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For as long as he dreamed, he wanted to make the world a perfect place.
When he was little, he read books telling of cities akin to paradise, of utopias. Idyllic, perfect cities with no flaws. A place where people could intermingle without having to worry about their race, nationality, gender, or their different cultural backgrounds. A place where everything was perfect, as it should be.
When he was little, he had dreamed of a world where everything was perfect. Every dream had to start small, and it started from his family.
His family was rich and famous. They live in a mansion, they didn’t have to worry about debt and their riches, for their income was stable. They had a private pool, an army of butlers and maids that served them with utmost loyalty and kindness. Media tells the public that they were the perfect family, where the parents didn’t push the children, didn’t force them, and they never got into fights. A perfect family.
At least…that was what the media portrayed them as.
Frankly, yes, their family was perfect, but only to the public eye. A perfect picture with a broken frame, one could say.
When he was little, he wasn’t acknowledged by his parents. They once told him that he was a failure. A failure, a mistake, too imperfect for their pristine image as the rich, famous, and perfect family. But, they had to put up a facade to not taint their image. It was quite a paradoxical scenario. He was the one tainting their image, but at the same time, being the ‘perfect’ son they had ‘dreamed’ of, he wasn’t tainting the image either.
So, he was a ghost to his parents, but an icon to the rest.
He grew up thinking that he was a failure. He wasn’t acknowledged because he was imperfect, right? A boy with so many flaws, that his parents wouldn’t desire him. Failure. Failure. Failure. Imperfect. Imperfect. Imperfect.
As he grew, an idea formulated in his head. He had a dream once, when he was 16, that there was a world, a distant world, where everything was perfect. The utopian city he had read about, the utopian city he had heard about, the utopian city he had dreamed about. A place where everyone is happy, a place where despair has no place. It was his dream, no, his goal to build that city. The ultimate life goal.
Forget his childhood passion of pursuing music. Forget the more stable option of getting a job in economics. Building a utopian city was his dream.
Maybe…maybe then, he would finally be acknowledged.
As he grew, he started to build his army. Coming from a rich family meant that he had an allowance, and as much as his parents would like to neglect him, they would rather dump their stashes of money to him than any other person when they die. With this, he started buying lab equipment without his parents knowing. Establishing a team of scientists, who would drag unsuspecting subjects and fiddle with their neurological system and try to create a mindset where it would fit into a utopian society.
It was…hard. He had started this project 8 years ago, and not once did he succeed. Every year, he wiped the city clean for the new batch of subjects to roll around, and live for a year. They never lived up to his expectations of a utopian city—there would always be a report of conflict here and there (though, substantially less than the normal world he lived in), a report of something going wrong that isn’t supposed to happen in a perfect society.
It was in his fourth year of experiments that he met Choi Seungcheol—who, as he heard from the security team, was a rookie fighter for the PLEDIS Security System, an organization in which they pledged to fight the world for the greater good.
He merely scoffed when the guard reported his presence four years back.
Seungcheol was everything that he resented. He was clumsy, reckless, and imperfect . When he would make a mistake, he would just laugh it off. When he would make a mistake, he just kept going, as if the mistake didn’t weigh him down. Imperfect. A human wasn’t supposed to make mistakes. A human wasn’t supposed to make errors. The gods above didn’t sacrifice their time to make idiots , right?
It was his noble duty to make them perfect.
He was now standing in front of Seungcheol, who had his gun out, loaded and aimed at the man. It felt like deja vu all over again—like four years ago, when they first met. Bloody corpses were around them, the stench of blood filling the air. It made him sort of sick.
“Why are you doing this?” Seungcheol shook his head, features crumpled. He doesn’t get it.
“You don’t get it. I need to make the world perfect. It’s my duty —a noble one. You would never get it.” He shook his head, taking out his own gun and loading it.
“A perfect world doesn’t exist .” Seungcheol shook his head. He couldn’t believe it—was he kidding? A perfect, utopian world does exist, in some multiverse, in some universe that they didn’t live in.
“It does exist. Somewhere, out there. We don’t have technology that can reach the multiverse yet, but I would like to make the first step to perfection on Earth, through this project.” He snapped.
“...It doesn’t. I’m sorry.” Seungcheol sighed, lowering down his gun. “Why do you even want to make a perfect world?”
