They were forced to stop well before reaching the prison proper, the car wheels squealing in protest as Jongdae slammed on the brakes to avoid the blockade of emergency vehicles. The giant boiling column of smoke from the prison had been visible the moment they’d left the police station, and the black cloud had only grown as they’d driven closer. Other police officers responding to the dispatcher’s call climbed out of their cars alongside Jongdae and Kyungsoo, shielding their eyes with hands or hats to protect them from the gritty, ash-laden wind blown from the conflagration. Jongdae let out a forlorn cry and ran to the blockade.

“Where are the survivors?” he pleaded, latching onto one of the firefighters. “My dongsaeng, where’s my brother?”

The firefighter gently peeled his coat out of his grip. “The whole place went up in seconds,” he said, pitching his voice loud enough that the growing crowd of responders could hear. “It’s too hot for us get any closer. We called in the airborne helitankers, but until they arrive, there’s nothing we can do.” Lowering his voice, he turned back to Jongdae. “We don’t expect any survivors. I’m sorry.”

Jongdae sagged to his knees, his face frozen in horror, one hand reaching out toward the prison, burning fiercely in the distance. Kyungsoo tried to step towards him, but his foot slid in the opposite direction, toward the blockade, toward the prison. Bewildered, he looked down as his feet took another step toward the mountain of flame and smoke, then another, unbidden, as if invisible hooks were buried in his flesh and the fisherman was reeling him in. No, not unbidden, Kyungsoo realized. Deep down, past consciousness and thought, he wanted to run into that fire. He needed to. Kyungsoo moved forward another step, feet dragging as his rational mind frantically battled whatever suicidal instincts were pulling him towards the fire.

Yeol. The name hit with a flash of clarity was like a blow to the chest, making his breath catch in his throat and his heart stutter painfully. It’s not the fire pulling me in. Yeol is in there.

Another step, two, three, and then he was running, no longer fighting the powerful pull. No-one could have survived this, rational Kyungsoo tried to reason with himself. He spun and dodged a firefighter who tried to tackle him, and slid over the hood of one of the cars forming the edge of the blockade. Even the firefighters couldn’t get inside, logical Kyungsoo screeched as he pelted toward the prison, legs pumping, the conflagration’s searing heat already pressing against his skin. This is suicide! sane Kyungsoo frothed, as he entered the outer parking lot, ash-choked air clogging his nose and throat, his clothes began to scorch. He hit the prison’s outer gate like a cannonball, smoking and blackened with soot. The steel gate tore like paper and Kyungsoo barrelled on, charging through door after door, trying to outrun the flames at his clothes as he ripped through the prison’s outer shell.

The tiny hooks that guided him spun him around as he crashed through the heavy reinforced barrier leading to the main cell block, and he skidded to a stop. Yeol was curled into a tiny ball just inside the entrance, charred and tattered, practically invisible. Kyungsoo didn’t take time to marvel at the luck of finding one unmoving person in the vast hellscape of the burning prison. With a banshee howl that was equal parts overwhelming triumph and excruciating pain, he slung Yeol over his back in a fireman’s carry and charged back the way he had come.

Kyungsoo didn’t stop running when he reached the outer door of the prison, emerging from the dark corridors boiling with caustic smoke into the scalding atmosphere thick with noxious combustion byproducts. Instead he drove himself towards the blockade, towards coolness and rest and sweet, sweet air. He out before they made it out of the parking lot. When he came to himself again, he was lying in the middle of the road, black ooze dribbling from his mouth, spasming as his lungs seized from the poisons he’d inhaled, the prison crumbling to its death in the distance. Every inch of his skin screamed with torment, and his fingers scrabbled at his eyes, trying to claw out the pools of acid eating into his skull. Shadows fell over him, voices shouted meaningless words, and a sharp sting in the crook of his arm blossomed into cool, insistent wave, washing him away from his body and into a sea of silence.

— 

Thought returned slowly, awareness trickling into the cool void where Kyungsoo floated. The slow, rhythmic whoosh of air into his lungs pulled him closer to consciousness, breath by breath. Soft warbles of medical equipment filtered into the void, and his eyes cracked open painfully, feeling gritty and swollen. He gagged on the tube in his throat, coughing a few times before the reflex settled and he could breathe normally again. His eyes watered even adjusting to the practically lightless room, but remembering the horrible pain from before, being able to see at all flooded him with relief. He wiggled his fingers and toes experimentally, and, when not assaulted by waves of pain, he cautiously raised one hand from the pillowy surface it was resting on and waved it slowly in front of his face. His hands were red and cracked with what looked like the worst case of sunburn ever, and gauze covered the rest of his arms. He gingerly touched his face, and found it lightly wrapped with gauze as well. A bit of judicious probing around the top of his head revealed that his hair was nearly 3cm shorter and crispy, but, thankfully, his hairline was otherwise intact.

Kyungsoo relaxed and laid unmoving for several long minutes, maybe even hours, luxuriating in the sensation of being alive. Finally, though, he had had enough of the intubation tube and he thumbed the nurse’s call button. The woman materialized with near instantaneous speed, swooping into the room and peering at the chart hanging from the foot of the bed with a penlight.

