Chapter Text
No more feeling, no more fingers to forget,
only infinite, bodiless ways I
could be on roads that will never again
console my need to run away for good.
- “Scatter,” Ryan Ram!!! Malli
Byun Baekhyun had always hated endings.
But one night, he decided to end it all. So he stood on the ledge and closed his eyes.
He took his last breath and leapt into the sky.
Many have said that it ends with a blinding flash.
But for him, life as he’d known it had ended with a jolt. He recalled feeling as if his body was pumped full of pain till it was rupturing at the seams. It hurt everywhere, like the world itself shattered. But the pain melted away soon, particle by particle, until there was no more feeling to be had; only a dreamless, lightless pocket of space. Just how he liked it. But his oblivion, which he expected would flow on and on to a forever nowhere, was being intruded most rudely.
Something solid kept hitting him from behind, over and over. Like somebody’s elbow trying to jolt him awake.
With an annoyed huff, he forced his eyes open.
Laid out before him was the view he was too used to seeing, he’d long since taken it for granted: the path leading to his private academy.
It was a scenic late summer afternoon, the sky a bronze cheek smeared with syrup, so it was around 4 PM—classes had just dismissed, and students, with written permission, were set free before yaja time. So just as usual the academy grounds were packed with snooty students in their snooty uniforms, their path paved with cobblestones and hedged by statues and manicured shrubs and trees—all enclosed in an arboretum. But everything seemed alien—scaled up and strangely distorted, like he’d shrunk to a diminutive size. The sinking sun’s rays pierced like shards of glass in his flesh...
Then, it only just occurred to him.
His body is not what it used to be. It became something wholly unfamiliar. It's plush and white with a red coat, and it's perched upon the black polyester of his school’s standard-issue backpack. He, along with the bag and its contents, bounced in time with whichever student was carrying them.
What the. Actual. Fuck.
He wanted to scream those words at the top of his lungs—if they’re still in his ribcage—but shock set in, numbing the entirety of his body and preventing him from even opening his mouth.
Him.
A cute little corgi plushie on a keychain.
He knew this, since he’d made sure to check. He'd carefully checked the fluffy contours of his stocky body, his dog’s paws, his tiny button nose, his foxlike ears, his wee limbs, and glimpsed all these in reflections from passing mirrors. He looked up (he could move, somehow. Thank fucking god—he’d go insane if he turned out to be stuck in the plushie variant of locked-in syndrome) and saw the metal ring on his head that attached him to the backpack’s zipper. Checking further confirmed that yes, he was stuck in this body, and would remain so for god knows how long (he didn’t want to know). He regretted checking.
What kind of bizarre dream is this?! It's too vivid, even, to be one. He keenly feels every sensation just like it had been when he was the boy known as Byun Baekhyun—the sweltering heat of summer, the fine dust of Seoul that subtly clogged everyone’s airways, the ever-shifting scents to be found on the streets. He must be at the brunt of some cosmic joke, as cruel as it was cutesy.
Eager to preoccupy his mind away from the existential horror of being turned into a technically inanimate object against his will, he thought about what kind of student must be carrying him. A girl, perhaps? It’s not like the guys he knew would want to get caught dead with a plushie keychain... or maybe it's still too early to conclude. So he’d quit overthinking and ride this out. By then, he’d probably be back in the oblivion he so wished for—and got, if he remembers things right—and finally find the peace he never had in life.
The student was walking towards a subway station, based on the roads they’d been passing by. Then, after scanning her T-Money card at the turnstiles and a dizzying run downstairs to the tracks, the student boarded the ever-punctual train by squeezing herself in, just like the dozens of other hurrying homebound commuters, like flies to cake. There were no unoccupied seats left so the student was left standing up, enduring being flush against the bodies of salarymen and yuppies and fellow students. Baekhyun felt like giving the seated ahjussis an earful for not offering a seat to his owner, the poor young miss.
And then, just like that, Baekhyun was confronted with the actual identity of his owner, who’d freed their arms from the backpack’s straps and turned it on its front.
It was Do Kyungsoo.
Baekhyun was only afforded a fleeting glimpse of him—hair, horn-rimmed glasses, nose, lips—before being abruptly squished against Kyungsoo’s chest, which mercifully smelled of fragrant fabric softener.
