago, but Appa was always better, his grown-up hands were faster and less clumsy with the interlocking pieces. “Dad will be out soon, and then we can go.”
“Appa, but it’s late,” Sunghoon protests, confusion already spilling through his voice. “Where are we going?”
“I know it’s late honey,” Appa answers. “We’re heading over to your aunt and uncle’s house. Aren’t you excited to see Aunt Youngmi and Uncle Hajun?”
Appa’s smiling without it reaching his eyes again. He only ever does this when he’s stressed, and Sunghoon thinks he’s old enough by now to be sensible and not give his parents any more trouble than he needs to. He keeps quiet and sits tight in the backseat until Dad and Appa both come back to the car, and all the windows in the front of the house are dark, and the doors are securely locked.
It is late, after all. Sunghoon falls asleep sometime during the journey and reawakens on a couch in his aunt and uncle’s living room, which means Appa or Dad must have carried him out of the car at some point during the night. Sliding off the couch and bundling up the blanket that someone had draped over him carefully, he creeps out to stand by the doorway leading to the kitchen. The lights in the rest of the house are dark save for that one room, and as his eyes adjust to the sudden light he sees his parents and his aunt and uncle all seated around the table, talking softly in low voices. No one is smiling.
“Sunghoon, you’ll stay with your Aunt and Uncle for a while, okay?” Dad has his coat on again, and his car keys in his hand. “Appa and I need to go somewhere, and do something.”
“But I wanna go with you.”
“No, sweetheart.” Appa leans down and wraps his arms around Sunghoon’s shoulders, and everything about Appa is so familiar and warm and comforting in this cold, strange night that all Sunghoon wants is to hold on to him and Dad forever. “We can’t take you with us. Behave yourself, okay? Don’t give your Aunt and Uncle too much trouble.”
“I won’t.” He’s determined not to, as far as he can.
The front door opens and closes again, and Sunghoon is alone.
─
That was eleven years ago. The truth is that nothing will change no matter how many times Sunghoon lets it run through his mind like a record, but sometimes that’s just the way things are. It’s been eleven years since he started living with his aunt and uncle, and his younger cousin Riki. Technicalities aside, Riki is more of a younger brother to him at this point.
“Morning, Aunty and Uncle!”
Jungwon’s voice in the front doorway rings out through the house, and Sunghoon hastens to pack his camera into its case before heading downstairs. “You’re early,” he says. Jungwon is seated at the dining table, waiting for him, backpack still slung over his shoulders.
“I’m on time,” Jungwon retorts, accepting the triangle of sandwich Aunt Youngmi offers to him. “You’re late. Come on, let’s go.”
“Aunt Youngmi, where’s Riki?”
“He left home early today, said he had to meet with some teachers before school, you know the usual,” Aunt Youngmi answers, smiling ruefully. “Have a good day at school, Sunghoon.”
“You too,” Sunghoon calls over his shoulder. “Bye!”
Riki usually leaves home earlier than he does now, which is more than understandable given his position as Midtown High’s incoming junior student body president; whenever there are events organised in school, he always stays late and leaves early, talking to the respective clubs and faculty involved to make sure the proper approvals and scheduling are cleared before they can cause problems.
They weren’t wrong to elect him. For all it’s worth, Riki is dedicated and hardworking and really admirably selfless, and he doesn’t mind being busy all the time. Sunghoon thinks the concept of always having something on his plate would drive him mad sooner or later, but Riki had only said “I’d happily be busy if it was helping someone” or something of the sort when he’d asked, and Sunghoon himself dropped the entire point of concern altogether. Riki could take care of himself when it really came down to it.
Midtown Science High School was by no means a regular high school, but the students by all means behaved like regular high school students. Which meant Jungwon and Sunghoon sidestep at least three couples eating each other’s faces off in the corridor before the bell could ring for homeroom.
“Hey Sunghoon-hyung,” Riki greets as they pass each other on their way to first period. “Can you tell my mom I’ll be late coming home today? I forgot to tell her this morning, but I’ve gotta meet with the committee after school to settle the logistics for the fundraiser.”
“Sure. I’ll put aside some dinner for you in the fridge, okay?”
“Unless my mom made meatloaf. Then…”
“…then don’t leave anything. Got it.”
“Thanks, hyung!”
