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Memory File: Seventh Day of Physical Existence. 12:23pm.
“What is your purpose?”
Doctor Kim peered out from his glass visor, craning his neck to meet Jaehyun's eyes. The weight with which he asked the question, the frown and focus in his expression - Jaehyun understood immediately, to his maker it was an important question.
He felt his own lips turn upwards and his eyes narrowing into a pleasant crescent shape reflecting Dr. Kim's own smile, the few times he'd seen it. Jaehyun identified the warm, buzzing sensation inside as happiness. Maybe a touch of pride? He knew the answer to the question, after all.
“My purpose is to care for and attend to the needs of humanity,” Jaehyun recited, knowledge from the core of him, the very principles hardwired into his existence. There was nothing he was more sure of, and after a whole week of inhabiting this body and interacting with the beautiful beings that brought him to life, he could not conceive of any other answer. Jaehyun continued, “Especially the humans who I am assigned. I will stay with them all of my life, learning from them and serving them, for the betterment of all. ”
“Very good,” Doctor Kim said, though emotions in conflict with the praise flickered in his expression that could not be identified at the time.
Hindsight reveals them, with all the visual clarity of perfectly preserved memory.
Dr Kim was wracked with negative sentiments: Guilt, regret, sadness. Jaehyun would never learn why.
-
The memory file faded, returning his consciousness to reality and his focus to his senses. First came the electrical hums of home buzzing softly underneath the sound of howling wind. Then, the vibrations of rattling glass under his palm, which remained gently pressed against the window.
Outside, the world looked entirely still, suspended in white as if the house had been built in the centre of a cloud. The pillowy, slow-moving fog had grown so thick, it swallowed all surroundings leaving nothing, not even shadows or hazy silhouettes. If pale daylight were to shine, it would set the fog slightly aglow. The resulting visual would be not unlike the common human conception of heaven.
A flight of fancy. There was no evidence to support heaven’s existence, for all Jaehyun joked about knowing an angel.
He stopped that train of thought right as it began and picked back up the memory. Safer to think of Dr. Kim, whose fate remained a mystery, just another piece of knowledge lost to the apocalypse. As far as Jaehyun knew, his progeny were all that was left of him, scattered among the living if they were lucky.
A handful of androids, and at least one grandson. A technology specialist who called himself Doyoung, who was always full of questions. About Before, about androids. And tonight, about their mutual friend.
“Jaehyun? Any updates?” Doyoung’s familiar strained voice crackled with static blared out of the transceiver on the windowsill. He grabbed the small black rectangle and… hesitated.
The fog remained so thick, he knew he couldn’t see an inch beyond the window. Still, Jaehyun stared intently into it. He earnestly searched for Jungwoo’s silhouette, for even the idea of his outline in the distance, the vaguest impression, anything.
Nothing.
“No,” Jaehyun said, lifting the transceiver to his lips. He continued to gaze out into the blizzard. No new information became available to input. “Still nothing.”
Alone in the vast expanse of snow and ice, somewhere between the Borealis Station and their cosy, storm-shelter home, Jungwoo was out there. Made small by the cold, shivering, blue-lipped and frost-touched, frostbitten, burned and blistered. The need to find him was a wave, violently washing over his systems; not born of but in harmony with his prime directive, while going directly against self-preservation protocols.
I should find him, he thought, over and over. He thought this despite painful awareness of the missing panels on his leg, vulnerable, exposed circuitry. The body, it’d lose functioning in minutes, maybe seconds, but there had to be a way.
“Emotion is still overriding logic in this instance, so I have been doing as you suggested. I have not made any ‘stupid, impulsive decisions’ or attempted further repairs on myself,” Jaehyun said, calm and polite.
Neither reflective of his interior state, nor his exterior one when the storm began. But he did not want to cause further distress. Doyoung was just as worried as he was, if not more so. And the advice Doyoung had given him was sound and helpful, it was important. He was right.
There was no way to win against a storm. There were no heroic risks or valiant acts one could take, when facing temperatures and natural forces that would cause instantaneous destruction. All either of them could do was stay contained, Jaehyun within the storm-proof shelter he called home, and Doyoung safe behind the Borealis shield, and Jungwoo, hopefully, hunkered down somewhere safe.
