Archive of Our Own

Suho is young and over at a classmate’s house, where his grandmother often sends him when she is too busy with her stall. He wants to stay with her at the market because his classmate’s mother is kind and quiet in a way that makes him ache for the loud humour of his own, but Halmeoni says he needs to make friends.

His classmate is currently obsessed with the UFC. Suho does not know what all the fuss is about - sees it more as a fixation with America than anything else, because he’s always going on about people with foreign names and how he doesn’t need subtitles to watch things. 

He forces Suho to sit down in front of his janky family computer and plays a video of his favourite fight.

It’s two massive men, sparring with each other with a strength that seems pretentious. They’re experts, moving with a powerful rapidity that’s objectively impressive, but Suho doesn’t see what this has to do with him. He’s already heard too much about this at school.

After a few minutes of watching in grudging silence, he shakes his head and gets up. 

“No!” his classmate says. He pulls Suho back down, hard, without ever taking his eyes off the screen. “You’ll get it! Damn it, I need to rewind now.”

He massages his shoulder resentfully and turns back to watch. 

Properly this time because fine, the other boy does look happy.

As the first round progresses, the men’s moves begin to get messier. Ugly. The neatness they’d started with begins to fall away in favour of visceral force.

Suho watches one knee the other into the fencing and realises, slowly, that his classmate was right.

They lunge and grapple at each other with an abandon that renders them a mess of energy and limbs. They are near static at times, locked together as every muscle in their bodies strains for both closeness and escape. He cannot look away.

A minute into the second round, one of the men’s faces blooms with red.

They are still drained from the first, and they struggle together on the floor until they are both covered in smears of each other’s blood. He sees the droplets from one fall onto the chest of the other.

Exhaustion and red sweat leech off their bodies and between beatings they hold each other, skin to skin, as if the other is the only thing keeping them up. They stumble as one, heads latched together in a mutual, faltering grasp. 

It looks like an embrace, even as knees and fists ram into bare torsos and faces, and new cuts open on both of them.

Suho does not know what it is about it - whether the carmine has switched some animal instinct within him -  but he doesn’t realise he’s moved closer to the screen until his classmate pulls him back, saying you’re blocking it. 

The crowd screams and the commentators shout in languages Suho does not understand, but the two men are not listening either.

Their fight is blistering - blinding - and something relaxes in him. 

At the second break, the men pant over their mouthguards as their teams swarm around them, battering them with ice packs and towels and encouragement. 

They look, simultaneously, both utterly focused and delirious.

Suho does not know why they are doing this. It’s brutal and ridiculous, and yet they return to each other like magnets each time.

Whatever this is, they want it desperately. When the whistle blows and they finally part, they both look as if they know they have found it.

They look victorious.

Suho asks to watch it again.

He rushes home that evening to ask his Halmeoni for classes, the little understanding he has of the value of money utterly obliterated in his eagerness. 

Halmeoni is still paying off his parents' debt but it’s the first time she’s seen him so interested in something since they passed, and so she agrees as if it is easy. He’s never asked for anything before and besides, there will be people his age that he can befriend.

She signs him up at a local gym. It’s unimpressive in its reputation, but the fees are accordingly affordable.

Over the next five years, Suho trains. 

He is a natural. 

He quickly outstrips peers who started training long before him and is always at least two years ahead in his mastery of new movements. His body is doing things that it’s not meant to be able to.

When his talent and determination become apparent they seem to breathe a new life into his Coach, who had, at forty-two, resigned himself to a failed career. 

Suho wins too easily against the few others in his gym, and so he begins to spar with other rising prospects in the area. As his name spreads wider he begins to enjoy winning for winning’s sake, as any lauded child would. 

When Suho turns eleven, he sees his grandmother apologising to the Coach for a late payment, and the reality of her grandmother’s finances becomes apparent in his mind. His Coach tells her not to worry, for he is glad he has Suho. It is also around this time that he begins to talk to him of career paths and earnings, and Suho starts dreaming of cash prizes and gold belts and, most importantly, a house in which Halmeoni can finally relax, having retired from her market stall.

He lives buoyed by the compliments and the routine and the subtle assumption of future success. He absorbs the jargon and patterns of the few seniors has and slings them with the ease of a first language. His juniors look up to him with bright, wondering eyes as he offers to help them with their basics. 