“Hadn’t I already told you? It’s my duty , Choi.” He tensed his stance, ready to press the trigger and shoot a bullet through his head.
“No, really. Why do you want to make a perfect world?” Seungcheol looked into his eyes. Two pools of deep brown, alluring and somewhat hypnotizing. What he wished his eyes were—instead of the ugly pair of pale gray he has. It almost made him look like he was blind.
“...It’s none of your business.” He looked away. Why was he prying into his business?
“...Y’know, we aren’t born perfect, even from the start.” Seungcheol chuckled. A deep voice, angelic and pure. What he wished his laugh was—instead of the deceitful laughter he was born with. Have you ever heard about this belief? That the gods above once made perfect humans, long, long ago. Those who can mingle with everybody regardless of their backgrounds, their genders.”
“Why are you telling me this? This isn’t time for a sob story. Plus, you just reinforced my point.” He groaned, about to shoot, but Seungcheol looked into his eyes again, this time with guilt in his eyes—no, pity .
“Because, the truth is, they were jealous. The gods were imperfect, but their creations, they were the opposite of them. What were once good intentions to make a perfect civilization grew into jealousy and envy for the perfect society. And so, they wiped the perfect humans off the earth, and created a new batch, but this time, even more imperfect than the gods, so that no matter how much they yearned for their supposed perfection, they can never quite get there.”
A heavy realization grew in his stomach, but he decided to ignore it for now. “So? I don’t care. No matter how long it takes, I would still strive to make that perfect world.”
“This means that we’re all imperfect. Even the gods above. I don’t know if you’re right, that there is a world out there, where everything is perfect and where the world is a utopia on its own, but in our damn world, where it’s filled with jealousy, greed, and so many sinful people, we have to acknowledge that we aren’t perfect.” Seungcheol smiled—a pure one, one of epiphany and kindness.
Sadness replaced rage in his heart. He didn’t deserve this. Why was he caring for him?
“Why are you…why are you doing this?”
“Because I want you to realize. No matter how high you reach for the stars, you would never touch them. But, we can always admire them from afar, and we can live with that. It’s like that with perfection. No matter how much you strive for it, you would never quite achieve perfection. But, we can still admire the concept of perfection, and we can live with it, knowing that we’re imperfect, but by embracing our imperfections, we’re perfect—in a way.”
Tears started pooling in his eyes, threatening to slip. “No…no, you’re just…detering me.”
“I know it’s hard to learn that this world isn’t perfect, which is basically the antithesis of your goal of a perfect civilization, but, we can embrace our imperfections, and in that way, we’re perfect. Perfect for embracing who we are.” Seungcheol smiled, walking towards the crying male and patting him on the back. His touches were reassuring.
“Plus, just because we make mistakes, doesn’t mean we’re imperfect. We learn as we grow, and I don’t think it spells the end of the world if we slip up.”
By that point, a waterfall of salty tears was cascading down his pale skin, as ugly sobs racked his body. Seungcheol, the kind, imperfect soul he is, decided to hold him as he cried his heart out.
“...I see. So, is this all meaningless?”
“...Ah, to that, I don’t really know.” He shrugged, a goofy smile spreading on his face. He couldn’t help but laugh a bit.
“Thank you for helping me break out of this mindset, Seungcheol-ssi.” He looked towards said man, who returned a beautiful smile.
“No problem. Ah, if you don’t mind, what’s your name?”
“Jihoon. Lee Jihoon.” He said.
“Nice to meet you, Jihoon-ssi. Hey, as a celebration of our newfound friendship, why not I treat you to ice cream?”
“Friendship? Since when—”
“Since I said so! Come on!” Seungcheol laughed giddily as he pried out of Jihoon’s embrace and ran towards the exit.
He was about to follow him when he caught something out of the corner of his eye. A small frame, a photo of his family encased within the plastic and glass frame. They were smiling, but they weren’t genuine. It made him realize how miserable his childhood was, how his parents nurtured his behavior, from a happy child to a perfection-obsessed person.
He wished he could give his parents an earful, but he felt like another way would be a good day. Not now.
He grabbed the frame and closed the photo, covering the sight of his family with the table. With that, he followed Seungcheol out of the door.
At that moment, Seungcheol’s words repeated in his mind.
“ By embracing our imperfections, we’re perfect—in a way .”
Hm. Maybe that’s his first step into being perfect—in his own way.