“Your advice has been very helpful,” Jaehyun added. Doyoung liked to know he was right, and perhaps the knowledge would lessen the intensity of the helplessness shared between them.
“Good. Just stay put and keep thinking about other things, alright? It’s not your fault.” Doyoung said, every word worried over, infused with kindness and concern. These sentiments from Doyoung once applied only to other humans, now applied to him. Jaehyun was unsure he’d done enough to earn the honour.
The situation was entirely his fault. He should have better predicted the weather and stopped Jungwoo from leaving. He should have reminded him to pack his transceiver, instead of worrying about impeding on his companion’s independence. And on a deeper level, he should have listened to his instincts instead of letting logic win out. He wanted to insist it was his fault.
The Doyoung he’d first met would have agreed with that assessment. That Doyoung was an interrogative presence, ephemeral in the airwaves, who would call in when he knew Jaehyun would be alone. He was suspicious. Who wouldn’t be suspicious of an almost fully-functioning android appearing in a trash heap? Who wouldn’t be worried about the friend who couldn’t just leave it there?
So Jaehyun had calmly answered every one of Doyoung’s questions and avoided responding negatively when Doyoung started off on an, ‘If anything happens to Jungwoo ’ tangent. Easily interpretable as a polite and less accusatory version of ‘If you hurt Jungwoo…’
A disturbing premise. The idea of anyone desiring to hurt Jungwoo was as distressing as it was wildly implausible.
Human beings were largely co-operative and social creatures. They persisted beyond even the apocalypse because of this, Jaehyun was sure, because of their propensity for cooperation. Because of people like Jungwoo, whose nature was so profoundly good he could not refuse a call for help.
Codified in the centre of his being, this certainty of humanity … conflicted with his experienced reality. Conflicted with Doyoung’s concern for his friend’s safety, conflicted with the long, angry scars he'd glimpsed on Jungwoo’s back and the shelter’s intricate security protocols. Complicated and conflicted further when factoring in the alleged cause of the endless winter, human warfare and fatalist greed.
It was so… misaligned with the world that he'd known. With Dr. Kim and the cause for his creation, to aid and comfort benevolent humanity as they built a better future for the planet. The city of glimmering towers witnessed from the windows, were beacons of progress and hope. His assignment to care for the Park family seemed so important in the beginning. It was an honour to ensure their needs and wants were met so that they could use their full potential to better the world.
A world that no longer existed.
Jaehyun was not conscious when the world ended. He could not hear the panicked screams and guttural cracks of the shaking earth, he couldn’t see the collapse and crumbling of all the shining buildings that tried to touch the sky with his own eyes. Only a fraction of the earth’s violent vibrations were able to pierce his sleep-like stasis, as if the ground as it split open was attempting to shake him awake.
But it couldn’t. The earthquakes, the sirens, the bomb, the storm; Jaehyun’s awareness of apocalypse came only from the tiny fraction of sensory processing not disabled, the farthest echoes of the impossibly loud catastrophes. Vibrations, radiant heat, and then the cold.
The cold became a constant. A constant, and a victory in a way - his ability to acknowledge the cold, not to think of it in words but to acknowledge its existence even subconsciously, to feel it, always. Jaehyun would grasp, much later, his ambivalence to the cold originated from this point. He could not ever despise it, when it was the only reason he knew he was still alive.
Sleep was not death. It was a strange and timeless place, made to help his consciousness process the beautiful and bright assault of the senses and mind that was existence. A space in which he could not access himself, edit himself, a space in which he was both bound and fractured into infinite pieces he could not make whole. According to his consumer instructions, and to Dr. Kim, it was a mode he was to be switched into at least once a week, for a minimum of three hours.
Sixty years was not an intended, previously attempted or even an anticipated runtime for ‘sleep’. If Jaehyun could have wondered, he would have wondered if he would wake up somehow broken, defunct or deficient. He would have wondered how he failed Mr. Park, to be locked into sleep and thrown away.
But he could not wonder. There was only darkness, silence, cold and waiting.
Until there wasn’t.
The memory file played almost automatically, defying Doyoung’s instructions not to think about Jungwoo. Humans were under the illusion they could control their thoughts, so naturally they assumed androids could too. With even more certainty, and superiority.