It gives him the easy confidence and the surety in his body that will carry through until he is seventeen. 

People at school start to gather around him, drawn by rumours of his prodigiousness. They only ever seem to want to talk about fighting, but that’s fine too - he’s too busy for close friends anyway - and the natural charm that had faltered with his parents' passing starts to shine again. 

When Halmeoni looks at him, she sees the lightness of the boy from before. 

He is funny, strong, and going places. 

When he enters his new middle school at age twelve, he introduces himself as ‘Mixed Martial Artist Ahn Suho’ and does a little punch in the air that, embarrassingly, impresses people.

This is also the year that Coach Yeo finally enters him into his debut youth competition, and Suho is practically floating with excitement because for the first time, he will be properly fighting rather than sparring. 

The past few years have been fun, but the emotions of that first video have remained throughout, running like an undercurrent beneath his feet as he muscled and strained his way to his current ability. 

It’s finally his time to fight. This is exactly what he’d been working towards.

When it ends, he comes out both trophied and oddly disappointed, for the competition had not been anything like he’d imagined. Most of his opponents had been too weak to count and the few who did had fought as if from textbooks. It had felt, at most, like a better training exercise.

The Coach laughs when he tells him this and says that he’s raising a beast. 

To a large extent though, it is natural that he does not understand. 

Suho is only twelve, and it’s the desperation in that fight that he’s seeing - the intensity in the air between them, taut and shared and molecular .

It’s funny to think about, looking back. From his own experience at the time, he has an unconditionally loving grandmother, a coach who is afraid he will be poached, friends who recognise only his charm, and parents in memories which grow easier by the day. He fights only in rings and under timers, for he is too good for anything else. 

His life has been simple and he is a child. He should be punching bags for fun and learning his fucking algebra. 

He has no business even conceptualising that complexity of emotion, let alone hungering for it, and so of course he does not understand.

Such things do not come out of nowhere. They need a purpose. A root.

Suho will only realise he has found what he is looking for years later, when a boy with downcast eyes hides an arm behind his back.

As Suho fights for the next few years, it’s always with the shadow of an anticlimax. 

Every competition he enters in that first year, he exits with the same feeling of confused emptiness. He still enjoys the reputation and admiration and prospects it brings him and Halmeoni, but never does he feel what he saw in that first video. Suho’s watched it enough that he knows the fight sequence off by heart and even tries copying their patterns, but that’s not it. 

None of his opponents seem to match him. 

They’re there for their pride or their parents or their coaches or their extracurriculars. They’re there for the three minutes and the judge’s scoreboards, and as Suho makes the same after-school journey to the gym to do the same after-school drills he’s done hundreds of times before, he sometimes questions why he is doing this at all. 

His fighting style grows more vicious in response. It’s a blunt attempt to catch the intensity he is missing because he thinks, in his adolescence, that it is a matter of violence and skill - that it’s the bare fight itself that carries the passion, rather than its purpose.

He begins to spend every spare hour in the gym.

He becomes notorious within his age group, putting all his creativity and instinct into techniques that tread the line of what is inspired and what is unacceptable. He mouths off at his opponents both before and during fights, hoping to goad them into a higher gear. 

It helps considerably because the empty anger makes them fiercer and the fights more exciting. 

As the rounds get harsher, Suho grows convinced he’s on the right path, even though none of his opponents are technically good enough to give him what he wants. No matter what he does, there’s a limit to their reply.

They all move with the same predictable neatness, but still - the adrenaline itself is enough to make him obsessive, and he begins to mistake it for meaning. 

Coach Yeo, who himself knows only the simple, chemical rush, sees this, loves him for it, and begins treating his future as a certainty. He lathers encouragement and honesty onto him, nourishing his confidence like a fast-growing vine. He talks of paths and journeys, and Suho assumes they are thinking of the same destination. 

At some point, some boys who he does not like approach him at school. They’re friendly, in the dank, shallow way they know how to be, and they ask him to beat a kid up for them. 

Suho laughs at them to cover his anger, because it’s offensive that they thought they could even ask. It’s disrespectful to his sport, to his effort, and to him. 

He’s a fighter. Not a bully.

Suho tells them to stay out of his sight.

Accordingly, he cannot see that he is getting unreasonable in his competition style, even when it gets to the point where none of his opponents will talk to him afterwards. They all either limp out or throw tantrums at his conduct.

