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Subong had to learn a few lessons throughout his life. For example: visible emotions have consequences, especially if they’re negative. Don’t speak unless spoken to. Poetry, music and art are gay. You’re gonna enlist in the army, they’re gonna make you a man and forget this stupid idea of yours of wanting to become a musician.
He was seventeen years old when he threw two T-shirts, a pair of briefs and his toothbrush into his backpack, then got on the last bus in the cool summer night, six minutes before midnight, that took him to the other end of the city.
He rang the bell of the run-down condo and was let in almost immediately, since no one else came to visit anyway.
He took the stairs to the third-floor apartment and opened the door without knocking. His first thought was wishing they’d let some air in here sometimes because he got a whiff of the pungent smell of weed and cigarettes that he couldn’t get used to, no matter how many times he visited.
“Hi Subong!” The one he came to see stood in front of him pretty much right away, his malicious smile on his face and a sly look in his eyes as always, and in his usual outfit: a band tee (that he’s been wearing for like a week at that point probably) and briefs. He hugged Subong tightly, but he could only return that clumsily.
“It’s not perfect but you’ll get good at it soon enough,” he said, after snatching the kind of loose joint from Subong’s hands that he had just rolled. Some tobacco and weed fell out of it, right onto his naked thigh, but in the next moment he had already lit it with his glittering gendarme lighter.
Subong never knew the guy’s real name, he made him call him Tony because Ironman was his favorite superhero. He was quite the unusual fellow: He was one and a half years older than Subong at max, his black hair reaching his shoulders was always greasy and he constantly smelled of sweat and cheap cologne because he showered like, weekly, and even if he was sober, around ten minutes after Subong had arrived, they had to get high. He didn’t have a job and he didn’t like Subong asking questions. But, despite all this, he kept talking to him, he went to visit multiple times a week sometimes, and made out with him when he put his colorful pills on his tongue because he was his only friend, after all. And if he could choose – and he could choose – he much preferred the smell of weed and cigarettes to the company of his father.
“He wants me to enlist,” Subong told after around fifteen minutes, drawling slowly. They still had a bit of the reefer left, but he felt it hit a long time ago. “He never enlisted though!”
“I won’t either,” Tony answered. “I have family in China. I’ll get citizenship there.” Subong scoffed while passing him the blunt.
“My dad did the same. But it’s not like that, he couldn’t have enlisted if he wanted to ‘cuz he has a bad back, a bad liver, high blood pressure, everything you could imagine. But he’s not willing to see a doctor, he thinks that is not manly for some reason, so he learned a new language and moved abroad instead ‘cuz that’s so much easier, apparently.”
“He’s one dedicated man, you gotta give him that,” Tony took a hit, then someone else walked into the living room and looked at Subong with a neutral expression from under his bangs. In contrast to Tony’s unhealthily thin build and hollow cheeks, this boy was handsome; a bumpy nose decorating the center of his square face, his downturned eyes watery and his upper lip fuller than his bottom one, making him look constantly sad. His body was shredded, Subong would see him sometimes right after showering with only a towel wrapped around his waist but right now, he was sporting a white tank top and blue striped pyjama pants. He was holding a bag of frozen peas towards Subong. “For your mouth,” Tony translated. Subong reached to touch his swollen, busted lips then took the peas shakily with one hand, and the joint from Tony with the other. He thanked him with a nod, the guy nodded back, and Subong offered him the blunt. The guy accepted, took two hits, handed it back to him, then turned on his heel and disappeared in the bedroom.
Tony introduced him as his boyfriend at the concert where they met, but Subong didn’t know his name, nor did he ever hear him say a single word. And the guy saw everything they did with Tony but pretended not to notice. He found out from Tony that he works as a cashier, he’s actually the one financing Tony’s every endeavor. The guy smoked his cigarettes in the kitchen every morning, and Subong saw him snort all sorts of powders then take off for work right after, multiple times.
The next moment Subong’s phone started to ring. Seeing his father’s name, he pressed decline without thinking.
Tony’s boyfriend made them scrambled eggs for dinner a little later, it was too salty and the eggs weren’t properly cooked, but Subong was so hungry he could have eaten a horse. Then Tony, instead of sleeping with his boyfriend in their shared bed, put his arm around Subong’s waist on the rock hard sofabed.
He had been at their place for around three days when he was standing in the bathroom on a cloudy, melancholic morning (he couldn’t have said what day it was), and scrubbing the sleep out of his big brown eyes, watched his phone ring for the nth time, the word ‘Dad’ flashing on the screen. Then he simply dropped his phone into the toilet and flushed it.
He stayed for approximately two more weeks, he was sober for like half an hour with great generosity, then on one Wednesday, in Tony’s only clean shirt and with his few things in his backpack he told him he was going home.
“What for?” he asked simply, smoking over the dining table. Subong could only stutter at first.
“Dad must be worried,” he replied clumsily. “He kept calling and I never picked up.”
“He’s going to beat the ever living shit out of you.” Subong swallowed. He could never get used to Tony’s attitude.