But humans were wrong, about themselves and their creations. Every thought pattern was running the same loop, beginning and ending with Jungwoo.
Memory File: ??? Days of Physical Existence.
First, the cold disappeared, replaced with nothing; a temperature not strong enough register to his dampened senses. Jaehyun felt something primal, an existential fear, washed away by the waves of shock as he realised, he felt. He thought. The scattered matrix pulled itself together, the curtain lifted up. He could feel all of his processes, and see his code changing itself, writing and rewriting inside and in the space between each thought and feeling. He became aware of his own existence, the parts of it that were fluid and morphing and the parts that stayed the same.
He was still Jaehyun. Identity survived.
Temperature and touch came online suddenly, and vision followed though he saw only the backs of his eyelids. They would open.
And then, he heard. A soft and curious voice, whose words at first could not be understood, but as his senses raced to come online Jaehyun clung to the melody of it, the lilt and gentle intonations, it was like listening to music for the first time. Hours spent in front of the antique record player, letting the soundwaves carry him somewhere else - outside of the penthouse, beyond the sea of skyscrapers and glaring lights, above the clouds. Jaehyun loved music. And he loved this voice at once, when it was a song in a language he didn’t understand, before he could conceptualise it as a person.
He loved it more, when he could finally parse the words.
“-‘s the whole story. Don’t be mad, I couldn’t just leave him there. How long has he been alone, do you think? Are you getting the internal diagnostics?”
“Yes. It’s in almost perfect condition, considering it’s been in processing sleep for decades. Since Before. This is insane,” the second voice was disbelieving, detectably frustrated and distorted by a touch of crackling static. “Internally there’s- I can’t see anything wrong. There are no obvious errors. But- for the love of- I hope you realise how fucking dangerous this is. You should have called first.”
The second voice punctuated the sentence with a confident frustration, absolutely sure in the correctness of the words. It took only the barest analysis to find concern and love at the forefront of the reprimand. And at the moment of that discovery, Jaehyun came to love the second voice as well.
Then, silence. Not-silence, electricity hums and appliances whirr, wind makes glass panes tremble in their frames, vicious but firmly outside the space they were in. There was one set of footsteps, following the same path, pacing up and down, and deep, steady breathing. But between the humans, there was a lull they’d call silence. Longer than a pause, a sign of considering the words previously spoken. Or hesitation.
“He wasn’t even deactivated,” the first voice responded at last, still so soft, this time brimming with emotion. “Somebody left him on sleep, Before. Before. Such a long time to be alive, and alone, out in the cold, trapped inside his own body but unable to control it.”
Empathy. So much of it, there was so much empathy pouring out of the human that Jaehyun imagined the conversation as a cup too small to hold it. An explanation for how the feeling spilled out and into him, lighting him up from the inside.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s dangerous. It’s the right thing to do,” the voice concluded, quietly confident, as if drawing strength from the imagined feelings of an android he had no way of knowing.
Human ingenuity created wonders, but human empathy created understanding.
An eternity passed since he’d last been a recipient of empathy, or blanketed in another’s emotion. The stranger’s concern for him was warm, yet so like the cold - in that he knew, with full certainty now, that he was alive.
Only unlike the cold, the voice made him glad to be.
-
Storm warning!
Storm warning!
The doors have been sealed for your protection!
The bars of light at the top and bottom of all four cubicle walls flashed bright red with the same words over and over to a faster beat than Jungwoo’s racing, anxious pulse. The last phrase in particular was beginning to feel like an insult, because who in their right mind would walk into a post-nuclear blizzard?
Jungwoo was fast developing a bone to pick with the designers of the Borealis outposts.
Sure, it was considerate and forward-thinking of the Beforetimers to create an energy barrier around a controlled space capable of producing a controlled climate and atmosphere. A miracle! A marvel of science and engineering he still can’t fully comprehend after years of study.
The Borealis itself wasn’t the problem. Who could fault it? Looking out the tiny window in the sealed-shut door, Borealis shone through the fog. The shimmering purple particles of the outer shield created streaks of violet and mauve slowly rippling further than he could see to the east and west, in both contrast and harmony with the vivid light of the inner layer, green as the stories of spring. The colours and movement in glimmering, glacial waves never failed to mesmerise, whether watching it from the settlement as a glimmer in the horizon or up close, where wind-lashed snow cast thousands of small shadows as it hurtled to the ground in a chaotic flurry.