Sunghoon and Jungwon take the same combination of AP classes, which means it’s more often than not that they share the same schedule. Mr Miller is always late for first period classes, so even though the both of them stroll in two minutes past the bell, there’s no one to reprimand them for it.
“So have you decided?” Jungwon asks suddenly, looking up from unpacking his notes from his bookbag. “About the Oscorp internship offer. Mrs Henry said they wanted a confirmation by the end of this week. It’s already Thursday.”
“Oh, that.” Oscorp, a multimillion-dollar biotechnology research and development company, had reserved Midtown High a few exclusive places in their prestigious internship programme and the school had offered one of those positions to Sunghoon, but in all honesty he didn’t have much interest in it. A random high school student wasn’t likely to be taken seriously in a big organisation like Oscorp, which meant he’d gain little for the amount of time he had to commit in order to accept the internship. He’d told Mrs Henry he’d think about it, but his mind had been pretty much made from the start.
“Yeah, I forgot about that. I’ll tell Mrs Henry she can offer it to someone else.”
“Seriously? I can’t believe you’re giving up a chance to work at Oscorp. It’ll give you something solid to put on your resume.”
Sunghoon sighs. Resumes meant getting jobs, which meant graduating, which meant growing up, which meant scary, scary future. “I’ll think about it later. I’m still not entirely convinced I’m going to live past senior year.”
By this time in the school year most people have sat in the same seat for long enough the seating may as well be fixed. Sunghoon is not in any way surprised when Kim Sunoo walks in and occupies the seat diagonal to his right, but it doesn’t stop him from looking up and following the other boy with his eyes regardless. He’s dressed in a cute autumn outfit, a white long-sleeved shirt layered with a knitted vest and neat grey slacks, typical of him when the weather forecast predicts colder days ahead.
“He’s going to turn around any second now and realise you’ve been staring at him the whole time,” Jungwon reminds Sunghoon softly, not quit able to hide the laughter from his voice, and Sunghoon sits back in his chair so he can better aim a retaliatory smack on his best friend’s shoulder.
“I’ve realised for weeks now, at this point we’re waiting for you to realise I’ve realised,” Sunoo doesn’t turn back when he speaks, but his shoulders shake just enough to tell he’s laughing too.
Sunghoon’s cheeks colour with immediate effect and he gives up, putting his head down on the table. “Sunoo, don’t listen to whatever Jungwon’s saying, you know how sometimes people say things but- But they’re wrong and you shouldn’t listen to them, yeah this is- This is one of those times just ignore him, seriously.”
Jungwon at this point knows Sunghoon isn’t at all actually angry, just rambling to cover up his own awkwardness and at most mildly annoyed, so he freely throws his arm over his best friend’s shoulder and shoots a knowing smile in Sunoo’s direction, which is reciprocated just before Mr Miller decides ten minutes is late enough for his first class and finally descends upon the mortal realm to grace his AP Physics students with his revered presence.
Sunghoon gets home relatively early today; the sky is still bright outside when he steps past the threshold of 318 Amaranth Ave., and the faint just-started-cooking aroma of bokkeumbap wafting through the dining room from the kitchen. He heads up to his room for a shower after quick greetings to his aunt and uncle, and by the time he comes back downstairs dinner is almost ready, and Aunt Youngmi is nattering on about the dust from a big wooden crate his uncle sets on the table.
“Hey Uncle Hajun,” he says, perching himself up on the kitchen countertop. “Where’s the flood?” Though they’d eventually conformed to the American habit of wearing shoes into the house over the years, Aunt Youngmi always kept a strict standard of upkeep and cleanliness, but today there were water tracks liberally dotting the hardwood floors.
“Come and see,” Uncle Hajun beckons, and Sunghoon follows him down to the basement. The wide room is unfurnished and mostly in a state of disuse, given it’s only ever been used as a storage area for miscellaneous items in the past, and Sunghoon steps carefully over wooden trunks and boxes to make sure he doesn’t upset anything on his way down. An old cooler seems to be the source of the running water, and it takes him just a few minutes of inspection to identify the problem.
“It’s the condenser tray,” he says, stepping back. “Too much water for the condenser tray or the heat exchange tubing, this has gotta be the fill line.”
“That’s the only thing that makes sense,” Uncle Hajun agrees. “Can you fix it?”
“No, not tonight. I’ll go by the hardware store tomorrow.”