“I know but…” he started after a few seconds of perplexed silence “...but I have to go home,” he argued precariously.
“Whatever.”
Then Subong stood there for a few more seconds thinking he might want to say goodbye, but after that didn’t happen, he stepped out of the door, and arriving on the street, he took a big whiff of the smoggy air.
He opened the door to their house with his hands shaking after having done breathing exercises for thirty-five minutes on the bus beforehand. He expected his father to jump him in approximately half a second, and his welcome gift to be a black-eye and a nose bleed at the very least. However, the house was completely peaceful, so much so that Subong started to feel uneasy, and he only later noticed the unbearable smell.
“Dad!” he tried calling out to him carefully while thinking about if he’s maybe out shopping, or working overtime or anything like that, then he walked into the living room.
His father was sitting on the armchair, he was quite the disgusting sight. His hand was resting on a half-drank, probably lukewarm can of beer and his body… Well, it wasn’t pleasant to look at.
Subong could feel his stomach churn, and he swallowed back the vomit in his mouth. He didn’t quite know how he was feeling. He was sad, disgusted, shocked and in some grotesque way relieved, at the same time. His dad was sitting idly with his head reclined and his mouth wide open, a whole swarm of flies hovering around him, but their buzzing sounded so loud to Subong that he felt as if they were all flying around inside his head. It was peaceful in some weird, disgusting way. He couldn’t hurt him now. Not anymore.
He doesn’t remember how he got into the kitchen to dial 119 on the landline, but afterwards he waited for what felt like hours for the cops to arrive, twiddling his thumbs at the dinner table. He watched his father be put into a body bag, then into a car, and later he found out that he got a heart attack a few days after he ran away. Guilt made its way into the chaos of his emotions. He killed him. Father killer.
His aunt, as his next of kin, helped him arrange the cremation, the ceremony, all of that jazz, and he couldn’t really tell how she was actually feeling about all this either. It was her older brother after all, and Subong knew they were never really on good terms, but he still would have liked some kind of guidance as to what is right at a time like this. Instead, the woman was completely stoic, they didn’t really talk to each other, other than the time they walked out of the tiny chapel, her in a black woman’s suit and hat, staring at her nephew for seconds on end, and him in a white button-down shirt and black jeans, holding the urn. Subong thought she was about to reproach him, that she was about to break down and ask him why he killed her only brother, but all she said was:
“You’re a carbon copy of him.”
Then they got in the car.
His aunt waited for him in the driver’s seat while he packed all of his things at home, then he occupied the guest room at theirs. The woman married a lawyer, so they had a very nice house, the guest room was spacious, but he found it a bit grotesque how they decided that’s also where they wanna keep the urn, so Choi Sujin was eyeing him every night. After a while, Subong decided to cover it with a blanket.
The ceremony was an incredibly awkward and uncomfortable experience. It was him and his aunt, and a priest who read out the most basic funeral speech that has ever existed because neither of them wanted to write about him. Don’t speak ill of the dead or whatever.
He visited Tony again the next day.
“Bloody Hell!” he laughed excitedly when Subong told him about what had happened, while they were smoking weed in his apartment as usual. “So you can do what you want now!” Subong shrugged.
“Pretty much, yeah. I live at my aunt’s now, but they don’t really care that I’m there.”
After that, Tony gave him a torn, elongated, stained T-shirt and they occupied the bathroom so that he could put bleach on Subong’s hair after getting an idea. Subong wasn’t sure if he wanted this at first, but with Tony’s bony fingers touching his nape and face here and there, he almost fell asleep in the chair in this weirdly peaceful state. Then when forty-five had minutes passed, Tony washed his hair for him and anointed the turquoise, and said that this color was literally made for him when they were done.
And Subong basically moved in with them; he sat on the hard, old wooden floor between the yellowed walls taking Tony’s pills, a table lamp gave him light when he was writing his poems because they rarely had the blinds up, he recorded his songs in the kitchen and uploaded them to the internet using Tony’s computer.
He was at Tony’s even when a famous label contacted him, telling him they want to have him signed.
He jumped into Tony’s arms in a euphoric state, he couldn’t utter a complete, coherent sentence, and he tried to tell him what happened with shaky hands, a smile as big as he’s never had on his face before. So Tony took both of his hands, caressed his face and kissed him.
“I’m proud of you,” he whispered to him, putting their foreheads to each other, gently stroking Subong’s nape.
That was the night he had sex with someone for the first time, on the very same bed Tony and his boyfriend would sleep in. Subong felt weird afterwards, he was guilty and regretful but he didn’t tell Tony. He tried covering his thin, naked body with their stained plaid blanket as much as he could, and when Tony left for the living room, he got dressed and rolled himself a blunt. He was very good at it now.
It took around three seconds for Subong to become insanely popular, at least that’s what it felt like. There wasn’t really a transition when his life went from going to school (barely) and hanging out at his best friend’s, to not being able to go to the store to buy a bottle of coke without being recognized. And he had to adapt, and fucking quickly. And he would adapt, even if it cost him his life because he’s not getting blackballed.