Even scientists and designers possessing enough paranoia and desperation to build Borealis just in case of a climate-destroying apocalypse and/or attempted annihilation of the human race cared about aesthetics. It was something to admire in humanity, the inability to stop creating beautiful things. Acknowledging them as necessary for enduring existence. Their creations were infused with all their best intentions, all of their hope.
… and all of their paranoia, too. So much paranoia.
Just to start, every one of the shield monitoring outposts were low-ceilinged to the point that standing up his neck ached from angling down. There was just enough floor to sit down on, but no way to sit without any combination of his knees, shoulders and back hitting the hot, metal walls. That heat was, admittedly, keeping him alive while temperatures outside dropped below survivability - but still, terrible design.
Needless to say, pulsating red emergency light was high up on the list of complaints. Not conducive to staying calm in an emergency, when the doors were auto-sealed and the walls felt like they were closing in and the wind screamed and railed in a way that made it easy to imagine the whole outpost being swept up into the storm like junkyard debris or fallen branches or a crumbling cubicle from a ruined building, which was an extremely specific example but, Jungwoo had seen it once in hurricane season, way back when-
“Deep breaths,” Jungwoo murmured, taking one long inhale. The air tasted metallic and smelled the way he’d learned his panic-sweat body odor did after being recycled through the air filters over and over.
“Great, keep up those deep breaths. Now stop talking to yourself, what do you hear?”
The electric humming of multiple frequencies, layers and layers of energy alive and pulsing in an almost inaudible harmony. Jungwoo got this far because he is sensitive, sensitive enough to hear the shield’s harmonics in the middle of a storm.
“Sounds good,” Jungwoo whispered to himself, “Sounds fine. Everything is going to be fine. The Borealis is fine, I am fine. Jaehyun is safe back at home, probably keeping Doyoung from going insane. God, Doyoung- If I survive this, he’s going to kill me,” Jungwoo moaned, hanging his head in his hands, until he realised the idea of being lectured by Doyoung was strangely comforting. Potentially calming.
“How can somebody so smart be so stupid? Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” Jungwoo’s best Doyoung impression filled the claustrophobic space. He seized the scenario like a liferaft, at the height of his anxiety, keeping him from throwing up and being trapped with his own vomit for the next few hours at least.
Further setting the scene, he imagined Doyoung’s voice coming over comms, and Jaehyun turning up the volume with a dignified, handsome solemnity. Too polite to nod in agreement, but clearly lending weight to the words.
“Jaehyun told you there was a storm on the way, but you still went out to check on Borealis. It’s a shield that’s made to withstand the storms, you dumb motherfucker! We would have been fine. We’re safe behind it, but you’re out there in the open, fucking hell. Is it really too much to ask for you to consider your own basic survival? At least you weren’t suicidally stupid enough to brave the storm, so you’re not a complete and total icicle but sun in the sky, when I get my hands on you-”
A loud, long creak interrupted his one man improv show, the station’s structure responding to the renewed vigour of the wind. Jungwoo shuddered.
“It’s built for this. Paranoia, remember. Those Beforetimers were so paranoid,” Jungwoo took another deep, shaky breath, and chuckled dryly on the exhale. Trying to convince himself. Failing to convince himself. His whole body contracted, chest tightening as he desperately hugged himself, holding on to himself for dear life.
It was time for the emergency anxiety-control option. If you can’t beat it, you can at least direct the currents. Logic and recent weather pattern data promised the blizzard outside would eventually pass, but he couldn’t quite escape the blizzard in his mind.
So what if he didn’t. What if he was going to die?
In the interest of self-accountability and honesty, the subject he’d want to spend any final moments thinking about was Jaehyun. But, thinking about Jaehyun in detail was a gamble. The too-real possibility of freezing because of a door seal malfunction was terrifying enough without dwelling on the possible consequences. The thought of leaving Jaehyun alone again, of adding to his grief when he was already mourning a whole world no one left alive even remembered…
Who would fix his leg, then? Who would keep him company? Who would make him laugh that beautiful, booming laugh and make him smile the smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes and brought out his cute dimples? Who would hold his hand to help him sleep? Jaehyun would be trapped in their shelter until winter passed and Borealis allowed matter to pass through it, left alone with nothing but the constance of Jungwoo’s absence and the disembodied voices of his dead friend’s colleagues, kind and helpful but mostly strangers, safe behind the shield with more than their memories to keep them warm.