“Alright. In the meantime, help me bring some of this stuff upstairs before they get too drenched to salvage, will you?”
Sunghoon takes a few trips up and down the basement stairway before the area around the cooler is cleared out, and he returns with a simple leather briefcase in his hands on his last trip, setting it down on the dining table and looking up at his aunt and uncle, some measure of expectation levelling in his gaze.
“I forgot all about that thing,” Uncle Hajun says, walking over to take a look. “It belonged to your dad, he asked us to help keep it safe. Your Appa had one too, but he probably took his with him…”
Sunghoon undoes the clasp and holds the briefcase open for them to see. “My dad asked you to keep this safe? Why? There’s nothing here…” He shoves his hand as far as it can go down into the corners of the old briefcase, but the venture yields nothing more. “There’s nothing in here, Uncle Hajun.”
Aunt Youngmi sighs, bending a smile on Sunghoon. “Your father was a very secretive man, sweetheart.”
Something familiar bubbles up inside him just then, something viscous and poisonous, and Sunghoon swallows the bitterness before too much of it can seep into his tone. “Yeah, trust me, I know.”
Aunt Youngmi has him take the briefcase off the dining table and Sunghoon carries it upstairs, leaving it on the carpet in his bedroom. He remembers to set aside a portion of the bokkeumbap for Riki and tell his aunt and uncle Riki’ll be home late tonight, and he rushes through dinner before heading back upstairs to examine the briefcase once again.
The inside is lined with striped, colourful fabric, typical of an older era. There’s nothing distinctive about it other than the initials engraved onto the clasp, PJS in regal font, the edges wearing away from use and time. Upon further, more thorough inspection, Sunghoon uncovers an old Oscorp employee card, some spare change and a pair of glasses in another compartment, but before he can ponder over the fact that the contents of the briefcase will be the only thing he has left of his dad, his fingers catch on something hidden above the top flap, and he pulls the fabric away to uncover a brown paper-bound file, crinkled at the edges, scraps of paper falling out from the open side.
A knock sounds on his bedroom door just then and he jumps, throwing the briefcase aside as he gets up. “Come in!”
Riki peeks in from outside, grinning widely. “Thanks for saving me dinner, hyung. Just dropped by to say goodnight.”
Sunghoon smiles, expression softening. “Goodnight Riki. Don’t sleep too late, alright?”
“Got it. Goodnight, hyung!”
He flips open the file without hesitation, careful not to dislodge any of the loose-leaf papers inside, but none of its contents make much sense upon first glance. Sunghoon sets down the binder and powers up his computer.
Let’s start from the beginning.
He knows his parents died in a plane crash soon after they left New York. A quick search and a news article click confirms this; ‘Plane Crash Kills Oscorp Scientists Park Jongseong and Lee Heeseung’. In truth, that’s all he knows. His aunt and uncle had avoided this topic of conversation consistently throughout his childhood. It made sense given Sunghoon himself was never really happy to talk about his parents anyway, but now he wishes he knew more about them before they left.
“CROSS SPECIES GENETICS: Science Fiction or Science Fact?”
The contents of the file are laid out on his study table, and he scrutinises them once more. The pages are closely scribbled with scientific formulas and chunks of written theory in what he supposes must be his father’s handwriting, though he has no recollection of it.
“Decay rate algorithm…”
Two circles with diagonal slashes through them are heavily lined on the bottom of a page, next to a convoluted line of formula.
Sunghoon goes to sleep that night with his mind racing. Though the file itself yields nothing concrete, in a way it has greenlit the direction his search should go. His next destination is Oscorp, his parents’ old workplace, the origin of this strange file; it’ll reveal more about everything he has never known about his past.
It has to, right?
─
Sunghoon makes sure to show up bright and early for his first day at Oscorp. Ten minutes early is not altogether the most impressive achievement, but he’ll take whatever small victories he can get. He collects his PARK SUNGHOON: INTERN nametag at the concierge and weaves his way through the foyer to reach the escalators.
“Welcome to Oscorp. Born from the mind of our founder, Norman Osborn, the Oscorp Tower houses 108 floors of innovation. Our scientific minds are pushing the boundaries of defence, biomedical and chemical technologies. The future lies within.”
He sure hopes it does.
