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Hyuna is born perfect.
Lucky genes, she hears those around her say. She is her master's proudest creation, from the colour of her eyes to the power of her voice. When she is enrolled into Anakt Garden for the sake of fulfilling her guardian's sponsorship, it isn't just because of her talent for singing—it's her talent for everything.
She has the kind of natural charisma that charms everyone she interacts with. Even as a child, she was always the one initiating new friendships, extending her hand out to those around her while Hyunwoo watched shyly from behind. Hyuna breezed through life like it was a smooth-sailing ride. Nothing was in her way. Nothing should've been in her way.
And then, like he was venom injected into her veins, she met Luka.
Luka was a terribly meek child, even meeker than Hyunwoo used to be. He never spent time with the other children, and when he did, the others would often run away crying and pointing fingers. They would claim that there was something terrifyingly different about Luka, in the way he speaks and acts, and that they didn't like his presence. By all means, someone like Luka wouldn't have survived in Anakt Garden for long, shunned and stamped out until he was nothing.
But somehow, Luka kept coming back. And when Hyuna looked at him, she didn't see a defect—she just saw another human, one worth saving, and within her capabilities to do so.
Perhaps that was her first mistake: Believing.
In the midst of her coughing fit, someone gathers up her hair for her, pulling it over her shoulder and holding it in place.
When Hyuna is done hacking up a bowl of flower petals, she turns her head to see Jacob kneeling next to her, a blank expression on his face. He does not give any indication on what he thinks of her situation, nor does he offer any words of comfort. He just smiles until she’s done, and backs away when she tries to catch her breath.
"Sorry," she says uselessly. The flowers seem to glow in her shaking hands. "This happens sometimes."
Being praised often for her helpful nature and strong sense of leadership, it makes sense that Hyuna would end up embracing the role wholly.
The children in her class all look up to her with stars in their eyes, nodding and listening to her voice like it was the gospel. Hyuna doesn't know what to feel about it at first, for she didn't exactly ask to be in this position, but she likes it nonetheless. She's good at it, anyway, so she might as well do it.
But there is no leader without an opposition, and Hyuna quickly learns what, or rather who that word represents.
"My father hates you," Luka tells her flatly, when they're sitting underneath a tree together, searching for reprieve from the intense sun today. He has a solved rubik's cube in his hands, purple-tipped fingers fiddling with it.
Hyuna isn't sure what to make of the claim. "Okay?"
"He hates your guardian even more."
"I don't even remember what my guardian looks like."
Luka hums. He leans back on the tree trunk, soft golden curls squishing against the surface. It makes him look kind of cute. Hyuna can't imagine why someone would think otherwise.
Unlike her, Luka's father has surveillance on him practically all the time. Hyuna's guardian has never once stepped foot into this garden, but Luka's visits him regularly, and always pulls him away for some sort of check-up. By the time Luka arrives back, the other children have retreated to rest, leaving him alone once more.
Except for Hyuna, who holds her patience close to her heart and waits long past the sundown, until she sees Luka's weak frame stumbling towards her.
She's not sure what even happens during Luka's check-ups, but he always comes back a little quieter, a little more tired, and she feels the urge to hold him close until he's back to himself again.
"You're everything I'm supposed to be," Luka continues, making a vague gesture in the direction of her body. He rests a hand over hers, and she doesn't pull away, but she does flinch a little. He's freezing to the touch, despite the heat surrounding them. "I think I was made for that purpose. To bring you down."
Hyuna swallows dryly. It's unnerving, the way Luka can say things with such a straight face, like nothing is of importance in this world. He reminds Hyuna of a scientific lab sometimes, the kind she very vaguely remembers spending her earliest days in, crawling around on stiff floors and searching for affection in all the wrong corners. Even then, she always found a little relief in having Hyunwoo by her side. Luka lacks that lull altogether.
So Hyuna just laughs and decides to take his words as lightly as possible, nudging Luka's shoulder before ruffling his hair. "You're so cute! Then you better work hard so that you can keep up with me!"
For a long time, Luka stares at her, unblinking.
When he finally does speak, Hyuna feels unease wrapping around her heart, like there were vines coiling around the beating organ’s muscle. "Of course. I have to."
"Are you sure you don't want to find a doctor?" Isaac asks her, his arms folded across his chest, watching as Hyuna trembles on her knees, her palms pressed to her lips like that would keep the flowers at bay. "You've been like this ever since you arrived. This isn't the garden anymore. If we looked hard enough, I'm sure we could find someone to cure you."
Hyuna's throat burns like a wildfire. She watches the petals flutter to the ground, dainty and innocent and irritatingly pure in their shade of white, despite the bloodstains coating them.
"It's fine," she manages to say through the haze in her eyes and the lingering taste of blood on her tongue. "It's not something I can let go of."
