Archive of Our Own ^beta

Please read each question carefully. If you do not know the answer, please mark N/A or answer to the best of your ability. Points will be taken off for any response left blank. Your time begins once you pick up his pencil. 



Question 1

Is belief in a god human? 

    Yes
    No
    N/A

Question 2

Every human has a special skill. These range from natural traits to learned abilities, values that make them stand out from other humans. Please circle your special skill on the list below. 

• Painting
• Running 
• Acting
• Telling scary stories
• Lip-reading
• Hiding
• Mental calculations
• Sewing
• Flower art
• Fire-starting with stones
• Jumping

Question 3

Let’s go back to the beginning. Please select the closest approximation to your earliest memory. 

    Cold. It’s omnipresent. There are sounds sometimes, often voices, human and segyein alike, but you never stray close enough to see which. Sometimes, when you manage to start a fire, it becomes warm. But the cold is always there, waiting, waiting. It never goes away, but rather becomes a small reassurance to you. The cold of your skin, the cold of the rooms you sleep in, the cold of concrete and later, of linoleum. The ever present pit of cold that lives in your chest, where it planted roots and grew into a garden of rot. You were born to the cold, and so it’s only appropriate that you return to it in death. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

    The sky. In the slums, death is normal, common, and expected. Everyone charges toward it with each step they take, each day they live. Even a child as young as you understands the inevitability of it. You don’t remember what came before, but you remember the sky. You remember the endless, yawning darkness, speckled with a billion glittering gems, your feet hanging over open air. A strange wetness springs from your eyes. Is this what it means to feel alive? You could never hope to count the stars, but that won’t stop you from trying. 

    The dark. Was it really dark? Was there a hand caressing your face? Was there a body curled up next to yours? In the dark, there’s no safety. But there’s no danger, either. In the gentle cusp of nothingness, you grow comfortable. This is where you’re meant to be, and you’ll live here forever. You’ll exist as nothing more than a shadow, always trailing two steps behind. In the dark, there is nothing. There are no humans, and there are no segyein. It’s just you and the all-consuming darkness. Alone. 

    Your owner. His hand is the size of your head. It’s gentle, but firm, and you can’t help but think how easily he might crush you. Little bean, he says to you, and you could almost mistake it for fondness if not for your penchant of knowing better. Make no mistake. To him, you are as low as dirt. You are a gift. A possession. An investment. You are only worth as much as you earn for him. But you remember his hand guiding you out of the adoption center. Do you remember the face pressed against the glass of another cell, watching you as you left? 

    Nothing. There’s a friendly face, you think. There might be bread. There might be a moment where you consider chasing after the man, unguarded with your stomach full for a change. Maybe if you’d been a little faster. Maybe if you’d been a little more distrustful. Maybe if you’d waited only a few more minutes. But a child could never hope to understand the weight of choice, and there are too many what ifs to consider for someone who claims not to remember any of them. 

Question 4

Congratulations, you’ve been admitted into Anakt Garden. Now that there’s a deadline on your life, you’ll be trained alongside multiple other products to compete in the fiftieth season of Alien Stage. Below is a list of things you know. 

ONE: The world, and your place in it. From the days in the slum to what you’re sure will be your expiration date, you are never uncertain about your place on the metaphorical food chain. You aren’t the lowest. But you certainly aren’t anywhere near the top. You will never leave a mark on the world, but you will still try, in your own small ways. 

TWO: Everything works in exchange. In order to receive, you must be willing to give. In order to give, you must risk the chance that someone might take. In order to chase, there must be something to pursue. A leader cannot exist without a follower. Black cannot exist without white. For every life given, one is taken. For every scrap of food you scrounge up, another child goes hungry. For everything your owner gives you, a piece of you will inevitably fall away. All things exist in a careful balance, one that you cannot upset no matter how hard you try.

THREE: Your own mortality. There might have been a point in your life where the reality of your fragile existence was never at the forefront of your mind, but that doesn’t mean you weren’t always aware of it. In the slums, death looms constantly over your shoulder. But you are smart. You know how to hide. You know to keep running. You know how to keep yourself safe. Death never graced your doorstep. But that doesn't mean it will never send you reminders of its presence. It, like all things, is inevitable.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being extremely detrimental and 10 being perfect, please rate how helpful this list is to your development in Anakt Garden.