The lobby is milling with people; it’s eight-thirty in the morning, and half of New York is on their way to work, which means getting to the assembly point for new interns on the tenth floor is not the easiest job, but it’s doable, and he reaches with a minute to spare.
“Welcome to Oscorp!”
Sunghoon’s eyes widen unconsciously as he looks up. A familiar boy stands in front of him; he’s clad in a clean white lab Oscorp coat and his dark hair is pushed back and away from his face, but his voice is undeniably, comfortingly distinctive.
“My name is Sunoo, I’m a senior at Midtown Science, and head intern overseeing today’s programme! I’ll be with you for the duration of your visit.”
It’s basic psychology, everyone knows familiar faces are the easiest to spot amongst a crowd. Which also means if Sunghoon is to fulfil his actual agenda in coming to Oscorp, he cannot let Kim Sunoo notice his presence in any way for however long he stays with the intern group.
His agenda? To find out more about the file, of course. The two slashes and circles, the decay rate algorithm, the formula, the cross-species genetics study- whatever it is that will tell him more about Park Jongseong and Lee Heeseung, Sunghoon will do it.
“Park Sunghoon?”
Failing his self-assigned task within two minutes should be considered an achievement, really. Sunghoon plasters a neutral expression on his face and turns.
“Hello, Sunoo.”
“I didn’t know you were planning on interning here,” Sunoo says, twirling the pen he’s holding between his fingers absentmindedly. “I thought you told Jungwon you weren’t interested.”
“How…” Sunghoon trails off, smiling to hide his nerves. “You were listening? Right, I changed my mind, yeah…”
“Well, you’re not exactly the quietest of people,” Sunoo throws back. “Kidding. I’m happy to see you here. Don’t give me any trouble, will you? I’ve got a lot of things to handle this week.”
“I won’t, promise,” Sunghoon says, and Sunoo returns to the front of the group to lead them to another area.
“Hey, I’ll be taking you guys to the bioreactor room now, alright?”
Sunghoon backs away from the hologram they’ve been crowding around and rams right into someone else behind him, sending something plastic crashing to the tiled floor.
“My bad, I’m sorry-”
He scrambles to pick up the item, a black plastic binder, and in the second it passes from his hand back to the man’s, something catches his eye. Printed in red ink, two circles and two slashes. “I’m sorry, sir,” he says again, bowing apologetically. The tall, suited man sends him a slightly disgruntled glare before turning to leave, and before he can walk more than ten steps away, Sunghoon is following, footsteps quiet.
The two red symbols are the first sign he’s seen today of anything from his father’s file. He has no idea what they mean, but they’re a beginning, at the very least, if not anything else.
The man stops in front of a nondescript silver door only labelled BIOCABLE DEVELOPMENT ROOM, with the two symbols beside it, and two scientists clad in full lab protection gear emerge from within, conversing softly before all three of them walk off in a different direction. In the split second it takes for the door to start closing again Sunghoon has to choose between entering the lab and following the three men, and just as the door begins to move he slips out from behind the pillar he’s been lurking around, shouldering his way into the room seamlessly.
“Sorry Sunoo,” he mutters under his breath. He’s trespassed into a restricted area now, there’s no going back.
Sunghoon is surrounded entirely by pristine lab equipment, some out in the open, some protected by double-paned glass. To his right, the window in a white door spills blue light into the narrow entryway, and he pushes the door open gingerly, watchful for any security alarms, before slipping silently into the room.
Two concentric circles of plastic racks revolve in a continuous spiral, and on them sit hundreds and hundreds of spiders. Sunghoon doesn’t like spiders any more than the next person, but he doesn’t have arachnophobia either, and his curiosity wins out over his aversion as he watches the critters scurry back and forth. In the centre of the revolving racks is a single flat-glass panel, and on it sits a single spider.
Why doesn’t it escape?
He gets his answer a second later. As he steps closer to the glass panel, something flickers in the space between, a restrictive energy field enclosing the singular spider on all six sides.
“Deactivating containment measures.”
I’m sorry, what ?
A small shower of sparks bursts from the ceiling and the energy field dissipates entirely, and the last thing Sunghoon can remember is the sickening realisation that the spider’s gone , before the electric stab in the back of his neck sends him spiralling into unconsciousness.