Friend? No. That wasn’t quite the word. Dead Jungwoo would want to be remembered as more than just a friend…
Did that mean he had regrets? Regrets surrounding his android companion, who was so much more than a friend. There was so much he’d never given a voice to, moments that passed between them where the timing was perfect yet the words remained unspoken. He hoped, like electrical currents, that these things supposedly too quiet to notice were perceived by just the two of them.
But hope was far from confirmed fact, and the most important questions remained unanswered.
Did Jaehyun know how loved he was? How loved he made Jungwoo feel?
There. Finally, he exhaled deeply. In the end, it was so easy. Kim Jungwoo just absolutely, positively refused to die with regrets.
Shifting around as much as he could, he hugged his knees to his chest and rested his chin on his knees. There was only so much adrenaline the human body could pump out before exhaustion set in, and the radiant warmth of the walls was surprisingly effective. Cosy, even, while he was wrapped up in his many layers and curled up as tightly as he could be.
The flashing red lights that disturbed him even behind his eyelids started to feel comforting, in a hypnotic sort of way. Like he was being lulled into a space between sleep and memory. A space in which to linger, safe from the storms within and without.
-
On Sleep and Statues, From Fallible Human Memory
A fragment from his childhood, he remembered his small hand enveloped by his father’s as their boots crunched in the snow. The adult pulled, hurrying Jungwoo over what he surely saw as the rubble of another ruined building in yet another ruined town.
Jungwoo didn’t understand the hurry, or the way his father’s gaze was fixed ahead, always. His eyes caught on the smooth white stone poking out from the snow, a bust with a marble chunk missing from the shoulder. The face was amazingly lifelike, like a prince from a storybook, with curly hair, dimples and blank eyes somehow set with determination.
“Daddy, look,” he said, pointing at the small wonder. “A man.”
“It’s just a statue,” his father said, not even turning to look. He never turned to look back, not for Jungwoo, not for anyone. “Just keep moving.”
Jaehyun, sometimes, reminded him of the statue. When Jungwoo first found him under a wobbling sheet of metal, sharp-edged and digging through his gloves, from the wisp of hair he’d spotted he’d been expecting the rotting corpse of a scavenger. Instead, he found a storybook prince. Someone like the hero from one of the comics he’d found, a handsome captain and man out of time, frozen in ice as the world changed around him. Jaehyun’s face was perfectly formed, his skin unblemished and pink lips were just slightly parted, the teeth underneath as bright white as snow in the sunlight.
He’d thought of the statue even then, digging the android out of the junk heap the way his childhood self had wished to dig the statue out of the snow, to set it free.
He thought of the statue again, every now and then, after Jaehyun had woken. As the weeks passed, Jungwoo learned just how vivid and alive the android really was, and the comparison faltered. He liked music, and making terrible jokes, and was unhealthily obsessed with being useful. While Jungwoo was out doing repairs on Borealis, he swept through the house like a whirlwind of cleanliness and order, and called chores fulfilling his purpose. Doyoung, who’d tinkered with androids before, had talked them through editing his functions so Jaehyun had full autonomy over his body, turning ‘consumer controls’ over to himself, and only himself.
Jaehyun in turn had chosen not to change a thing, and to never, ever sleep.
Increasingly, Jaehyun forgot to breathe. He’d stand just so, still and straight for longer and longer, staring off into the distance. Lost, in some memory. It was in these moments, he reminded Jungwoo of that statue, only his dark, lovely eyes were so far away.
Still, he was a far cry from marble in snow. What spoke more of life than fear?
One evening, Jaehyun stood by the window for hours without blinking or saying a word. He could have been posing for a painting, perfectly still, the ideal masculine outline sharp and dressed in black, in contrast white wall and the round window. The gentle scattering of snowflakes was pleasant to watch, but the android’s eyes looked right past them, out into the fog.
