Work Text:
BEFORE THE TOWER
When Khun thinks about the dates of the main events of his childhood – his entry into school, the adoption of Kiseia, the beginning of the princess selection process, Maria – he builds a yardstick to more or less determine his age in other less central events.
The first of these moments was before he entered Khun school, so he must have been around three years old. That day his mother sat on his bed as soon as he woke up and told him what was wrong with him.
It was crucial that he knew, that he understood, because when you know the threat, you can destroy it (or in that case avoid it).
“This is extremely dangerous, Aguero. It could get us expelled if anyone finds out, so don't trust anyone."
The following months could only be described as suffocating.
With each step taken by Khun, his mother hovered – for lack of a better word – over him, asking what everything around him looked, smelled, sounded, tasted, its texture, its shape.
When she leafed through a book with him and he pointed out the colored words, his mother told him that book had no colors.
This was the first “detour” he discovered.
A few days later he discovered how his body itched whenever he saw the odd numbers, shivered when he saw a number in the hundreds place, and skin tingled when it was multiples of seven.
Since then Khun had to worry about hiding the way he saw and felt the world around him. That's because the atypicals – popular name for people like him – and their family nucleus were automatically expelled as soon as they were discovered.
The big argument was: atypicals often had trouble controlling shinsu. For an ableist family this was unacceptable. In addition, the Khun Family recognized the problem as hereditary, to solve the “problem” effectively and permanently, everyone directly associated with the atypical identified was automatically expelled. Another application of the popular saying “nip the evil in the bud” that is said to all the disinherited.
Most of the family, however, knew it was a great hypocrisy. Atypicals were identified throughout the Tower, yes, but the proportion within the Khun Family was higher. Which automatically induced that it was not the wives who carried the defective gene, but the great head of the family.
But the Khun Family was never fair. And Khuns always found a way to survive.
The first big challenge for Khun was when he entered school at the age of four.
It was common knowledge that teachers tested students to find who had deviance the most in the early years, even if in a veiled way.
His mother had trained his mind exhaustively to understand the intentions of the teachers' questions and what their strategies were that would lead him to a dead end that would expose him.
Not all the other half-siblings who studied in the same class as him were so lucky. In his class of initially thirty-one students, three were also atypical and were discovered by the same inspections that he got away with. And as his mother said, they and their whole family nucleus were expelled.
Over time, however, overconfidence breeds recklessness. And it seemed so unrealistic that they would find out that Khun began to adapt his deviations to improve functions and ease his obligations. And Khun AA has always been, by his nature, lazy.
A lazybones always found the easiest way to do something. In all the years he had spent in the Khun Family, he had been living proof of that.
He adapted his deviations from quickly identifying numbers and seeing few colorful words to do the most with the least effort. This substantially reduced his time studying and his effort on the task. So he just skimmed the pages while his hands flicked through the pages without bothering to worry about drawing suspicion. As he got better and better he had free time to even start fishing.
IN THE TOWER
From inside his lighthouse in Leroro's class for light bearers, Khun was already bored.
It had been a few minutes since he'd only paid partial attention to the professor's voice. Instead, he focused on doing little research on the floor's network.
As an amateur in the use of lighthouses, he didn't know how to properly protect his research from some floor administrator who might presumably want to snoop on what he was researching. Even one of his priorities for the near future was to learn about it, but for now, he could afford to do some safer and more predictable research.
First some members of his family. The name Kiseia glowed orange as soon as he finished writing it, accompanied by the already sickening blue he always saw in the name Khun. The information he sought was there: she had not yet entered the Tower.
Next research: Maria, with the light pink tone, contrasting with the yellow Zahard that almost hurt Khun’s retinas. The result was more extensive, as in addition to the usual file there were several news about apparitions, interviews and gossip. As she was a princess this was inevitable, surely Endorsi would have a similar result. He stopped himself from opening any of them and focused on the information important to his – and now Bam's – climb.
Next was Ran, the dark blue that always reminded him of a clear night sky. Ran was a hidden atypical like Khun, as well as being a family prodigy. Khun already had a plan to convince him to join him once Ran entered the Tower.
So he researched members of the floor. The closest friends, perhaps, according to the list he helped complete: Bam, Rak, Hatsu, Isu, Endorsi, Anaak .
Perhaps he had already unconsciously made the connection in his brain. The truth is that when he read that Anaak Zahard was dead, Khun didn't even blink.
Khun entered the kitchen to heat up his late dinner in the microwave. Ran was half lying on a couch, yogurt dangling from his mouth as he played a video game. Khun walked right past him without a greeting. It was somehow a small kindness on Khun's part not to induce Ran to be irritated by the sounds he heard whenever he looked at someone.
The truth was, Ran was very lucky to have only one kind of detour, as annoying as he thinks it is. Whenever Ran looked at someone a specific sound would sound in his head. And he organized the sounds into irritability scales, which ranged from mildly uncomfortable to "I would kill that person to stop this".
Against his expectation, Ran looked away from the video game to look in his direction when Khun was passing. Maybe the sound Ran heard when he looked at him wasn't so bad, because Ran didn't avoid looking as much as expected. Khun reached out and ran his hand lovingly through Ran's hair, giving it a light tidy before making his way to the bedroom and going back to work on his lighthouse.
In a test floor every second was precious. Maybe not for everyone, but it was for Khun. Any second he could get ahead could give him more control over both his team and the entire test. And for that he used all the tricks and artifice he could and his detours – surprisingly – helped him a lot.
Khun had already become a color expert, going through hundreds of pages a minute in his lighthouse. Knowing what each piece of data was about based on key colors that glowed and things that felt. He just spent time reading data he already knew had what he needed.
It sure made it worth the headache and eye pain he got afterward.
Since waking up from the coma, Khun has been feeling strange. Not only has his body temperature been fluctuating bizarrely, a potentially dangerous firefish stuck in his body and dropping occasional threats and Rak looking at him as if he were a soft-shelled turtle. Ugh .
Plus, he has an unprecedented feeling bubbling up inside his chest: gratitude. He couldn't help but feel, despite having proven himself inconvenient more than once. The inconveniences are situations like the one he finds himself in at the moment: in a training room, under the tutelage of none other than Hansung.
It's inevitable , he thinks with a sigh, maybe I've become a soft-shelled turtle. After all, Isu and his team spent two years delaying their climb to try to revive him. And Khun doesn't think he deserves it, so he's been going along with a lot of stupid ideas over the last few weeks.
The class in question is basic shinsu control, because Isu wants to hone some scout skills. For C-rank regulars scout using Observers are expected to have more complex dynamics with the equipment that is only possible with greater shinsu control.
Of course, Isu was smart enough to do a lot with his teammates' skills alone, delegating only strategy. And that's why he was so keen to improve his own skills, because any improvement would be a significant advance. Khun understands and shares the thought, even admires it even though at this point all he wants is to strangle him.
Khun was sitting on the floor, sweating and exhausted. Around him, everyone was wearing new training clothes with their names embroidered on the pockets.
Ever since Khun entered the Tower, he's been tempted to signify the colors he saw in people's names. It is an unforgivably sentimental action and probably also meaningless. If the colors were random he would have wasted who knows how much time assigning meaning based on nothing.
But a small smile threatens to appear on his face as he looks at Hatsu's gray name, the color of a blade he saw in a children's book he read. And Isu's green always made him feel a little better, almost comfortable.
And most significant: Baam. That once was just night, a word meaningless enough to have a color. After meeting Bam, it glowed with the colors of a vast golden field of the Floor of Evankhell. It glowed like hope. It glowed like second chances. Like beginnings. Like Baam.