"I think that's the exact issue," Isaac snarks back. Hyuna almost snaps at him to shut up, but she holds her tongue at the last second. She knows where Isaac is coming from, and as the new leader of the rebellion, she can't be held back by something as pathetic as this… illness.
“I’ll figure something out,” she insists anyway.
Later, when Hyuna re-enters her bedroom, she glares at the poster of Luka she has on the wall. It's been torn in half, residues still peeling off in little bits and pieces, but even then, she can still make out Luka's empty smile, taunting her from the shadows of her past.
The first tickle of her throat started the day after Hyunwoo's death.
Hyuna didn't get to see what the guards did with Hyunwoo's corpse. Still fresh and warm to the touch, they pulled him away from her tearful grasp, ignoring her pleas to let her follow. And even when she remains on that hilltop, all the way until the stars begin twinkling at her mockingly, she is painfully alone.
Until she feels a soft weight against her back.
Luka leans onto her with a content hum, and it's that little expression of peace that wrecks Hyuna’s world entirely. Her heart pounds, struggling to keep up with her shortening breaths, and she presses a hand to her lips to muffle her cries.
She can’t stop shaking. Hyuna has never felt this mix of emotion before, having everything she’s ever known shatter and crumble in her hands. She draws her knees to her chest, still able to picture her brother’s blood soaking through her clothes, even though she’s been changed out of those hours ago. At the same time, she can feel Luka nuzzling his face, and that’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
How can Luka be happy in a time like this?
She knows this is probably his attempt at comfort, but it has the exact opposite effect. Luka is the last thing Hyuna wants to be near right now, but even as hot tears stream down her cheeks, she can’t bring herself to stand and push him away. She won’t allow herself that cruelty. So she stamps it down with all her might, pretending it doesn’t exist at all.
Her fury bears its seeds into her lungs that night. By the time Luka has fallen asleep on her back, Hyuna coughs up her first flower petal.
When Luka said that he was made to bring Hyuna down, she didn't think he meant it literally.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Hyuna confesses one day, her face buried in her arms.
She came here to escape from the other children, who are all having dinner in the break room. Luka never eats with the rest of them—says he isn’t allowed to, for the most part, so he always hangs around a different lounge area, watching from afar. Hyuna knows no one will come near him either, which makes him the perfect safe spot for her to retreat to.
“Here?” Luka repeats, referring to the room. “We can go to the garden instead.”
Not what I mean, she thinks, but she digs her teeth into her bottom lip and holds her tongue. Hyuna has to remember that they’re constantly being monitored, especially during leisure activities like these. She can’t afford to have a teacher listening in.
So she says, “Yeah. It’s suffocating in here.”
Luka doesn’t grant her an ounce of empathy. Never has, if he doesn’t understand her. Hyuna didn’t expect otherwise either, but it still stings, not being recognised in that way.
But he offers a hand out to her, gesturing to the garden again, and Hyuna, despite her aversion, takes it.
They make their way out with their hands interlaced, footsteps falling in sync. Hyuna ignores the stares they get, keeping her eyes focused on Luka—even after all these years, she still has a few inches on him. Luka’s perfectly manufactured genetics can’t make up for everything, it seems.
The sun is beginning to set beyond the hilltops, with a blazing inferno stretched across the sky when they arrive. Hyuna feels the tickle of soft grass beneath her feet and the cold touch of Luka’s hand in hers, and for a moment, she entertains the idea of a greater world. She’s known Anakt Garden her whole life and nothing else, but Hyuna has access to CDs, and books, and dreams.
Hyuna wants to see what the universe has to offer outside of this prison.
Despite her guardian being nothing more than a hazy memory, she resents him greatly. For locking her in this place, meant to dangle herself for the universe’s entertainment. And it’s not like Hyuna dislikes performing either—in fact, she adores the thrill, the way music helps her connect with an audience on a deeper, more tangible level. If Hyuna could, she’d perform for the rest of her life.
But she knows the fate that looms over her with every year she grows older. Hyuna has seen the videos of past Alien Stage contestants, shot in the neck with merciless accuracy over a sheer number. The audience cheers as another human loses the light in their eyes, and it means nothing to them, not when there will always be another round and another pet to spare.
(And Hyuna knows, maybe better than anyone else, what it feels like to have someone bleeding to death in your arms.)
She doesn’t realise how tightly she’s gripping onto Luka’s hand until he makes a little noise of discomfort. Hyuna rips her hand away, eyes widening. “Oh, sorry.”
When Luka turns to her, there’s a childish adoration in his smile. “It’s okay. I forgive you.”
Stupid, Hyuna immediately thinks. Luka doesn’t really know the concept of forgiveness, just like how he doesn’t understand the idea of guilt, or apologies, or accountability. There are many emotions that Luka can only mimic, but whether he truly feels them authentically is hard to say.