─
Sunghoon doesn’t know how much time has passed before he comes to once more, but he’s too overwhelmed with relief that no one has discovered him trespassing to be concerned about that. He gets back up on his feet, albeit woozy from the fainting spell, and manages to slip out of the lab unseen, and as he backtracks the route he’d taken following the suited man earlier in the day, he wonders to himself exactly what the hell happened.
The dull ache in the back of his neck resurfaces just as that thought flashes through his head. Right, the spider. It must have bitten him before he could back away, in the seconds that passed after he’d triggered something that deactivated the containment measure; it was the only explanation to all of this that made any semblance of sense whatsoever.
“Damn, that hurts like a bitch…” Sunghoon mutters to himself, wincing as he stretches his neck to alleviate the growing soreness. He’s found his way back to the central lab by now, the one Sunoo had addressed the rest of the intern group in just this morning. No one around seems to pay him any heed as he weaves between the neat rows of pristine countertops, and Sunghoon is this close to making a seamless escape before a familiar voice makes itself heard behind him, and his heart sinks.
“Hello again, Sunghoon.”
“Sunoo!” Fake, fake, god he sounds so fake. Sunghoon is terrible at lying, and he is nothing but consistent. “It’s…great to see you again! How was your day?”
Sunoo smiles tightly, straightening out his lab coat. “It started well, until one of my interns decided to run off on his own and disappear for-” He glances down at the watch on his wrist. “Two hours?”
“Yeah, that was-” He has nothing. “I just- mhm. Yeah, that definitely happened alright.”
“Okay, what’s really going on here?” Sunoo drops his interrogative tone and, for a minute, he’s just Sunghoon’s classmate again. “Was there a motive you had, in coming to Oscorp? Are you trying to do something? Because-”
“Look, I really like talking to you, and I’ll definitely answer your questions another day, but I’m really just not feeling very well at the moment. I think I’ll go home and get some rest for today.” Sunghoon isn’t lying. A light, thrumming headache has manifested itself behind his eyes somewhere during the brief conversation, and his body is slowly but surely sending him warning signs that something’s not quite right. Whatever it is, he’s not interested in finding out in the middle of Oscorp’s central research lab.
Sunoo sighs, not taking his eyes off Sunghoon. “Alright then, please rest well. Will I be seeing you on Monday, for the second day of the internship opening programme?”
“That depends,” Sunghoon says. “I’ll definitely be here if I’m alive on Monday.”
His deadpan answer earns a laugh from the other boy, and Sunoo gives him a little finger-wave as he heads off towards the East Wing. Sunghoon leaves the Tower and points himself in the general direction of the subway station.
A strange feeling is beginning to settle inside his head, something distinctively and uncomfortably overwhelming. It’s like he’s seeing too clearly, hearing too sharply. It feels like the time in third grade when he’d tried on his classmate’s glasses just for fun, and the degree of the lenses had been way too high for him; the suffocating, drowning sensation of too much, too much is beginning to drive him crazy, and he’s more than thankful for the empty seats on the subway as he spreads himself out over the row and tries his best not to think about anything at all.
─
Sunghoon wakes up to soft but persistent knocking on his door, as if the person outside is equal degrees insistent on coming in and insistent on not intruding without permission.
“Come in.”
Riki slips inside and closes the door behind him softly. “Hyung, is everything alright? My parents said you’ve been cracked out since you got home and I just wanted to check on you.”
“Aunt Youngmi used the words ‘cracked out’? Really?” Sunghoon laughs, sitting up in bed. He doesn’t have any solid recollection of coming home or even getting himself into bed, but he’s glad even cracked out Sunghoon had the sense to change out of his outside clothes. He’s nothing if not particular about the cleanliness of his bed, after all. “I’m alright, Riki, thanks for the concern, all I need is some rest. Just some bug, maybe.”
Haha, bug. Spider. Are spiders bugs?
“Rest well, hyung,” Riki says, smiling. “There’s some dinner left in the fridge for you, but I’m not sure if you’ll want to eat it. Mom made meatloaf, so…”
“Oh…” Meatloaf under this roof fell solidly under the ‘edible, but not so enjoyable’ category, as all inhabitants were well aware of by now. “I’ll check if we have other things lying around. I’m sure I’ll find something.”
“Okay, let me know if you want me to pick up meds from the corner store. Get well soon!” Riki closes the door behind him when he leaves, and Sunghoon is once again reminded of what a great younger brother he has. He reaches out for the cup of water someone, probably Aunt Youngmi, has left on his nightstand, and as his grip tightens around the cup, the colourful ceramic pattern shatters, water spilling through his fingers.
