#41: The God Gene (part 2)

Continuity: Right after the previous drabble
Kyungsoo, Lay and Xiumin centric
Warning for swearing and discussion of death

I’ve been wanting to bring this up for a while, but I keep seeing people subscribe to this story and yet I’ve had the same 12 people commenting on the updates for months now. It’s at the point where I click on the subscriber link and see names I’ve never even noticed before, or when I click to see who’s subscribing to my new stories I see that these people are also subscribed to AWE and I had no idea they even existed. I have (at the time I’m writing this) 460 subscribers and 554 comments—but I know that there are people who have been subscribed from the beginning and never said a word to me and I can guess that a third of those subscribed to this story have never left even one review. Now I don’t expect everyone to comment on every single chapter, especially those of you who are coming across this story only now and are reading 40+ chapters at once—that’s just crazy. But I’d like to see some unfamiliar usernames in the comments every now and then. I’m starting to think there’s only about 20 people who are actively reading this story and that’s kind of depressing.

I try to reply to comments when I have the time, but don’t think that because I didn’t reply to you I didn’t see your comment. The input from my readers means a lot to me as a writer, sometimes I can’t figure out what to write next and a comment will inspire me to write the next update.

Well that's it, back to your angsty drabble!

Lay had always been a very calm person, and Chen had often by saying that Lay doesn’t have the energy to get worked up about anything—his name sounded a lot like the Southern pronunciation of the word “tired”—and even going so far as to tease that Lay was too tired to even think most days. He certainly did seem to have his head in the clouds more often than not, and they sometimes had to call his name several times before he answered.

Lately though, Lay had been getting even more spacy. Everyone noticed it, even if they hadn’t called him out on it. It seemed to have happened around the same time that Chanyeol had come out of the woods with a kitten cradled in his arms. He said that Lay had found it, however once Lay had come out of the woods (a long time after) he had denied any knowledge of the kitten’s whereabouts. In fact he refused to look at the creature for more than five seconds at a time, which was almost comical because the kitten seemed determined to follow him. Baekhyun had even asked if Lay was afraid of cats, but that had never seemed to be the case.

Not long after this behavior started Lay exploded—or exploded relative to his normal behavior—for seemingly no reason. The twelve of them were sitting by the side of the road for a lunch break. Lay seemed to be in a daze, and when Xiumin called his name a few times he stood up, knocking his bag off his lap, and glared at everyone.

“Don’t call me that,” he demanded through clenched teeth.

“Don’t call you what?” Suho asked. “Your name?”

“My name is Yixing!” He yelled, whirling on Suho. “I don’t know who Lay is, I’ve never known who Lay is and I don’t want to be Lay anymore!” Then he crumpled to the floor, his head in his hands, and started to cry.

Lu Han was the first to react, getting up and going over to comfort him. “Do you want us to call you Yixing?” He asked. After a nod from their fallen companion, Lu Han went on to say “Alright, then we’ll call you Yixing.”

It took some getting used to, every now and then someone would forget and start to say ‘Lay,’ and they’d instantly correct themselves. But even the change in his name didn’t seem to make Yixing feel any better. He had dark circles under his eyes and was even more distracted, and he seemed to be losing weight. Kyungsoo had half a mind to corner Yixing and demand to know what was wrong with him, since it seemed like nobody else was going to call him out on his weird behavior, but he never got a chance.

After about a month of the onset of the odd behavior the twelve of them stopped for a long rest in an old apartment building and on the very first night as Kyungsoo was walking down the hall to his room, Yixing ran up out of nowhere and yanked him into an abandoned room. Kyungsoo was no stranger to being snuck up on—he was very easy to surprise now that his gift had been blocked and he wasn’t supersensitive to vibrations in the ground—but he didn’t appreciate being manhandled into a room without any notice.

“What the heck is the matter with you?” Kyungsoo demanded when Yixing released him. He didn’t get an answer right away as Yixing turned around and locked the door. “What did you do that for?” Kyungsoo yelped.

