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It starts out softly — nothing more than a faint brush of knuckles against the wood of his door, as if almost afraid of the ruckus actual knocks would cause. The shifting of weight from one leg to another, a muted rustle of fabric, and another, hesitant, tap. Sharp, ragged exhales. An all-too-familiar click.
Chenle looks up from his book like he’d seen a ghost (which is purely theoretical, because if ghosts exist, and if he managed to catch a glimpse of one, he wouldn’t have been granted reaction time; he would already be dead), eyes darting to the source of the sounds before his brain can properly process the situation at hand (or at door, haha, nevermind). The peaceful tranquillity of unread pages in the late morning is instantly clouded with the choking haze of white noise, and Chenle is at his feet in an instant.
He doesn’t believe in peepholes — never has, probably never would — and still doesn’t, even as he stands in the entryway to his home with a thin piece of wood between him and whoever that stands outside. He swears that, in the event that he survives this, he won’t ever subscribe to that notion. He hopes that he survives.
You’re being stupid, he thinks to himself. Physically, he’s invincible. Who would ever come for him in this (lovingly) godforsaken town mainly consisting of nice old grannies who knit every person below forty customised sweaters like they’re their own grandchildren in the middle of nowhere anyway? The most secrets anyone keeps in the town are their prized pie recipes. This town is safe. There’s nothing dangerous here to be afraid of — not friendly old uncles, not sweet old ladies, and not their children coming back to visit once in a blue moon.
Chenle sucks in a deep breath. You are a normal person, he reminds himself as he strides across the room. Normal people aren’t afraid of answering their doors.
“Coming!” he calls, the way a normal person would, and swings the door open in a smooth motion. “How may I-”
In response to his hospitality, Chenle receives a gun to his forehead.
“Don’t move,” a shaky voice says, hands far steadier than the unsteady way the words rattle in his chest. “Or I’ll shoot.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Chenle warns.
The last thing he hears is a muffled bang as a bullet buries itself in his temple.
Ten years ago, Zhong Chenle was a god.
Well, as close to a god as a genetically-engineered teenager in the murky depths of the Chinese underground can get, anyway.
When he turned 18 and decided, hey, what if there’s more to life than this? he escaped as far as he could and wound up at a quaint little town hidden in a foreign countryside filled with ivy-covered cottages and old ladies who wouldn’t harm a hair on his head, even if he asked them to. He grew his own vegetables, he learned not to flinch at every mention of his name, and he tried his best to forget.
Ten years later, Chenle tends to his lettuces, which seem to have halved in their numbers since he’d last checked on them yesterday. He’ll have to check on the idiots in charge of predator control — it simply wouldn’t do for the wolves to be eradicated from the area by foreign hunters who think they know everything. If not the wolves, what else would stand in between his produce and the bold buck hiding in the woods?
“Those pests after your lettuces again?” A sympathetic voice warbles its way over the low white fence separating Chenle’s garden from his neighbour’s. She heaves a sigh. “It looks like we’re in the same boat, my dear. They’ve had a go at my poor tulips.”
Chenle climbs to his feet, pushing stray hairs out of his eyes with a rough gloved hand. “Good morning, grandma!”
“Blessed morning, Chenle dearest,” Mrs Lee, the kind old lady who lives next door says with a wrinkled smile and a twinkle in her eyes as she hefts a wheelbarrow of flowers picked from her garden onto the town’s only road. “Heading to the market, too?”
Chenle shakes his head. “Nothing good to sell today after the deer took their sample.” He peels his gardening gloves off, tucking them in his pocket, and swings the little gate open as he crosses the border separating his home from the rest of the town. “Need some help?”
“No, no, I’ll be fine!” she exclaims, although she doesn’t put up a fight as Chenle gently takes the heavy barrow from her. “Well, if it’s no trouble to you,” she relinquishes.
“Of course it isn’t,” Chenle reassures. She straightens her back out with a breath of relief.
“You’re such a good boy, Chenle. Whatever could have led you to move all the way out here, in the middle of nowhere?” Mrs Lee asks, and Chenle has heard this question so many times that he already knows his response before she can even finish her sentence.