“Aigoo,” she cooed, leaning over one side of the bed to the other as she checked the instruments, filling Kyungsoo’s nose with the mild, sweet scent of talcum powder. “Kyungsoo, pabo, you’re a brave, lucky idiot. Let’s get this tube out.”

After few terrible seconds that felt like drowning, the nurse pulled the tube free of Kyungsoo’s throat, and he indulged himself in a bout of forceful, throat clearing coughs. The angel-nurse tipped a straw into his mouth, and Kyungsoo drained the cup of water dry without taking a breath, exhaling with satisfaction as he leaned back into the pillows. The nurse adjusted a few dials on his IV, and fished his chart from the holder at the foot of the bed.

“How…long,” Kyungsoo croaked at her after a few tries, his voice rusty.

The nurse looked up from the notes she was scribbling in his chart. “Most of the day,” she informed him, her tone calm and reassuring. “It’s just a few minutes before midnight.”

“My…friend?” Despite the calming effects of whatever was in the IV, a bit of panic crept into his voice. He dimly remembered carrying someone through the prison, but logical Kyungsoo was back, nagging about excellent possibility that he’d risked his life to rescue a corpse.

The nurse finished her notes, and re-shelved the chart with a light clatter. “That boy was alive when he got here, and that’s all thanks to you. When the doctor does his rounds in the morning, you can ask him all the details. But now, you sleep.”

The nurse breezed out of the room without a second glance, even though Kyungsoo was itching to interrogate her about Yeol. He toyed with the idea of pressing the button to call her back, but the IV drugs were excellent and stronger than his willpower. He drifted off between one moment and the next into a dreamless sleep.

Kyungsoo didn’t remember talking to the doctor that came by in the early morning shift, but the nurse who did the mid-morning checks appeared with a wheelchair, so whatever blurry ramblings he’d been able to string together had been coherent enough to win him a visit to Yeol’s room. Standing up and sitting down, even with a fresh dose of morphine, was an ordeal Kyungsoo wished he didn’t have to repeat. If he hadn’t been desperate to see Yeol’s condition for himself, he would’ve ordered the nurse to knock him out with whatever was handy and put him back in bed. The wheelchair jaunt was laughably brief; Yeol was only two rooms away. The nurse wheeled him past the uniformed guard at the door and parked him at the arsonist’s bedside, promising to come back when he rang.

Kyungsoo surveyed the person he’d literally gone to hell and back for, and tsked to himself silently. Cleaned up and laid out, Yeol looked even worse than Kyungsoo remembered. His skin, wherever visible underneath the thin hospital gown, was mottled black and purple, and bandages swathed his head and bulked around his ribcage. Plaster encased one leg and both arms from fingers to shoulder, and Kyungsoo snorted in disgust at the silver handcuff linking the wrist of one cast to the bed rail. Yeol’s hair was darker than its normal coppery shade and singed at the ends, but, unlike Kyungsoo, that was the extent of the damage done by the fire. There were no burns, no blisters, no other sign that he’d nearly burned to death. Kyungsoo had come expecting to see a barbecued inmate, but instead Yeol was only battered, and lightly fried.

He stayed by Yeol’s bedside for the rest of the day, shedding a few silent tears as he stood vigil for Yoondae. His best friend’s dedication to protecting Yeol had cost him his life; he wasn’t going to let that sacrifice go to waste. With Yeol outside of the prison’s security and vulnerable, this was a perfect time for another attempt on his life. When the nurse returned in the evening to take him back to his room, he went without complaint. When she left, he climbed out of the bed on his own, wincing and cursing at the pain it caused his burns. Handicapped by stiffness and fear of overexertion, he hobbled between his room and Yeol’s during the guard’s bathroom break, dragging his tower of liquid relief. His appearance in the corridor earned a disapproving hiss from the nurse on duty, but she didn’t try to stop him, nor did she inform the guard of the unauthorized entry in his absence.

Kyungsoo propped himself up awkwardly in the visitor’s sofa in Yeol’s room and settled in for a long uncomfortable night. He had just started to doze off when the soft sound of the door sliding open jolted him awake. A hurried glance at the clock above the bed showed that it wasn’t yet time for the nurse’s rounds, but the shadowy figure that entered the room headed straight for Yeol’s bed. Light glinted off of a syringe in the intruder’s hand, and Kyungsoo, attempting to leap across the room and tackle him, tumbled from the couch to the floor, bringing his own IV stand crashing to the ground with enough clatter to wake the dead. The intruder bolted from the room, dropping the syringe in his haste.

The nurses rushed in a few moments later. They exclaimed in horror over the syringe of air Kyungsoo retrieved from the floor, knowing the air bubble would’ve caused a sudden death if it had been injected into an artery. The head nurse explained, in the midst of profuse apologies, that they’d been called away to assist another ICU patient who’d inexplicably started having seizures. The timing, as well as the complete disappearance of the guard, confirmed Kyungsoo’s suspicion that the hospital was not a safe place for Yeol to be. There was no telling what lengths this mysterious grudge-holder would go to to kill the arsonist, and a ward full of medical staff was not the place to mount a defense. They could be injured if they got in the way of another murder attempt, or, for the right price, they could turn into assassins themselves, like the guard. Without backup, staying here was gambling with Yeol’s life.