“I don’t want anyone coming in,” Yixing explained in a small voice. His shoulders were a little hunched and he kept his head down. He looked so upset that Kyungsoo instantly forgave him for essentially kidnapping him on his way to bed. “I’m not sure if I should tell you this,” Yixing began, twisting his fingers into his shirt, “But I thought that maybe you could sympathize with me, since you know what…what death feels like…” Kyungsoo gasped in shock but was ignored. “And I know we’ve…never been especially close but I think we’re really not so different and you seem like you won’t judge me or hate me for what I did…and I really don’t want to tell Suho or Kris, I don’t really want to tell anyone but I can’t—I just can’t keep it to myself anymore, it’s driving me crazy…”

“Yixing!” Kyungsoo cried, “Your rambling is scaring me! what on earth are you talking about?”

Yixing swallowed nervously. “Maybe you should sit down…”

So Kyungsoo huffed and walked into the apartment, taking a seat on the worn-out couch. “Now just talk to me,” he pleaded as Yixing sat next to him, his perched on the very end of the couch. “Whatever it is I promise I won’t judge you or be upset.”

Yixing laughed hollowly. “You say that now,” he said bitterly, “You don’t know what kind of a monster I am.”

Kyungsoo gasped. “Yixing!” He scolded, “Don’t say that about yourself!”

Yixing didn’t seem to hear him. He doubled over, his face buried in his knees. “I’m really scared, Kyungsoo…” he whimpered. “I don’t know how I did it but I…” He sat up and looked at Kyungsoo with tears in his eyes. “That kitten, the one that Chanyeol came back with,” he said in a strained tone, “Um…I did find her but…but she was dead when I found her.”

Kyungsoo’s mind went blank. “What?”

Yixing stood up and began to pace. “I was lying down,” he said, talking very quickly, “I was trying to feel for signs of life and I got a faint feeling, and then it disappeared and I chased after it and I found the kitten and…and she had just died, she was so thin and dirty and I was so upset because if I had gotten there sooner I could have saved her, and I picked her up and I hugged her and then after a while I felt her heart start to beat again! But that shouldn’t have happened, she was absolutely one hundred percent dead there’s no way her heart just randomly started again…it was me, I know it was. I brought her back to life and there’s no way I should have even been strong enough to do it never mind that I just broke the most fundamental law of Healing and that’s that you should NEVER EVER bring a creature of choice back to life…Kyungsoo say something!!”

Kyungsoo was startled out of his daze. “Well you were talking too fast for me to say anything!” He exploded, and Yixing flinched away from him. “I’m sorry,” Kyungsoo said immediately, using a softer tone. “I’m not mad at you. Yixing, come sit down, okay?” Yixing obeyed but only hesitantly, and once he was seated Kyungsoo took his hands. “Now I want you to be honest with me,” he said firmly, keeping calm even though his head was spinning, “Did you pick up that kitten’s body with the intention of bringing her back to life?”

Yixing shook his head, his eyes wide with fright. “No way!” he shouted. “I’ve never even thought about doing something like that, I never imagined…” he trailed off and his eyes seemed to get even wider. “I didn’t…I didn’t mean to…”

“Exactly,” Kyungsoo said quickly, realizing that the first thing he needed to do was get Yixing to calm down. “You had no intention of bringing this animal back to life, so technically you didn’t break any laws. It was an accident.”

“But it still happened because of me,” Yixing muttered. “I did something unnatural, immoral even…”

“It’s a kitten for the Tree’s sake!” Kyungsoo almost snapped. “And it was only a few seconds dead, doctors bring back people who have been dead longer than that. In my town there was a man who was pulled out of the water after he’d been under for five minutes, and a doctor brought him back to life!”

“Dead is dead,” Yixing snapped.

“Clearly not,” Kyungsoo retorted, “Or else we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

That seemed to strike a chord. “You’re right,” Yixing said.

“I am?”

“Yes,” Yixing breathed. “Maybe death is curable…at a certain point at least. That kitten…her body was fine, if she’d been eating properly she wouldn’t have died, and I…I did something that restored her body to a healthy state. Maybe what I did…maybe I didn’t so much reverse her death as I did prevent it.”

