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일.
It's a thankless job, really. Most days, that's what Chan feels.
Most days also always start out feeling normal. He wakes up after a bare minimum amount of sleep—usually clocking at two to three hours—and he gets ready for his day job; somehow, despite the constant fatigue in his system, he's regularly out of the door in time for his shift at a small, non-franchise coffee shop located right by █████ station.
Chan kind of hates how easily his routine could masquerade as the life of a normal guy, when in truth it's anything but. He knows there's no point lamenting this, though, so he tries not to.
Every day, he tries to be as optimistic as he can about the state of his life. At the very least he reminds himself that his life is only going to be as good as he makes it out to be.
Today, Chan wakes up at half past nine in the morning; his roommate, Changbin, has not budged from his bed. He's still asleep, and Chan supposes if he could teleport like Changbin he would sleep in as well—God knows he needs it considering that he's never really able to sleep before at least two in the morning.
It's quite hard to get some shut-eye when the city is always awake, buzzing with life and non-stop thoughts.
This is not the life that Chan had envisioned for himself when he was a little boy. It might sound cliche, but mostly he had dreamed of the entire white picket fence package—a loving spouse to come home to, three kids and two dogs. Maybe they would even live next door to his own parents. That was the kind of childhood he had after all, at least for a very short while. Maybe that’s why it’s his ultimate dream—he just wants to have what he once had, before things changed overnight and he was brought to District 9.
Everyday, he tells himself, hey, maybe one day you can still have it, and hey, maybe it's not just a complete lie that he tells himself. Maybe one day he could have such a picturesque life, but right now he's got a different family that he has to take care of, and just because they aren’t his blood relations, it means they are any less important or close to his heart.
As soon as he steps out of their apartment, everyone's thoughts start wheezing by his head, and it's extra work keeping them out. God, he thinks, because psychic powers are the most overrated out of the lot especially when you don't have the best control of them.
이.
Seungmin would have thought that it would be more exciting, leading this kind of life. A life on the run. Sort of. Technically, that’s what it is, he supposes.
It isn't really, though—it isn’t that exciting. Most days he's just sitting in front of a computer hacking into data banks, and coding security measures just to ensure that District 9 doesn't find out where he and his fellow runaways are hiding, or that they're even still alive, and that they're the ones who keep foiling every other recent criminal activity District 9 has attempted to pull.
It's also weird, he thinks to himself, referring to it now as simply District 9.
It used to be home, after all. Sometimes he forgets they all ran away, that they're still running away, and he flashes back to good times when ignorance was bliss, and they didn't know better. He stares at his reflection on his computer's monitor, a habit that he has developed through the years. He likes to look at his image on whatever surface that would reflect it, as if to assure himself that it's still him, and he's still in this world, and not lost elsewhere.
Sometimes he wonders how that would feel—being lost elsewhere.
Most days, though, he tends to wonder what life would be like if he was in charge of other tasks—of more hands on tasks. If he had ended up with a mutation that lent him more aggressive powers. Would he be on his way to a reconnaissance mission with Changbin right now? With Hyunjin—? Life would certainly be more exciting than being behind a desk 24/7.
The computer beeps, and,
“Bingo,” he murmurs. The information network has finally brought to him the exact piece of information he was looking for and he can’t help the self-satisfied grin that curls on his lips.
He glances sideways at the vase filled with out-of-season sunflowers that Felix had earlier dropped off, just for him, and he leans back against his comfortable chair, stretching his arms and cracking his knuckles.
Chan always did say he has the most important job in the group.
삼.
Jeongin looks out the window of his classroom, sleepy from last night's activities. The teacher is going on and on about trigonometry and angles and sines, cosines, tangents, and everything is just a buzz to him.
“I want to sleep,” he murmurs to herself, his eyelids slowly drooping. Just because he has a bit of extra superhuman strength doesn't mean it never gets depleted every now and then. To be frank, super strength is overrated—it’s more embarrassing than useful whenever he forgets himself and he ends up with a broken door knob. Sometimes, even a broken desk.