He must really be tripping.
Yup, this is a sign to sleep.
It’s Saturday today, which means he doesn’t have to wake up early tomorrow, and Sunghoon collapses back into bed without a second thought.
─
When Sunday morning arrives, it becomes clear Sunghoon is, in fact, not tripping. The smithereens of the cup litter the floor in a pile by his bedside, and he scoops them carefully into the trash with a roll of paper and reminds himself to apologise to Aunt Youngmi when he goes downstairs. The remnants of lingering sleep mask the discomfort for a precious few minutes, but the chokingly overwhelming feeling from the previous day begins to engulf him again the more alert he becomes, and with each passing second it becomes disturbingly obvious that nothing he does can shake it off.
Sunghoon tries going back to bed. His body rejects even the idea of it as soon as he lies back down; he’s probably slept about eighteen hours straight since he left Oscorp Tower yesterday. He’s awake, painfully awake, and there’s no reprieve to be had from the omnipresent discomfort.
When sleep fails him for the third time, he gives up on the entire idea and drags himself over to his study table, pulling up the search engine on his computer. Though only minimal swelling remains, the back of his neck is still tender where he was bitten by the spider, and there’s no doubt whatever he’s going through right now are aftereffects of it.
Spid |
Spider b |
Spider bite symptoms |
Goddamn. The hundreds upon hundreds of pictures of deadly hunting spiders and tarantulas the search results carry are everything but comforting.
“It is worth noting that few species of spiders regularly found living in households have venom fatal or even severely harmful to humans, however studies conducted in…”
Useless, useless. A single isolated spider kept in a high containment environment in a biogenetics lab is nowhere close to ‘regular’. Assuming that one specimen was the only one they had, Sunghoon is officially the only person in the world ever to have been bitten, which also means he has absolutely zero source material to refer to. Whether he lives or dies- that’s all up to him to figure out.
Oddly enough, as strange as all these new sensations are, Sunghoon doesn’t feel sick exactly. There are many words that can be used to describe them, but not many are negative. A loud, protesting plastic click breaks him from his train of thought just then, and he looks down. Seven keycaps stick firm on his fingers when he pulls away.
Sunghoon sighs.
─
He skips out on the rest of the Oscorp internship opening programme. Sunghoon spends all his free time in the next seven days scouring his father’s notes for any information that could be helpful to him. The spider that bit him was, he learns, part of the research study on cross-species genetics that Lee Heeseung and Park Jongseong both dedicated their life to. The content of the notes speaks of spiders in plural form, but for unknown reasons there seems to be only one specimen remaining, the one he accidentally let loose.
The bite wound heals and disappears. The new, foreign abilities they bring don’t.
Sunghoon slowly pushes his own limits as the days pass. How high is too high for him to jump? How fast is too fast for him to move? How long can he stay hanging with one hand stuck to the wall before he slips? Higher than he has ever jumped before, faster than he has ever seen someone move, longer than should be humanly possible.
He wonders if human standards should still apply. Contemplating his identity as a living being takes up too much brainspace, and Sunghoon goes back to parkouring his way through the most unorthodox routes he can take through downtown New York City to pass the time.
“Hey Aunt Youngmi, Uncle Hajun,” he greets, shrugging off his jacket at the door and hanging it up in the entryway. “Something smells good.”
“Dinner’s ready,” Aunt Youngmi answers, smiling. “Sunghoon-ah, you’ve been coming home late these days. Something on?”
“Uh…” Sunghoon falters for a brief moment. “The Oscorp internship! Right, I’ve been busy with that lately.”
“You got some time after your internship to pick up Riki on the way home? He’s got a field trip to some place on the other side of town and I’ve got a late shift tomorrow I can’t swap.”
“Yeah, absolutely,” Sunghoon says immediately, washing his hands before sitting down at the table. “I can do that. Tomorrow night, about seven?”
Nothing else happens, between the time the agreement is made and the time it is supposed to be fulfilled. But Sunghoon, caught up by the rest of the fast-paced city, absorbed by the allure of exploring his new limits as a spider-boy, just forgets. And by the time he returns home the next night, later than usual, at almost nine, Uncle Hajun is sitting on one of the patio chairs waiting for him, and he does not look anything close to happy.