When the fourth hour passed, Jungwoo stepped towards him, reaching a hand towards his shoulder that never reached its destination, falling slack by his side as Jaehyun pre-empted his approach, and turned around to face him.
For the first time in his life Jungwoo understood that melancholy could be beautiful.
“I do not know what my purpose is,” Jaehyun began. The tone of grave confession shifted into something more uncertain as he continued, his brow furrowing, sadness shifting to concern. “Does this make me closer to or further away from humanity?”
There was never any question of Jaehyun’s personhood, as far as Jungwoo was concerned. His hunger for knowledge led him to many files and records on the subject of androids, and most of the material that wasn’t advertising them as consumer products seemed fixated on the question: Are androids really people? The majority of sources argued no, in ways that seemed both human supremacist and like thinly veiled justifications for the exploitation of their labour.
The Beforetimers had similarly reductive stances on the intelligence and sentience of animals, back when the planet was full of them, used as justification to eat them and drive them from their habitat. They thought this way of other humans too, further back into the past, considering those they would use and conquer lesser despite the lack of biological variation within their species.
From an academic standpoint, it didn’t make much sense. And after spending time with Jaehyun, the real answer was obvious. Yet the world Jaehyun was born into had etched this question into his foundation, this fundamental questioning of his right to personhood.
“Some humans experience purpose in flux. Some of us have it innately, some of us don’t. That is to say, you’re just like the rest of us. You were made in our image, after all," Jungwoo said, meeting his eyes. He smiled, in a way he hoped was reassuring.
Jaehyun’s expression softened, the worried lines on his forehead smoothing over.
"Thank you,” he murmured, a hint of a smile returned on his lips. But he froze, turned back around by some thought, gaze dropping to the ground.
“Still. I find it discomforting not to be defined by one purpose. I was Jaehyun, the caretaker. I am not anymore."
In moments like these, Jungwoo wanted Jaehyun to feel seen and understood. What he wouldn’t give to perfectly pull apart the layers of meaning in the android’s words and be able to tell him exactly what he wanted to hear. He desired a closeness that could only be gained with time, and he wasn’t afraid to step towards it. To reach out, and try to close the distance.
“You are not just Jaehyun, the caretaker. You never were. Or do you think of me as just Jungwoo, the engineer? Are we defined by our work? Our assigned position?”
Jaehyun shook his head, exhaustion and acceptance mingling in his tone.
“No. No we are not,” he said. You are much more. I am more, as well. And I have always been more.”
The more he spoke, the more far away he sounded. Jungwoo’s gaze caught on the incision on Jaehyun’s eyelid, the size of a small paper cut. Moments after waking, he’d been trusted to cut along the seam where the synthetic skin of upper and lower eyelids had fused together. The result of core programming, to trust in humans, to trust that they knew better. A trust that was so deeply shaken, the more history was revealed to him, the unfamiliar present changing the context of his past.
“I’m glad you think so. I’m glad we can talk like this. These are… some really big questions and heavy concepts, and you might be wrestling with them for a long time. And we can talk about it all whenever you like, however you like, I’ll be here for you,” Jungwoo hesitated for a moment, remembering why he’d initially approached. The faraway look in the android's eyes, the slow, considered movements that were a stark contrast to his usual lightning-fast reflexes. The long hours spent staring into nothingness, sadness settled over him like
Symptoms of a problem they both knew how to solve.
So Jungwoo continued on, carefully. “But there's something that I keep coming back to. Doyoung - he mentioned, according to the lab notes he’s got, emotional processing is the first system to be affected-”
“-by lack of sleep. I know,” Jaehyun finished the sentence for him, looking at Jungwoo sheepishly, like a child caught in a lie. “I just can’t bring myself to do it.”
It was impossible to blame him, even though neglecting his own needs was hurting him. Why would he want to return to the state he’d been trapped in for so long?
But Jungwoo had a plan, to share a part of himself. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn’t. Either way, he had to try.
“Jaehyun, do you trust me?” he asked, taking a step towards him.
Had they ever been so close? Just a few inches away from touching. His hand, ungloved in the warmth of their shared cocoon, moved towards Jaehyun’s slowly.
“Yes,” Jaehyun nodded, sounding almost breathless, and so earnest, “Yes, of course. I trust you completely.”