He wishes he had Chan’s psychokinesis as he silently wills the teacher to forget that he's in the room so he could get the sleep he thinks he deserves, but of course that doesn't work and Mrs. Kim only calls out on him to solve the problem on the board.
Shit.
He stands up and straightens his tie.
Shit, he thinks again before he goes up front, and just as he expects he ends up staring at the problem blankly.
"Well, next time do your homework and don't sleep in class," Mrs. Kim reprimands him without a hint of gentleness at all.
I would, except secretly saving the world kinda takes a toll on you, he grumbles to himself as he walks back to his seat. He has classmates who are really into superhero movies and comics and in an attempt to fit in, Jeongin has more than once attempted to consume the same kind of content.
This is how he learned: real life is never like it is in fiction—it is always a lot less glamorous, and a lot more trivial.
He tries to stay awake and take notes for the rest of the class's duration, but in his head, he's really just thinking of a girl he once knew back in District 9 who had powers of invisibility.
How nice, he surmises to himself. Having those powers wouldn’t be so bad now, either.
사.
Changbin is always late. A bit of an irony considering he can be anywhere at any time quicker than a finger snap.
Seungmin long ago pointed out that this is precisely why Changbin moves like a sloth otherwise—he always thinks he can make up lost time easily.
Changbin knows that’s not always the case; he knows, as much as anyone else in the team, the real value of time—he’s had years of childhood stolen from him, same as everyone else after all. Unfortunately, this doesn’t change anything in the way he moves. “It’s my body composition,” he always says, even though he sure as hell doesn't know what he scientifically means by that.
He teleports in the middle of a busy street right across a high rise building where he’s meant to deliver a package; one would be surprised at how easy it is to do that—to appear out of nowhere and land in the middle of a crowd. People are always preoccupied with something or other, usually themselves, and pay little to no attention to everyone else around them. It’s why Changbin loves being the center of attention; he understands how much of a skill—how much of a talent it is to be able to draw people’s attention towards you.
Changbin enters the building with confidence—struts in as if he’s six feet tall and not a good seven inches shorter. He wants to be noticed now, and it shows in the cordial smile he flashes at the receptionist as he makes his way over to her.
Before he reaches the front desk however, he freezes, and a completely familiar shudder runs down along his spine. His head turns—the man who walks right by him, busy enough on his phone that he completely neglects to notice Changbin’s presence, is all too recognizable. He has the face of someone that Changbin has focused on one too many times during his childhood—a face that he had anchored himself on to make sure that he never gets lost in the In Between. Not by choice, but more by mandate.
He doesn’t know how to feel about the fact that JY Park has seemed to have completely forgotten his face despite the hours—the days, weeks, months the man had spent with him making sure that Changbin honed his teleportation skills to perfection.
Happy, he tells himself. That’s how. Relieved, because who knows what would have happened otherwise. At least this way he has something to report back to Chan.
District 9 has business in the city and it’s big if they’ve sent someone as high up as JY Park to negotiate.
오.
It’s Jisung’s mid-shift break at the convenience store and he’s out back, half-eaten kimbap roll in one hand a collection of oddly shaped pebbles in the other. He tosses one in the air, and half a second later—
Boom!
A small explosion, and what was once a tiny, crude, grey pebble is now reduced into ashes. Jisung smirks; his control is becoming much better these days.
He continuously shakes his knee as he tosses another one, but this time it implodes with a mere poof!
“You should stop doing little firework shows out in public,” Minho berates him in his trademark even-keeled tone.
“It's only because I got bored waiting for you,” Jisung retorts, pouting right before he takes a big bite off his kimbap roll. Minho always acts tough and unaffected, but Jisung knows him well. He knows that Minho can't really resist when Jisung pulls the wounded kitty look on him.
