Work Text:
Freak Accident Leaves Man Dead! Horror In The Talcott Factory
In the first hour past noon of the fifteenth of October 17xx, the Talcott Textiles Co. production factory experienced a tragedy of the highest degree. The operator of heavy machinery failed to perform proper reports and observations before beginning the day’s work, and it proved fatal to 26-year-old Hyungwon Chae, who was killed by the malfunctioning machine.
Hyungwon was pronounced dead exactly five years ago. He didn’t even have an obituary.
That makes it sound as if there was a bit of time for closure, a window where people were able to say their goodbyes and prepare their eulogies. No, no, no. Hyungwon Chae was ripped to pieces in an accident during his day job at a factory. ‘Painted the place red,’ as other workers recalled. ‘Tore him up like he was made of paper.’ It made for a very, very shattering day for his work partner, Kihyun Yoo.
Kihyun spent his days working in various cemeteries and traversing the countryside as an undertaker, serving his community in a way that few could stomach. He was rather apathetic when it came to grieving for those he never knew (quite convenient for his line of work). Until Hyungwon died, he had never found it in himself to weep.
Hyungwon and Kihyun weren’t the best of friends, if even friends at all– they would hardly call themselves coworkers. After their shifts were over at the graveyard and factory respectively, Kihyun and Hyungwon retreated down dirt back roads to Kihyun’s small inherited farmhouse, and behind the farmhouse, a barn that had been refashioned into a laboratory. Science was one of the few things Kihyun and Hyungwon bonded over. They were geniuses in their own ways, Kihyun in ways of the human body and Hyungwon in the ways of chemicals and concoctions. Together, late into the cold winter nights and rainy spring storms, they had created a salve that slowed the decay of the human body so immensely that an individual would look as if they were simply asleep for weeks after they died– their cheeks could still be rosy for days. With Kihyun’s morbid field of work, this salve was rather profitable, so the funding went to more and more investigation and experimentation.
It was a rare day off when the worker came to Kihyun’s house to break the news of Hyungwon’s death. Usually most of his work is on the Sabbath, considering many wish to bury their loved ones on a holy day, but Kihyun ultimately took the day and committed at least half of it for rest. The worker, a terribly young fellow, arrived approximately ten minutes past six o’clock, a solemn and ghastly look on his face. Kihyun knew that when it wasn’t Hyungwon coming back, not that Kihyun’s shabby farmhouse was a home to him anyways, he was dead. The poor messenger boy must’ve witnessed it. He pities him. There’s a lot of blood in a body.
The morning after, Kihyun reminisces as he trudges to the mausoleum. He reminisces on the moment he realized he was bound to Hyungwon, tied to him in some spiritual way that made his chest squeeze, and reminisces on the moment he realized he could never confess such to him. Mute point, really, considering Hyungwon was dead, but memories tend to haunt the grieving. It was a night when they were both in the lab, finishing up a few documents before cleaning up for the night. Kihyun dipped his quill for the final time, scrawling notes in the margins of the day’s observations. He glanced over to his work partner, his stained, button-up shirt rolled up to his elbows, brows furrowed and lips bitten in concentration, hair tousled and mussed. The mistake, the fatal realization of his traitorous heart, comes when Kihyun doesn’t look away and thinks, “I’ve come so far with you.”
It’s been maybe two years since Kihyun has come to this realization. Two years since Kihyun reminded himself that his fellow townsfolk, his neighbors, are only looking for one more flaw before torching his home, his lab, and all his work to the ground. His reputation is already marred by his status as an undertaker: he’s been accused of mutilating corpses after their death far too many times. They are just decaying! The man he bought his home off of was wary of his hobbies –why would he need a barn and pasture if he wasn’t interested in keeping livestock? The neighbor is suspicious enough of his lab as it is. He firmly believes that Kihyun’s a Satanist, using the barn to summon demons that keep causing crows to flock at the roof. The yearnings of his heart are simply the cherry on top. He’d be hunted and burned like a witch should the town find out he loved a man in the way he should be loving a woman.