Suho is not a bad kid - he is just a kid. He has a jagged sense of honour and within his treasured ring, everything is fair game. 

Anything to make the fight better. 

At some point, Halmeoni stops coming to see his matches. When he asks why, she only smiles and says I don’t want to see you get hurt . He is so occupied with training that he takes this answer at complete face value.

He forgets entirely who he thinks he is doing this for, in favour of chasing something that has yet no reason to exist.

He just needs to find the right person, he thinks. Someone who can stand beside him at the end of it all - who Suho can look in the eye and see that they have both won. Someone who understands him, just as much as those two had understood each other.  

When he is fourteen he says this to Coach Yeo, because he thinks he can put what he’s searching for into words now. 

The Coach looks at him as if he is stupid and says that’s not how fighting works, then tells him that he needs to want victory more. 

He is a young romantic, and it is a confusing time.

When Suho is fifteen, he begins to hear the name Kang Wooyoung.

He’s a boy of his age and weight class who’s recently moved to Seoul from Iksan. He’s coached by his father and fights like a wild animal. 

Stories proliferate about him around the circuit and each one is a little shock to Suho’s system because it sounds as if they are the same. People say that his style is ‘unusual’ (read: diabolical), and he demolishes his peers in his district within a couple of months. His name lingers in the air when spoken, just as Suho’s does.

When it becomes clear that they will meet at some point, Suho starts training harder than ever. He finds himself imagining their fight again and again and how it will feel to finally have found a match. He knows this is who he has been waiting for and for the first time in years, he is truly, truly excited. 

It finally comes in the form of the North Seoul Youth Tournament. 

There could not be a better opportunity. It’s a new event this year, organised to be one of the biggest in the calendar. It’s a prime chance for gyms and teams to both scout for talent and advertise themselves. 

Everyone is here and Wooyoung is making his official Seoul debut.

It’s a balmy day in early summer and Suho sees him for the first time that morning. 

He’s the same height as him but looks older than his years, with messy hair and feline features and grace. He stands stone-faced next to his father - a large, well-built man who is chatting amiably with the other adults. Suho sees Coach Yeo approach the father. They shake hands.

Abruptly, Wooyoung’s eyes flick up to meet his, even though Suho is half a room away. His expression is blank, but he holds his gaze for long enough that it is obvious he recognises him. 

Suho grins. 

He gets a little scoff in return, and Wooyoung looks away. He seems both pissed and astoundingly unimpressed. 

Suho is buzzing. 

He flits his way up through the brackets thinking only of the final match, for he is certain they will both win in their groups. 

Everyone else is too. Informal bets start to be placed hours before they are announced as the final pair of the day. He knows it by how delighted Coach Yeo looks. 

Their groups fight in different arenas so he does not get the chance to see Wooyoung in action, but their two names are the only ones being murmured. Even the losers are all staying to watch, because between the two of them it is unclear who is both disliked and admired more. Everyone wants to see one of them get beaten. 

Now, it is evening and there is less than half an hour to go. People are starting to trickle back in from the dinner break. Suho sits in the lobby and feels them go past, eyes closed, ears covered, and heart thumping.

He sees scenes of that fight, playing out like vignettes on the insides of his eyelids. The men push each other to the brink, again and again, and then they keep each other from falling. 

He watches until slowly they start to fade, and are replaced by the memory of Wooyoung’s expression that morning. 

Suho breathes in and out, then gets up.

He’s ready.

He makes his way back to the warm-up room, intending on taking his time.

He’s halfway there when an arm shoots out of nowhere and drags him sideways.

Suho’s body clatters against metal shelves, laden with cleaning products. He hears a door slam shut and realises he’s on the floor in a closet, barely a few square metres in size.

He turns, bewildered, to the owner of the arm. 

He starts laughing.

Wooyoung stands over him, his hand on the doorknob. He’s looking down at Suho with an expression of muted distaste, as if he hadn’t been the one who just kidnapped him.

“Wow,” Suho says, grinning. He shifts his body up into a lazy lounge, leaning against the buckets as if they are cushions. “This is pretty interesting foreplay, you know.”

Wooyoung doesn’t react. He just crouches down, slowly, until their faces are level and inches apart.

“You’re going to throw this fight.” His voice is quiet and flat.

“Am I?” Suho’s still amused - even more so than before because honestly, even he has never gone this far with his taunting. What a fucking psycho. 

