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Taerae knows that the Gyuvin in the classroom now is not the Gyuvin that went missing on the school trip two weeks ago.
They look exactly alike. They act exactly alike.
The replication is so perfect, so uncanny, that no one else in their class finds the intruder suspicious.
He’s still popular. Still excellent at badminton. Still plays his acoustic guitar while sitting on the brick wall outside of the school building in the mornings. And when anyone asks him what the hell happened to him on that trip the other week, he laughs it off and admits, “I got lost.”
Yeah right.
Taerae finds it even weirder that things at school have gone back to normal so swiftly. It was five long days of stern speeches from the school principal at morning assembly and anxiety-inducing interrogations from the village elders and a weekend-long search party with Gyuvin’s crying, worried parents begging anyone for information.
All of the adults wanted to know everything about his life:
Was school stressing Gyuvin out? Did he say anything to anyone about running away? Did he drop any hints about where he might go?
Was there a chance he was being bullied?
Pssh.
And then, last Tuesday, Gyuvin had showed up to class without a scratch on him. Gyuvin sat in his usual seat at the back of their classroom like nothing happened, mystified by everyone’s teary-eyed concern yet thrilled by all of the attention.
Now, days later, it’s like Gyuvin had never gone missing at all and it makes Taerae feel like he’s losing his goddamn mind.
“Here,” Gyuvin says. His quiet little voice snaps Taerae free of his melancholy.
It’s break time between classes. Gyuvin, cool as can be, settles in at the desk in front of Taerae.
“For you,” he adds, holding up a cheese bun from the downstairs canteen.
This again.
Taerae stares at it like it might be a weapon. It very well could be.
He must take too long to accept it. Gyuvin reaches out, grabs Taerae’s wrist, makes him lift his hand off the desk so that he can press the packaging against Taerae’s palm.
Taerae takes it. Inspects it. It’s warm–steaming–unlike yesterday when he’d handed it to Taerae brick cold. There doesn’t seem to be anything off about the smell but he lowers it from in front of his face. “What’s this for?”
Gyuvin stares at him for a moment, chin propped up on his hand. His gaze pierces Taerae. Sees him all the way down to his synapses. “I feel like I should give it to you.”
That isn’t much of an explanation.
“Why?” Taerae asks, swallowing down a lump in his throat. He’s so afraid he’s going to ask too many questions one of these days.
“You’re always in my head,” is Gyuvin’s answer.
Which, frankly, is the last thing the Gyuvin Taerae knows would ever say.
That’s why this Gyuvin has to be someone else.
Some thing else.
He still looks the same. Dark, too-long-for-school hair hanging over his brown eyes. Long, straight nose and sharp jaw. School uniform stretched taut over his tall and lanky body.
Handsome is what all of the girls call him. They follow him in the halls, chase him across the courtyards, clamoring for a scrap of his attention, and his laughter is like windchimes when he hands out his recognition like prizes, sending girls swooning.
Right now, though, Taerae’s heart races for an entirely different reason. “Did you do something to it?”
The accusation genuinely catches Gyuvin off-guard. “To the cheese bun?” The surprise looks utterly ridiculous on his face. Like something out of a cartoon. “What? No. Why would I?” And to prove his innocence, he stands up off his chair and leans close. Too close. And then closer still. He takes a bite out of the bun and hums as he chews. Then he takes a second bite. Bigger than the first.
He settles back on his seat and gestures to Taerae. As if to say, well?
If only to satisfy him before things get tense, Taerae takes a more moderate bite from the bun, going out of his way to avoid the gaping tear Gyuvin’s teeth have put in the toasted bread.
The bun is warm. Soft. The cheese is just salty enough, gooey between his teeth. But Taerae can barely taste it. Can hardly focus on the act of chewing with the maelstrom of unease in his head.
His tiny bite pleases Gyuvin enough, however, because as he watches Taerae swallow, he does the absolute worst thing he could possibly do: he smiles .
Then the bell for the next class rings and Gyuvin gets up to go back to his assigned desk.
🧿
Gyuvin brings him another cheese bun the next day.
Taerae didn’t ask him to, so he’s not sure why the guy does it.
When he doesn’t immediately start eating it, Gyuvin tears off a piece with his fingers and then pops the steaming bread in his mouth. He tears off another piece, bigger than the first, but he holds it in front of Taerae’s face and stubbornly keeps it raised until Taerae parts his lips and allows Gyuvin to push it into his mouth.
Still suspicious, Taerae doesn’t chew it, even as the cheese melts across his tongue.
Voice muffled by his mouthful, he asks, “Why?” Because he’s been watching and Gyuvin hasn’t brought a cheese bun for anyone else in class. Not even for Gunwook or Hanbin, who he’s always chatting with at the back of the room.
“Because I feel like I should,” Gyuvin says again, head tilted to the side like he’s confused by his own words.
Taerae doesn’t know what to make of it. Is it… an apology? Too little too late, if it is.
But… no. The Gyuvin he’s familiar with would never apologize. At least not to him.
If anything, this just confirms Taerae’s worries. That this really isn’t Gyuvin.
🧿
That school trip two weeks ago haunts Taerae’s nightmares still.