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10

Question 5

They watch you through the flowers. Will you crush the buds beneath your heel? 

    Yes
    No
    N/A

Question 6

If you selected Yes to question 5, please explain the way your heart awakens when he hits you for the first time. 

Question 7

You have learned to lay down and roll over. You bare your soft throat to prove that you are not a threat. This is a language that even the wagyein understand. They, like you, are lesser creatures. To you, they are kindred spirits. You seek solace in the dark of their cave and the wet heat of their mouths, trusting that they will not close their teeth around you. 

He does not understand this. He does not understand them, and he does not understand you. Still, no matter how many times he gets knocked down, he gets back up. You watch him bruise and bleed and struggle, but he gets up again anyway. You could interrupt and guide his hand. You could tell him that the wagyein like to be pet along their faces, or that they like it best when you lay quietly and absorb their warmth. Instead, you watch. You observe his futile struggle, and in the deepest pit of your chest, something blooms. 

Do you understand it? 

    Yes
    No
    N/A

Question 8

Please circle the definition you feel best fits the word crush. 

• Softness. Gentleness. Kindness. The grass beneath your feet and the warmth of the artificial sun. A bubbly affection, defined by its lightness. The way one girl smiles at another. The way he watches from afar, his face mottled with bruises. 
  
  
• Heavy. All-consuming. Craven and desperate. It’s a rock in the pit of your stomach. It’s the itch in your fingers, the urge to reach out and reopen his newest wound. You want to follow a step behind him for the rest of your lives. It will hurt you both. You want it to. 
  
  
• Violent and thrashing. Insistent, broiling, and vile. Burning and painful and ever present. Perfect. You want to pin him to a display board like an insect. You want to crack open the cavity of his chest and make a home there. 
  
  
• To compress or squeeze forcefully. To damage or distort. To break.
  
  
• To subdue.

Question 9

In the dark, you map him beneath your fingers. You learn the shape of his fingers and his scars, and even in your dreams, you can pinpoint the exact angles of his body curled against yours. You know the jump of his voice when he grows embarrassed or indignant versus the wavering lilt when he’s trying not to cry. There is a locked box inside of your chest, overflowing with the things you know of him, and these, too, will find their place there. 

Someone like you, who spends your days passing the time and perfecting your masks of personalities, human only in the way an outline is a book, can only be admired, but never loved. But him—you exist for him. You are defined by him. 

Now, please consider the following phrase: You can’t love someone until you love yourself first. 

In general, do you agree with this sentiment? 

    Strongly Agree
    Agree
    Neutral
    Disagree
    Strongly Disagree

Question 10

Please read the below passage carefully and answer accordingly. 

Your life will always be something of a balancing act. 

Every moment of every day is spent on a fraying rope, taking two steps back for every one you take forward. Beneath you, there’s nothing but the air, the ground, and the inevitable fall. One step forward, two steps back. Lean, readjust. Steady, steady, steady. You are a ship on the dark sea, staving off your end to the water. 

You knew the odds of taking two steps forward instead of one. You knew that he was always soft-hearted, heedless of the way he hid behind his loud voice and bruised knuckles. He’d always cared too much—about her, about his other friends, about anyone but himself and you. Even if you knew where to go, the odds of him following were always divided. You weren’t surprised when he let go, but that didn’t mean it hurt any less. 

It was the likeliest possibility. You’d prepared yourself for it. He would never be yours in a way that mattered. 

What could you call this? What name could you put to this? Was there even a word for the way you felt for him? You want to hurt him. You want to heal him. You want to take his throat in your hands. You want to grab his face and kiss him. Again, and again, and again. You want to swallow him. You want to live inside of him. You want to occupy the biggest part of his mind. You want to never be thought of again. You want to tie a chain around his ankle and keep him by your side. You want to open the door to his cage and set him free. You try to. You do. 

Under that crimson sky, you foolishly allow yourself to have hope for the first time. Your rope swings and frays and leaves you pinwheeling, spinning in the air like a star, falling like a meteor. You take three steps back. You watch him turn and run back into his gilded cage. And you laugh. But you follow him anyway. 