“Yes. I have money, and you don’t. That’s why you’re still at that shitty gym, isn’t it? Lose and I’ll pay you.”

Wooyoung holds his gaze steadily. Suho feels the smile drop from his face with the rapidity of a slashed blade.

He’s completely serious.

“What did you just say to me?”

“You heard me.”

Suho stares at him. All the excitement and apprehension he’s been building for the past few weeks deflates like a ripped balloon.

This is who he’s been waiting for?

It leaves him feeling hollow. And furious.

“I can get you two-hundred thousand. That’s what I have save-”

Suho grabs him brutally by the collar, cutting off his words. 

“Is this how you’ve been getting through your fights?”

Wooyoung doesn’t flinch.

“Why. Does it matter?”

Suho feels his breath on his skin, oddly cold and fresh. He feels like laughing again because the words that came with it were so dirty that the contrast is absurd. 

But he is too angry. Instead, Suho pushes him away with such force that Wooyoung crashes into the opposite tier of shelves. 

He stands up, disgusted.

“See you in the ring.”

Suho’s already opened the door when Wooyoung’s hand shoots out, gripping his wrist tight from his position on the floor.

He twists back, angry enough to punch him now if he doesn’t let go, but Wooyoung says, “Wait!”

The expression on his face is unlike anything Suho’s seen all day. It’s completely open - honest - and suddenly he looks a lot younger than his fifteen years.

“It’s my debut tournament,” he says. There’s a tinge of genuine panic in both his voice and eyes, like he knows he’s fucked up. “I need to win.”

It seems he’d banked everything on buying him off.

Suho might not have parents, but he’s not fucking cheap. 

He leans in, close enough that he can see the veins in Wooyoung’s eyes.

“So win .”

The grip on his wrist slackens. He leaves without a second glance.

“You’ve got this, kid,” says Coach Yeo. 

It’s minutes before the match and he’s clasping Suho’s hands with that intensity that means he’s got money on him. Suho nods, because he knows he’s trying to get some more machines for the gym, and gets half pat, half slap, half hug on the shoulder or whatever it is that middle-aged men do to show affection.

The arena is not large but the stands are absolutely packed. Suho sees the section with his juniors from the gym, who are holding homemade placards and cheering him on. 

He sees Wooyoung by the other cage door, blue gloves to his red. He’s looking only at his father, who has a hand on his hair and is machine-gunning advice at him. He’s nodding seriously.

As if he’d planned to do this properly.

“Crush him.”

Suho looks up at the Coach, who’s eyeing Wooyoung too. 

Damn, a lot of money then. 

But he didn’t need the encouragement anyway - he’s still pissed. He’d practically been boiling all throughout his warmups.

He doesn’t think Wooyoung bought his entire way up here, but there are fighters close to Suho in ability that he’s purportedly taken down. Shin Giyoung? Cha Jaehwi? 

Fuck, they’re both poor too. 

Suho breathes in and out, slowly. Jumps up and down, feeling the hot blood in his body and the leather on his hands. Bites into his lucky mouthguard, his teeth sinking into it like soldiers lining up for battle.

The sounds of the arena fade to a hum and his ears are filled with the blunt refrain of Why. Does it matter?. He does not hear Coach Yeo’s last words as he slaps him on the back. 

His sight is fixed on that messy head of hair as it comes up the opposite set of stairs. 

When their eyes meet, they are all Suho can see. 

The whistle blows.

Wooyoung comes at him first, his fists scorching past Suho’s dodges with such speed that he hears the air hollow next to his ears. A knee comes next, grazing him in the ribs. 

Suho dances back, and it’s in those few seconds that he realises that shit, he is good , but he has no time to smile now or to wonder why Wooyoung had not denied his accusation.

He launches himself forward, this time on his own terms, aiming for the chin, then the collarbone, before twisting into a kick. Wooyoung blocks his leg with the motion of his body and then they’re on the floor , grappling tightly as they both aim punches in the absence of space between them. 

Suho tries to get up, to flip for the upper hand, but Wooyoung’s lock on his legs is too strong. He holds him there for what feels like an eternity, their fists straining for contact.

Suho coughs as suddenly, he’s hit in the sternum and arm, but then there’s a gap and he lands one to Wooyoung’s back and three to his jaw, left, right, right, and hard - hard enough that he reels and Suho can rip himself out of the tussle on the floor.