He spends all of his time wondering if things today would be any better if he’d done something different back then. If he’d gone anywhere else on that mountain. Been braver. Or, alternatively, if he’d been even more cowardly and pretended to be sick that day. Stayed home.
He wonders and worries if Gyuvin would still be Gyuvin if their school just hadn’t gone there that dreary, drizzling day.
Their small rural village doesn’t offer much in terms of student enrichment. The rice patties, maybe, if a kid’s serious about agriculture. Or the splitting river. The dam. Or perhaps the twenty five hundred stone steps that lead up to the big shrine. Sites that might attract tourists if the place was on most maps.
It’s an odd, isolated village scattered halfway up the mountainside, with a population of mere thousands only recently clawing its way out of superstitious tradition. But some things will never truly change. Hell, the village is run by the same family who founded it five or six generations ago.
There are no cell towers this far north, and although most of the buildings have electricity, only the school and the library and a handful of government offices are wired for phones and the internet. “It’s expensive to run the lines,” is the response the village elder always gives when complaints arise during town hall meetings.
Only about a third of these steep, winding roads are paved and at any given time, there’s more farming equipment using them than personal cars. Many of the houses sit empty and dilapidated after decades of entire families leaving the area to start fresh in bigger cities.
Even now– especially now–Taerae resents his parents for remaining here. For making him stay in a place like this. A place where the village’s history sits redacted in the library archives yet everyone knows and accepts (yet never openly talks about) how their ancestors were members or victims of a religious cult, committing human sacrifice. Worshiping demons.
What’s fucked up is that there might have been something real to the power they sought back in the day.
Stories about monsters lurking in the woods or hiding in the caves get whispered about in the school bathrooms, passed around in secret more often than stolen cigarettes. Some kids talk so earnestly about such sightings that it’s easy to believe that they’ve really seen such creatures stalking the mountainside.
In simpler terms, there’s not anything new or exciting that a group of educators can show a hundred or so teenagers from a small village without taking them hours away to Seoul.
So the school trip didn’t attempt that. The four big buses drove them maybe thirty minutes away, to the western side of the mountain where the valley is deepest. A historical site , their teacher said. The old village center .
The temperature had dropped with all the overnight rain, and a thick, white fog obscured everything since the sun had yet to rise high enough over the side of the mountain to burn the fog away.
To all of Taerae’s classmates, it was probably just more trees. More ridges and waterfalls and the shells of old, abandoned homes that someone’s great-grandparents used to stay in. The same things they’d experienced every day.
To him, though, it was something bloody and brutal and full of torment. Wet, red scenes lifted straight out of an old horror movie one could rent on tape from the library.
Yes. Taerae knows for a fact that the Gyuvin in his class isn’t the Gyuvin everyone remembers from two weeks ago.
He pushed that guy over the edge of a cliff himself.
🧿
It’s the fourth day in a row that Gyuvin brings him a cheese bun.
This time, Taerae only hesitates a little bit before he takes a nibble.
🧿
He makes a special trip to the village library that evening.
The old desktop takes ages to load up the results of his catalog searches.
Monsters , he types in.
When that’s not specific enough, he tacks on the name of their village.
No results.
He deletes the word monsters . Types urban legends instead.
Just fantasy novels.
He ticks the box for nonfiction. Tries the search again.
The only book that looks promising is checked out.
He types in folklore . Finds something about their region of the country.
He jots down the call number and searches the cramped wooden shelves bowing beneath the weight of all of these old books. What he’s looking for isn’t there. It’s just not on the shelf where it should be and he does not know why he’s afraid to ask, in case the librarian might try to stop him or something.
He goes back to the computer.
Bodysnatchers , he types into the search bar.
No results.
Changelings .
Nothing.
With a defeated sigh, he grabs his backpack and goes home.
🧿
Taerae can’t look this Gyuvin in the face.
Even after this many days, when he looks at him, he can only see the boy with a broken neck and wide open, unfocused eyes that he left all alone in the drizzle and fog two weeks ago.
Taerae is evil for that. And Gyuvin, of all people, is the last person on earth who should be this kind to him now.
“What’s that look for?” Gyuvin puts his hand on the back of Taerae’s chair. He’s so close. Always. Always too close. His body heat is excessive and there’s something rot-sweet in his body odor that his shampoo and cologne can’t quite mask. Gyuvin damn near puts his lips to Taerae’s ear. “Do you not want to be partners with me?”
The question feels loaded. And the answer Taerae wants to give him could make this all worse.
“It’s not that,” he whispers.
In the past, being partners with Gyuvin on a class assignment meant doing all of the library research and essay typing himself, writing Gyuvin’s name beside his own on the paper and then not complaining at all when their teachers didn't notice.
Taerae shrugs his shoulder, slipping it from beneath Gyuvin’s hand. “I’m not smart,” he says.
“You’re the smartest guy in class,” replies Gyuvin, grinning.
Those familiar words make Taerae go tense. How triggering. That’s the exact same phrase the old Gyuvin–the real Gyuvin–always said to him before demanding Taerae do his homework, even for the classes they didn’t share. But this Gyuvin is so nice. His every touch is gentle. His every word a song.
It makes Taerae feel like breaking apart.