The only emotion Luka has ever genuinely shown her is the bright love in his eyes when she approaches him.
It makes Hyuna feel sick to look at every time.
“I’ve had this condition since I was young,” Hyuna explains with a dismissive wave of her hand. She’s seated on a couch, her fresh prosthetic resting on her lap as she wipes at it absentmindedly. Jacob and Isaac sit from across her, though she’s not sure why Isaac is here to poke his nose into her business. He isn’t even the leader. “I just cough up flowers sometimes. It barely affects my voice anyway, and I think I’ve learned to keep them at bay.”
“Do you know what the condition is?” Isaac asks. “Sounds unnatural.”
“Just rare,” Jacob corrects. He stands up, heading over to a cabinet in the corner of the room. When he tugs it open, a dust cloud bursts in his face, and it’s evident that it hasn’t been touched in a long time. He digs through the stacks of things inside until he pulls out a small book, with a blue leather-bound cover and a half-torn ribbon marker.
“What is that?” Hyuna asks.
Jacob cracks the book open. “Human records. This one was owned by a scientist, at least we think. She specialised in medical botany, though the content in here is mostly about medicine made from plants rather than illnesses.”
Isaac raises an eyebrow. “Why haven’t I heard of that? Could be useful to our medical team.”
“It says she often tested medication on herself to check their effectiveness. I wouldn’t want our limited manpower to do the same, lest they risk their lives.” When he returns to the couch, he’s flipped to a specific page. “Ah. I thought it might be here.”
Turning the book around, he hands it over to Hyuna. She squints at the messy scrawl, for she’s still not the best at reading in other human languages, but she thinks she can figure out the general gist.
Hanahaki: A disease stemming from the repression of strong feelings, which eventually mutate and take the form of flowers growing in the patient’s lungs.
“What repressed feelings?” she asks dully, ignoring the wave of nausea that crashes over her. “I’m free as a bird.”
Isaac gives her a skeptical look. Jacob just smiles sadly.
Hyuna snaps the book close, grabs for her cane, and hobbles her way out of the room.
For someone so supposedly weak, Luka becomes a terrifying creature once he’s been placed on the stage.
Hyuna knows that this is what Luka has been prepared for his whole life, but seeing the product of that harsh training is nothing like she could have ever imagined.
It’s inhumane. Luka performs humanity to a perfect tee, smiling like he truly feels the notes he’s humming, like the lyrics actually mean anything to him. He sings with a passion so manufactured and a voice so polished that it’s unnerving, but at the same time, Hyuna watches with captivity. Just the way he intends to leave you awestruck.
He’s exactly what the aliens want. Hyuna can already imagine the skyrocketing popularity that Luka’s enchantment will bring the universe. And she thinks, with devastation in her heart, that if she’s going to destroy Alien Stage, she’s going to have to destroy him first.
Can she do it?
Hyuna is objectively the better performer. She’s always the slightest step ahead of Luka in everything, but unlike Luka, she doesn’t care to be so pristine, instead wishing for authenticity. It’s the one thing she has that Luka definitely cannot replicate, anyway.
Despite this, Hyuna doesn’t truly hold the upper hand.
It’s him, she realises, watching as Luka’s glowing smile flashes on the screen, pronouncing him the winner of his debut round. The results aren’t even unexpected—the point difference between Luka and his opponent was as large as a chasm, and there’s no reason in pretending the outcome could have been any other way.
His opponent is on the floor, soaked in a puddle of their own blood, while Luka stands over them triumphantly, microphone still held in his delicate grasp. And perhaps Hyuna is just searching for a needle in a haystack, but she hopes, just for a second, that Luka might show a hint of remorse.
Instead, he grins.
Hyuna’s grief increases tenfold. A petal inches its way up her throat, but she swallows it back down to focus on more important things—her round is coming up soon.
Hyuna is born with the perfect body, and Luka is the poison that grows in her lungs until it overtakes her, leaving her destroyed.
Maybe after all these years, Hyuna is the stupid one for caring about Luka in the first place. She’s the only one who is willing to see humanity under his cruel gaze—not even Luka views himself that way.
Even though Hyuna is no longer chained down at Anakt Garden, sometimes, she feels Luka’s greedy hold on her, like vines wrapping around her neck, its thorns digging into her flesh. She runs with all her might, telling herself that time will heal all wounds and that she just needs to keep going, but inevitably, Luka catches up to her. He’s always there, lingering in her lungs, and the image will have Hyuna awake in the middle of the night, trying to tear her skin off so that she can rip Luka’s ghost from her too.
It’s born from hate, she tells herself, when she stares at the palm full of petals so hard her gaze starts to blur. Years and years of anger built up in her chest and blooming in the form of these beautiful flowers. It’s a shame. Something so lovely shouldn’t feed off something so ugly.