He stands up, panting. He cannot hear the crowd but they’re on their feet now, jumping and bellowing with silent, open mouths. 

Wooyoung comes at him from the floor but it’s clumsier than before. Suho catches him with a right hook just as his arms start to wrap around his waist and it throws him sideways into the cage panel. He staggers against the black metal - the hits to the jaw must have really dazed him - and Suho aims. 

Wooyoung catches him with a clasp around his shoulders, attempting to quash his use of his arms but his grip is not strong enough. He grabs Suho’s left fist instead, holding on tight as he uses his other arm to defend from the barrage of knees and punches. Wooyoung’s head is wet with sweat as he rams it against his shoulder.

Then abruptly, there’s a leg hooked around Suho’s and they both go down - him on top - and he locks himself around Wooyoung and starts hitting. Wooyoung cranks an arm desperately around his head, the flesh of his bicep squashing Suho’s mouth and nose, but even as little pinpricks of light start to burst in Suho’s vision he does not stop striking - one two, one two - on every available bit of body he can reach.

His grip must loosen though because Wooyoung rolls free from under him, wheezing. Suho gasps too, at the sudden intake of oxygen.

They both teeter as they drag themselves upright. They swipe furiously at their eyes as briney sweat drips into them.

His entire body is tingling, electric with adrenaline. 

The boy in front of him looks spent - limbs weak, skin red - but still, he meets Suho’s gaze straight on . 

Fists up. Red and blue.

This is when Suho smiles.

It’s the best fucking fight he’s ever had.

And he’s winning. 

They go again, standing this time. Suho’s movements are markedly sharper than Wooyoung’s now, but still the latter does not let up. He kicks and spins and punches into every gap he can find, even as his chances get thinner and thinner and Suho’s lands blow after blow. 

Just as he begins to let his guard down, Wooyoung gets in one roundhouse kick to his collarbone - the exact height at which Suho kicks so as to not get marked with a foul.

Fuck. 

His muscles are searing with acid by now but he pushes himself through because like fuck is he going to lose. He knows he can outlast Wooyoung, who seems to have used up a lot with that kick. His movements are beginning to falter.

He strikes him in the thigh and he staggers - just long enough for Suho to draw his fist all the way back and swing it forward in a wide arc. At his face.

Honestly, he doesn’t really expect it to connect.

It does.

It feels like any other hit, an echoed gong of an impact, shuddering through his gloves.

But something must have caught, because one second there’s nothing, and the next there’s red, streaming down the side of Wooyoung’s face. 

They both still, shocked.

Blood is rare in youth competitions. In all the years Suho’s been fighting, this is the first time he’s drawn any.

Even as his vision narrows, he can sense the crowd going ballistic.

Drips of garnet splatter onto the floor. Suho’s breath catches. 

It’s just like the video.

The referee comes in, hands outstretched to check Wooyoung’s face as per protocol, but he hesitates. 

His gaze is distracted by something off to the side, and when Suho turns he sees Wooyoung’s father, screaming something as he points and shakes his head.

It’s not directed at him, though. 

It’s directed at Wooyoung. 

Keep fucking going, the mouth says. Its teeth are bared.

Wooyoung stares at his father and the referee stares at them both. His head turns back and forth between them like a ping pong ball, before finally he takes a towel and wipes the blood off Wooyoung’s face.

It’s a small cut, just under his brow. The referee asks him something and he murmurs a reply, seeming dazed. The referee looks to his father one last time, then nods and blows his whistle.

There’s still forty seconds on the clock.

Wooyoung raises his fists again, mechanically.

When they meet eyes, one last time, the white of his left one is tinged with red. The blood has mixed with his sweat and seeped into it, covering its membrane with its colour. 

There’s something blank and unknowable in his gaze. He’s on an edge, Suho can see - teetering right at the line. His punch has put him there.

The cheering is so loud now that it’s trickling through even to his ears. 

For a second, he sees them as they must. Imagines the camera, angled upon them exactly as it’d been on that computer screen, half a decade ago.

They’re two goliaths in the bodies of skinny, fifteen-year old boys. 

Paired in a fight that cannot end, because they will not let it.

It’s up to Suho to bring him back.

And so he grins. 

Come at me, he mouths.