“Be partners with me, Taerae,” Gyuvin presses, but he’s smiling. His tone is devoid of intimidation. “I’ll treat you to dinner after school.”
The offer is totally benign but it makes Taerae want to flee. Gyuvin hasn’t hurt him once since he came back from the mountain and is it sick of him that he hates that? Hates always being on edge, waiting for the next insult? “Who are you?” Taerae doesn’t mean to say it aloud but it’s the question that’s been echoing in his head for the past week and a half.
The Gyuvin standing over him now freezes for a moment but his expression never turns cold. In fact, he heaves a sigh and lets his shoulders slump.
But before their conversation can continue, Ricky on the other side of the classroom calls out Gyuvin’s name and he leaves to work on the class project with them instead.
🧿
The old, blind woman who runs the general store at the base of the mountain usually does not speak.
Her grandson, Yujin, one of the first-years at school, dresses her up in beautiful hanbok and does up her stark white hair in an elaborate bun each morning. Yujin leaves the radio on for his grandmother during the day and, operating on good faith and small-town courtesy, villagers grab their purchases and then leave a suitable amount of money or an IOU in the lacquered box at the woman’s side before leaving.
Taerae attempts to do that very thing today.
With the old Gyuvin no longer snatching away his pitiful daily allowance, today Taerae has more than enough to splurge on the more expensive boxes of loose-leaf tea that get brought in each weekend by Yujin’s father.
He drops his counted-out money into the lacquered box at the old woman’s side but, before he can turn away from the table, she’s grabbed him by the wrist as quick as a snake.
He startles, turns to look straight into her glassed-over eyes and wizened face.
“Something powerful has attached itself to you, boy,” she warns, voice raspy like sandpaper on wood.
Powerful , she said. Not evil .
He wants that thing to be evil.
He wants it to be something he’s allowed to push over another cliff edge.
“Will it hurt me?” he asks her.
Instead of answering him, though, she lets him go and then turns her gray head back towards the radio, faint orchestral music just barely cutting through the ocean of static on the ancient thing.
🧿
Taerae keeps an eye out for Gyuvin.
Call it a trauma response. Like how his mother still doesn’t trust the linen closet door after she accidentally closed it on her own fingers ten years ago.
He just likes to know where in a room Gyuvin is standing. So that he won’t be caught out, of course. So he’ll never be approached from behind by him. Taken by surprise. So he and Gyuvin are never alone together.
Unfortunately, it means Gyuvin catches him staring quite often.
Or, worse, Taerae glances up only to see Gyuvin already watching him.
The eye contact is like lightning striking. Every single time. Buzzing through his body. Locking up all of his muscles. Turning his vision blurry.
He’s so afraid .
The old Gyuvin would take such glances as a challenge and then, between classes, he’d remind Taerae of his place. “Beneath my fuckin’ shoe,” he’d say sometimes, smirking.
As nice as this current Gyuvin acts, the memory of the old one will never fade. The one who tripped him in the halls, locked him in the utility room, put cigarettes out on his arm. The one who’d make him take his sweaty, post-practice badminton uniform home to wash and then he’d kick him in the back of the knee if Taerae brought it back the next morning less than spotless. Heinous things! Only for Gyuvin to go back to class and be adored by everyone. Students and teachers alike.
Not a single one of them knows that he is a monster. Then or now.
It makes Taerae want to scream.
It makes him want to pull his hair out.
He should be relieved that this Gyuvin doesn’t appear to be the Gyuvin he remembers, but that doesn’t mean he knows what to do with the terror that’s etched into his bone marrow. He can’t purge his body of it. Can’t stop his heart from thrashing or his hands from shaking or his pits from sweating whenever Gyuvin’s close.
He’s so swept up in his thoughts that he’s completely unprepared when the Gyuvin that’s not Gyuvin walks right up to him in the hallway before P.E. But instead of punching him in the chest and pretending it was an accident, he just… stands there.
Taerae goes statue still. Bracing himself for confrontation.
The two of them stand in front of each other for several long moments, the hallway full of their schoolmates grumbling and groaning, dressed for exercise, not ready to face the midday heat and do drills.
At last, Gyuvin says, “What gave it away?”
Taerae blinks, flabbergasted.
“How do you know I’m not him?” Gyuvin clarifies.
Taerae nearly turns around and runs but Gyuvin is quick to grab hold of his trembling hand and steer him towards the wall of windows, out of the way of their schoolmates.
Gyuvin laughs at himself, “I thought I was doing pretty okay at this.”
“You are,” Taerae admits. “For the most part. You’ve fooled everyone.”
“But not you.”
Taerae swallows a mouthful of nervous spit. He’s so terrified. What if he says or does something that makes this thing that’s not Gyuvin start bullying him too? “It’s not how you behave that’s different. It’s how you are .”
Instead of questioning his vagueness, Gyuvin merely nods. “How am I?”