Do Kyungsoo, of all people, owned a plushie keychain, and had dangled it freely, god be damned, on his neat, no-nonsense backpack.
Who would’ve thought? This surely was information worth noting. Or maybe everyone apart from Baekhyun had known this all along, and he’d only been too mired in his own interests to care.
Out of all the backpacks his new unwanted body could’ve been attached to, why did it have to be Kyungsoo’s?! Baekhyun knew the guy, sure, but they didn’t hit it off that well…
To make matters worse, Kyungsoo lifted Baekhyun up from the tight confines between the bag and his chest with one hand, trailing his thumb against the plushie’s body and squeezing—gently, surprisingly. Baekhyun felt more flustered than he probably ever would in this weirdass limbo. But he kept his mouth shut as a keychain ought to, even as Kyungsoo squeezed and stroked him repetitively like a stress ball—though with none of the intensity usually given to the likes of that.
And then it was starting, just the slightest, to feel good because of how lulling it was, and it reminded Baekhyun of how his mother, back when she cared about him more obviously, would run her fingers through his hair until he fell asleep.
The trip didn’t take long. Kyungsoo got off the train and walked into Yeoksam Station. He suddenly paused in the middle of walking and peered down at Baekhyun.
“You’re looking a bit different, Mongryongie,” Kyungsoo mumbled, squinting through his glasses. “I don’t remember you having a mole at the corner of your mouth... and were your eyes ever this droopy?”
Mulling this over, Baekhyun supposed the keychain had taken his form somewhat. He wanted to ask to make sure, but he had the decency to hold back from making Kyungsoo go mad in such a crowded station. But considering Kyungsoo talks to keychains, there might not be much to lose to begin with.
Kyungsoo shook his head, presumably at this absurd situation. “I must be imagining things. My eyesight's never been the best, either...”
Kyungsoo righted his backpack once again and transferred to a shuttle bus that waded deep through the glitz of Gangnam-gu. Kyungsoo dropped off before a big, blatantly rich-people hospital. He entered and passed through its gleaming white halls confidently and with a sense of direction, then rode an elevator. He chose the top floor and stepped out to what seemed to be the VIP wing, which resembled a hotel interior with marble flooring and guards posted at every doors. So he’ll be visiting someone famous, like a celebrity?
Kyungsoo soon found the room he was looking for. The room’s guards asked for identification and he handed his student ID over. They allowed him in, probably because he was the patient’s immediate family, but he suddenly said that he’ll be back in a minute.
He walked towards the far end of the hall. There, he detached Baekhyun from the zipper and held him close to his chest, like a child does with a favorite toy. He was too old to do something like this, but Baekhyun found it kind of cute. It even warmed his heart a bit.
Kyungsoo started to pace up and down the hall, muttering to himself. “Should I really do this...”
Dying to know what’s up, Baekhyun was tempted to yell at him. Get it over with! Baekhyun didn’t, for obvious reasons.
Kyungsoo heaved a sigh. What could be weighing on him so heavily, he couldn't get into that room? Best not to dwell, Baekhyun thought, reminding himself that this guy was pretty much a stranger to him. Do Kyungsoo’s inner life is none of his business.
And then Kyungsoo threw his shoulders back and straightened his spine, as if touching the plushie was just what he needed to boost his will. He reattached Baekhyun to the zipper and at last, entered the VIP room.
In three seconds flat, Baekhyun badly wished he’d kept his eyes shut.
Before them was Baekhyun’s body, lying unconscious on the hospital bed. All sorts of drips and tubes were going into his body, a ventilator humming right next to him.
Shit.
Baekhyun’s nurse also asked Kyungsoo for identification, and accepted Kyungsoo’s student ID. Even as Baekhyun silently, desperately begged not to be left alone with this strange boy, the nurse promptly cleared out towards the adjacent relatives’ room to give them privacy.
Left alone together, Kyungsoo said,
“You know what, Byun Baekhyun? You’re by far the luckiest shithead I’ve ever known.”
Huh?
“Just as I suspected, your parents didn’t know who your friends were, and didn’t care to know,” Kyungsoo continued, walking until he stood right in front of Baekhyun’s bed. “So I’m here on the pretense of being a friend from school. Sorry. There’s no other way for me to get to you.”