Something switches in Wooyoung’s gaze - it tunnels, becomes feral - and Suho’s feeling fucking euphoric, even as the other boy launches himself at him with a ragged cry ripped from the deepest parts of him, because 

yes, they’re going again. 

That half-second is beautiful.

It’s the closest Suho has ever come to feeling what he has been chasing.

Then it all comes crashing down.

Fingers, pointed stiff and aimed, come straight at his face - for his eyes. He’s never seen this before because it’s utterly fucking banned, but he immediately knows they mean to poke. To gouge. To maul. 

He dodges at the last moment through some ungodly combination of impulse and fear and twists back.

The words what the fuck die on his tongue as he sees Wooyoung’s gaze.

In place for what he’d seen as wild intensity - there’s an absence. 

Whatever there was from before, it’s bloomed, died, and rotted all in the duration of that cry. It’s swallowed and expanded grotesquely until there is no space that can contain it, not even the black dilation of Wooyoung’s pupils - and so it’s gone, leaving only dregs of instinct from years of training and a shadow of childish fear. 

Suho doesn’t realise all of this in the moment, of course.

He only realises that he’s entirely, entirely, misinterpreted this. 

His taunt, his desire. His young, addicted hunger.

Suho hasn’t brought him back at all. 

He’s pushed both of them off.

The fight is over quickly after that.

Wooyoung’s moves become certifiably sloppy. He swipes viciously, again and again, for Suho’s head. There is no variation to his movements and Suho easily gets two punches in - the second of which takes Wooyoung to the floor.

It is then when the bell rings. 

Their four minutes are up.

No one has to see the judge’s scorecards to know who has won. 

Sound torrents into Suho’s ears. He hears Coach Yeo yelling, his juniors rushing, and the cage door clattering open as they all burst in to celebrate him. 

Bodies jostle him, screaming joyfully, as he watches the referee bend over Wooyoung’s. He’s breathing deeply on the floor and staring straight at the ceiling. He reacts to nothing - frozen, as if waiting for something. 

Blood still trickles from the cut under his brow. It slips vertical down his temple, dribbling into a single, tiny pool on the black floor.

Suho’s about to call his name when a large man marches over to Wooyoung.

It’s his father.

He grips him by the collar and yanks him up from the floor with hideous force, spitting something at the referee when he protests. Every trace of the amiable man from this morning has disappeared. 

Wooyoung’s expression is almost the exact same as then, though. Stone-faced. Blank. 

But add to it, this time, a creeping hue of resignation.

Suho watches as he drags his bloodied son out of the cage, past the medical station, and towards a small side room. The referee sighs as he watches them.

“Where’s he going!” yells Coach Yeo. He’s pink-faced with joviality. “He owes me - god, I can’t even think about it!”

He seizes Suho’s head with both hands and plants a kiss on his sweaty hair.

“My boy!”

In the last second before his father slams the door shut, Suho gets a glimpse of Wooyoung’s expression. It’d been so open a half hour before when he’d gripped Suho’s wrist from the floor but of course, he hadn't recognised it then.

It’d be hard not to now, though.

There is nothing but pure, cold, fear.

I need to win.

Coach Yeo leaves the ring, heading for the engraving station as a gaggle of other middle-aged men follow him with congratulations. Suho’s juniors eventually quieten at his silence, putting it down to some genius post-match meditation, and start talking about what to ask the Coach to buy for dinner.

All around, in the ambient swamp of sound, mothers and fathers and siblings murmur their approval.

What a good final!

That night, Suho watches the fight again. 

When the blood bursts on the man’s face now, it is not love. It’s just cells.

For the first time Suho sees nothing more than two sportsmen, competing for a six-figure contract.

When he enters Byuksan High School the next year, he introduces himself only as Ahn Suho.

He never sees Kang Wooyoung again - or anyone from the circuit, for that matter, aside from in passing. Coach Yeo is both flabbergasted and devastated at his notice and along with everyone else, sees it as a betrayal to the sport. 

He doesn’t bother justifying his decision to anyone, because he knows they wouldn’t get it. He himself wouldn't have, before that fight. He just lets everyone leave.

In the meantime, he hears that Wooyoung has started fighting for money. He doesn't blame him.

Suho does not want to forgive himself but it grows harder to remember over time. 

He trains, habitually. They are routines he’s spent a third of his life with, after all. But he has fought only four times since his match with Wooyoung. 