It’s so eerie being this close up on him. Being face to face with him. Taerae makes himself stand firm, even as his legs threaten to give out from underneath him. “I look at you–” And see the boy I killed , he thinks. “I look at you and–” See all the things I hate about my life . Because God knows he hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since that school trip. He hasn’t been able to rest since that day. Running through the fog and the rain with Gyuvin’s noisy footsteps and wicked laughter chasing him up the mountain. He remembers crawling into a hollow tree and curling in on himself for what felt like an eternity, ignoring the itch of bugs skittering over his skin while trying not to even breathe too heavily. He looks at ‘this’ Gyuvin and still sees the sneer on ‘that’ Gyuvin’s face when he found Taerae hiding away. When he grabbed him by the shirt collar and hauled him out of that tree. When he twisted his fist into Taerae’s hair and shoved his face into the mud.
The few disastrous seconds that came after play over and over in Taerae’s head.
God.
The one time he did what his dad always told him to and fought back… When he finally couldn’t take it anymore… The one time he’d pushed and all he could do after was watch Gyuvin lose his footing on the very mud he’d just shoved Taerae’s face in before tumbling right over the cliff edge. It had happened so quickly that Gyuvin hadn’t even screamed. He just… fell. And even after everything he’d been through, Taerae had watched him vanish into the fog and he felt concern ! He worried ! He took an hour finding a way down to the bottom of that cliff, discovered Gyuvin’s cold corpse already attracting flies on the rocks.
He ran away after that. Of course he ran.
And he was so fucking invisible to his classmates that he made it back to the tiny shrine where the buses were parked and none of them questioned where he’d been for the last three hours. Only Hao even asked him why his clothes were caked in mud but he cared so fucking little that Taerae’s “I fell” was enough of an excuse for him, shoddy as it was.
Holy hell.
Now that he thinks back on it, no one else had really picked up on Gyuvin’s absence until the bus ride back to school.
What gave it away?
“I look at this body,” Taerae says, finding his words at long last, “and I can see the thing inside wearing it like clothes.” He stares into this Gyuvin’s face. “I see whatever you really are looking out of his eyes at me.”
He doesn’t realize he’s crying until Gyuvin lifts his hands, swipes his thumbs through the salt trails on Taerae’s cheeks. “Please don’t be mad at me,” he breathily pleads. “I didn’t mean to take what’s not mine.” His voice sounds off. Like the monster inside can’t quite get Gyuvin’s vocal cords to function.
“How did it happen?” Taerae can’t help his morbid curiosity. “How did you… get in there?”
“I remember being on the mountain, imprisoned in that seal…” Gyuvin’s gaze goes unfocused as he thinks back. “And then, suddenly, I was in this body. Alone in the woods. Hurt, I think.”
I got lost , he’d said back then.
Taerae pulls Gyuvin’s too-warm hands off of his face. He sucks in a breath and holds it captive in his lungs so he won’t fucking sob. Scream .
Gyuvin keeps on, voice low and broken and gravelly, “Please don’t make me go back.”
Taerae puts his back to him so he can wipe his dripping nose on his sleeve with some semblance of privacy. The hallway is empty. All of their schoolmates are out on the field now. Go back to where? He wants to ask, but part of him doesn’t want to know the answer. Doesn’t even think he could fathom it. “Like I can make you do anything,” he huffs beneath his breath.
Last thing he expects is for Gyuvin to put his hand on his back in what must be his idea of a consoling pat. Somehow, Taerae doesn’t flinch at the touch.
“I love it here,” says the thing using Gyuvin’s body. “But I’ll go if you want me to go.”
What would that mean? Would Gyuvin die a second time? Would everyone somehow find out he pushed Gyuvin off the cliff? It absolutely carves Taerae up from the inside out to turn around, look that thing in the eye and tell it, “You can stay.”
🧿
That evening, Taerae goes to the store at the foot of the mountain again.
Yujin is there, headphones on, sweeping the aisles with a big, straw broom. He sees but doesn’t seem to care that he’s making Taerae wait for him to move from in front of the flour and sugar shelf.
Too cowardly to speak up, Taerae only waits.
And then he waits even more when he needs to get at the shelves of cooking oil that Yujin is blocking for him now.
Eventually, Taerae makes it up to the front of the store with his items and drops more bills in the lacquered box than he needs to for his handful of things.
“Will it hurt me?” he asks the old, blind woman again.
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t acknowledge him at all. The temptation to reach across the wooden table and shake her is so strong.
Instead, he stares down into the box full of money and, only for the briefest of moments, ponders if he could get away with stealing it all. It must be more than enough to get him on a bus to Seoul. Maybe even earn him a hotel room for a night. He hears the repetitive scritching noise of Yujin with the broom get closer and closer as the kid reaches the end of the aisle behind him.
Taerae peers over his shoulder to make sure the kid’s headphones are still on. He turns back. “Will that thing that’s in his body hurt me?” he asks the old, blind woman.
When he’s met with only the crackling static coming from the radio, he starts to turn around–
“Worse,” she says. Softly. “It will keep you close.”
🧿
At dawn on Friday, Taerae takes his bike up the dirt path to the western side of the mountain, back to the old village center.
The place looks different without the drizzle and the fog.
Nature explodes around him. Colorful flowers bloom at his feet. Cicadas scream from the treetops. The wooden shells that used to be homes sit in ruins around him, covered in muck and climbing ivy. Knee-high weeds have grown up through what used to be the walking paths. And over there, the red-painted wood of the small shrine building still looks fresh in the golden haze of sunrise. The pigment untouched by time and weather. The altar sits oddly pristine and the carved wooden figure of some goddess or another peers out of ocean-like shadows at him.