You don’t believe in things like fate or destiny. Coincidence, certainly. Sometimes, things happen that seem like they might mean something. The stars and planets align, and humans used to comfort themselves by putting names to these incidents. You don’t believe in fate or destiny or soulmates or any sort of divine intervention. This was not chance. You willed this with every fiber of your being. Every inch and iota. There is no you without him. Your fingers bleed as they tangle your strings with his. The red is fake, but it’s red, nonetheless. 

You always knew he was going to be your undoing. There was never going to be another outcome to this existence of yours. 

Now, answer the question. Answer it. Answer it. What’s the question? You already know what it is. Don’t pretend like you don’t. Now, answer it. 

Question 11

Please explain, in excruciating detail, what love means to you.

Question 12

When he’s in a good mood, he might still let you watch him draw. He draws anything and everything. The other students. The flowers. The trees. If he had shown you that he drew you, too, things might have been different.

    True
    False

Question 13

When you were younger, your owner often retrieved you from the garden to attend banquets. He parades you around like a prize to be won and displays you like a trophy, soaking up all of the praise the other segyein give him when they see what a good, well-behaved pet you are. That is who “you” have always been. Pleasant. Thoughtful. Accommodating. Easy. You bend over backwards for their pleasure. Yo never raise your voice except to sing. You smile, smile, smile. Even when your cheeks ache. Even when they grow numb. What was all of that training for if you don’t? Keep smiling, keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep marching to the beat of the segyeins’ drums. Keep marching towards the end. 

It’s easier not to look inside yourself. It’s too dark in there to tell one thing from another. So instead, you study others, humans and segyein alike, and act accordingly. Laugh at this remark. Graciously accept that compliment. Parade under the heavy weight of your owner’s hand, nothing more than a puppet on a string. You are nothing if not practiced in the way of control and careful flattery. 

Did you ever want to live? Did you ever want to do anything more than survive? What’s to be gained from keeping your heart behind your teeth? 

This would only ever end in disaster. He could never be happy with you. He is a matchstick, a fire, a blaze, life giving and life taking. You are the creeping cold, the shadows settling, the murmur of freeze threatening to extinguish. One day, he’ll see you for what you really are. Cruel, Unkind. Selfish. A beast wearing the shape of a human being. 

Every action, every reaction, every expressive quirk or tell—these are the things you keep in a white-knuckled grasp. You spend your life holding it all in carefully hidden fists, the contents invisible even to yourself. To look would mean to pry your hands open, painstakingly peeling each finger from the indents of your palms. 

But you don’t have the strength for that.

    True

Question 14

Now that you’ve graduated, please rate your experience with training in Anakt Garden on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being abysmal and 5 being beyond all expectations.

1  2  3  4  5

Question 15

Choose one of the five senses.

    Sight. Of the four of you, her vision had always been the worst. In exchange, her other senses had been better, as was often the trade-off. On the other hand, her vision had been the best. She had always scored high on every vision test the handlers gave you. Perhaps this is why they had been drawn together. She could take her in, every inch of skin, every strand of hair, every blemish, everything, perfect or imperfect. She would see it all and still want her, despite it all. Maybe it was your vision that was lacking in the end when you looked at them. 

    Smell. Once, you read that human minds tended to associate memories with smells. A particular scent could bring someone back to a specific point in time affiliated with it. Her sense of smell had always been the worst. She would never openly admit it, but you noticed. When the other children could smell a rare treat, she would hang back, listen, and gather what it was from the mouths of others. You watched, more than once, as she offered her a flower, radiant with excitement as she spoke about the smell. Without fail, she would merely smile and tell her it was nice, as though to spare her feelings. A bold-faced lie. You wonder if she ever figured it out. 

    Taste. The most divisive. A sense of taste varies from person to person, varying based on a multitude of factors—everything from genetic makeup to the way an individual’s tongue was made. Some people tasted too much, and others could hardly taste anything. This hardly took preferences into account. Some people preferred plain. Some preferred sour. Others liked spicy. Some didn’t care either way. You were always partial to sweets. You liked the way they made your teeth ache. It was a luxury, a rare reward that you treasured. Still, it could never quite erase the bitterness that lived beneath your tongue.

