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Khun stares at ceilings a lot.
It isn’t an activity he particularly enjoys, just a byproduct of his insomnia, born from his childhood in the Khun Family, when he stayed awake late into the night to eavesdrop on other family members, gathering information and possible blackmail, watching out for possible assassins. Of course, there had been no need to stay awake on the Floor of Tests—no one could get into his room without a passcode or his permission—but the insomnia remained. Sleeping on his back isn’t his preferred position either, but sometimes if he focuses hard enough at the blank ceiling, he could bore himself to sleep. When Bam found out about it, though (due to Khun accidentally smearing off his makeup that covered his bags—he always seemed to mess up around Bam, it was strange) he invited Khun to his room, and they would stare up at the fake Shinsu sky instead.
“Rachel told me that stars make patterns in the sky sometimes,” Bam said. She called them constellations.”
Bam always talked about Rachel. Thinking back, Khun wishes he could have warned Bam— look out for her, she’s just manipulating you, she hates you —but he knows Bem wouldn’t have believed him. Bam was too bright, too trusting, and maybe that’s what got him killed on the Second Floor.
“Constellations?”
“Yeah! Like you could trace the stars in and they would form a picture! Rachel said the stars were always constant in the real sky.”
“Well, the Guardians make the sky here, so they’re different on each Floor,” Khun shrugged. “The sky’s just a decorated ceiling.”
“That’s fine! Let’s make our own constellations, then. That one’s you.” Bam pointed to a cluster of twinkling lights in the sky.
“…I don’t see it.”
“If you trace it here…” Bam gently grasped his hand, lifting it up towards the sky. Khun tried not to flinch; he wasn’t used to being touched so suddenly. But if Bam noticed, he didn’t say anything. “It looks like you!”
“…I look like a stick figure?”
“Well, I mean…”
Khun couldn’t help it. He laughed quietly. “Alright, then that one is you.” He gestured to the stars right next to Bam.
“And there’s Rak.”
“Wait, why is the gator next to us too?”
“And Isu, and Hatz, and Anak…”
Khun turns his head away from the blank ceiling and glances out the window. None of those constellations exist on this Floor. They didn’t exist on any Floor without Bam to point them out. He still remembers the last night they had stared up at the stars together, smiling as if the final test would go perfectly, that they could all climb the Tower together.
The sky here is just a ceiling.
He sleeps even later now, around three to five in the morning. Sometimes he just idly browses his Lighthouse instead of sleeping at all, making backup plans for backup plans for backup plans that he knows will never be used, but they take his mind off the emptiness. If he occupies his brain with strategies, he can’t dwell on the other…things.
He climbs with everyone for a while. Isu sometimes comes up to him, asking if he’s okay, and Khun just waves him off with an “I’m fine.” He’s a lot more tired every morning, but he’s used to faking alertness anyways, so it doesn’t matter. He can’t continue getting attached to his friends anymore. He’s going to leave them soon. They don’t need to know the truth about Rachel just yet.
On his second to last night with his friends, his brain is being far too loud, and thinking up tactics isn’t enough to shut it up. Khun sighs and stands up, turning his Lighthouse back invisible and heading outside. He could use some fresh air, and given the number of files on his Lighthouse, there was no way he would ever get to backup plan number fifty-three. He surrounds himself with a sound barrier so his teammates don’t hear him going down the stairs and dispels it once he’s outside with the front door closed behind him. He sits down on the porch steps, head propped up on one hand, staring aimlessly into the distance. It doesn’t matter how pretty the night sky might be, if Bam isn’t here, it's nothing more than a fake Shinsu replica.
His hands work on autopilot, opening a new note in his Lighthouse, labeling it as backup plan fifty-four, but before he can start typing out words, his fingers change course on their own, turning on the touchscreen function and dotting out a few points. When his gaze drifts back to the screen, he’s greeted with a single cluster of dots, in the exact position that Bam had named his constellation.
It’s amazing how he still remembers the precise location of each star. A brief moment of hesitation, and he slowly taps the screen a few more times, until Bam’s constellation is right next to his, just like the sky back on the Second Floor. He stares at the file for a little longer, the glowing white dots against the blue of the screen, and he glances back up at the sky. Lighthouses aren’t exactly made for drawing on, but the touchscreen is sufficient enough. He adds Rak’s constellation before saving the draft.
That night, he falls asleep with the memories of a brilliant night sky, and the laugh of a boy whose name meant night but whose eyes glowed like the sun.
After he leaves his friends on the 25th Floor (it might be his favorite number now), he works on his star chart more and more. It’s his one remaining connection to Bam, those constellations they dreamed up on the Floor of Tests, and the one of his few lifelines of sanity while he climbs with the person that murdered his best friend.
What started with a few scattered dots ends with a full star map, each point carefully plotted to show all the constellations he and Bam had pointed out while staring at the night sky, along with some other tiny stars just to fill in space. He fiddles around with the coding in his Lighthouse and figures out how to overlay another file that connects the stars with glowing white lines. It’s a complete waste of his time, but honestly, if he can’t sleep, he might as well do something with his insomnia. Looking at the diagram is strangely comforting, and since Lighthouses can’t project images, he sometimes just falls asleep in the cube, with the file of the night sky stretched across the Lighthouse walls. The only downside is that he’ll wake up with a stiff back.