Sunghoon feels something buzz against the small of his back, and a familiar little jingle plays softly, just softly enough that if his surroundings weren’t silent, he wouldn’t have heard it. His phone.
Before he can reach in to fish it out from wherever it’s buried in his backpack, Uncle Hajun speaks. “Don’t answer that, but I’m glad to know it works. Where were you tonight?”
“I, uh…” Say something, say something, something that isn’t “jumping through residential blocks in Manhattan using only fire escape rails” “I was just out, taking a walk and stuff.”
“Taking a walk, huh? Do you remember?” Uncle Hajun asks. “What you were supposed to be doing tonight?”
Oh, shit. He was supposed to have picked up Riki from his field trip at seven. The post-it note scribbled with the address he should wait at was still in his pocket, folded into half beside two fruit candies.
“A sixteen-year-old boy had to take a two hour journey home through an entire city area he was unfamiliar with, because you were busy taking a walk. Do you know what could have happened tonight, if he hadn’t been lucky enough to come home safe? Do you know how many people disappear on their way home every day, and never return ?”
Sunghoon’s heart wrenches as the worry and disappointment and relief seeps through the anger in his uncle’s voice. “I’m really sorry, Uncle Hajun. I’ll apologise to Riki, too. This was my bad, I’m really really sorry. I should have been more-”
“Sunghoon-ah, listen,” Uncle Hajun begins. “I know losing both your parents was difficult for you, and I know it was something you never really processed properly. Your aunt and I did our best to raise you, even though we knew we wouldn’t ever replace your real family. And I know Riki isn’t your brother, but-”
“Do you think I left him there tonight because I don’t care enough about him? ” Sunghoon doesn’t have a habit of interrupting, least of all interrupting his seniors. But this time, something else just takes over. “Uncle Hajun, I know I was irresponsible tonight, and I know I was wrong. But how could you try to tell me I don’t love Riki as my brother? ”
“Listen, that’s not what I meant-”
“Isn’t it?” Sunghoon continues, his tone bitter, so bitter to mask the hurt. “Ever since the day my parents abandoned me at this doorstep and left, I have always treated you as my real family. To me, you and Aunt Youngmi and Riki, you’re my everything. You’ve never lost your parents. I don’t think you would understand, Uncle Hajun.”
Before his uncle can answer, Sunghoon is already turning to leave, backpack abandoned on the patio steps where he was standing, and he disappears into the bustling night cityscape.
─
His journey this time has no aim, no intended destination, no goal in mind. Flipping between rooftops doesn’t carry the same exhilaration when his heart is heavier than stone. Sunghoon finds himself a semi-comfortable perch halfway up the side of a street-facing building and settles down there, letting the sounds of nighttime New York occupy his mind. Processing emotions never came easy to him, and it doesn’t seem like it’s about to start now.
“Sunghoon-hyung!”
Sunghoon opens his eyes again only when one voice stands out from the monotony of passing car engines. Sitting up where he is, he looks down at the street and searches the walkways for the owner of the voice.
“Sunghoon-hyung?”
Riki?
“God, what’s he doing out here so late at night?” Sunghoon says softly, preparing to climb down. “His parents are going to kill him…”
By the time Sunghoon locates the dark head of hair down on the street, there’s only a second left before it disappears. There’s no time for him to react, none at all; all he can do is watch on as the white pickup truck ploughs over the dark-haired boy without stopping, and the body so far away crumples into a heap on the empty street.
“Riki!”
Sunghoon doesn’t register anything until his body hits solid ground again, and he scrambles to stand up in a hurry. Something is definitely broken somewhere, an arm or a wrist or something, but he can barely feel it. He’s beside Riki’s body in a second, crouching down, cradling the boy’s head in his lap. A deep, open gash cuts across his forehead, matting his hair with dark, congealing blood, lips pale, eyes empty.
“Riki? Can you hear me?” Sunghoon’s hands are shaking where they grip onto his shoulders. Blood drips from his own forehead faster than tears and he wipes them away, unheeding, the only thought in his head a dying hope for his brother to please wake up.
“Riki, please…”
Anyone who’s lived in New York knows sirens are perpetual background noise near the city centre. Sunghoon, tonight, learns they’ll never be fast enough to save the person who needs it most.