Kyungsoo was confused. “So what, you can reverse time now?”

“No,” Yixing muttered. “I can prevent death. I mean, I can cure horrible diseases, I even brought my mother back from the brink of death…no, I prevented my mother’s death! Death is preventable up to a certain point after all. We prevent death with medicine and food and water and rest. I’m not talking about people who have been dead for days, not to the point where their body has already begin to decay, I think that’s the point where I would be reversing time. But if it’s only been a few minutes…” He trailed off, looking thoughtful.

After a moment of silence, Kyungsoo started to talk again. “Okay, you seem to have worked that out. I’m not sure what you mean but if it works for you, great. Just…don’t go digging up corpses and testing that out, okay? In fact just…don’t touch anymore dead things until we figure this out.”

Yixing gave Kyungsoo a shocked look. “But I’ve touched dead things before!” He said. “I’ve come across dead animals as late as five years ago and this didn’t happen!”

The wheels began to turn in Kyungsoo’s head once more. “So are you saying that this is a recent development?” Yixing nodded, and only then did Kyungsoo begin to really get worried. “So basically what happened,” he said slowly, trying to keep calm, “Is that you got stronger without even knowing it? To the point where this ability of yours to prevent death even after it’s happened just made itself known without you even trying?!”

Yixing looked shocked once again. “Oh, well when you put it like that…”

Kyungsoo jumped up. “You have to tell Suho.”

“No way!” Yixing screamed, grabbing Kyungsoo’s arm and yanking him back down. “He’s with Tao and Kris right now, there’s no way I’m interrupting that!”

“You think this isn’t important?!” Kyungsoo cried. “What if it’s happened to all of us?!”

“We don’t know that!” Yixing said. “We don’t even know if there’s anything to tell him! Maybe I’ve actually been able to do this all along, it’s not like I ever tried—”

“You just said you weren’t trying!”

“I wasn’t! but maybe it was a combination of stress and emotions and I subconsciously stopped repressing myself—”

“We need to test this out,” Kyungsoo interrupted. “We need to see if we’ve actually gotten stronger.” Yixing looked at him expectantly and Kyungsoo almost slapped him. “Not me you dummy, I don’t have my gift right now!”

“So who are you going to ask?” Yixing demanded. “Everybody’s coupled off!”

Kyungsoo rolled his eyes. “Nice of you to remember Xiumin.”

Yixing had the decency to blush. “Oh…yeah. But um…you explain this to him. I’m not…I can’t.”

Kyungsoo sighed but went off by himself to fetch their older friend. After he told Xiumin what Yixing had done and managed to get out some convoluted summary of what Yixing had said about preventing death, Xiumin seemed not to be freaked out by the idea. It was only after Kyungsoo explained his own realization of their strengthening power that Xiumin leapt up off his bed with wide eyes and gasped that they needed to tell someone. The Kyungsoo had to hold him back and tell him that Yixing thought they should test the theory first, and Xiumin looked a little incredulous but agreed to be their guinea pig, so Kyungsoo proceeded to drag him up to the room that Yixing had previously herded him into.

When Kyungsoo and Xiumin walked in Yixing actually started to cry and asked Xiumin if he thought he was a monster. Kyungsoo realized that this was probably going to happen each time they told the story and resigned himself to having to watch Yixing suffer because of what he’d done. Even if he could justify it, there was after all, no guarantee that everyone would see it his way and until Yixing had absolute proof that his brothers didn’t hate him, he would be convinced that they did. Of course Xiumin did not think Yixing was a monster and told him so, wrapping Yixing up in a hug until he stopped crying. It was hard to watch and Kyungsoo knew it wasn’t half what Yixing must have felt.

Once Yixing calmed down though, it was time to start their test.

“So what should I do?” Xiumin asked.

“Freeze something?” Kyungsoo suggested.

“Like what?” Xiumin snorted. “Everything in here is pretty easy to freeze.”

“So freeze the whole room!” Yixing cried, his voice still thick with tears. Xiumin paused to make him blow his nose before he answered.

“I’m not freezing the whole room, I’ll kill us,” he said bluntly. “You don’t want all the moisture out of the air at once. Don’t you know how my gift works?”

