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It’s an exercise, in becoming human. It’s not working, he is told.
The sky stands the blue of a bruise above them, or so eighty-eight imagines as more touch is administered. Ankle to knee, knee to hip, hip to armpit, shoulder to neck. Throat to forehead. Beneath glaring light, eighty-eight is cut up into pieces with strokes of these hands, dry and warm. In these rooms with their floors cut up by red markings, nothing stays whole. He feels less alive, in the way a wound would make him feel, feels bruised all over by the flinching and shivering of his unrestrained body at each touch, feels himself turning blue as the bruise-blue sky.
And yet—his skin stays blank. His dreams do, too.
It’s not working, they note, the words condensing against their red face shields. It’s not working, and yet eighty-eight is barely more than touches strung together, loose and billowing where neglected. He stands on draughts, walks on fluttering curtains, feels of his face only the line of a branding touch down its middle.
Two thirds painted, he stands in the laboratory and answers their questions.
How do you feel today? Blue, like the day before.
How did you feel the day before? Like every day before it.
How do you want to feel tomorrow? Dirty. Hungry. Tired.
Which rules have you broken today? None.
Confirmed. How does that make you feel? I will receive my rations tomorrow.
How does twenty-one make you feel?
How does twenty-one make you feel?
How does twenty-one make you feel?
... You can leave.
It’s only ever until the next day, this leaving.
“Do you have a month?” eighty-eight asks as hands lick at the skin cloaking his bones like he’s seen flames licking at steel. “Baekhyun has one. Do you?”
“Don’t get into the habit of calling him by his name,” he’s told.
Jongdae never rushes, never pauses. He answers, unlike them. It keeps half of eighty-eight’s thoughts in icy water, restrains him to the narrow grey bed better than the limb holders and belt.
These are the things he knows of Baekhyun: the name they call him, and the name Jongdae calls him. Knowing something about one of them is precious. Knowing two things is invaluable. “If I don’t say his name out loud, it’ll leave me like water.”
“The months, they reset at twelve.”
Then Jongdae has none. “There should be a hundred. What is the earth round for if there aren’t enough months?”
“It doesn’t stop at one hundred,” Jongdae says. He’s wearing a new smile today, sharp at the edges. (Eighty-eight will go through bins later, looking for his discarded one, finding nothing like it, only a new smell clinging to his hands.) As usual, his thumb arrives in the hollow of eighty-eight’s throat before his forefinger does, leaving behind his collarbones, becoming one to run a line up his throat. “There are twelve of us, but not everyone has a month.”
“I don’t think I’m meant to be touched there,” eighty-eight interrupts, not daring to touch where Jongdae touched.
Today, Jongdae’s fingers travel back down, sit over his adam’s apple, dissolve into light strokes along its sides, until the nausea condenses in eighty-eight’s head, drips up the length of his throat.
“You haven’t gotten used to it yet?”
Eighty-eight brings the bag he’d thrown up into with him. Their hands shy away from its heat, have him setting it into a glinting tray. They want everything he is, everything he was, but they don’t touch him skin to skin the way Jongdae does. They strip their touch off their hands into bins, run water over them for long minutes.
Eighty-eight is like them. Eighty-eight is not like Jongdae, who touches without hesitation, touches like he has an appetite for it.
How do you feel today? My throat is sore. My mouth tastes bad.
How did you feel the day before? I don’t remember.
How do you want to feel tomorrow? Clean.
Which rules have you broken today? I ate my morning ration, but it’s not inside me anymore.
Confirmed. How does that make you feel? I will receive a ration less tomorrow.
How does twenty-one make you feel?
How does twenty-one make you feel?
How does twenty-one make you feel? Nauseous.
You can leave.
They bring in someone else. Nameless, he touches every inch of eighty-eight: everywhere Jongdae had, and everywhere he hadn’t. The world is round, and so is eighty-eight. There is no escape from these hands, and these eyes that may well be closed. Illness makes a home of his stomach, pushes up his throat into his mouth. Eighty-eight stains the hands in turn, with this something worse than blue, with a smell he failed to keep inside. Another bag, another ration gone. This time, he sees them discarding the bag as well.
On his own bed, he wonders if there’s anything inside of him worth keeping enough to fence it into a body.
Jongdae’s hands don’t return. The nameless hands do. Eighty-eight learns to swallow what burns his mouth how touch does. He answers their questions day after day. His answers even out. When he’s been led to his bed, he stares up into the ceiling light, and thinks about those that leave. Down the corridor, lit by its stark white walls, they walk briskly beyond eighty-eight, white shadows crossing the smudged red line, stirring the air until a draught pulls them from their grip.
He stares until they take his eyes from him for the day. His dreams stay blank. If he could walk down the corridor, he would find someone to tell him how Jongdae made him feel, he’s certain.
The world is round, and the sky is blue. There is nowhere to go, so there is nothing outside but the blue sky. This is what eighty-eight was let know. Eighty-eight turns it over in his head like he turns over the food in his bowl in search for other life. It has to hide somewhere. It breached into one of the rooms, once, scattering across the floor like spilled dried rice, but alive, following the call of a crevice. The room was sealed off for the night, and eighty-eight held the vision so close to his chest he could hear it scattering inside of him, too, moving into his crevices, where no hand or eye could follow.