Kihyun is preparing what was left of Hyungwon’s body for burial. Hyungwon’s younger sister is the last of the family left, and she now lives in the town’s orphanage. His previous home, since it has no tenants now, will be auctioned off and his belongings will follow the same demise. Kihyun is frustrated with how carelessly these bits and pieces of Hyungwon’s legacy, however great or little it was, could be thrown out so carelessly. It was infuriating. His work prevents him from attending, which means he wouldn’t be able to salvage anything. Kihyun would be left with nothing physical to remember Hyungwon by. Kihyun’s only job was to place Hyungwon’s remains in the coffin. Based on the bag that was skittishly handed over to him, Hyungwon’s feet had gotten caught in the machinery. Ripped the appendages clean off, and threw the rest of him around like a ragdoll. Kihyun’s heart settled like a kettle full of rocks and mud in his stomach. A dark part of him chuckles at the thought that this is the first and only time Hyungwon has ever been shorter than him. Then, as Kihyun carefully placed Hyungwon’s mangled remains into the pine coffin, an idea struck him.
He and Hyungwon had mastered the recipe to a salve that would prevent bodily decay. It was so obvious! He could bring Hyungwon back! Granted, he might have to succumb to his corpse-mangling accusations to scavenge some legs for Hyungwon, but that was still something he could do. It was an option! Options are good! Better yet, he had a lab full of chemicals, of tools, of textiles, and most importantly, his very own icebox. He works with corpses all the time. He knows how to sew and has mastered human anatomy. With just a little bit of time, patience, study, and luck, Hyungwon would certainly breathe and work beside him again.
The days begin to pass as follows: Kihyun begins his work before dawn, hiking to the barn and applying the salve to Hyungwon’s remains before he goes to his actual job. As soon as the sun crests over the trees framing the acreage, Kihyun returns to his farmhouse, dresses himself, and heads to the guild house. Depending on the season, he might remain indoors to keep watch over the surrounding cemeteries. More often than not, he finds himself following distraught mourners to their homes, where he would pull out a cloth to use as a shroud and cover the body. In that time, he mastered the syntax required to calm and comfort. He would load the body into his cart and take it to his funeral home, where he would then select a proper coffin, dress the body for burial, and see that the cemetery had a hole built and ready. Quietly, he would apply the salve to slow the decay. He might do this for a family or two a day, only resting on the Sabbath, and by sunset, he would be back in his farmhouse. He brewed himself tea to keep him awake and soothe his nerves before working into the night at the lab. Those days blend together into a messy, foggy blur, like well-blended watercolors. They are only decipherable from one another in Kihyun’s journal, where he documents each day’s work and progress faithfully. It is there that some memories are most prominent, such as the death of Hyungwon’s sister, taken by typhus, or the election of a new Mayor. As soon as he scrawls down the day’s events, he promptly forgets them.
Kihyun has without a doubt resorted to criminal activity to bring Hyungwon back to the land of the living. Grave robbing seemed something he would’ve been guilty of earlier than now, the same with manipulating his funds and the tax collector. This was all for a good purpose, though! He was about to make a scientific breakthrough! To bring a dead man back to life, after all, a dead man who died in pieces at that! He had stitched together a body, eight feet tall and equal in proportion at that, and he would be healthy and powerful and clear-minded. He would create a mind to think, wire copper and nerves through his body to ensure he could still get goosebumps. Thread skin together so seamlessly, the scars would become more akin to art than destruction. No, destruction was a horrible word to use. Kihyun was creating. Kihyun was building life.
Kihyun hurries into a lab with a hand wrapped tightly around his satchel. Its contents are precious and Kihyun can’t waste a second, as every moment lost is a moment that Hyungwon’s new form won’t have eyes. The scientist learned rather frustratingly that eyes are the most feeble organs to work with, for threading an optic nerve was testing his patience. His feet catch on the small rocks of the path to the lab, which makes his ankles twinge with jolts of pain. His shoes (which are on the sturdier side of falling apart) have untied themselves, threatening to trip Kihyun with every footfall. He doesn’t falter, however, keeping his breath steady to spite his burning calves and strained lungs.
The eyes are the last thing Kihyun needs to complete Hyungwon’s body. He is so close to proving to everyone that even if he’s mad, he’s overcome death itself. Kihyun was constructing a man from a corpse in pieces, reviving sentience, with features as delicate as full lips and blinking eyes and as rugged as iron-reinforced bones and a heart pumping with the aid of a machine. He would give Hyungwon back his voice, his sight, his hearing and smell. He would create a nervous system so he could feel Kihyun falling into his arms and welcoming him back home. Home, it seems now, with Kihyun.