    Sound. His hearing had always been the best. It never mattered how much loud music he listened to or how often he yelled. Perhaps it was in part due to his musical genius, but he always heard things nobody else could. A music note on the breeze, a tiny chord hidden in a song, a conversation several feet away. Mystified, you test his range time and time again. You remember reading in the same book that sound was often affiliated with memories, too. In another, you’d learned that sometimes, the senses got their wires crossed and caused people to see sound or numbers as colors. You wonder if he saw sounds as colors. You wonder if he associates any songs with you. You never ask. 

    Touch. You were even across the board. First and last in nothing. Unremarkable in every way. There was no particular way you stood out, but with everything laid out before you, you always found your hands to be the most reliable part of you. Touch is reliable. If you can feel something, you can affirm its existence. You can confirm it’s real and material in your hands, against the pads of your fingers, taking in the texture and weight and temperature. In one book among the many you no longer remember the names of, you’d learned that touch is the least reliable. Nothing ever truly touches. There’s always a space between your atoms and everything else. No matter how many times you feel his warmth beneath your hands, you can never truly sully him. It’s almost reassuring. Almost. 

Question 16

From the list below, circle the parts of the body you are most familiar with. 

• Heel. Firm, rough, and rounded into an angle your ribs are all too accustomed to. The part of him that dug into you most when he thrashed during naps. The part of him that you knew had to leave the ground when you unbalanced him. In the slums, you remember a child with missing toes. But he has five on each foot, and that, too, is a small comfort. You count them. Once. Twice. Three times. Every time he digs his heel into the soft part between your ribs.
  
  
• Hip. The part where you meet. When you sit together, when you lay together, this is the part pressed against you. Leg against leg, connected from hip to knee, where his leg deviates into a fold and yours continue straight. You aren’t sure when it started to be his sharp hip digging into the meat of yours instead of the other way around. You aren’t sure when you started to measure longer than him both ways from that point of contact, either. 
  
  
• Spine. The most important part. It supports the mass of the body, connecting it to the brain. It defines you as mammals, animals rather than insects. He stiffens as your fingers track up each bony notch of his spine, counting each as you go, reading aloud as you compare them to the diagrams you were given in class. His spine is strong, you think, put under immense pressure, but never breaking. Unlike your own, which bends and bends and bends. Unlike your own, forced into whatever shape best suits the needs of the room.
  
  
• Shoulders. Slouched. Hunched. Stiffened. Scrunched up to his ears. They’re as expressive as the rest of him. He’s disgruntled to see how narrow they are compared to yours. It used to be him that stood wider. It still is, in every way but physically. Shoulders to elbow, pointed in a shape that leaves behind marks on your skin. Elbow to wrist. Everything connects. If you try hard enough, you can pretend to be connected too, when your head carefully finds its place here. 
  
  
• Hands. You’re no artist, but if you were to paint him, it would be in shades of red. Cherry and merlot, ruby and crimson. You watch his wrist, deft and versatile, perpetually bent in the shape of a tune, always tinted with the colors of his art. Wrist to fingers, each one you want to map individually, each one you want to reverently press your mouth against, each one you want to worship like a pantheon of small gods. You were never a believer, but you think there must be a god, for your paths to have crossed even for a moment.
  
  
• Throat. A soft, weak spot. As easy to bruise as it is to break, as easy to trace as it is to tear out. It’s hard to recognize the fragility of a life until you hold it in your own hands. His throat is just as telling as the rest of him. You can feel the beat of his heart, pounding in time with your own. The shape of his name imprints itself against your fingers. Is this what it feels like to be close with someone? Is this what it means to care? You can’t call the things you feel for him love. Love was not supposed to be like this. You aren’t made of love. You’re made of all of the evil, vile things that raised you. You’ve spent your entire lives with your hands around his neck. Why should the end be any different?
  