It’s always from some misunderstanding that they refuse to resolve with words - it’s quick and neat on his part. A process of utility. 

In the many, many days between, Suho adjusts to a normal life. 

His grandmother's banchan business has slowed down considerably - her entire market has, a relic in the digital age - and she increasingly starts to struggle in making their monthly payments. Suho hadn't even noticed before and he feels terrible. Had she not spent so many years on his coaching fees, she would have had a considerable amount of savings to fall back on by now. And yet she hadn’t commented once when he’d quit fighting - not one word about abandoned careers or fees or sunk costs - and so he loves her faithfully and simply now, through scrubbed floors and bags of food and nights spent asleep on tables at school. 

If Suho keeps going and switches to full-time work after graduation, they'll be able to pay off his parent's debt before he's twenty. He's spent his life training instead of studying, and he's realistically not smart enough for college - not one good enough to justify the fees, anyway.

He is tired most days, and lonely. He lives a different life to everyone around him, running on different time and different priorities. He sleeps through most classes and it's hard to find people who don't make subtle assumptions about him. That he's lazy, or poor, a failed athlete and an ambitionless student. Well, apart from the first one they wouldn't be wrong, but still. He can see it in their eyes, hear it in their niceties when they question him, and like with when he left the circuit, he doesn't want to have to explain himself to people.  

Besides, it increasingly feels like he couldn't, even if he tried.

Suho no longer has something he can point to, a label that he can understand himself by. He's not a senior or a junior, an athlete or a rising star. Not a fighter.

It was his decision to leave that all behind, but what does that leave him with?

His old reputation is now only a rumour at his new school and although he uses it well, quelling quarrels with his presence before they have even begun, it often feels weird when he does. Like he's appropriating something from the past.  

To himself, he's just Suho again and he does not know what that means. There are parts of himself that he likes - he's proud of how hard he works - but when he's living so differently from everyone else it's damn confusing. Like when he was twelve, he starts to feel lost within the mess of people around him. A little out of step. But he does not like to show it, and nor does he complain.

He just tries his best to be a normal, cool, teenager. He pretends he doesn't get why anyone would want to go to college. He laughs off his teacher's comments about sports schools. He jokes he's too clever to listen in lessons anyway. Other times he says he has narcolepsy. Why not. People find him funny, and odd.

Over time, this confidence becomes his weapon and shield against all things he doesn’t understand. Both within himself and out.

By the time he approaches seventeen, Suho is spending most of his time working and the rest on calculating the best jobs to take on after graduation. He’s put his Halmeoni firmly in the centre of his world, for her joints ache nowadays and he is determined to let her rest.

The events of two years ago feel like they belong to a different person - one who believed in ideals and extremes and the attainability of such things. His world is bland now, yes, and there's still that old emptiness within him - but he's okay. The balance on their debt is going down, day by day, and that means enough. For now.

He’s a realist.

The gap in his heart is patched over, not with hope, but with regrets. 

He sleeps.

One day, Suho is woken up from his nap to the sound of slapping.

It’s the boy with the pretty eyes. The one who’d been so unimpressed before, first when he’d fought and then when he’d asked for water. The interesting one.

He strikes himself, right hand to right cheek. Each impact cracks across the classroom. Vessels pop, bruising his flesh to the same blush shade as his chewed lips. 

His eyes blink each time he slaps out of instinct, but it looks like they are not closing at all. 

They burn silently, filled with the dull fury of someone who has too much and nowhere to put it, other than upon himself. 

When finally he decides to stop, his gaze is embered and exhausted. He looks back up at a teacher who is all too scared to question more and does not explain himself.

Oh. Nothing.

She accepts.

Suho’s eyes flick to the nametag on his shirt.

Later, Suho watches from his seat at Yeon Sieun beats blood from a fabric-bound mannequin. Every inch of his body sears with bright, torrid rage, uncaged onto another at last. 

Suho’s own body feels cold.

The boy lets the other drop to the floor and hurls the thing in his hand against the wall. 

He breathes, slowly, in and out.

When he finally speaks, it’s with such a soft emptiness that a tear splits on the patch in Suho’s heart. 

It’s tiny - invisible to any aged eye - but chaotic, and irreversible. 

Suho cannot see his face but he knows what there would be. A black, consuming dilation.

Yeon Sieun lifts up his foot. 

Step off, crush bone.

Suho catches him.