The wind blows through the trees and sends the branches dancing. The constant rustling sounds like something ancient and angry is whispering to him.
He can just about make out the words.
Taerae props his bike up against the old stone well and then picks his way through the shrubbery and trees, stepping carefully down towards that awful place at the base of the cliff.
He lets the sound of the waterfall guide him north, and from there, it’s easy to find the exact place Gyuvin fell if he follows the trail of broken tree limbs.
It had to have been… here. No. Here .
Yes. There’s even faded bloodstains on the rocks and right over there is the fallen tree he vomited onto after seeing Gyuvin’s crooked neck and twisted leg and broken back.
It’s not until he’s standing there, bug-bitten and sweating in the humidity, that he realizes that he came all of this way because he actually wanted to find Gyuvin’s body here. He wants proof that he’s wrong about all of this.
He searches the ground, this way and that, but there is no body.
He looks back up the side of the cliff. Can hardly see the top where Gyuvin first slipped.
Is it possible that a normal person could just get up after a fall like that?
Taerae doesn’t want to think about it. He turns and rushes back through the trees the way he came, nausea making his head spin.
🧿
“How do you do it?” Taerae asks the thing that’s not Gyuvin later that morning. “How do you act like him so exactly ?”
Gyuvin shifts about on the chair at the desk next to him. “Hmmm, how can I put this into words?” Class has yet to start. The room is noisy with chatter. Gyuvin takes a bite from the cheese bun before handing it to Taerae with a sort of reverence and care that the thing doesn’t deserve.
Taerae stares at it for several seconds before he accepts it. Bites into it.
It’s like a ritual at this point. An offering made to him. Taerae feels like it should be the other way around.
Granted, over two weeks ago, he was the one rushing to the canteen to buy Gyuvin his morning cheese bun before they were all sold out during the breakfast rush. Every day. Or there’d be punishment.
Gyuvin figures out what he wants to say: “I have access to this body’s memories. They stretch out in my mind like a web and it takes no effort to sift through them. All the way back to childhood.” He probably would sound crazy to anyone who might be listening in on them but, somehow, the two of them are practically in their own world seated here at the very front of the classroom. “They are different from my own memories… Different from the length of time I spent trapped on the mountain. I can taste my memories, nearly. Smell them, you could say. Dive in and out of them. I can recall the time period before I was subdued like it was yesterday. You see, such memories were my only company during that time. I would have gone mad otherwise.” He pauses. Leans extremely close. Takes the bite that Taerae had been about to. He laughs at Taerae’s spooked expression. “In comparison, with this body’s memories, I can only flip through them like pages of a book. It’s all just silence. Still images. Not even emotions. Details and nuance are things that I must guess but it clearly wasn’t a difficult task if I’ve gone this long without giving myself away.”
“Are there memories of me?” Taerae has to know.
“Of course,” Gyuvin says, a bit too cheerfully, considering their history. “You’re always in my– In this body’s head.”
It’s what he had said before. And it doesn’t make any more sense now. “What do you mean?”
Gyuvin scoots closer to him as if they have always been this close with each other. This friendly. His breath is hot on Taerae’s neck when he murmurs, “Hmmm. This body has many memories of you.” He lifts a hand. His fingertips touch down near Taerae’s temple. Taerae holds still, despite wanting to duck away. “The texture of your skin is so familiar to me.” Slowly, Gyuvin’s thumb drags across Taerae’s cheek, down towards his mouth, and then it flicks away a bit of cheese stuck to the corner of Taerae’s bottom lip. “When I saw you on my first day here, I was the most familiar with you out of anyone in this room but you were also– I could glean so much from my connections with everyone else but everything about you was like a dark pit that I just had to throw myself into.”
His choice of words sends a chill up Taerae’s spine. He immediately loses his appetite. Can’t even swallow what’s in his mouth.
What Gyuvin says next is even worse: “Were we lovers?”
Taerae wants to retch. He most certainly feels his stomach twist. Feels his throat tighten. He spits the mashed up chunk of bread out of his mouth back into the bun packaging. He wants to cry. He wants to scream. He wants to shove this creature away from him and run out of the room to hide. Instead, he musters up what little bravery he can manage and looks dead into the monster’s eyes.
They hold eye contact for what feels like forever and Taerae hopes this thing can see how scared he is.
It must not.
“Is that why your heart races whenever this body is near you? I can hear the sound even from a distance.” Then Gyuvin asks again, more quietly, “Were we lovers?”
With calmness he doesn’t feel, Taerae asks, “Is that what your– What his body’s memories tell you?”
As opposed to anything definitive, Gyuvin merely supplies another ambiguous “Hmmm.” Then he slowly lowers his hand from Taerae’s face.
He wants to know so badly what the monster sees in Gyuvin’s memories. If it can see what Gyuvin saw like flipping through a book, then does it not recognize the violence? He wants to know even a small percentage of what the real Gyuvin–the real beast–thought of him while he tormented him.
Or did the real Gyuvin believe that everything he’d done had been out of love?