Baekhyun was incredulous, but he could only let this scene unfold before him uninterrupted. Aside from seeing someone he’d hardly ever interacted words with being friendly with his out-of-it body, he had difficulty processing that he was now beholding himself from the outside.
It was, to put it mildly, extremely fucking weird.
Kyungsoo pulled a nearby chair closer to Baekhyun’s bed and sat primly on it, crossing his legs.
“No one thought you’d make it out alive after what you did,” Kyungsoo said, tone cordial and conversational as if Baekhyun had the capacity to respond. “It was four floors up, so it was approximately forty-five feet. But here you are. Your mom told me your chance of regaining consciousness is fifty-fifty, though.”
Fuck.
This can’t be. Baekhyun can’t ever wake up again. If he does, the only thing waiting for him would be hell.
The hell he thought he finally escaped.
Kyungsoo breathed out and relaxed, leaning back against his chair.
He continued.
“You have a traumatic brain injury. You also broke your neck, ribs, and your right arm, plus a skull fracture, a separated shoulder, and a severed liver, among other injuries. But your legs were spared, and even if you hurt your head, it’s not bad enough to turn you into a lifelong vegetable, which is nothing short of a medical miracle. But for reasons unknown to the doctors, you won’t wake up, even if your brain injury is mild. You’re not even in a minimally conscious state. Why is that?”
Maybe that’s the extent of Baekhyun’s spite, which powered him through the last few years before he got the courage to jump.
“Your real friends visited you many times before, but it’s been a month and they can’t take it anymore, I guess,” Kyungsoo said with a shrug. “If I were them, I'd also find it painful to see you like this. I’d eventually stop coming so I won’t lose hope too.”
Oh. His friends.
They didn’t enter Baekhyun’s mind until now. He’d made a habit of shutting thoughts of them down, along with thoughts of all that’s good in his life, so he’d be able to go through with his plan.
His plan that had massively failed.
“Right now, are you fighting for your life, Baekhyun-ssi?” Kyungsoo asked. “You know what, if I was in your place... I wouldn’t.”
He lifted his hand overhead and moved his fingers, as if to make sure they were still there. He had such long, slender fingers, though they were more rugged than Baekhyun’s.
A small smile spread on Kyungsoo’s lips, cryptic and almost impalpable. “...But this is a choice only you could make. Live and let live, as they say.”
Kyungsoo stood up and walked towards Baekhyun himself. Kyungsoo’s hand drifted down on the bed, stopping short of touching Baekhyun’s own.
Baekhyun’s hands were in pristine condition, unlike the rest of his wasting, ruined body. The fingers were pure and unbroken with not a single nail or cuticle cracked.
Those hands had always been Baekhyun’s defining feature.
He was less a person, and more a pair of skillful hands.
Pianist Byun Baekhyun.
Kyungsoo spoke again.
“Contrary to what you might’ve been thinking right before you jumped, you have a bright future ahead of you. Piece of advice: just live it out as happily as possible. Sooner than later, it’ll be over before you know it. That’s always the case when you’re too happy, am I right? So happy that spacetime itself can barely contain you and everything slips away so fast?”
What the hell is this guy rambling about?!
He doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about. He doesn’t know what it’s like to look down a top floor ledge, and imagine walking off of it. Every night and day.
Baekhyun bet this guy had never even come close.
“What am I saying?” Kyungsoo asked no one in particular, chuckling. “God... I have nothing better to do than giving a person in a coma advice he didn’t ask for, and won’t even hear. Funny, huh.”
He rose to his feet, lifting his bag and plushie-Baekhyun along with it.
“I better get going. If you’re actually conscious as we speak and have heard every dumb thing I said, again, I’m sorry.”
Kyungsoo courteously bowed to Baekhyun’s half-dead body and made his way out.
Good thing he left as fast as he could. Plushie-Baekhyun would have probably reanimated his human form by sheer force of will to beat Kyungsoo senseless.
Nobody has the right to lecture Baekhyun. Nobody.
Exiting the hospital, Kyungsoo walked to Gunja Station and rode the subway back to the academy for yaja time, which should last until 10 PM. Once he arrived, the library was already full, so he opted for the study hall instead.