A storm brews in the distance. Kihyun scuttles about his lab, tawny brown hair damp with the sweat of work and glasses still slipping down his nose. If the winds are on his side, the storm should pass directly over the lab. The charge from the lightning should be conducted and directed into his lab, and then to the hulking body resting beneath the sheet over the work table. Thanks to the help of his old neighbor’s carpentry and now dead brother’s masonry, Kihyun should be able to pull a lever and his work table would rise to the heavens, iron pillars plucking the lightning from the clouds such as ripe fruit clean from the vine. Hyungwon’s life would be returned by the fire and might of the heavens.
Kihyun lurches back to pull the mechanism which opens the paneling of the roof. The chains and pulleys wheeze to life, the screeching of metal filling the air and harmonizing with the nearing thunder. The ceiling allows the faintest moonlight in, the light quickly obscured as it is masked by thick storm clouds, then in comes the rain. Kihyun scrambles to move his papers and journals out of the rain, which now falls into his laboratory in torrents through the opened roof. His shoes skid and slip on the wet stone floor. He stuffs all of the paperwork in a compartment with his journal, which he is utterly jubilant to document tonight’s outcome in. Against his ordinary rules, he grants himself optimism.
The sheet draped over Hyungwon’s body is drenched. Its sickly white color is now wettened and sticking to the corpse to create a ghastly glow in what’s left of the moonlight. There’s a brightness, Hyungwon’s silhouette is complete and ready to be revived. There is lightning. Kihyun carefully steps into the rain, cold as the ice on his spine, and pulls the sheet off Hyungwon. He looks peaceful. Eyes closed, stitches following the natural curves of his face, of his cheekbones and temples, lips still as full as they were when Kihyun first thought about kissing them. The shrewd scientist stands beside his table, rain soaking him to the bone. Slowly, gently, he places his palm against the cold, wet skin of Hyungwon’s forehead. He admires the features he’s restructured- he remembered it all, worked off of a few sketches he had made in his journal all those years ago. He looked just as breathtaking, even dead, as Kihyun remembered.
He kisses Hyungwon’s forehead after brushing a lock of hand-woven hair away from his face. “I have waited so long to see you again,” Kihyun says, his voice silent beneath the thunder. “I’m so excited for you to come back. I’ve made a lot of discoveries while you were gone.”
Thunder cracks, winds wail. Kihyun steps back.
“Come home to me.”
Kihyun pulls a lever, and the table holding Hyungwon’s abomination of a corpse is hoisted skyward with a raucous rattling of chains. The iron, lancelike monoliths on each of the table’s corners begin to draw in the lightning before the mechanism is even above the laboratory. It floods Kihyun with hope.
As Kihyun built Hyungwon’s body, he carefully placed pieces of metal alloys along different pulse points. His jugular, his wrists, even the bone of his sternum is strengthened by metal. Highly conductive and especially sturdy. The electricity surging along the metal poles should channel into Hyungwon’s body soon. Hopefully, the lightning is enough to give Hyungwon a heartbeat. Hopefully, the heartbeat lasts long enough to make him live. To bring him back.
Icy rain falls to the stone floor of the lab. Kihyun’s nose runs at the fault of the cold, his fingertips are red and begin to sting. He can’t quite feel his toes. The blood roaring in his ears makes silence of the thunder, tames it, quiets it. His whole body quakes with a nightmarish blend of emotions– the adrenaline of fear and excitement, the merciless bite of the cold. It feels as though Mother Nature herself is warning Kihyun about what happens when you play God.
An exceptionally bright bolt crashes to the floor of the lab. Kihyun, momentarily blinded, stumbles back and braces his hand on the nearby table. However, the wood is slick and Kihyun’s hand slides right off and sends him plummeting to the unforgiving stone. His head cracks against the ground and the pain splits his skull immediately– instantly his vision swims. Rattling roof tiles and the crackle of lightning create a chorus, a symposium of the gods, of the laws of nature. They all mock him–- they scorn him, ridiculing him for his ambitions. The winds rip through his laboratory, spitting rain against all the machinery Kihyun failed to cover. Sparks shoot into the air like fireflies released from a jar, crackling, giggling. The mere sparks of Kihyun’s labor laugh at his magnum opus. Oh, how dare they?