The eyes of the Gyuvin that’s not Gyuvin seem to trace the shape of Taerae’s lips. Contemplating. For the longest time, he doesn’t blink. Doesn’t breathe . “That’s odd,” Gyuvin exhales after a long pause. “This sudden, blazing urge I have to grab hold of you… Are these my feelings or… this body’s?”
🧿
Were we lovers?
Those dreadful words cling to Taerae’s ankles like a curse and make him go slowly his entire bike ride home.
🧿
Taerae spends the weekend trying to sleep.
His thoughts are a summer storm, nothing but noise and wind.
He buries his head under his comforter, even with the sap-thick June heat. Anything to block out the light of the day. The mocking, cheerful sun.
Sleep doesn’t come.
Even after another chilled cup of the calming tea he bought.
He watches the light in his room turn orange with sunset.
His mother knocks on the door and asks if he’s alright. She can hear his constant shuffling about from down the hall. He complains of a stomachache and then has to say that it is no big deal three times before she gives up on the thought of taking him to the village medic.
An hour later, she brings him a simple dinner on a tray and leaves it at his bedside.
It’s a miracle that he keeps the food down when he tries it.
Still, sleep won’t come to him, even though he can feel his exhaustion like knotted ropes tying down his body.
During the one instance that he nearly dozes off, nightmares overwhelm him immediately and he jolts upright in bed, throat hoarse from screaming.
His mother must be napping because she does not come running.
Anxiety claws at Taerae. Makes him toss and turn and quietly cry until dawn fills his room with a burning glow.
🧿
At school, Taerae finds that he must satisfy his curiosity or he won’t be able to live.
This morning’s cheese bun going cold and uneaten in his hands, he asks, “Can I see the real you?”
He thought such a request might cause some distress but Gyuvin only smiles at him. Almost as if he’s been waiting for Taerae to ask. “Meet me in the gym equipment storage room before P.E.”
🧿
Taerae tries to get to their designated meeting place early but Gyuvin is already waiting for him, seated cross-legged on top of a stack of blue mats. Swirls of dust motes dance around his head in the slanted shaft of sunlight coming in through the room’s tiny window.
Taerae takes two or three steps into the room. He gulps. Comes to a halt a short distance out of Gyuvin’s reach.
Being here is dangerous, Taerae’s instincts warn.
“I won’t hurt you,” Gyuvin states, beckoning him closer.
Such a statement almost makes Taerae scoff.
Gyuvin leans over, grips Taerae’s bony wrist, pulls him in.
The alarm in Taerae’s head blares: Turn around. Leave. You shouldn’t be alone with this thing.
Anything could happen to him here and no one would know.
“Sit,” Gyuvin says, but not meanly.
Taerae does so, climbing up onto the stack of mats, leaving ample room between their bodies, but Gyuvin slides towards him. He closes the distance until their knees touch. Taerae goes rigid, intrigued and terrified in equal measure.
“I don’t seem able to pull too much of myself out of this body, but… I can show you this.” Gyuvin starts by unbuttoning his uniform blazer. He peels himself out of it, folds it and sets it down next to him. Then he undoes his tie, places it gently onto his blazer as if it’s some fragile thing that could be easily shattered.
Then, one by one, Gyuvin begins to undo the buttons on his dress shirt.
Wait.
It’s not until Taerae catches his first peek at Gyuvin’s flushed-pink chest that he looks away, embarrassed. Cheeks burning, he stammers out, “W-w-what are you doing?”
“I must do it this way.”
Taerae suddenly no longer wants this. No. He never wanted any of this from the beginning. “Gyuvin,” Taerae chokes out. The syllables feel like sand on his tongue and he knows right then that this is the first time in two weeks that he’s ever said the thing’s name aloud. If that even is its name.
“Look at me,” Gyuvin says.
Taerae turns. Gyuvin’s completely out of his shirt now, his narrow torso all bone-sharp angles and knobby joints. The way he breathes in and out looks wrong. Unnatural. Like it hurts. Or, rather, like he doesn’t truly need to do it. As if his lungs are an afterthought.
What comes next is shocking.
Gyuvin presses his fingers to his neck and his nails sink into his skin with only the slightest rip of sound. He pushes them in and in , like he’s trying to claw his own throat out. Then he hooks and yanks his fingers downward and his skin tears as easily as tissue paper.
Taerae gasps, hands over his mouth in fright.
Gyuvin shushes him. Or perhaps the hissing noise flooding the air is the only sound that body can make with a vertical slice in its neck.
Gyuvin pulls at the corner of the slit and it gets wider and wider, carrying on down his throat and splitting his flat chest in two.
But blood and guts don’t ooze out of him. No. Nothing does.
Against his better judgment, Taerae rocks his weight forward just so he can better see what is– Or what isn’t inside of Gyuvin’s body.
There’s no heart in there. No bones. No human insides. Only shadowy darkness lies beneath, ballooning outward to fit itself down the limbs of Gyuvin’s body. The creature inside is deepest black with liquid hints of refracting rainbow color like the surface of oil.
It’s absolutely hideous.
Little shadowy tendrils reach out of the slit like tiny, grasping fingers. The black mass twists and stretches, peeling back Gyuvin’s skin and filling Taerae’s nostrils with the foul, earthy stench of decay.