Taking an unoccupied seat at the back, he brought out his books and notebooks and studied, insusceptible to the fidgeting, whining, sleeping, note-passing, and paper-airplane-throwing done by bored schoolmates nearby.
The dinner bell rang at 7 PM and only then did Kyungsoo’s eyes leave the pages. After a pleasant supper surrounded by classmates he’s chummy with, he resumed studying with them.
He left the study hall by 11 PM sharp, when most of the students, even the most studious ones, had already left an hour ago. The lights were shut off the moment he stepped out of the foyer.
He walked to the station, his murky path edged by lampposts and the signages of after-hours restaurants and cafés. The following subway ride was taking a lot longer, so Baekhyun assumed that Kyungsoo’s going home for real this time.
So Baekhyun, the lucky shithead in question, is still alive.
As of now Baekhyun wouldn’t be able to do anything about that, and it’s not like there are any escape routes in sight for his soul. He hoped the nurses in the hospital would criminally neglect him so his soul could finally pass on. A shame he’d failed to look up the likelihood of death from bedsores on Naver. But bedsore-related complications are bound to happen to a longtime coma patient anyway, so not all hope is lost!
This might all be funny to you. Not for Baekhyun, though. He found out for himself that situations like this are only hilarious to onlookers, who are watching from within the safety of their own bodies. He would never again laugh at people who got transformed, no matter how cute the thing they transformed into. This plushie existence just felt like a fucking bitch.
He neither wanted to ponder how a plushie keychain’s everyday existence will go, nor dwell on Kyungsoo’s crazed monologuing in the VIP room, so Baekhyun looked back on the sole significant encounter he had with that Do Kyungsoo.
It was back in freshman year. Baekhyun had taken to playing the baby grand piano in a deserted classroom on the fourth floor. He didn’t want to go home yet, eager to avoid the heat that made him sweat through his clothes, his insufferable piano teacher, his parents’ check-ins from opposite sides of the globe, and his life as a whole.
He didn’t play any pieces from the standard repertoire. He played for sheer personal indulgence, likely out of a casual misguided attempt to chase the pleasure he used to feel from playing.
After months on end of being unaccompanied, a voice started singing along to his tunes.
It was gold. Like molten gold.
It was a voice that could have only come from someone brimming with warmth. Baekhyun was beside himself with wonder—that some of it was trickling his way, to the sound of his own notes.
Never had he heard a voice of the likes of it. It was engulfing, like something that's too good to have.
He wanted to keep it for himself.
So he gave his playing all he got.
At first, he exclusively played pop songs out of consideration for his very own unseen singer. And then, tentatively, delicately, he’d play snatches of the songs he’d composed in secret.
The singer, undaunted, tried flowing along with them too, scatting scatteredly before he added words—ones he penned himself, no doubt, because Baekhyun, not one usually impartial to the written word, found himself liking them.
He stopped skipping school and attended everyday just to lap up whatever the singer entrusted to him in the span of a single hour: consistently the only duration in which that person would sing before cutting it short.
Almost every afternoon they did this impromptu jam session until their parts fit right in, melding so seamlessly it was hard to tell where Baekhyun ended and his singer began.
Of course, Baekhyun had to break the spell—he’s stupid that way. The singer so far hadn’t attempted to formally meet up or make his identity known to his accompanist, so Baekhyun knew at once that he was a shy one, if not outright ashamed of the idea of being found out.
So Baekhyun took it upon himself to see who this person was once and for all, partly out of mischief—as his admittedly unprincipled personal motto went, what good is fruit if it’s not forbidden? And mostly because it would only be another couple of years before they part ways, assuming this person was the same year level as him. He wouldn’t dare let a voice like that go. Not for the world.
Not a stranger to underhanded means, he tricked the singer into thinking he was still pounding the keys himself, and, knowing that the singing was coming directly above the room he was using, he burst onto the right spot right away, eager to grab his coveted voice by the throat.
Maybe it was the summer. Looking back, Baekhyun would say it was most certainly the summer—its heady heat a roiling haze over his thoughts, deluding him into thinking everything was his to take.
It was easier to swallow than the alternative: that his heart, unprompted, unprovoked, had a troublesome longing: to have something of its own to keep, even if nothing in this world can be kept.