“The city life was just too hectic for me,” Chenle smiles, and it is at least somewhat true. He doesn’t like lying very much. They want me dead out there, he thinks.
“But you came such a long way,” she tuts, her grey hair bobbing as she shakes her head. “A boy like you could’ve gone out and made a name for himself, instead of spending his days pushing an old lady’s wheelbarrow for her.”
“Well, who would push it for you otherwise?” he jokes, and she laughs.
“Fine, I’ll let it go, you little smartmouth,” Mrs Lee swats a pink gloved hand at his shoulder. “You are a good kid, though.” She heaves a sigh. “You remind me a lot of my son.”
Chenle raises an eyebrow that she can’t see under the brim of his floppy hat. “The one working overseas?”
“That’s the one.” Her footsteps slow in pace, and he shortens his stride so he doesn’t leave her behind. “I haven’t seen him in many years. I know that visiting is hard when he’s so far away, but his letters could be a little more frequent...”
And yet she’s always trying to get him out of the sleepy old town, Chenle thinks. Old people are strange.
“Speaking of,” Mrs Lee suddenly remembers as they approach the market located near the town’s centre, “did you know Sooyoung’s son is back in town?”
Chenle tries to remember who that is — it’s hard to match family name to given name when everyone is Mr or Mrs to him. “Ms Choi?”
“Park, dear,” she chuckles. “Her son is a wonderful little boy, just about your age! I hear he’s back after getting his doctorate at a big university.”
“His mother must be so proud,” Chenle says, and feels just a little bit jealous.
“She is! I think he’ll be helping her out today. You should go meet him!”
It’s kind of dumb, considering how far they are from the dregs of society where Chenle was created, but his walls still creep up a little when he thinks about meeting people that aren’t friendly senior citizens. “Maybe.”
He isn’t sure if she can’t sense his reluctance, or simply doesn’t care. “It would do you so much good for you to have friends your age, Chenle dear.” She smiles as if she hasn’t just verbally jabbed Chenle in the stomach. “You can stop here, thank you so much.”
“It’s always a pleasure,” Chenle grins, setting the wheelbarrow down next to her little wooden flower stand. “I’ll be off, then!”
“Don’t forget what I told you!” She calls after him as he ventures deeper into the semi-crowded mishmash of handmade stalls, all selling a variety of homemade goods. This town doesn’t even have a supermarket — the town’s market is as close to a Homeplus as its inhabitants will ever get — but Chenle finds that he quite likes it. There’s a sort of peace one finds when their biggest concern is their senior citizen neighbours haggling your carrots down to a fraction of its original selling price with sweet talk and promises of ice cream when they get their old machine working again.
Without a shopping list of items he specifically needs, Chenle weaves aimlessly through, stopping every now and then to exchange words with some of the chattier folks or examine a fish that their seller swears “is so fresh that it could come back to life if he were to drop it into a bucket of water!”
“With all due respect, ma’am, I don’t think that’s possible,” Chenle says, looking into the fish’s lifeless eyes.
The middle-aged woman running the stand rolls her eyes. “You just haven’t given it a shot. Steam one for dinner! I’m sure the taste will live up to your sky-high expectations, Mr Genius.”
Chenle laughs with an “I can’t back out after that, now, can I?” and asks for two.
“I knew you were a smart one,” she winks, tossing her hair over her shoulder as she turns to call someone behind her. “Jisung!”
“Yeah?” A guy Chenle’s age sticks his head out from behind her, brown hair flopping into his eyes, and Chenle realises with a jolt that this was probably the aforementioned son that returned to visit his mother.
“Help wrap this lovely boy’s tilapia for him.” She turns back to Chenle. “You’ll have to excuse him, he’s a little new to this. He went to study in the city and got so used to it there that he can’t remember how to help his poor mother out at her stall anymore.”
“It’s no problem,” Chenle says quickly, and wonders if he can shrink away somehow. The brown head of hair emerges to form a lanky boy wearing plaid flannel, who takes the fish from his mother and clumsily folds them into packages wrapped with beige butcher paper. While he does that, Chenle suddenly becomes very interested in his shoelaces.