For the first time since this all began, Taerae feels… comfort.
In front of him is all the evidence he needs. Undeniable proof that the bully who made life hell for him is truly gone. Replaced by this otherworldly being going for a joyride in his skin.
Where is the real Gyuvin?
Is his spirit locked away on the mountain where this thing used to be?
If so, it’s what he deserves.
So shouldn’t Taerae be happy?
He’s not sure what he feels. Emotions that he doesn't even have names for are lancing through his body, piercing his heart.
In front of him, this Gyuvin continues to unravel itself. It sighs with what might be relief as the tear across Gyuvin’s body reaches his belly.
More and more of that shadow swells out. Spills.
“Does that hurt?” Taerae asks, watching it drip.
“Not at all,” it answers in a voice that does not come from the slack, open mouth of Gyuvin’s body.
Taerae wants to be afraid.
This is clearly something that would terrify anyone but, to Taerae, an actual monster isn’t half as frightening as the human who sat in the back row of his classroom two weeks ago.
This Gyuvin’s skin undulates as whatever creature that’s in there shifts about as if stretching. The colors on its form brighten and dim in a pulsing rhythm that just might be its heartbeat.
The swirling darkness almost hurts to look at–like it’s something Taerae's not meant to perceive–but the quivering pattern he spots in its depths is so hypnotizing. So seductive. He wants to get lost in there. He wants to throw himself in. There don’t seem to be any eyes on its form but whatever that thing is in there is looking directly into Taerae’s eyes. He can feel it.
Before he knows it, Taerae’s reaching up. Touching Gyuvin’s cut-open stomach. As razor sharp as they appear, the edges of the slit in his body are feather soft. Smooth.
On accident, his fingertips dip into that darkness and touch something grotesquely solid. He yanks his hand back.
They gasp in unison. One of them choppy and low. The other high and drawn-out with horror.
“Did that hurt?” Taerae repeats.
Gyuvin throws his head back, trembling. “It felt wonderful.”
So Taerae tries again. He slots a single finger between the warm flaps of Gyuvin’s skin and dips it into the shadowy mass, watches his digit vanish inside of that thing.
The sensation makes them both shudder. Electric tingles spin through Taerae’s hand. Shoot down his wrist and up his arm. The feeling goes off like fireworks in his chest. Makes it hard to swallow down air.
Gyuvin lets out this deep, shaky whimper that sounds too loud in the claustrophobic storage room.
Curiously, Taerae shoves a second finger in. The intense feeling makes his breath hitch.
In front of him, Gyuvin shakes. A tug of his fingers pulls the tear across his stomach wider and Taerae accepts the quiet invitation to push his fingers in deeper. To the knuckle. Gyuvin’s eyes drift shut and his tongue swipes wetness across his thin top lip.
The electric tingles in Taerae’s body slide warm and heavy into his gut and he realizes, both fascinated and horrified, that this is making him aroused.
He pushes his hand past the folds of Gyuvin’s skin and tightens his fist around the black, shadowy mass inside. It vibrates in his grip. He feels it stretch over his knuckles and wrist and it traps him fast like quicksand. Taerae pinches his nails in. Twists hard as if to hurt.
But the moan from Gyuvin’s lips doesn’t sound like pain.
Oh.
“Are you sure that feels good?” Taerae questions.
“It is pleasurable,” Gyuvin confirms, short of breath.
Taerae feels good too. Across his skin and muscles. Down to his bones. Warmth like nothing he’s ever felt before is racing through his body. Numbing his toes. Clouding up his mind. Although some small part of him is still buzzing at him in warning, Taerae decides that he and Gyuvin are not close enough. Still. Sure of himself, he pushes his fist in more deliberately and he watches his arm sink into the writhing blackness. Up to the elbow.
The way is slippery and easy and when he wriggles his fingers, tingles shoot through his palm. He can’t quite describe what it feels like in there. Not exactly wet . Not something that could be described as hot or cold. It’s just primal, intoxicating sensation that makes Taerae’s thoughts gum up and slow.
Gyuvin seems to lose himself in it. The tear in his skin unpeels further, letting more of the black shape inside spill out.
Its form twists into the air with unfamiliar geometry. Tendrils scrape over the walls. Touch the ceiling. They block out the sunlight coming in through the window. A few of the little tendrils wrap around Taerae’s arm and they ease him further in.
Taerae sits up on his knees, helps the thing along by leaning close.
He watches the way his arm disappears up to the shoulder inside of the thing and now there’s no denying the pleasure sitting heavy in him. The aching hardness in his pants.
Gyuvin’s tendrils are beginning to wrap around his neck and head now, dragging more of Taerae's body into the pulsing, dark center of him.
Panic suddenly spears through Taerae’s arousal.
When had he crawled onto Gyuvin’s lap?
Gyuvin bucks his hips up underneath him, pressing his own hardness to Taerae’s thigh.
God, it feels good. Just pure, singing pleasure working through his bones and making him moan.