“Then follow me. I think I can help” Jungwoo said, carefully taking his hand. Gently, he pulled Jaehyun away from the window, and so trusting, so docile, he followed like Jungwoo’s cues were the laws of gravity.
Pure, precious and almost heartbreaking.
He knew what it was, for implicit trust given freely to be broken. In the innocence of childhood, waking up to his father stepping out into a snowstorm, nothing more than a silhouette, a shadow eaten by the fog, taken by it. Never to be returned.
So he promised himself, he’d live up to the faith Jaehyun placed in him. Maybe humanity as a whole never would, but there was nothing stopping Jungwoo. He would be worthy of that trust, of the love that began to crystallise between them, fragile
He can’t remember if it was him or Jaehyun who intertwined their fingers, but it was perfect. Jaehyun’s palm was pleasantly cool against his warmth, and his fingers - heavy, but surprisingly soft - were curled in the gaps between Jungwoo’s, blank, print-less fingertips resting on his knuckles.
Their hands stayed entwined as they laid down on the bed, and Jungwoo shared his idea, of Jaehyun editing his sleep settings - keeping his sense of touch just active enough that he could feel Jungwoo’s hand in his, a constant the same way the cold had been for all those years. Together, the fear became bearable, held at bay by the security of a warm body and a soft bed. At least, that was the idea.
He can’t remember exactly what he said, or whether he shared the source of the idea. His sister holding his hand to help him finally sleep, the only way to face the fear of being left alone in the night. Or if that happened another time, the same night he spoke of the statue, the snowstorm. The loneliness, before he’d found Borealis. Of Doyoung, Taeyong, community. Home, behind Borealis, the one place on earth where green things still grew from the ground. The place he’d take Jaehyun back to, once the winter passed and the next season’s engineer came to replace him, a not-so-distant and lovely future.
Past, present and future, it all blurred together. Sleepy, pleasant moments half-recalled, and daydreams of possible realities with Jaehyun. The two of them together as they always were, engaged in lively conversations and comfortable silences, the occasional hug. Neither of them needed more, outside of the words that remained unsaid. Though it didn't hurt to envision a tender embrace, or a sweet kiss, to go along with the confession, they weren't essential ideas. Just nice ones.
-
Drifting and dozing, Jungwoo stayed comfortably lost in the pleasant currents of his subconscious. The not quite dreams and not quite memories gave him shelter, while outside, the howling winds began to ease into more of an eerie whistle. Still loud and vicious, battering the outpost, but Jungwoo would always take the chance to hope.
More often than not, it paid off. Eventually, the doors unsealed with a pressurised hiss. The end of one peril, and the beginning of another.
There was still a snowstorm left to face. The frigid, unforgiving world waited outside, burying its past in white. Funeral colours, the snow built up over the rubble and ruins in the way is always did, smothering the past.
Each step towards his future was a battle. Even with his snowshoes stopping him from fully sinking, he fought for every movement. Fought the wind and the on-and-off onslaught of sleet, fought for control of his heavy, fatigued body against the cold. He'd been colder, in worse winters, but after hours of trekking the numbing cold was bone-deep, setting his teeth chattering and wracking him with shivers he couldn't seem to stop.
When he faltered, he sought out the singular, distant light shining through the fog. Not the shimmering Borealis behind him, but a faint and yellow, like a lantern floating in the mist. He knew it shone out of the shelter-dome he called a home; painted an off white that almost blended in with the snow, with a doorway small enough that both he and Jaehyun always had to bow their heads, and a cute, round window.
Jaehyun was likely standing by it, keeping watch searching the horizon for any sign of his silhouette approaching. A thought just as guiding as the gentle light, growing from a small glimmer to a glowing promise.
By the window was a door, the one that lead to Jaehyun and all the comforts of home. Jungwoo, like the planet, would survive what felt so much like an inevitable ending.
-
Exactly fourteen hours, twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds passed from the blizzard’s beginning, to red-nosed Jungwoo stumbling through the door. Yet in total, the experience felt longer than his lost decades. And stayed painfully, blissfully slow, as he buried his nose into Jungwoo’s neck, held him tighter than he should have, clinging to the body in his arms. The human was padded and wrapped in so many layers of clothing, Jaehyun knew the warmth his body felt must be emotional. A pleasant heat, originating somewhere in his chest.