“I had a delivery run late,” is Minho's simple answer.
Where Changbin is a messenger boy, delivering messages and packages in high-rise buildings, Minho is a delivery boy for a family owned jokbal restaurant just a block away from the 7-Eleven that Jisung works at.
That Minho just silently moves to stand next to Jisung without another word about his little explosions is proof enough to Jisung that his little pout once again worked. With a grin, he leans his head against Minho's shoulder and continues to finish his lunch.
“Did you hear?” Minho asks.
There’s a softness in his voice that’s always managed to calm Jisung down and all he can do is hum in response as he now busies himself with finishing his lunch. It’s easier to sit still and enjoy food when Minho is around.
“Changbin texted me earlier. He says Seungmin might have found where District 9 has most recently relocated,” Minho says, just like that—and even though he sounds eerily calm, his words take Jisung by complete surprise anyway and he almost chokes on sticky rice.
“Wait—really?” He lets out a few coughs, until Minho offers him a can of pear juice which he eagerly takes and gulps down. “What does Chan-hyung plan on doing?”
Minho shrugs. “How would I know? I’m not in his head—” he laughs. “That’s him with all of us.”
Jisung wrinkles his nose and gives him a pointed look; Minho laughs again.
“Who knows what we can even do with that information?” He shakes his head and bites into a sausage stick— his lunch. “We’re barely able to stop their little operations this side of the country as it is.”
Jisung purses his lips; Minho is right, of course, but he knows Chan—they both do. He bears the weight of responsibility on his shoulders; he’s long decided that it’s on him to take District 9 down, so he’s bound to come up with a way to utilize this new information towards that goal.
“There’s something else though,” Minho adds. “Seungmin messaged me too.”
“What?”
“There was another breakout,” Minho reveals. “Another district breakout.”
Well Jisung wasn’t expecting that either, but at least he doesn’t have anything to choke on this time apart from his saliva. “Seriously?” he asks, eyes widening; he barely leaves room for reaction when Minho absentmindedly reaches for his hand.
Minho shrugs, and starts playing with Jisung’s fingers, "We inspired a movement, I guess."
“You guess, huh?” Jisung laughs, but it's kind of bittersweet. “Does Seungmin know who is in the group?”
“Seungminnie’s trying to figure out how to initiate contact with someone from their group. Don’t tell Hyunjin anything about this yet, though.”
“Why?” Jisung’s brow furrows. “Yeji?”
Minho’s expression turns solemn, so Jisung nods in understanding. “Seungmin isn’t sure yet but—” He crosses fingers on his free hand; he might act disaffected but Jisung knows he cares—and that he worries, too. “Here’s to hoping.”
Jisung exhales quietly, and then he squeezes Minho’s hand.
“I’m glad we made it out together on that school bus,” he whispers softly.
Minho elbows Jisung and then he moves his hand so that their fingers would curl together; he doesn’t say anything but Jisung hears his silent agreement loud and clear.
육.
Minho was ten when the scientists at District 9 first took him to meet an eight-year-old Han Jisung. The boy was supposedly prodigious—powerful in a way that none of them have ever seen before. That was what Minho surmised from the bits and pieces of conversation he heard anyway—even as a kid, Minho had been very observant. He was very good at listening and gleaning information; he’s pretty sure that adults at District 9 would have referred to it differently, though—he’s pretty sure they would have called it eavesdropping, and they would have pulled his ears hard had they known just how good at it he was.
He knows how to explain Jisung’s powers now, but as a child, all he had been told was that Jisung was able to make things explode. The problem was that he didn’t have complete control over himself. “He’s a sensitive boy,” was what Minho had been told.
Sensitive, Minho would eventually learn, was just their word for ‘unstable.’ Not that it took him long to figure that out, considering they literally told him, “we need to bring you in to help stabilise him.” He thinks they could have said it better, especially to a kid, but what could one expect from a group of emotionally stunted adult scientists?