Baekhyun dashed up the stairs, practically tumbling through the door onto the rooftop, and there he was.
A boy his age, just as Baekhyun expected. The same uniform, the same white socks, the same school-issued slippers. The boy, who'd been leaning against the fence, was shocked into stopping his singing.
This was expected, yet Baekhyun could scarcely believe his eyes.
His mystery singer was someone he’d always known from afar.
Standing on podiums, called up on stages, tacked on the bulletin boards, singled out in every mind-numbing assembly and entrance ceremony; it had always been that way since elementary school.
Not a foot or a hand out of place. It was none other than Do Kyungsoo: honor student, student council secretary, extracurricular extraordinaire, and everyone’s favorite upstanding citizen. In short, someone Byun Baekhyun would never, ever be associated with.
Baekhyun had only ever heard Do Kyungsoo’s voice making valedictorian and campaign speeches, sometimes scolding hooligans in the halls. You don’t say! Some discovery, this was. Baekhyun was far more pleased than what was permissible, knowing it came at the expense of Do Kyungsoo’s dignity.
The first thing Baekhyun noticed about Do Kyungsoo were his eyes, which now betrayed what he felt the moment Baekhyun burst onto the rooftop: shame, pure and simple. Flushing instantly from head to toe, Do Kyungsoo hauled his backpack to pour out as fast as humanly possible, the deceptive tune from below acting like an obnoxious background music to that fiasco.
Blocking the doorway, Baekhyun abruptly grabbed Do Kyungsoo’s wrist. It worked like magic.
Do Kyungsoo froze just like the female leads in those dramas that Baekhyun wouldn’t admit to watching. Baekhyun had Do Kyungsoo on lock. Baekhyun stopped himself from cackling like a nefarious villain just in time.
“What do you want...” Do Kyungsoo said, the warmth now missing from his voice. He was missing his eyeglasses, and damn if his direct gaze didn't make Baekhyun’s blood run cold.
Behind him lay the sky. It seemed like a pitfall, waiting for Baekhyun to trip and tumble.
“Er...” Baekhyun muttered, kicking himself in the ass for not being as smooth as he liked. “Your voice. I want it.”
Shit, that was a bit much.
I want it.
Really, Baekhyun?
But Baekhyun truly did, so badly, he couldn’t help but be blunt and ask for it—
Suddenly, Do Kyungsoo’s wrist wasn’t in his grip anymore.
Baekhyun had let up involuntarily. For some reason he feared for his life, which he only ever treated with reckless disregard until then. Do Kyungsoo wasn’t touching him at all but he felt pinned by his wrists, unable to move in the slightest as Do Kyungsoo stared into his eyes, not saying a word.
A death threat would’ve been comforting at this point, but he received no such response. Baekhyun could always be counted on to coax things out of others—pardons, favors, treats, and sometimes even genuinely sincere pledges. But from this boy, he got absolutely none, and there was nothing more dreadful than this deep, dark pit he'd never see the bottom of.
He let Do Kyungsoo depart without a word. He looked at the endless sky where a fine line of gold was beginning to seep.
He remained on the rooftop, the loudness of Do Kyungsoo’s stare still ringing in his ears, only just processing that he’d let something he might seek for the rest of his life pass him by.
Simple as that—he let it get away from him.
He was known to have claws that fiercely seized anything he could possibly want. But this time, just this once, he didn’t pursue what he wanted, for reasons unknown even to him.
He went home by himself that afternoon. It was so cold it’s almost as if he was freezing into nothing, unheeding of the heady heat and gold of the summer.
It would end anyway. It's not his to keep.
He returned the next day to the deserted classroom with the baby grand and played the same old tunes they’ve made, hoping just a little that Do Kyungsoo had changed his mind, that the last rays of summer had wound their way into his icy heart.
And yet, no voice of molten gold flowed out from the rooftop to accompany Baekhyun after the opening notes. Baekhyun returned and did the same thing the next day, and the day after that, and then the next, to no avail. The first semester came to a close and the luster of summer was lost in the blusters of fall.
Do Kyungsoo never again returned to the rooftop.