  
• Head. A dark room. A body, bruised, disheveled, and pitifully small, huddled sideways against a chair. You cradle the world in your hands, careful, gentle, so sure it might shatter beneath the slightest pressure. You memorize his chapped lips beneath your thumb. You wipe away the tracks left from angry tears. You press your face to the pale one before you and nuzzle, skin over sweat-soaked skin, seeking and giving in equal measure. There’s a feeling in your chest that you can’t describe. Why is it that you’re only capable of being gentle at times like this? 

Question 17

Please circle the statements you feel best apply. 

• You are a man, made of flesh and blood and bone easily broken. You will live, and then you will die, and that’s all there is to it. It’s easy to forget that there’s a heart between your ribs. 
  
  
• You are a black hole, always hungry, always devouring. No matter how much you consume, you always end up empty. You could never love someone in a way that doesn’t swallow them whole. 
  
  
• You are an insect, a parasite, squirming and writhing. You want to be consumed, want to crawl inside him and spend the rest of your pitiful life there. After all, a parasite cannot survive without a host. 
  
  
• The things you crave are the ones you pay the biggest price for. Things that are beautiful cost the most. Gifts in lovely packages are a tragedy waiting to happen. 
  
  
• One day, this heart of yours is going to kill you. It will rot you from the inside out and tear through your flesh like barbs, restless and harsh and despairing.
  
  
• Are you the monster? Or the man? Is there really a difference? 
  
  
• Your teeth are as good a weapon as any blade.

Question 18 

Who are you? Are you even someone?

    N/A

Question 19

Please select the emotion you are most familiar with.

    Anger. Contrary to popular belief, you brush shoulders often. If you were willing to admit it, you’d say that it might be one of the feelings you’ve grown closest with. There’s always a part of you, buried somewhere deep, deep down, that seethes with it. There’s a part of you that hates this—this, this wretched existence of yours. It despises your owners, despises the people you surround yourself with, despises the person you’ve become, and despises that you don’t know how to be anything else. In another life, maybe you’d hate him, too, for being everything you could never hope to be. 

    Love. Can you even define this? Can you put words to what this feeling is? Can you claim to have felt it? You don’t know love. You don’t know your provider. Your owners never loved you. The other humans never loved you. You never loved yourself, either. You don’t know love, but he does. He loves with his whole heart. He loves with his entire being, body and soul. To be loved by him, you think, must truly be the greatest blessing. He’d never love someone like you, who could not begin to fathom the depths of the feelings in the hollow of your chest. But you would never really try, would you? It was easier to call them disgusting. Selfish. This isn’t your answer. You don’t know love. 

    Desire. Try as you might, you’re no stranger to wanting things. Wanting to blend in, wanting approval. Wanting to make the best grades, no matter how useless it proves to be outside of the garden. Wanting to give up this ploy for good and vanish off the face of the planet like you’d never existed. You’re no stranger to the feeling, but you’ve grown used to squashing it like the millions of thrashing insects that live inside of you. Someone like you isn’t allowed to be greedy. You’re already selfish. You’ve already been given more than you could ever hope to ask for. So you shouldn’t want him. You shouldn’t want his eyes on you. You shouldn’t want to occupy every moment of his every day, and you shouldn’t want to touch him, or hold him, or live inside of him. Most importantly, in the deepest part of yourself, you shouldn’t want him to want you, too. 

    Grief. There’s no point in wallowing over things that could never be. It’s time to move on. Pick yourself up out of the dirt again. Dust off your clothes. Put your mask back on. Keep on marching. Here’s the cliff, and there’s the fall. Where he soars, you will not. Grief has no place here. Nobody will grieve you. 

    Regret. In the end, you’re nothing more than that child from the slums. This was truly the worst kind of destruction—the one with plenty of foresight. You will die as you lived. Unsavory. Unloved. Cold. Maybe you should have been kinder. That’s your only regret. 

    Happiness. Even canines can find solace among fleas.

Question 20 

If you could go back and change something, anything, would you?

__No

Question 21

In another life, you could have been happy. 

    True
    False

Question 22 

Your decisions will impact him, too. You don’t know it yet, but they will. He’ll spend the rest of his life with you hovering at his shoulder. The words you said to her will come back around. Please don’t despair. Knowing this, will you still do it, for even a chance that he could live? 

    N/A