Kihyun grows colder and all his thoughts fade to the awareness of the growing pain in his head. His vision shifts from dark corners to a full blur, his eyes shaking in their sockets. Though he can’t see it clearly, he trusts his ringing ears when they hear the scraping of metal and the liminal hum of electricity through the rain on the stone. Kihyun’s vision goes in-and-out of focus, but it sees the table holding Hyungwon’s corpse descending from the thunderous heavens. The pitter-patter of rain against Kihyun’s cheeks lightens, and the time between the thunder and lightning grows longer: the storm must be passing. The shrill of wet metal stings Kihyun’s eardrums, but he’s growing too tired to care. The adrenaline is running out– the shivers are from the cold now. Kihyun blinks twice, thrice. He’s quite…sleepy. Right, sleepy. He can feel a stiffness in his joints and an unkind prickle in his legs and shoulders. He isn’t sure if his hands and toes are even attached to his body anymore. His nose is running, his eyelids are fluttering closed. His head hurts– this is unwarranted rest, but hopefully it will do Kihyun well. His heartbeat slows and a pleasant warmth blooms in his chest. As his eyes close, he sees moving shapes and smudges of color. There’s distant sounds that reach his ears -voices? Ack, it’s that implacable wind again!– but none of it is decipherable anymore. All Kihyun wants now is for the wind and the rain to quiet down. He’s sad now, and wishes to rest.
Hyungwon smells iron when he wakes up. His body aches, prickles with the feeling like his foot’s fallen asleep but the feeling’s all over him. When he sits up, he finds his back and elbows stiff. His knees, knuckles, and toes are all on the same boat, causing him to grimace.
Knees.
He has knees. Knees and toes.
He makes a garbled noise of disbelief, shredding his dry vocal chords in the process. He blinks, finding that his eyesight is worse than he remembers, and the understanding settles in. He remembers the factory, he remembers looking down and watching his legs get crunched between unforgiving metal teeth of a machine. He recalls the pop of his shoulders out of their sockets as his coworkers try to pull him away, only for Hyungwon to watch his vision fade and then die. Hyungwon’s on a table and he’s soaked with rain. He closes one eye at a time, determining which one is at fault for his blurry vision, then keeps it closed. Then he can get a good look at his surroundings and his body. His stomach turns once he makes out the lines all over his body. His depth perception at the moment is quite bad, so he can’t tell if his hands are bigger than he remembers or not. He’s still too unsettled by the fact that he’s alive –well, he thinks he is– and the mangled appearance of his body. Each patch of skin quilted together on his body is a slightly different color. He continues to look around. Machinery, stone, wood, a couple of bookshelves. The open paneling on the roof– it’s the lab. He knew it was the lab. And Kihyun is unconscious on the floor before him.
Hyungwon stands. His mind races with countless questions: “Why am I alive?” “How am I alive?” “Did Kihyun do this?” “Why do I look like this?” It never ends. He takes a step forward, cursing his wet clothes for making his body feel so heavy. His bare feet are slick against the floor and his balance is already off-kilter, so Hyungwon feels not unlike a toddler taking its first steps. He grimaces. His one-eyed gaze re-fixes itself on Kihyun. He’s thin, thinner than Hyungwon remembered, with dark circles beneath his eyes and a hollowed face. His lips are chapped and his hair is long. He looks awful.
When he reaches down to pick Kihyun up, he realizes he is in fact larger than life. He scoops his unconscious friend up and stands again, staggering towards the doors and finding himself bending down to fit through. However, Kihyun feels so light. He’s probably lost weight, but more likely than that is a terrible strength that Hyungwon now possesses. He tries not to think about it.