Months passed and seasons changed and Baekhyun had all but forgotten the encounter since the campus was quite big, giving them allowance to avoid running into each other in the halls—they belonged in opposite wings as well—and most of all, his every waking thought was consumed by the competition that would decide what would become of his life from thereon: the International Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians.
He passed the qualifying round. He passed the first round as well, but barely passed the second due to a scandalous blunder. He made it into the finals only to place fourth prize, that dreaded number, that sign of glowing mediocrity, that guaranteed bait for the world’s most careful backhanded compliments. A few weeks later, the rooftop incident happened, and so on and so forth.
This final situation of him as a possessed plushie keychain was so wretched, he couldn’t have come up with it on his own. But maybe he was only, as the academy’s guidance counselor termed it, catastrophizing, due to the combined stresses that piled on him today without warning.
If this was punishment for trying to terminate his life on his own terms, he decided that maybe it wasn’t so awful. He wasn’t suffering as much now, mainly because there were no expectations from him other than to be innocuous and adorable.
In this manner, he could also hear Kyungsoo’s voice as much as he pleased—not too bad a bone thrown his way! And he’d be cute forever (if that could even count as consolation), just as he was in life!
But in all seriousness, he wanted to cry. Even if he never ever cries. But having real tears flowing from a plushie's button eyes is absurd even for his own tastes. So he swallowed the pain and made it pool in his mouth like blood. If he topped it off with a grin, it would be Byun Baekhyun all over again, the crimson a sheen over his teeth, glittering bright like nobody's business.
Thirty-or-so minutes later, the creepily empty train crawled to its last leg and only then did Kyungsoo get off, blissful in his ignorance, as the automated voice announced that this is the last stop of Seoul Subway Line 7. They were way up north in Jangam Station in Gyeonggi-do—a station Baekhyun had never even reached as he wasn’t much for hiking.
Kyungsoo’s day was not over yet, it seemed. He walked for a couple of minutes through dark, deserted streets to a bus station, rode a blue bus where there were only a couple of other passengers, and arrived at the only establishment still open around the place, situated at the second level of a commercial building—a hagwon. Breaking the law against holding classes this late, expectedly. Of course he’d be the type to go to a hagwon—what did Baekhyun expect?
The subject the hagwon specialized in was mathematics, which Baekhyun hated, but he couldn’t just tune out the droning of the teacher as there’s nothing else for him to focus on: he’d be frightfully conspicuous if he whipped out a smartphone to play games in it, and that would just about do in the last of these cram school students’ mental stabilities.
Unlike Baekhyun, Kyungsoo attentively hung on to the teacher’s every word. He took down notes and solved problem sets, never once looking tired or dying of boredom—how he managed, it was beyond Baekhyun—as if he didn’t tell Baekhyun’s unconscious body that he’d want to be in its place—what a splendid actor!
When the study sessions were over, long past the 22:00 curfew, Kyungsoo walked home. It wasn’t too far away from the hagwon, the respectable suburb he lived in.
He took out his own set of keys and unlocked the door of the big, posh dream-come-true-house, where a single light was left on for him. He got into the dark foyer and removed his loafers, replacing them with indoor slippers. It was three in the morning so nobody was up to welcome him. All the lights inside the roomy single-family home were killed.
He walked with a practiced silence down the shadowy halls, climbed the stairs, and entered his room. He opted for switching on the desk lamp on his study table rather than the fixture on the ceiling. By the light of that lamp, Baekhyun could see what Kyungsoo’s room looked like.
It was nondescript and filled with bookshelves—a far cry from Baekhyun’s, which was plastered all over with pictures and posters of The Great Composers he’d defaced with his friends—and the books were all variations of study guides and civil engineering shit, those things the size of phonebooks. The trophies, medals, and certificates he attained over the years were down in the living room, that’s for sure, as families like Kyungsoo’s bragged like their lives depended on it.
Setting down his backpack, Kyungsoo loosened his tie, stretched his limbs, and, stepping out of his indoor slippers, peeled off his socks. He opened his closet for a fresh set of clothes, and left to take a shower. And when he returned smelling of peaches with a late-night premade dinner in his hands, he didn’t collapse into bed like Baekhyun would’ve done after eating, moaning loudly about how lucky he was to keep his sanity after being harried, while making a furious snow angel on the sheets—Kyungsoo's above that kind of nonsense, duh. So Kyungsoo pulled out the chair by the table at the other end of his room and as he ate, he continued to study far beyond school hours late into the night.
