Forceps clamped around the creature’s squirming body as its captor’s gleaming eyes moved closer. “Steady, my pretty,” he murmured, groping for another set of tweezers. Carefully closing the piercing tips around the edge of the wing, he yanked sharply.

Pain receptors set on fire as the insect’s writhing doubled. It flailed its legs, each movement only making the throbbing worse, but there was no other outlet, having no vocal cords. Though it couldn’t comprehend the sudden loss of its wing, its brain hurried to release endorphins to soothe the pain, but there was nothing it could do to for its fear. Even the simplest of animals can comprehend fear.

“It won’t hurt for long,” the scientist assured the insect as he set it aside and placed the membranous wing on a microscope slide. Clipping it into the microscope, he focused the lenses and peered down at it.

“Beautiful.” He gazed at the iridescent appendage with an awe akin to reverence. “Made of tissue mere micrometers thick, developed from the gills of primitive insects, capable of speeds up to forty-five miles per hour.” He stared down at the staggering creature, a smile ghosting his lips. “It’s a pity you can’t appreciate what an exquisite creature you are.”

“Yesung?” The scientist turned, the sinister expression vanishing from his face as he replaced it with a smile. “You’re staying late?”

“Yes, I will be here for a little longer,” Yesung replied. “I need to finish up a few experiments.”

His colleague merely nodded. “Don’t forget to lock up.”

“Of course not,” Yesung replied. The moment the other man vanished from view, Yesung turned back to the microscope.

“Exquisite,” he repeated, changing the objective to a higher magnification and peering down at the wing again. “How fortunate…to be gifted with such a remarkable tool.”

Unbeknownst to him, the “exquisite creature” had staggered towards a window he’d left open, hoping to escape the pain and terror of this strange and foreign world. It struggled to balance itself with only three wings and climbed onto the ledge of the window with difficulty. It spread its wings out, catching the gentle breeze wafting through the window. Flapping once, it pushed off with its legs.

And it fell.

“How do you feel?” asked the doctor he was so used to seeing by now, the tall one with the gentle smile and the white coat. Dr. Han was the name stitched on his pocket, but he insisted that everyone to call him Hangeng. He began every check up each morning with that exact same question: “How do you feel?”

Ryeowook raised his shoulders and let them drop again. He didn’t like answering, because he knew that Hangeng was expecting him to say, “Fine.” Everyone always said they were fine, even if Ryeowook had heard them crying themselves to sleep the night before or cursing at God when they thought no one was around to hear. They always lied, painting on a smiling façade whenever the friendly doctor came around. Ryeowook didn’t like to lie; his mother always told him lying was one of the worst things he could do.

But the alternative to lying would be telling the truth. And that was worse. It meant admitting that he was homesick and lonely. It meant telling Hangeng that he wanted to go outside and run around and play with his friends when he knew it couldn’t happen. It meant hearing Hangeng say the same empty six words that were his default response to any impossible request: “We’ll see what we can do.”

So Ryeowook made his lips curve upwards as he faced the doctor. “Fine,” he said. “I feel fine.”

Hangeng’s fingers prodded at his spine and Ryeowook felt the sudden urge to hum and swing his legs back and forth, the way he always did when he was younger and impatient with the doctor. His mother, watching from the hallway, gave him a stern look as if she’d read his mind and he almost smiled. Mom, you don’t need to do that…

Because now his legs just dangled over the edge of the examination table. One of the nice nurses- what was his name? Ryeowook couldn’t remember- had had to wheel him to the room and lift him onto the table. “It’s because you’re still recovering.” Ryeowook knew bull when he heard it.

He erased the thought quickly. Swearing wasn’t a nice thing to do either.

Today was supposed to be the day Hangeng made his final call on the decision of whether or not Ryeowook would ever walk again. The doctor picked up a reflex hammer from the counter and lightly tapped Ryeowook’s knees, just below the kneecap. Instead of kicking forward like they were supposed to, his legs just hung there. 

Picking up a file, Hangeng turned and headed into the hallway. Leaning forward and craning his neck, Ryeowook caught a glimpse of his mother clasping her hands together hopefully, his father’s arm around her shoulders. He could make out Hangeng pointing at something in his files and shaking his head apologetically.

And when his mother burst in tears, Ryeowook found that he couldn’t join in. He’d already known it, known that anyone whose spine was torqued the way his had been didn’t have an ice cube’s hope in Hell of walking again. Maybe he was only twelve-years-old, but he knew his body better than any so-called medical expert with some fancy piece of paper did. His tears were gone. He was done mourning.

His parents now entered the room and his mother threw her arms around him, still sobbing, while his father squeezed his shoulder, the tightness of his grip conveying his grief. Ryeowook felt a flash of irritation- what did they have to be so upset about? What right did they have to cry?