He carries Kihyun to the house. He’s breathing and his body temperature is remaining steady, so Hyungwon knows he’s not been struck with a heart attack or hysteria. However, he’s just as wet as Hyungwon is and doesn’t need to develop pneumonia from being in the cold for so long. He needs a change of clothes and to sleep in his own bed. The house is as Hyungwon remembered, other than that he doesn’t quite fit inside it like he used to. He ducks through each door, and thinks about the wear this will have on his back. Namely for the sake of distracting himself, he ambles about the house and ensures Kihyun is taken care of. He quickly replaces his wet clothes with dry ones, towel-dries his hair to the best of his ability, and pours a glass of water to sit on Kihyun’s nightstand. He pours a glass for himself in hopes it will salvage his vocal chords. Now, he scrounges the house for one of Kihyun’s old pairs of glasses to see if they’ll suit his eyes. He’s run out of things to do, so he resigns himself to the bathroom and faces the facts: he looks in the mirror.
Mourning doves greet Kihyun back to the land of consciousness with the gift of a throbbing headache. Normally he welcomes their solemn coos, but he’s too disoriented to enjoy them now. He clenches his eyes shut again only to find that the light is too bright through the thin, veiny skin of his eyelids. His ears are still ringing.
He’s in his bed in the farmhouse. His quilt hasn’t been kicked off of his feet and both pillows are at the top of the bed, and warm morning sun casts a gentle glow over his room. On his nightstand sits a full pitcher of water and a glass that’s three-quarters full. When Kihyun reaches to pick the glass up, he finds that the water is still cold. How did he get back here? He fell and knocked himself out in the lab last night.
A faint thud resonates from beyond the room, followed by a quiet “ouch!”. Curious, Kihyun has never had company at this hour. Especially since the only person that had a spare key was Hyungwo–
The memories (and their consequential sadness) return not a moment later. Kihyun’s blood runs cold as throws the quilt off his legs. His headache sends him reeling, the pain causing his balance to be off kilter, and as soon as his feet hit the ground, his knees and palms follow. He curses at himself for such careless ruckus. He doesn’t know who– or what! –is meandering about his house!
Evenly-spaced footfalls are the only sound filling the silence. They sound slow, but they’re heavy and growing louder. This thing is covering more ground in one footstep than any normal person would. Scrambling, Kihyun desperately tries to shove himself feet-first under his bed. He doesn’t know who’s in his house, he doesn’t know how he got back to his house, and his head hurts so badly he can’t think straight.
A voice spooks the scientist from his paranoia.
“Kihyun?”
A voice– that voice. His voice.
Kihyun freezes. With everything below the knee under his rickety bed frame, Kihyun freezes. His fingers have a white-knuckled grip on the bulk of the quilt that drapes over the bed and fabric feels more prickly than soft at that moment. His breaths escape him in choppy gasps working in tandem with his racing, squeezing heart. A whirlwind of butterflies begins to whip up in his chest: the sound of a dead man’s voice has made his mourning heart flutter.
Kihyun cannot see the door from his position on the floor. His twin-sized bed is the only barrier between Kihyun and the vast presence that emanates from the entryway. The more Kihyun thinks about it, the more his heart begins to jackrabbit. His headache hammers between his ears and pulses above his brows, but he doesn’t feel the pain of it. It’s only a throb.
The voice comes again. Softer, this time, a little gravelly, hoarse. As if the speaker hasn’t spoken in some while. “Kihyun, are you awake?”
Kihyun swallows and his tongue practically scrapes against the roof of his dry mouth. He longs for the water on the opposite nightstand. His hands are tingling, shaking with anticipation, eagerness, possibly dehydration. He can hardly wait nor bring himself to look beyond his bed. There’s a knock on some wooden surface– Kihyun can’t tell if they’ve knocked on the nightstand or the knob at the foot of his bed frame. Oh, he’s so anxious he might throw up. He must look, he must.
As quickly as his body lets him and as slowly as anxiousness makes it seem, Kihyun twists himself out from under his bed. His aching knees scratch against the carpet, back cracking with the new and unpracticed movement, and fingers stiff as they sprawl open against the mattress. Silently, Kihyun sends up a prayer with its recipient unknown. Then Kihyun looks over his bed, and sees him in the doorway.
Hyungwon.
Alive.
Kihyun gasps. A pregnant silence blankets the two friends. Kihyun sits paralyzed beside his bed, awestruck by the scientific breakthrough he has achieved, by the miracle he has been gifted with to have his best friend back. Hyungwon, simply by the fact that he has experienced death and revival. Kihyun is almost afraid to speak to him. What does he say? Where does he begin?