Jisung used to get nightmares, apparently. As a result of that, he would charge things in his sleep and blow them up without meaning to; this reached a point when the district scientists had needed to take away all items in his room—when all Jisung had left was a springy mattress for him to lay on and a threadbare comforter to wrap himself in because even his pillows had been charged and exploded in his sleep.
Minho, adversely, was good—was great— at taking blows. He was good at absorbing charged energy and retooling said energy in whichever way he sees fit. Where Jisung was built to power things up, Minho was made to power things down.
And this was why the scientists wanted him there with Jisung; wanted him to calm the boy down when needed—and it was almost always needed. They slept together every night, Jisung curled up next to Minho while Minho stared up at the ceiling counting cracks every night until he could feel the smaller boy relax next to him and he could finally sleep as well.
Eventually, Jisung’s nightmares went their way and Jisung grew closer and closer to the superpowered prodigy that District management had always pinned him to be.
Minho was sixteen when a fourteen-year-old Jisung kissed him for the first time. It was sloppy and unlearned, but genuine and certain—and Minho easily gave what he got.
“I need to go, break’s over,” Minho murmurs now, exhaling a despondent sigh as he pulls away from Jisung’s lips. They’re out behind the convenience store that Jisung works at; they really shouldn’t be doing this here—Jisung can very well get fired if they’re caught, but neither of them care too much because that’s just a part of the thrill.
The younger boy nods, smiles—plants a one last brief peck against the corner of Minho’s mouth that leaves him with a literal electric feeling.
“I’ll see you at home tonight, hyung,” Jisung says, laughing as he playfully pushes Minho away.
Minho was nineteen and Jisung was seventeen when they finally saw the outside of the District 9 walls for the first time that either of them could remember since they were toddlers. It was strange, new and nerve-wracking—but at the end of the day, when Jisung had curled up against Minho to sleep, he realised that Jisung has always given him the same kind of comfort and familiarity that scientists had needed for him to provide Jisung.
It was ironic, in a way, but it was the easiest thing to decide that it wasn’t really something to complain about.
칠.
Felix is a good soldier; the best, even. He will follow Chan to the ends of the Earth, and maybe beyond, and he will willingly take a bullet for each and everyone of them if needed. And that’s saying a lot, considering Felix is very in tune with the earth—if you can gather what that means.
Ha.
Felix wishes it actually means something; wishes it means he can do something apart from make flowers grow from nothing. He’d love to actually be a good soldier and do something for the team.
Instead, he goes to cooking school.
Chan tells him it’s because he’s the only one with a concrete dream. “I want to open my own restaurant some day,” he had jokingly told Chan once, a long time ago—during a time when they weren’t allowed to dream.
Everyone knows that it’s Chan’s way of keeping him busy without putting him in harm’s way.
“Because he knows daisies aren’t going to help in a fight,” he’d joked around with Seungmin once.
“No way,” Seungmin had argued. “It’s because you’re his favorite,” he pointed out. It made Felix balk, but there was no malice or poison in Seungmin’s tone, just honesty. “And because if something happens to you everyone will be too fucking sad to function. So listen to Channie-hyung—all he wants is you to have everything you want and to be happy.”
Felix wanted to say that his happiness is connected with everyone else’s, but he held back. He figured he’ll work hard at whatever they wanted him to.
So—every day he commutes to a culinary academy in █████, just outside the city, and sure, it’s a bit of a long way to and back, but Felix doesn’t really mind. It gives him time alone with his thoughts—gives him time enough to know himself better.
It’s on one of these evenings that he finds Yeji in the rain, right by the bus station where he gets off at, on his way home. She is cold and wet—a far cry from the last time that Felix remembers seeing her and he feels sorry for her.
He almost didn’t notice her, truth be told. He noticed nothing but a shimmer in the downpour, and normally that wouldn’t have made him stop especially since it’s raining and he has no umbrella and the best thing for him to do is to sprint home.