Eighty-eight stands on his bed to touch the ceiling, bare grey against his fingers, cool and smooth like floor and walls, and wonders what the sky feels like. What blue feels like. He’s touched red before: at the seams of skin split open, running down his face and crossing into his mouth, metallic smooth slick, stained so easily by his hand.
Eighty-eight wakes to a face bare of a shield. He looks into the ceiling light, pours the light gathered by his eyes onto them. No one stands by the side of his bed, until one of them does. He carries the feeling of a breath slithering along skin, of a gaze hooking into him to his morning ration, and beyond.
Because the world is round, Jongdae’s hands return. Some other illness spreads inside eighty-eight, light and sheer, when he lays a hand on his ankle. He thinks his heart is dislodging. Like the face, he doesn’t report it, lets it be a creature in the bowl of his mind, scattering thoughts at its bottom when its climb is foiled by too smooth walls.
“Which month is it?” eighty-eight asks. The nameless hands brought no replies for him.
“The fourth,” tells him Jongdae.
The last time he’d touched eighty-eight, it had been the sixth. “You’ve been gone for,” he folds fingers into his palm to count, “two.”
Jongdae brought a worn smile today, so torn at the centre it shows teeth and makes noise. It repairs itself soon, the way eighty-eight wishes his skin did when they slit his stomach to push their long eyes into him. “I never went away. I was just down the corridor—did you know, the months have names.”
“I know. It’s Baekhyun month,” says eighty-eight.
Jongdae shakes his head at that. His hands halt, press fire into hip bones. “It’s April now.”
April. It tastes of disinfectant, of hard lines of scalding water falling onto skin. “April,” he repeats, slow, taking care not to let his mouth rip the word apart.
“When you wake up tomorrow, you will have a name, too.”
“I already have a name.”
Jongdae stares at where his hand saws touch into ribs. “It’s just a number, not a name. You’re not making enough progress. Are you thinking about the questions when you’re alone?”
“I think about the sky,” tells him eighty-eight. He’ll think about April today. He wonders if Jongdae wakes up to a face by his bedside too. “Is it round, like the world?”
Hands come to lie on his forehead. The session is over; insufficiently painted, eighty-eight still feels the weight of the other hands’ touch where Jongdae’s didn’t replace it.
“With a name, you’ll meet the others soon.”
“Baekhyun?” The name had slipped from Jongdae’s grasp once, and eighty-eight had picked it off the floor before he could.
“Baekhyun, too.”
How do you feel today? I don’t want another name.
How did you feel the day before? Do you remember how you felt?
How do you want to feel tomorrow? Invisible.
Which rules have you broken today? How do you know which ones I broke?
You are breaking the rule about disclosing yourself to us. You are breaking the rule about not asking questions. How does that make you feel? I will receive two rations less tomorrow.
How does twenty-one make you feel?
How does twenty-one make you feel?
How does Jongdae make you feel? His hands don’t scare me anymore, but it still hurts.
You can leave.
The unshielded face by his bed owns hands. One of them covers eighy-eight’s eyes. He looks into the warm darkness of a palm, listens to the stiff rasp of his eyelashes against skin.
“Think of the corridor for me,” the hands whisper.
Eighty-eight does. His stomach twists, as does the inside of his head. For a moment, the palm lights up blinding red, until darkness befalls it again.
“You’ll be ready soon. We’re waiting for you.”
When they come to open his eyes, they bring him a name. It sits in another glinting tray, cold and unworn—familiar. Half of Jongdae’s. It’s April, and he’s made to know something new about himself.
“Jongin,” is all Jongdae says today, his hands steady and quiet, Jongin’s skin aflame underneath. The new name fills his ears and mouth. His heart is dislodging again, tugging on its leash.
Today, Jongin only has one thing to ask: “You haven’t touched my heart yet,” he says when the hands lift away. Makes a loud noise, but not in protest, when he finds his own hand flattening Jongdae’s gaze against his chest, against the root of his pulse.
“I wish you hadn’t said this,” Jongdae says, eyes trembling across Jongin’s face. He touches Jongin’s colourless mouth with his own, until it floods red.
We have no questions for you today. Wait in front of your door.
He waits, until his feet begin to hurt. He lays a palm flat against metal and looks through the small window in the door into his room, at the empty bed. Thinks of staring at the ceiling until his stomach, the inside of his head twist again, and for a split-second, he seems himself on the bed, sees his own face in the door window.
The corridor pulses around him. Jongin thinks of the sky, blue and round and everywhere he’s not, until he thinks his head will split in two.
The seam of Jongdae’s touch holds. His eyes open. The floor beneath him, blue as the sky, gives. Water rushes into his nose, with the sting of salt. Before he can sink, the burn of hands closes around his wrists, firmer than any limb holder, and he is hauled to his feet. Jongin finds he can stand in this sky reaching to his navel, finds himself drowning in Jongdae’s eyes instead.
“Look up and see for yourself: is the sky round?”