The seams of the stitches that sever the lines of Hyungwon’s body seem thinner, as though overnight, his body was healing over the very seams that first kept it together.There’s a warmth in his skin, though naturally stained with the pallor of death, that gives it something normal, natural. When Kihyun reconstructed Hyungwon’s face, he imagined the resurrected rosy glow of his round cheeks. Seeing it, however, brings Kihyun a joy he cannot describe. For so long he had worked with pale, sickly skin, but to see it blushing and alive is euphoric.
“Have you nothing to say to me?” Kihyun blinks in stupor at Hyungwon’s firm voice interrupting the silence. When Kihyun looks at him, he sees no aggressiveness in his face. In fact, Kihyun sees the corners of his lips slowly giving way to a smile. Kihyun swallows and it feels like sand down his throat.
“You’re here,” he says. “You’re back!.”
Then Hyungwon beams at him. Kihyun watches his pillowy lips thin and curl over his teeth, polished and pristine as they were five years ago. “Let’s get you back in bed first,” Hyungwon suggests, taking practiced steps around the bed. He covers the length of the room in a few hulking strides. Kihyun pushes himself to a standing position, hands still braced on the mattress, and tosses the fallen quilt back where it belongs. He suddenly feels Hyungwon’s warm palms on him, one at his shoulder and the other cradling his left side. Kihyun startles. It’s been a long time since anyone has touched him.
“Back you go.” Amusement laces Hyungwon’s tone. “We have much to catch up on.” The revived man pulls over the armchair that had sat in the corner, then brushes a layer of dust off of the cushions before sitting. Kihyun watches the movement with pride and incredulity. Hyungwon, in this new body, does not fit in the chair. He moves to the floor.
“How does it feel?” Hyungwon looks up quickly, one of his neck joints popping and earning a twitch of his eye in mild discomfort. Kihyun feels his skin prickle with sweat at the scrutiny of Hyungwon’s stare, subjecting him to fierce accusations without a single word. He isn’t quite sure if it’s the look on Hyungwon’s face or his own guilty conscience creating the questions, but they pop up in his head nonetheless. What have you done? How did you do it? Why?
A twinge of sadness ebbs through Kihyun’s bones at the sight of Hyungwon’s mismatched eye colors.
“It’s strange.” Hyungwon’s expression softens. “Different from what I knew. Of course, you’ll have to explain more of the details as to why that is, but I might infer some things for myself.”
Kihyun opts to follow up with a “Do you feel good?” It’s less jarring than being asked if you can feel the rods in your legs or the gears click in your heart. Hyungwon purses his lips. He lifts a calico hand to his chest, answering the unspoken, and replies.
“I don’t know. I haven’t done or experienced enough to know what’s good or bad. This is is just different from what it used to be, and I will have to adjust to that.” He’s learning to cope.
“I’m so happy to see you again.” Kihyun’s nose begins to sting and his vision blurs with a film of tears. He opens his eyes wider to cleanse his vision without blinking away the tears.
“It’s good to see you too,” Hyungwon replies. He places his hand over Kihyun’s. “But it’s my turn to ask my questions.”
Kihyun nods with as much fervor as his throbbing head will allow. He focuses on the warmth of Hyungwon’s hand –good Lord above, it’s truly the size of a dinnerplate– over his. The pain seems to fade. “I know you’ll explain it in due time, the process of undoing natural law,” Hyungwon begins. “So I’ll lead with what I’m most curious about: Why change my body so severely?”
Kihyun has had five years to prepare an answer for that. “Bigger canvases are easier to paint small details onto,” He states. He’s proud of the metaphor. “It was much easier to hard-wire a nervous system since your body was bigger. Most things were tricky from the waist down, seeing how you died,” Kihyun allows himself to chuckle. Is five years too soon to joke about Hyungwon’s untimely demise? “But, once I found a suitable trunk and constructed internal supports for your legs and knees, adjusting your proportions became only the natural solution to reviving you.” He’ll spare Hyungwon the strife of forging hip sockets and the rostral ball joint of a femur later.
“I’m surprised you didn’t settle with keeping me in half,” Hyungwon snickers. “You’d be taller than me.”