“Here.” Jisung hands the bundles to Chenle, who keeps his eyes firmly down at the fish displayed below him.
“Thanks.” Chenle doesn’t bother to say anything more as he pays Ms Park, waving goodbye to her as quickly as he can before making his way out of the market as briskly as he can without seeming strange. He’s had too much social interaction for today, he decides as he heads home with his fish, and when he unwraps the packages of fish to store away, their dead eyes seem to stare back at him.
“You really didn’t have to, you know,” Chenle tells his captor. He’s pinned with his cheek against the ground in an instant, hands pressing his own into his back with surprising speed.
Despite his nonchalance, the unforgettable crack of the gunshot still echoes loud and clear in his ears. From his vantage point on the floor, Chenle watches the bullet roll away and behind his umbrella stand.
“Don’t talk to me.”
“I can kill you where you stand.” Chenle pauses. “Or kneel. I don’t know what stance you’re taking, but I doubt it’ll do you any good.”
“I said, don’t talk to me-”
“Are you working for my family? I’d know those guns anywhere. Didn’t think they’d try to find me out here, but I like to think I threw them off pretty good.” Chenle interrupts. The word family leaves an acidic sting in his mouth, but he ignores it. “Actually, wait. Going back to your mum in your godforsaken hometown out of the blue with no backup? You must’ve defected. How long did it take to shake them off your trail? Do you still have all your fingers intact?”
There’s a click at the back of his skull. Chenle hums to himself. “Not quite right, then. Let me take a second guess: you fucked up, you’re looking to return to their good books, and I showed up where you least expected me to be like a golden goose. Is my bounty still up? I wonder how many million yuan I’m worth now. Or has it hit the billions?”
“One more word, and you’ll find out.” His hands are bound with some kind of makeshift rope, and they rub his wrists raw. “You’re going to answer all my questions, Zhong Chenle.”
“I thought you said I can’t talk anymore?” He feels the cold metal of the muzzle touch his skin for the second time today. “Yeah, yeah, okay.” Why do people keep threatening me with bullets to my head like I’ll get caught off guard if they shoot me again?
“What are you doing in this town? Why do you want to hurt these people?”
“To be left alone, what else?” Chenle scoffs. “As if I’d hold some retirees hostage. Missed the carrots growing in my garden, did you? You can ask your mother about them, she buys from me every week.”
Chenle hopes his guess is correct. Judging from the moment of silence, he’s probably hit the nail on the head. “You’re a murderer,” his captor finally says, but he sounds a little unconvinced. Chenle snorts.
“And you’re not? Don’t play dumb, I know the Zhongs don’t just hire anyone.” He sighs. “Look, I really don’t want to have to kill you. Believe me, I’ve had enough blood on my hands for a thousand lifetimes.” He lifts his bound wrists as much as he can manage. “Untie me, and I’ll make you some tea.”
Chenle makes tea. Park Jisung sits awkwardly on a cushion on the ground, because Chenle doesn’t have a couch.
“Does anyone else know you’re here?” Chenle asks, handing over the only mug he owns. It’s chipped at the edges, and has a crooked handle. Jisung glances at the brownish water and takes a sip.
“No.” He pauses. “I messed up, just like you said.”
Yes! Chenle does a mental fist pump. “Your mother sent you to the city for university, right?” He doesn’t wait for Jisung’s reply. “I’m assuming that’s not exactly how things went down.”
“I was naïve.” Jisung looks down at his mug. “Mum underestimated the money I’d need. I was already working three jobs, so I thought I could handle it, but I got into massive debt. I used to hunt, I'm pretty good with guns, and when I was the most desperate, I met a guy.” He shrugs. “Dropped out of school after six months.” So much for that doctorate.
“That sucks,” Chenle says, because he doesn’t really know how he’s supposed to respond. How do you say that you’re familiar with fate forcing your hand? How does one put that feeling of understanding into words?
They took me in when I was three and stuck me full of needles until I stopped bleeding.
They lied to me for years that I was doing the right thing.
They drugged me up and made me dependent, so I could never leave.
They were all I ever knew.
“Are you still going to turn me in?” Chenle says instead, because the mere thought of saying those words out loud still sours his tongue with a punishment he knows can’t reach him. Old habits don’t die easy.
