Chapter Text
Hua Lian has always known the apocalypse was going to happen. He didn’t know that day, or month. However, he knows the year and exact time: 2019 at 7pm when the last chapter of a certain novel is supposed to be released.
Hua Lian was a weird child. However, this was something his mother, Hua Ruolan, had always smiled and bragged about to the Ajummas next door. He didn’t fuss much, he was content to play by himself, and he was very smart for his age. He took to academics like a fish to water and it made his mother very proud to know he’d have a bright future.
He was pretty certain his mother was a prostitute, and his father had likely been one of her clients. She had never told him this explicitly; however, the Ajummas liked to gossip when they babysat him during the nights he was too young to stay home by himself.
You can imagine that with that line of work there wasn’t a lot of income. They lived in a studio apartment that looked like it had seen better days ten years ago. The kitchens sink faucet always dripped and the shower water never got hot. They shared a bed most of the time, or his mom would take the old leather couch on bad work nights. Hua Lian knew his mother felt guilty about raising him in this situation.
Most days, their meals were modest, and often, they found themselves going to bed with empty, rumbling stomachs. Despite these hardships, his mother was steadfast in her care for him. She always ensured that Hua Lian ate first, sacrificing her own comfort so he wouldn’t go to bed hungry.
School was a strange affair for him. Lessons were always boring as the subject would just click into place in his brain. It was like being told something you had just forgotten for a moment, vaguely irritating. However, he made sure to put in the effort of keeping his grades high. Even young, he knew it brought his mother great joy seeing his high-class rank and that she enjoyed the time she got to spend with him while studying. Over time, even Hua Lian grew to enjoy this domestic act as well.
As he got older Hua Lian found it hard to keep his emotions stable; at home he was a saint, but at school his skin felt too sensitive, and the stares of the other kids felt like needles in his back. It didn’t take long before he got into an altercation. And it didn’t take long before he got used to working through his problems with his fists. After the third time his mom had to be called to the school because he knocked another student’s teeth out, she finally addressed it.
He remembers clear as day the way her hair draped her face when she knelt down to be eye level with him as he sat in the plastic chair. The sun coming through the window highlighted her figure but hid her expression from view.
“Honey, you can’t always fight your problems.” Her tone was stern, no room for argument; but also melancholic, like she was sad Hua Lian was in the position where she had to say it.
“It’s them, not me! They’re always saying mean things and looking at me weird!”
“A-Lian, what they think doesn’t matter, they are no one. What matters is what the people you care about think.” She grabs his shoulders and his eyes finally meet hers, “When they say something mean, or when they look at you weird, I want you to smile. Okay? When you smile, you can imagine whatever mean things about them you want; but just smile. That smile will be your shield. When you smile whatever they said or whatever look they just gave you will bounce right back to them. Okay?”
Her hazel eyes look into his with something sharp. Hua Lian doesn’t know what it is, but it makes him listen.
“Tell mommy that you’ll smile, A-Lian.”
“This Lian-er will smile.” It’s a quiet response.
“Smile.” So, he does, he puts on the best smile he can. It doesn’t fit his face right; too many teeth and one side pulls higher than the other.
Following that conversation Hua Lian practiced his smile a lot, until it finally looked normal. But it didn’t help much at first. He still got into fights; but every time his mother entered the office, she’d make him smile at her, she’d make him promise to smile next time. Until eventually he stopped fighting back, instead he’d imagine himself beating them blue in his head with a bright smile on his face.
Hua Lian, however, would feel that his skin was still too tight, and an anger and deep-seated loneliness would still plague him; he wouldn’t understand it till he got older. An unnamed want would tug at his heart when he saw other kids playing and laughing together, but he never had any joy those few times he would join in.
When he got to third grade, nightmares would start plaguing him. Most would focus on a pretty Hyung in a white coat that would always die at the end of the dream. The unnamed vial feeling would always churn in his gut when ‘Pretty-hyung’ was with his companions. Hua Lian grew to hate these dreams the most. They always left him feeling the loneliest he’s ever felt and he’d spend what felt like hours to his young brain wailing in his mom’s arms.