And as he got richer and more famous, Tony invited him to his apartment more and more often, and he would always go. Though he didn’t remember most of these times. And at her aunt’s house he would wear sunglasses no matter what time of the day it was, but they didn’t see him much even when he was home, so it was whatever.
And Thanos slowly realized he loves not thinking. He loves when his brain isn’t working and he loves when he doesn’t feel like there are ten thousand eyes watching everything he does and he loves when the picture of his father’s body isn’t floating in front of his eyes endlessly. And it’s only him that exists and it’s only Tony that exists and he doesn’t need anyone else in this whole entire world.
“Hey Thanos,” Tony addressed him one day. They were sitting on the floor, Thanos’ head reclined on the couch as he was trying to decide whether he was going to vomit or fall asleep in a few minutes. Tony interlocked their fingers, and he turned Thanos’ head in his direction with his free hand. “We’re very good friends, right?”
He asked Thanos to buy him and his boyfriend a house, he’s so rich and famous anyway. Hearing that, Thanos jerked his head up. He was looking at him for a few seconds before comprehending what he just said, while his face gradually turned to a grimace of disbelief until he managed to blurt out a firm “no way in Hell.” Tony tried to convince for around half an hour after that, but when he realized he couldn’t win, he started crying and shouting. About how could Thanos do this to his only friend, especially after all he’s done for him, how he’s such an unreliable maggot, how no one else is ever going to love him the way Tony did. Then he kicked him out of his apartment.
Thanos put on his sunglasses in the nightfall with his backpack sloppily thrown on his shoulder, he didn’t even bother with putting on his coat even though it was quite chilly in mid-October, then he simply vomited on the sidewalk. Then he got on the bus as if nothing had happened, and he didn’t care that his pass expired yesterday.
He would have cried a lot if he had been a normal teenager, but instead he just sedated himself with a bunch of sedatives until the point where it just wasn’t dangerous, and did nothing but sleep for days. Who cares about Tony anyway (anyway, he did, but he wasn’t about to admit that).
Then in the course of only a few years there came a few overdoses and a car accident which he always said didn’t happen on purpose (or would have said, if anybody had asked), followed up by quite a public psychotic break.
He went to rehab when they threatened him at the company that it’s either this or his career. But this was all he had left now, so he admitted himself, even though he really didn’t want to. Then he was let out, he pretended the last few years didn’t even happen, and two days later he was sniffing glue, then doing the real stuff again, but only in reason. Nobody else had to know.
He released a new album and started investing in crypto. He considered MG Coin his most trusted adviser on this, then when the advice of that jerk failed shamefully and miserably, giving him an outrageous amount of debt, he went up to the Dongjak Bridge to finish this once and for all. It had been long overdue.
Then a guy in a suit tapped him on the shoulder. Thanos turned to him angrily at first, can’t a man commit suicide in peace, but then he mostly just confused him. He played Ttakji with him, slapped him a few times, and gave him a weird business card in the end.
And now he’s here, in a disgusting green tracksuit, they took his limited edition shoes, and he’s playing children’s games for money and also his life. And he’s sharing his pills with Nam-su because at least he’s cool. And he’s like his lap dog, he follows him around and he can make him do a lot of stuff. That Gyeong-su and that Min-su are also like that, but they’re collateral damage if someone had to be sacrificed. Se-mi is much more difficult, she keeps talking back to him, that’s exactly why he doesn’t like her. Who does that woman think she is, seriously. She doesn’t know who she’s dealing with.
When they’re done with the game for the day and they can go back to the room with the beds, Nam-su always sits with him. They take his pills, then with their hyper, probably not-so-reliable brains start strategizing about how the two of them are going to win. But Thanos keeps getting sidetracked because he thinks about how Nam-su with his long, black greasy hair, the sly look in his eyes and his characteristic smell of deodorant and sweat, reminds him so much of someone. Then he starts thinking about how he would love to kiss him right about now. Moreover, how he would love to push him to the bed by his wrists and…
Actually no, he doesn’t think that because he’s not a faggot . It’s just the drugs messing with his brain. That’s why he wants to tell Nam-su that he’s in love with him. But he won’t because this is not the right moment, and it’s not even true. But he never really knew time and place anyway. Besides, it’s just the drugs messing with his brain.
But he’s finally going to murder MG Coin, that maggot that ruined his entire life. He’s already got him on the ground, now he’s going to grab his throat and strangle him until he’s not moving, or he’s going to smash his head into the tiles, or he’s going to drown him in the toilet but he’s finally going to die for what he did to him. He needs to be put in his place, nobody messes with Thanos, and now he’s going to pay for his deeds, literally and figuratively.
Sharp pain in Thanos’ neck. He should be scared, of death, of where he’s going after, but he knows that perfectly well. As his blood splutters on MG Coin before getting the mercy kill, the only thing he can think of is that this is his karma. Father killer. He’s sure he’s going to see him again soon, and he’s also sure it’s not going to be in Heaven.