But Taerae has to stop this before he’s swallowed whole. “Gyuvin–” He chokes out. His chin is touching the darkness now and his vision swirls as more sensation than he can process overflows his nerves. “Gyuvin,” he tries again, voice shrill with panic. The monster’s many slithering tendrils are snaking around his waist and thighs now, lifting him up, pressing Taerae’s whole body inside like a sort of tongue scooping up food. “Gyuvin!”
“More,” Gyuvin encourages. “I need more of you.” His hand, his human one, is at the crown of Taerae’s head. Pushing him inside.
The darkness covers Taerae’s mouth. Hits his nose. Taerae holds his breath.
It’s like two weeks ago on the mountain, feeling the old Gyuvin shove his face into the mud.
Adrenaline sizzles in his veins and fear whirs at the base of his neck. Far too late, Taerae realizes that this is properly dangerous . That he shouldn’t be allowing the monster to do any of this to him. That he might die if all of his body falls inside the darkness.
No. No. No. Nonononono!
He attempts to pull his body free. It feels stuck fast. Like the darkness is trying to trap him inside. Taerae squeezes his eyes shut as the rest of his face is drawn beneath the shadows. It's like drowning. But slower. Stranger. His fear has eaten up his arousal completely now and he struggles with all of the strength he’s got left in his body. He thrashes harder. Harder. Using his hand to try and tear at the goopy substance. He’s running out of breath. His consciousness is fading. Oh God, he doesn’t want to die!
Then, suddenly, the darkness lets go of him with a whoosh of power.
One more tug and he is able to pull his body free of the sticky void and he falls backward across the blue, dusty mats. He blinks up at the ceiling, tears in his eyes, gasping. He clutches his hand to his chest. It feels numb. Freezing cold. But it looks fine and his fingers respond when he flexes them.
Holy fuck.
When he sits up, the creature’s amorphous form has been recalled back into Gyuvin’s naked torso and the slit up its chest has seamlessly closed.
They are both breathing heavily. Taerae’s pulse pounds in his ears.
Gyuvin’s usually curly hair is plastered to his forehead and to the sides of his face with sweat. His face is rose-petal pink from exertion and he stares into Taerae’s eyes with something that holds a wicked resemblance to fondness .
Taerae sits there, thighs shaking and chest heaving, body vibrating with soupy lust as dopamine filters through his veins. “Wow,” is all he can manage.
Gyuvin leans forward, swamping him in his inhuman body heat. He swipes a thumb through the tear tracks across Taerae’s cheeks and his voice is warm and small when he says, “This body has made you cry many, many times. That’s the one thing I know for sure about us.” He presses his face close. Too close. Closer still.
Taerae sees it coming but he lets it happen despite everything. He lets Gyuvin kiss him.
It’s a soft thing. The gentlest approach. The lightest touching of tongues. And it’s over about as fast as it began.
The boy– The thing pulls backward and, again, uses its thumbs to wipe the remaining salt trails from Taerae’s cheeks. “Were we lovers?”
How cruel.
Taerae squeezes his eyes shut. Feels the way fresh tears seep past his lashes. His chest aches something fierce as conflicting emotions go to war inside his heart, feelings laying waste to everything. “We weren’t,” he answers, feeling like he’s lying.
🧿
It will keep you close . The old, blind woman’s words take on brand new meaning.
What closer place can prey be for a predator than sleeping comfortably in its belly?
🧿
It has only been a few seconds of this but Taerae feels nervous sweat trickle from his armpits. Still, he tries not to move his arm too much, worried about Gyuvin’s comfort. Even now. “When you act like this…” he starts, mouth full of cotton. One of their schoolmates passes by the half court line where the two of them are seated on the floor during P.E. She openly gawks at their tangled limbs before giggling and hurrying past them. “...it gives people the wrong idea.”
Gyuvin doesn't move. Which is the majority of the problem. His head is heavy on Taerae's shoulder. His hand is even heavier on Taerae's bare thigh, fingers purposely slipping beneath the bottom hem of his nylon gym shorts. He turns his face up towards Taerae's, the overhead lights catching in his brown eyes like amber. “And what's the wrong idea I’m giving them?”
“That–” Taerae has to accumulate spit and swallow, his throat is so fucking dry. “That we’re together.” There. He said it. Finally. It’s taken him all week to be this brave.
But to his dismay, Gyuvin snorts back a laugh. His hand grips Taerae's wrist faster than he can dodge. He lifts it and guides Taerae's fingertips to his throat. “Should we give them the right idea, then?” Malice briefly glints in his eyes although his smile never dims. “Should we tell everyone around us that I need you inside of me?” Then the sweat-damp skin of his neck peels apart like a tear in soft fabric and he guides the tips of Taerae's fingers inside.
They both moan quietly at the wet slurping sound the insertion makes. At the electric thrum of pleasure that shoots down both of their spines. But then Taerae yanks his fingers free and watches as the slit in Gyuvin's skin snaps shut like a closing mouth. “Not in front of people,” he hisses, glancing around.
The thing that looks like Gyuvin settles its head on his shoulder again. “Fine. Later.” It closes its eyes. Then, through a yawn, it says, “One of these days, I want all of you in me.”
Taerae shivers.
🧿
Friday, when Gyuvin brings him a cheese bun before class, Taerae tears it down the middle and shares it with him.