As he got older, new types of dreams would haunt him. Dreams of a never-ending crimson rain that pelted the scorched ground, leaving a tacky and warm feeling that would have Hua Lian scratching at his skin in his lukewarm showers before school. Or a cold subway carriage that permeated with a sense of great loss; leaving Hua Lian staring blankly at the wall adjacent to their bed until his mother would start making noise in the kitchen.
When he was still young and stupid he had tried to tell his mother of the dreams he had of blood rain, and swords made of eyes, and dokkaebi that could make heads explode. His mother’s hazel eyes would always crinkle slightly in worry, and she’d give him a tight hug. It would always frustrate him back then that she didn’t take it seriously.
A great realization hit Hua Lian when he turned eleven. His mother had had the news playing on their grainy TV as she cooked when something on screen caught his eye.
“Breaking news today as the trial concludes for a wife that had brutally murdered her husband. This has left their young son orphaned as…” The woman that had been speaking on the screen is replaced by a photo of a family of three. Hua Lian has never seen any of these people before, but he knows that face.
It’s that familiar feeling of something clicking in place. That boy, only a few years older than him, will be the pretty Hyung from his dreams. That boy will die an innumerable number of times for his companions, and he will never reach his happy ending.
Red starts to flush the white jade of Hua Lian’s cheeks as he starts crying like the world is ending. Far away he hears the metal clang of his mother dropping the sauce ladle as she rushes over. Hua Lian’s brain feels like it’s splitting in two, there is a war ongoing in his head between him five minutes ago and the him that now knows the truth of this world.
“Baby, what’s wrong?” He can feel his mother’s soft hands cradle his wet cheeks, as she soothingly tries to shush him.
When he can’t get any words out through his hyperventilating, she pulls his head to her warm chest and pets his red hair gently as they rock. She hums lullabies to him and kisses his scalp, her long black hair tickling his ears. This continues for some time until the hurt in Hua Lian’s head fades away; with quivering lips and his breath still shaking he pulls away from the tight embrace.
“A-Lian, what happened?” She asks gently.
“… I know him.” It’s the only thing he can manage to whisper with a raspy breath.
His mother’s warm hazel eyes look at him in confusion before she sees where my gaze is locked onto the tv screen; she must have paused it at some point. It’s on a still frame of who Hua Lian now knows to be Kim Dokja.
“You know him from school? Oh, I’m so sorry honey.” His mother says this in a sympathetic voice. She didn’t make the right assumption, but her heart was in the right place.
“Why don’t we right him a letter? I’m sure he’s feeling very alone right now and knowing his friend is thinking of him might make him feel a bit better.”
The part of Hua Lian that feels like an adult knows that probably wouldn’t be a good idea. They aren’t actually friends; in fact, he was a stranger to Kim Dokja. But the part of Hua Lian that is still small rejoices at the idea of making Pretty-hyung feel better. That unnamed feeling in his heart thumps wildly and a shaky smile grows on his tight cheeks.
“Please, I need to make ‘Pretty-hyung’ happy!”
…
A week later, Kim Dokja is awoken from the daze that has been clouding his brain since that night his father died when his aunt lets him know there is a letter addressed to him.
Kim Dokja doesn’t know who it could have been from, he doesn’t have any other relatives, and he doesn’t have any friends. So, he stares at it blankly, mulling over if he should just throw it away, before his thin finger starts to rip open the seal.
Inside is just one hand-written letter; the penmanship looks too messy to be from an adult, so he assumes it’s from one of his classmates.
Dear Pretty-hyung,
I’m sorry that this has happened, I know it can’t be easy. I hope this letter can be of some comfort.
Continue to read, as long as you’re reading you can be anyone and anything; be friends with anyone and everyone. Through reading you will go on a lot of adventures, and it will teach you to feel a lot of emotions. Let your love of reading guide you through this challenging time.
Know that as long as you’re reading, I may not be by your side, but I’ll be with you. May we read a lot of stories together.
Lots of hugs,
From a Faraway Friend.
The letter is very personal, and Kim Dokja doesn’t know who ‘Faraway Friend’ could be; it left him with a strange mixture of emotions after reading it. But largely, he hopes it isn’t a prank letter and that he might actually have a friend somewhere out there.
‘I may not be by your side, but I’ll be with you’, Kim Dokja repeats this phrase in his head over and over again. Yes, he thinks he’ll stick around a bit longer after all. He wants to read with this friend.