On the 28th Floor, he finally convinces himself to ask Dan if he can borrow his Observer. He’s been spending more and more nights in his Lighthouse, and while his brain is a bit calmer, his back isn’t quite so happy with the new “bed”.
“My Observer?” Dan looks a bit confused when Khun asks, but he obliges anyway. “Sure, I guess. What do you need it for?”
“I’ll give it back tomorrow morning,” is all Khun says. Dan knows better than to pry.
That night, Khun fiddles with the controls on the Observer. It’s not particularly difficult to figure out the settings, but rather than the buttons and screens in a Lighthouse, most of the functions are controlled with Shinsu. He regrets not asking Isu for a quick overview of how they worked.
There’s a knock on his door, and Ran comes in and plops down next to him. “Whatcha doing?”
“Trying to figure out how to project images,” Khun answers. He trusts Ran enough to not blab.
His half-brother lightly nudges him aside and taps the Observer a few times, and the drawing of the night sky appears in its full glory, spanning across the ceiling. Ran taps it once more, and the image rotates slowly, not enough to be dizzying, but just enough to make it seem a bit more animated.
Hm, not bad. Would Dan mind if he borrowed his Observer every night? Well, it’s not like Khun would let him refuse, but the Scout might get curious, which would be problematic.
“Did you make this?” Ran stares up. His face is carefully composed into a blank expression; he knows how sensitive the topic of stars is around Khun.
“Yeah. Just something someone showed me,” Khun responds vaguely.
Ran understands the “someone” immediately. “It’s pretty.” He stands up and leaves the room. “G’night, A.A.”
“Night,” Khun replies, watching as his door swings shut. The ceiling is a lot nicer now, but with the entire room nearly black, it’s a bit hard to see. Unlike when the moon was shining brightly on the Second Floor… Maybe his Lighthouse would work? He turns one Lighthouse visible and activates the light function.
It’s a bit too blue and far too square, with the cube’s sharp edges and corners, but better than nothing, and he can almost trick himself into thinking it’s round if he let’s the cube rotate in the air. The fake display won’t ever replace what he once had with Bam, but when he lifts his hand up and traces the familiar patterns, he could almost feel Bam right next to him again.
“Hey, Khun? What’s this?”
“Hm? What’s what?” Khun glances back at Bam, who was browsing idly through his Lighthouse files. With the war around them, they rarely get any respite, but this is one of the few times they have a tiny space of free time, right before they’re about to go to sleep.
“You have a file named after me?”
At that, Khun whirls around, eyes wide. “Wait—”
Too late. Bam taps on the file, the Lighthouse screen changing to show the night sky that Khun had illustrated so long ago. “Is this—”
“I…drew it a long time ago. You know, when you…were gone,” Khun blurts out quickly. “It’s nothing important, just…” He falters.
Bam’s finger lightly traces the stars on the picture. “You remembered…”
“Yeah?” His voice comes out a lot weaker than he likes.
“You, me, Rak…” Bam breathes out quietly. “You remembered the constellations.”
“…I fell asleep looking at it,” Khun admits. He looks away before Bam can meet his gaze. “Stupid, I know—”
Bam hugs him tightly. “It’s beautiful .”
This isn’t the first time they’ve hugged, but it catches Khun off guard regardless, and it takes him a few extra seconds to remember to hug Bam back. “It’s really not, I just doodled in my free time—”
“Khun.” Bam pulls back to look him in the eye, and wavering blue meets sparkling gold. “Thank you.”
“There’s nothing to thank me for.” Khun breaks eye contact first. It’s always Bam who’s the exception to his rules, the only person that caused his heart to lead instead of his head. “Anyways, the picture looks better when there’s an Observer projecting it, it’s really small if you look at it in the Lighthouse—”
Bam’s gone. A few minutes later, the brunet returns with one of Isu’s Observers.
Khun chuckles. “Of course.” He turns off the lights in their room and taps on the Observer, watching as the map is projected on their ceiling. Bam’s eyes are wide in awe at the display, and for a moment, it’s like they’re on the Second Floor again, young and full of wonder, hopeful and optimistic.
He lies on the bed, and Bam joins him. After Khun returned from his coma, the brunet insisted they share a bed, not wanting to be any further apart than they needed to. Khun couldn’t have refused even if he wanted to.
“I used to use my Lighthouse as a fake moon, but it wasn’t that good of a replica,” he says.
“I have a better idea.” Bam holds out his hand, and an orb appears, round and white and glowing. He floats it in the center of the room. Khun smiles, finding Bam’s hand and squeezing it tightly. Bam squeezes back. They lay in comfortable silence for a while.
Khun can feel his eyelids growing heavy, and he can tell Bam’s close to sleep too, but the brunet speaks one more time before they drift off. “We should add the others,” he whispers. “Wangnan, Hwaryun, the Slayers…”
“Yeah,” Khun replies quietly, closing his eyes. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow.” Bam snuggles up to him, arms wrapping him in a tight hug. “Goodnight, Khun.”
“Goodnight.”
The stars shine brightly above them.