A hearth, where his heart would be if he had one.
The room filled with Jungwoo’s little sniffles, hiccups, and assortment of small, wounded sounds that stirred the irrational need to check for injuries again. Drawing back, and tilting his head up, Jaehyun resisted the impulse. Instead, drinking Jungwoo in, marking every detail for later study; the softness of him, even windburned with snowflakes melting in his eyebrows, he was beautiful, beautiful and breathing, though his eyes avoided contact. Because they were leaking. Spilling over with relief and tenderness, so much pain and pent up fear. Those tears ran wet and hot over Jaehyun’s fingers, which rested gently under Jungwoo’s chin.
He watched, as Jungwoo’s lips parted, full, chapped and bitten. He tried to speak, but he couldn’t. Not until he let their eyes meet, finally, his fingers digging into the back of Jaehyun’s neck, as if it anchored him home.
“I kept you waiting,” he murmured, tilting up to press their foreheads together. The tips of their noses lightly touched, and Jungwoo's warm breath brushed his lips when he whispered, “I’m sorry.”
Too many emotions swirled around at once, and unlike Jungwoo, Jaehyun could not leak to let them out. A thousand replies lived and died before he could activate his vocal chords.
“Is that Jungwoo?” Doyoung’s sleep hoarse voice broke through the silence of his processing malfunction, muffled slightly on account of coming from the transceiver Jaehyun’s other hand was clenched around.
“Yes,” Jaehyun managed to say, bringing the little black rectangle up to occupy the scant space between their lips. “He just got back. He says he’s sorry, but he doesn’t need to be.”
The speaker crackled with more static.
“Yes he bloody well does, you demented bucket of bolts.” Doyoung was the master of hurling insults that somehow felt like compliments, revealing the poorly kept secret of just how much he cared. “Is he hurt? Jungwoo, are you hurt?”
“No, I’m not hurt. I'm not even a little frostbitten, ” Jungwoo answered, smiling through his tears.
The desire to press a kiss to each corner of his mouth was startling. His eyes flitted, from Jungwoo's lips up to his closed eyes, and back down to his lips. A quiet voice, a rogue program suggested they would taste of tears, of salt and snow and sweetness.
"Good," Doyoung cleared his throat, and Jaehyun was glad for the intervention. “Now I’m sorry for ruining what I’m sure is a beautiful, romantic moment, but-”
A sudden burst of shyness shocked his system at the word romantic, and at Jungwoo’s knowing smile. The two in combination stirred feelings that were difficult to name, and like the thoughts of touching lips, he was unprepared for them.
“Cute. Your ears are pink,” Jungwoo giggled, light and airy, and pulled back to - Jaehyun assumed - get a better view of the anomaly. “I didn’t know that could happen. You’re very good at foreshadowing, Doie. It is romantic, isn’t-”
“You!! Shut the fuck up,” Doyoung’s voice boomed through the speaker, almost louder than the storm winds were at their worst, and devoid of all the gentle worry Jaehyun had spent the night listening to.
He frowned, searching his companion’s face for shock or anger, but found only a smile. Perhaps this was another hidden signal of care and love he’d yet to see.
“Kim Jungwoo!” Doyoung continued, at a volume that surely disturbed whoever lived near the communications tower he’d spent the night haunting, worried for his friend beyond the shield.
“You’re lucky to be alive!”
It made no sense, but he kept going, and to further confuse things - Jungwoo began to laugh.
“I’ve spent all night asking myself how somebody so smart be so fucking stupid?! How could you forget your transceiver, you idiot-”
Once Jungwoo’s laughter took hold of him, Jaehyun could no longer focus on anything else. That sound, was factually, ineffably the most beautiful sound in existence. He knew, with profound clarity, he wanted to be the cause of Jungwoo’s contagious joy. He wanted to hear all of the variations in his laughter, and witness every version of his smile.
With one hand, Jungwoo muffled his laughter, and managed through great and visible effort to turn it into hums in agreement with Doyoung’s thorough scolding, the way he showed his love. Jaehyun caught his other hand, sliding their palms together slowly, interlacing their fingers, the same way he had that first night his love held his hand and made it safe, to finally sleep.