He didn’t tap syncopated beats on the table like an antsy drum major or spin any of his pens, as Baekhyun tends to do when forcing himself through dull lessons in a textbook. And most of all, Kyungsoo didn’t hum, much less sing. He gave off no indication that he had a luscious singing voice, or could even sing—neither a glint nor a flicker fell from his lips.
He was just so deeply immersed in the books he was reading and the mock test questions he was practicing with. But if his monologue in the ICU was to be believed, he only had a great degree of self-control, and he was sick of this shit as any non-robot would be.
It was no wonder why this guy wanted to reach the end of the line. He’d been screwed out of happiness by design. He was meant for a joyless existence after passing the Suneung with flying colors just as planned. Baekhyun himself would have ended it long ago. And to think that nearly all the students in this country were plagued with the same problem, going over the same endless study guides and arriving home in the exact same godforsaken hours... yep, no wonder indeed!
Baekhyun’s own former life as a student in the academy’s music department wasn’t to die for, either, but it was comparatively nice... he’d take it over the crushing tedium that was an aspiring STEM major’s routine. Was this some doubtlessly evil deity’s way of telling Baekhyun that he had it good? That he had it so much better than this boy ever will?!
Swallowing down his exasperation—Baekhyun wasn’t very keen on passive-aggressive methods to relay such a simple message—Baekhyun settled for watching Kyungsoo contemplatively instead as Kyungsoo burned the midnight oil. It’s not everyday that Baekhyun would get to see another person’s everyday life from start to finish, so he decided to appreciate this peek, no, more like a panoramic view, into Kyungsoo’s crammed schedule.
Baekhyun was a chatterbox with a chronic inability to sit still so he was extremely close to reaching his limit from not talking and hardly moving all day. But this would be the last opportunity of this kind he’d ever get!
This was devious of him. He’d never been known as an angel, but he’d certainly stooped into a new low. He had to make up for it in some way.
So when Kyungsoo—finally, thank god!—was dead to the world, cheek flush against the pages of an opened book, Baekhyun didn’t snoop around in Kyungsoo's room to seek out the dirty laundry in his spotless veneer, or try to find where he stored his porn stash despite a strong curiosity to find out if a model student like him would have something like that in his possession. Baekhyun wouldn’t appreciate that one bit if it was done to him, that’s why.
Baekhyun unhooked his metal ring from the zipper. It was shocking that he was able to move at all. But he tried not to freak out because being freaked out by yourself is not a livable state to be in for the long run. He detached himself and pulled off, with much effort, the blanket on the bed. Baekhyun thought it illogical and impossible but his new body had a bit of strength. He just doesn’t know where it came from, and is too afraid to dwell on it.
He doesn’t want to know more of the madness that made him possible.
Baekhyun succeeded with his task, but god was it hard to do. He had to scale up the length of Kyungsoo’s chair while weighed down by the blanket he’d knotted around his neck. He slid down and fell a few times but got the hang of it soon enough because Baekhyun was supposed to be clever, not klutzy. He learned to grip with his paws and tiny limbs and how to navigate the disorientingly zoomed-in world as a small object.
Little did he know that being designed for the sake of cuteness was appallingly impractical. Nothing should have to be cute for others’ shallow enjoyment! This shit should be illegal, no kidding.
Baekhyun slid down the chair once he’d completed his purpose, which was warming Kyungsoo for the night. He stepped back and admired the sight: Kyungsoo dozing off over his desk, the blanket wrapped around his narrow shoulders. That would keep him warm and let him sleep tight, all right...
Lost in thought, Baekhyun had an idea. Maybe the first thing he’d do once his body wakes up, if he didn’t get killed by his parents first, would be to write and publish a tell-all on the difficulties of being a plushie keychain. That would get those cruel toy manufacturers and the depraved folks who patronize their poor little products to stop!
His new body neither needs rest or sleep. He doesn’t even feel human, with all of its accompanying aches and functions now gone. But his soul had aged decades from this day alone. So after he reattaching himself on the zipper of his owner’s backpack, he shut his eyes and forced himself to rest, in hopes of recovering from this day. If that’s even possible.