Kihyun wonders if he should be truthful in his response. He thinks he should, he owes it to Hyungwon after pulling him from the peaceful nothingness of death. “When I was to bury you,” He is cautious with his wording nonetheless. “My entire body grew cold and heavy with sadness seeing your remains. It sounds silly, but your height was familiar. It became a comfort, so I worked with what I had. You’re just taller now.”
Hyungwon grins, and Kihyun watches his lips again. “And as for bringing me back to life, that was just a whim, wasn’t it?”
The mix of Hyungwon’s accusatory tone and his unblinking stare make Kihyun squirm. “Of course not. We had much work left to do.”
Hyungwon hums. Smirks. “This is an awful lot of work and a tremendous feat to be done just to ‘keep working’, Yoo. Are you sure this wasn’t some stunt to feed your pride?”
“You wound me,” Kihyun laments, though his mouth smiles. “I don’t intend to flaunt you out in the world just yet. You know just as well as I that they’d kill us both for that.”
Hyungwon grins back at him, but something about the way he stares makes Kihyun uneasy. There’s weight in his gaze, his blue and green eyes swirling questions he is too afraid to ask. Has he blinked at all this whole time? Kihyun can’t recall. His head’s starting to hurt again anyways.
“Do you mind if I lay with you?”
Kihyun opens his eyes, only now becoming aware that he’d closed them. He must not answer quickly enough, because Hyungwon continues with “This body is obviously not well-adjusted to being alive yet.”
Kihyun lets out a quivering breath. “Not at all.”
The bed isn’t terribly large and, with further consideration, might not withstand both Kihyun and Hyungwon’s weight. It doesn’t matter. Kihyun shuffles over, grasps to take a drink from the glass of water that’s been taunting him for so long. He makes as much room as he can and Hyungwon gingerly places his weight down beside him. Poor fellow, he can hardly lay fetus-curled without some part of him flinging into Kihyun’s space or simply off the bed. His joints all pop and his long, dark hair feels like straw.
“God damn it, Won, just lie down,” Huffs the concussed scientist. He rolls to his side, suffering the consequences with the thud of his head. He wants to be tired and rest like his body needs, but his heart and his mind race at the same speed. As Hyungwon moves the bed frame creaks and whines, but holds. The weight of Hyungwon’s long arm drapes around Kihyun’s midsection.
But a knock from the front door removes Hyungwon’s warmth as quickly as it was placed there. The un-dead man might as well have thrown himself to the floor as he scrambles into the corner of the room.
“What in God’s name are you doing?” Kihyun spits.
“I shouldn’t be seen!” Hyungwon hisses back, frantically grasping at the armchair to hide him from the window should anyone look inside. Kihyun wants to retaliate with some snide comment, but knows Hyungwon’s right. Drearily, he kicks off the quilt and gingerly forces himself to stand. The knocking repeats, its duration doubled and slightly louder. Following it is the hoarse voice. “Yoo! Yoo you get out here!”
“It’s the neighbor,” Kihyun groans. “Some of the shingles from the roof must’ve blown off in the storm and he’s come to bitch about it.” Hyungwon makes a noise of sympathy, but continues to make himself small in the corner. Kihyun ambles to the front door, bracing himself on the arms of chairs and door frames as he goes. The light outside is far too bright for his eyes right now. The knocking returns.
“Give me a God-damned minute!” Kihyun shouts as he reaches the door. He rubs his eyes and undoes the deadbolt, then throws the door open.
He is met with the barrel of a rifle.
His blood freezes in his body, his bones go hollow. Every cell in his body screams for him to do something other than stand there like a fool.
“You’ve done something you shouldn’t have, Yoo.” The neighbor thrusts the barrel right into Kihyun’s sternum. “You’ve played God.”
Kihyun says nothing. He stares at the neighbor, praying that he would have the empathy and the grace to close the door and leave. Kihyun would even accept having the police sent to the house and his lab searched.
“Last night, during the storm,” The man sneers. His finger is heavy on the trigger. “I saw a monster carry you from the barn to the house. There’s a dead man living here and that’s something that God doesn’t allow.”
Please leave,” Kihyun says. He’s begun to sweat and his body is beginning to fight against him. “I will keep you and your property out of everything I do.”