But there was something about that moment; something that told him to stop, and then she was just there, materialising in the rain and falling against him, limp and weak and a far cry from the strong, confident girl that Felix once knew back in District 9.
“I found you,” she’d muttered, right before she completely passed out in his arms.
팔.
Hyunjin feels aimless.
He also feels shapeless, but he supposes that comes with his abilities so he tries to accept that.
But the former—it bothers him a lot. He hasn’t really known what to do with his life ever since they had escaped from District 9. He wishes he was like Felix—chasing after such a normal dream. A hard one to achieve, but a normal one anyway. A goal to strive for that has fixed steps one can take.
He doesn’t even know what he should begin dreaming for.
“We’re alive, isn’t that enough?” Jisung told him once, and Hyunjin found himself mute and unable to respond because—he’s right, technically. Being alive and being free, these things should be more than enough but they aren’t.
They’re all just trying to live normal lives—granted, those attempts happen to feature in between operations of them trying to fuck up District 9 operations whenever theyc an, but still. They try.
Jisung also always tells him that he’s got it the easiest because he can literally be anyone he wants to be, and Hyunjin thinks that most of everyone else probably agrees with him on that but the truth is he resents that statement.
He doesn’t just want to be anyone—he wants to be himself, except he doesn’t really know who he is. He thinks he hasn’t known since he was two and he was stripped away from his family.
Not that he even remembers his family, even; at least except for the girl whose bedside he was keeping vigil at while she slept and (hopefully) regained energy.
As if his thoughts about her have been heard, Yeji slowly stirs awake. Curiously enough, there just might be merit to that notion; considering the plethora of twin experiments performed on them, and other pairs of siblings like them back in District 9, there just might be a chance that they have developed the ability to hear each other’s thoughts.
Or not—Hyunjin and Yeji were never able to really test any joint abilities they may have had considering they were only twelve when management had decided it would developing strong bonds between blood family was not beneficial to them; if anything promoting stronger bonds and loyalty between their charges might prove to be more detrimental to their fealty towards the District—and clearly that was what carried most weight out of all their considerations.
Considering what Hyunjin and his friends were able to pull off thanks to their combined teamwork—the district higher-ups were clearly right in their assumption.
“Where—?” Yeji croaks out after her eyes flutter open. “H-hyunjin?”
She sounds really hoarse and Hyunjin clamors to reach for a half empty bottle of water to give to her. “It’s me,” he tells his sister, doing his best to be reassuring even though his voice wavers pretty badly. “It’s Hyunjin.”
“Ryujin—” Yeji begins again after she finishes downing the contents of the bottle. “Jisoo, Yuna—”
“They’re safe, don’t worry,” Hyunjin informs her. “Seungmin managed to make contact with Chaeryeong. We don’t know much yet, but we’re figuring things out.”
“I lost them,” Yeji mumbles.
“And you found us,” Hyunjin counters. “You found me.” He feels strange when he reaches for Yeji’s hands. It feels as if the last time they were in the same room together, he wasn’t older than twelve. Guilt wracks him daily—after all, he escaped District 9 and left his sister; he gained a family with other strays, but for some reason he always thought Yeji had been left to fend for herself.
It gives him little comfort knowing now that she found herself a group on her own, at least.
“We have to find them,” Yeji insists quietly, her hands tightening their group around Hyunjin’s own. “Please, Hyunjin—”
“We will. I promise—but for now, you’re safe here,” Hyunjin smiles at her reassuringly, and Yeji actually returns it with a small smile of her own; maybe, despite years of being estranged, something can still be said about their blood connection. “You just have to trust us.”
Yeji closes her eyes, and takes a deep breath.
“Okay,” she whispers as she opens her eyes again. “Okay,” she repeats more clearly. “I trust you.”
Hyunjin exhales slowly; maybe, for now, this is all he needs.
ㄱㄱㄱ