Hyuna doesn’t know how long she can go on like this.
She wants to live, to sing, to be free like a bird that’s known the skies its whole life. But every year, she finds herself watching Alien Stage on television, and when she watches Luka win again and again, she knows that she will never be released.
Not until she destroys Alien Stage herself. She’ll save all the children stuck there, and once she does, maybe she can finally move on from the boy she once knew and loved.
“Stop moving so much.”
Mizi flinches from in front of her, glancing away. She’s seated on the rebellion’s tattered couch, drowning in the clothes that Dewey lent her because they didn’t have extra at the moment. The scabs on her knuckles are still fresh, and Hyuna tends to them as gently as she can, but on the inside, her heart is rattled up completely.
She saw him. Lying motionless on the stage, almost like he was dead. Perhaps that is the closest that Alien Stage’s poster idol will get to actually losing.
And Hyuna knows that Luka saw her too. Whether he recognised her or not is a different can of worms, though if Hyuna dared to be honest with herself, she knows that he probably did. He won’t ever forget her, just like how she won’t ever forget him.
“You’re a pretty messy fighter,” Hyuna says conversationally, setting aside the used cotton buds. The rebellion doesn’t have enough bandages on them—first aid supplies are awfully low and difficult to make, so she just sets Mizi’s fists on her lap and warns her not to do anything reckless. “Your first time meeting the golden prince, huh?”
Mizi gives her a feeble shrug, her hair falling over her shoulder like curtains. She hasn’t said a word since arriving at their base, practically trembling whenever she breathes. Not that Hyuna can blame her for her current state of mind.
“At least you gave him a good beating!” Hyuna adds as an afterthought, standing up with a slap on her knee. “That kind of rough and tough attitude is what we like here!”
It’s clear she isn’t wanted or needed here any longer. So Hyuna turns around, intending to go to the bathroom, when she hears Mizi call. “Um…”
She looks over her shoulder.
“Do you… Do you have something personal against him?” Mizi asks. She doesn’t clarify who him is, not that there’s any confusion.
Hyuna’s throat squeezes, a searing pain forming in her chest, like there were sharp knives digging into her heart, growing deeper the longer she remains silent.
“Yes,” she finally whispers. There’s a brief tang of iron on her tongue. She grins, and her cheeks ache in protest at the unnatural pull of her facial muscles. “I despise him, so I’m going to take him down.”
“I see,” Mizi mutters. “I hate him too.”
(When Hyuna finally makes it to the bathroom, she throws up a large, snow-white flower.)
The hazy lights, the roaring crowds, the numerous guns pointed in their direction—it all fades into a blur when Hyuna meets Luka’s eyes on that wretched stage again, finally having their long-awaited reunion.
Hyuna thinks, she’s planned for this. Every second, every step she took in the rebellion, it has all been so she can come here and do what she meant to do almost a decade ago.
For just a moment, though, no one moves. Time has slowed to a complete stop. Luka stares at her, unblinking, like he can’t quite believe she exists in his vicinity again. Then his eyes curve, a wide, pink-cheeked smile growing on his face, and Hyuna’s heart pounds in her chest.
He looks desperately alive, and he’s breathtakingly beautiful.
This is the same person who has wrecked Hyuna’s life for years. Who has given her this constant pain in her lungs and the inability to breathe when the nights get particularly cold, who has laid his fingers into Hyuna’s soul and cursed her for eternity.
Who was born out of vile pride, yet had so little of it in the moment that he dropped everything to dash into her waiting arms.
When Hyuna holds Luka close to her chest and lets the bullet fly into her back, her first thought is that she wished she had more time.
Hyuna would have liked to live a life with the rebellion without Luka’s curse dragging her into despair. She would have liked to love him without the anger and betrayal that accompanied it, tainting such a pure emotion.
But for the sake of her own personal catharsis, Hyuna must die.
In her final moments, Hyuna hugs onto Luka’s shaking frame tightly, offering her last bits of warmth for the person who has only ever known the chilling shadows, and at long last, enacts her revenge.
Live with love, Hyuna had wished.
Luka stares at the vibrant red petals that have just slipped from his mouth, fluttering onto Hyuna’s unmoving body. His throat burns as hot as the wild flames surrounding him, and he can feel his skin screaming in anguish.
Still, Luka does not run. Instead, he rests his head on Hyuna’s body, fingers tangling into her hair, and kisses her cheek. She does not react even as blood drips from his lips and stains her skin.
Live with love, Hyuna had cursed.
So Luka presses a hand to his chest and swears he will nourish every vengeful flower that blooms in his feeble lungs. For each one is a parting gift from Hyuna’s lovely heart, and Luka will take whatever she gives him with his greedy fingers, even if it kills him, as long as he can have any piece of her for the rest of his wretched life.