The neighbor’s expression remains steely and cold. “I’m just doing my fellow townsfolk a favor that should’ve been done a long time ago.”
Kihyun’s heart plummets out of his body. This can’t be happening, he has far too much left to do! He’s only just gotten Hyungwon back, he can’t lose him again so soon–!
“No! Please!–”
BANG!
Hyungwon knows that sound. He knows that terrible, terrible sound from when he and his coworkers went hunting last fall. He hears a shout, pained and afraid, and a gurgling, followed by a thud.
No. No, no, no, no.
The armchair covering Hyungwon’s body is flung to the ground with a weighty thunk. His body is moving on its own, but at the same time, he’s so aware of the way his muscles expand and contract to move his legs. He has been ever since he woke up last night and carried Kihyun back to the house. His heart races and he can faintly hear the clicks and whirs of the machinery aiding it. He hears the heavy exhales of his breath, the rattling of a gun in the front room, and the rush of real, red blood in his ears. Not a clear thought flits through Hyungwon’s mind.
Kihyun is dead. Red blooms from the center of his chest, which gapes open and oozes viscera. Splinters of bone protrude from the wound and frame Kihyun’s bleeding heart like teeth surround the tongue. His expression, petrified by death, is afraid. His mouth is just barely open, as if it were about to call Hyungwon for help. Pure wrath boils and bubbles beneath Hyungwon’s sewn skin. He feels as if his gut was tying itself into knots, but feels his hands shake and his muscles tense as he looks up at the neighbor. He too shudders, but Hyungwon feels safe to assume it’s not rage the man bears. The horror in his eyes says all he needs to know.
“You…” Stammers the man. His jittery hands fumble with the rifle and Hyungwon sees the rod he used to reload the rifle on the floor. Either way, it seems, Hyungwon would be confronting the neighbor and his gun.
“Me,” Hyungwon sneers, his own voice foreign to his ears. It’s low, hoarse, wavers with a blinding rage. “What about me?”
The neighbor doesn’t answer, instead lifting the rifle and taking aim. Hyungwon grabs the barrel and moves just as the man fires. He hears glass shatter behind him, but it doesn’t break through his haze of anger. Hyungwon grips the barrel and bends it into a horseshoe with his bare hands.
“Monster!” The neighbor’s hands dart to cover his head, his bold demeanor vanquished in an instant. Hyungwon’s clockwork heart thuds with contempt. Hyungwon lifts the twisted rifle over his head and swings it. There’s a sickening crack when it connects with the neighbor’s temple, and blood sprays against the front door. Hyungwon does it again, again, again. He does it until the man stops making worthless noises, until Hyungwon doesn’t recognize his face. The strength Kihyun gave him in this body is terrifying.
Hyungwon is content with his work and nothing but a puddle of crushed bone and brain matter remain of the neighbor’s head. For good measure, Hyungwon plunged his fists into his chest and removed his heart from his cavity, took a bite out of it (for reasons unbeknownst to him), and tossed it in the yard. Whatever possessed him then released him from its grasp, and his strength wavered. The rage is replaced with aching, cold, and sickness.
Hyungwon carries Kihyun’s corpse to the lab, accidentally rips one of the doors off its hinges out of sheer urgency, then lays his friend on the table on which Hyungwon himself awoke on not twelve hours ago. He pads around the area, still in havoc from the winds of the storm, and fishes out Kihyun’s notebook. Hyungwon prays there are notes that help him to retrace Kihyun’s steps to revive him. The strength comes when he needs it and flees the second the work is done. Adrenaline must be more potent after someone dies. He knows what he’s become -monstrous- and it’s all the more motivation to bring Kihyun back and thank him for it.
It took five years for Kihyun to revive Hyungwon: Hyungwon sets the goal to have Kihyun revived in two.
Hyungwon washes his hands and puts on an apron that’s much too small. He cleans his necessary tools, cuts the clothing off of Kihyun, and covers him in their post-mortem miracle salve.
“You had to go and be killed before I could get answers,” Hyungwon frowns. His body is heavy with hunger, thirst. He briefly wonders if Kihyun made his heart strong enough to be broken so soon. “You’ve always been so cruel to me.”
And then he goes to work.