Jisung shrugs again. “At first, maybe. When I recognised you, I thought my prayers had been answered,” he laughs, a little self-deprecatingly. “Maybe they’d let me back in, and I could go on like nothing happened. But then, I thought, do I really want to go back? It was good money, but I hated every second of it. So I had to make sure that you weren’t a threat to this town, instead.” He gestures at the mug in his hand. “I don’t think I can do that now, can I?”
The knot Chenle’s insides had wound themselves into loosens slightly. “I hope not,” he jokes. “Or I’d have wasted my tea.” They won’t kill him, they won’t kill him.
Jisung laughs a little in a sad, hollow way and is silent. Chenle glances out the window and wonders if it’ll rain.
“What do I do now?”
Chenle looks up at him in surprise. Between then and now, his mind had gone fishing for the fallen bullet from behind the umbrella stand, and it hovers in the air between them. He reaches out to give it a little spin.
“Well, you could help me out with my lettuces,” Chenle says simply, like it's no big deal. “I’ll give you ten percent of my earnings.”
“Fifty percent,” Jisung corrects, and Chenle grins. Okay, then.
“Fifteen.”
“Forty.”
“Twenty.”
“Thirty?”
“Twenty-five,” Chenle says with finality, and reaches out his hand. Jisung takes it and gives it a firm shake.
(Chenle gives him twenty-five and a room in his house.
Jisung takes fifty and moves into Chenle’s room the next year.)
“I always wondered, why did you keep your surname?”
Chenle straightens up from when he was bent over his plants, pruning his tomatoes. “Zhong?”
“Yeah.” Five years later, Jisung now bears weatherbeaten skin and callused hands to match Chenle’s. He stands across the fence, watering the tulips they’d been babysitting after Mrs Lee’s son finally returned and invited her to stay with his own little family for a few months. “No one would’ve known your name out here and, I mean, it’s not really yours. Not biologically, anyway.”
Chenle thinks back to when he was a child crying alone on the streets until they whisked him away to a lab full of needles and radiation beams. “I didn’t have any other name to use, I guess.”
“Well, you could always take mine.” Jisung’s voice is nonchalant, but Chenle’s eyes widen.
“Jisung.”
“I’m serious!” Jisung says, but he laughs, which kind of ruins the effect. “Unless you don’t want to, which is fine-”
“Get over here, you idiot.”
Jisung puts the green watering can down and steps obligingly over the fence. Chenle immediately tackles him around the waist, and they fall to the ground. Grass tickles their limbs, and a little bit high on joy and life, Chenle giggles.
“Is this your way of proposing? Because it really isn’t funny,” Chenle says as he sits up despite the massive grin that stretches across his face. “Yes, yes, of course. Park sounds better than Zhong any day.”
Jisung tugs him down and their lips meet in a sweet collision. It’s a little bit gross, it’s a little bit uncomfortable — there’s a smattering of dirt smeared across both their faces, and Jisung’s legs are splayed far too close to the cauliflowers — but there’s nothing Chenle would change about this moment under the sun.
There’s blood on both their hands, and it stains their souls with the dark smear of death. Victims of circumstance or not, their sins are unforgivable; they’ll never see heaven. They’ll live, and they’ll die, and they’ll atone for the deaths they’ve caused in one way or another.
If Chenle closes his eyes, he can daydream that they’d grown up in different situations, met under different circumstances. That they could roam free on the earth and wander the streets like real people do, and close their eyes without the hands of the dead reaching out to claw them under.
But for now, they have vegetables. They wield shovels and shears, and trade conversations and carrots and cabbages at the marketplace. They repaint Chenle’s stall, and at some point, they buy the house a couch. Jisung adds a mug to Chenle’s shelf and chips it while washing the dishes. The pistol collects dust in a box under their bed until Chenle digs a hole one day and buries it under layers upon layers of dirt. They learn not to fear knocks on the door. They live on, even though they definitely deserve more than just to die.
Under the sunlight, they are two boys again, and as Chenle presses their foreheads together, his heart can’t help but swell with hope for a brighter tomorrow.