“Not exactly,” Yixing mumbled.

Xiumin sighed. “I’m not like Suho, I can freeze the water in the air but…like I can’t make a snowball in my palm. I have to start with a shape, to make a snowball I’d basically have to freeze one molecule at a time until I have a shape, and that’s just too small of a scale to work with.” He put his fingertips to a lamp and as Kyungsoo and Yixing watched, a film of frost formed over it. “What I just did was freeze the water in the air around the lamp, and it was easy because I had a shape to work with, something I could visualize freezing. Now to create frost, I pretty much have to pull water from the air and freeze it, and again it helps to have a shape to focus on so that I don’t pull water from just anywhere in the room. Do you remember when I first started learning to use my gift, sometimes it would snow on my head? That’s because I wasn’t focusing on where the water was coming from. And I can’t concentrate enough water in the air to make a large mass of ice. Suho can make a large mass of water, but he has it easier because he’s not converting that water to a different state.”

Kyungsoo’s head was spinning from all this explanation of the physical and moral limitations on gifts, but he understood. It was the same for him, he could move earth but he had touch it in order to do so. He could send tremors out in the ground and make an earthquake—as long as his body remained in contact with the ground. And he could move a large boulder, but if he pushed it down a hill then once it left his grasp he had no control over it. But maybe if he was more powerful, that could change…and suddenly Kyungsoo knew how to test Xiumin’s gift.

He ran to their window and looked out. The sun was getting low in the sky, but it wasn’t quite sunset yet. There was a line of trees about twenty yards away, and one of the trees was bare and craggy looking. Kyungsoo gestured Xiumin over and pointed to the tree. “Freeze that tree,” he commanded.

Xiumin laughed at him. “Are you nuts? I can’t freeze something I can’t touch!”

“That you know of,” Kyungsoo amended. “Have you tried lately?”

Xiumin opened his mouth, closed it and then scowled. “Alright fine,” he muttered. “But I really don’t think I can.” He stared out the window, focusing intently on the tree. His knuckles  went white as he gripped the window sill, his forehead pressed against the glass. After only a few minutes, Kyungsoo noticed that the tree was beginning to sparkle, and he realized that it was frost reflecting in the sunlight. He clapped a hand to his mouth to muffle his gasp of surprise, and he blinked and suddenly the tree was covered in a thick layer of ice. Kyungsoo slowly turned his head and saw Xiumin staring dumbstruck out the window, his jaw hanging open.

“Well,” Yixing said weakly. “I guess Kyungsoo was right, we are super powerful.”

Xiumin backed away from the window. “I need to go out there,” he said weakly, and then he bolted from the room, Kyungsoo and Yixing hot on his heels.

When they got outside Xiumin approached the tree slowly, as though afraid it would come to life and attack him. “This is incredible,” he breathed. “I’ve never made a frost that thick before…not even on something I could touch.” He pressed his palm against the frozen tree and after a few seconds his eyes went wide and he leapt back with a scream.

“What?!” Kyungsoo yelped as he and Yixing jumped.

Xiumin had his hands clasped over his mouth, and it was a moment before he pulled them away. “I-it’s frozen solid,” he stammered. “I froze it completely through…I’ve never, ever done that before! Not on this kind of scale!”

“You barely even broke a sweat,” Yixing gasped. “Xiumin, once you got started…I mean that was really fast!”

“I think I froze it from the inside first,” Xiumin said wonderingly. “I knew I was doing something but I couldn’t see it, so I focused even more and that’s when it froze on the outside too…” Xiumin looked toward the other trees, and his gaze narrowed. As Kyungsoo and Yixing watched in awe, he froze ten trees in a span of about a minute, one after the other. “They aren’t frozen through,” he muttered when he was done. “But even so…”

“That’s ing insane,” Kyungsoo blurted. “There’s no way you could have done that before.”

The three of them lapsed into a stunned silence for a good ten minutes before Kyungsoo finally turned to Yixing. “So,” he said haughtily, “Now can we go tell Kris and Suho about this?”