He resisted the urge to squirm away. Even if he could, he couldn’t run. Perhaps that was the worst part: the inability to be alone.

As he wiped off the objectives and pulled the cover over the microscope, Yesung finally noticed that the dragonfly was missing. He felt a twinge of regret; it would have been nice if the creature had stuck around longer for some more experiments.

But then again, it was just as well, he reasoned. A dragonfly with a missing wing might raise questions, and that just wouldn’t do. He discarded the slide in the broken glass bin. 

Pausing at his desk to pick up his laptop and notebooks, Yesung glanced up at the framed diploma resting on his bookshelf, with his name printed across it in fancy script. He’d received his Ph.D. in genetics, and specifically in stem cell research. The piece of paper was proof of his knowledge in that field, but it wasn’t his interest at all. Sure, stem cells did have some useful applications, like in cancer therapy or cloning, but where was the interest in staring at plates of cells and treating them with nearly invisible volumes of chemicals? Perhaps it was amazing that a single fertilized egg could develop into a full human being, but what abilities were humans capable of when compared to the Insecta class? The microscopic muscles of a bee could beat up to three hundred times per second. The millions of delicate scales on a butterfly’s wings could endure harsh winds to travel distances that exhausted humans riding in airplanes. Even the little fruit fly with its short life span could achieve flight, a feat humans would never do more than marvel at.

But insect flight was not a popular topic in science. To earn funding, one had to switch to fields that studied more mainstream topics. For now, his secret passion would have to remain a secret. One day, he thought, people would understand. And then they’d take back his nickname they’d given him: Cloud Prince, because his head was always miles above the ground.

Yesung switched off the lights and locked the door behind him. As he walked out of the building, heading for his car, he failed to notice the crushed dragonfly lying on the sidewalk, one wing twitching pathetically in the wind.

Six weeks. Forty-two days, one-thousand and eight hours, sixty-thousand four hundred eighty minutes. No matter how Ryeowook looked at it, it was an awfully long time to be trapped in bed.

None of it had been fun in the least. Not the ambulance ride, not the first stay in the hospitals with doctors and nurses running around as he floated into and out of consciousness. Especially not his stay in this…rehab center or whatever its official name was, where experts dropped by daily to run tests on him. X-rays, CT-scans, MRIs- he knew the inside of the machines and how it felt to lie motionless and trapped better than any of them did.

The worst was probably observing the other patients around him, watching their emotions evolve from anger and denial to depression and resignation at the hopelessness of their case and knowing, understanding, that the same would happen to him. The daily tests, the attempted exercises that the physical therapists tried on him, everything ended with a hushed discussion with Dr. Han- Hangeng- of which he could hear nothing. It didn’t matter; these grown-ups were crap at keeping the emotions off their faces. With each passing day, he knew with increasing certainty that his paralysis was complete. There was no chance of even slight recovery, like the doctors had been hoping for.

Worst of all, he’d missed most of his summer vacation. Instead of the daily soccer and baseball games he’d planned with his friends, he’d spent it all indoors, staring out the window at cloudless skies and green fields beginning to dry in the hot sun. Perfect for sports. Not that he could ever play them again.

“Ryeowook, guess what? You have a visitor.” The nice nurse who took care of him when Hangeng wasn’t around- Zhou Mi. His name was Zhou Mi!- smiled and helped Ryeowook sit up, propping some pillows behind him to keep him upright.

“Hey, champ. How’s it going?”

“Sungmin!” Ryeowook’s face broke into a smile as his older cousin approached. Sungmin ruffled Ryeowook's hair before taking a seat beside the bed.

“So, what’d that old quack say about your back?” Sungmin asked.

Ryeowook giggled. “He’s not that old!” He sniggered again before adding more somberly, “He says I can’t walk again.” It felt strange repeating the news to his cousin, like he was detached from the situation. He might as well have been talking about the patient next door.

Sungmin snorted, “What does he know?” and Ryeowook instantly felt better. “Don’t worry about what he says. He’s just a guy wearing a lab coat. He has no say in what you can or can’t really do.”

But through his cousin’s smile, Ryeowook saw something else: guilt. Sungmin was trying to reassure himself as much as he was attempting to comfort Ryeowook.

The twelve-year-old suddenly felt very old, like he was the one sitting in the chair and Sungmin was the one in bed. He felt the urge to say something that would erase the guilt from his cousin’s face. So he grinned broadly and lied again, for the second time that day. “Yeah, you’re right. He’s just an old guy who doesn’t know anything.”

And when Sungmin smiled, Ryeowook felt his mood lighten slightly as well. Because Sungmin was never supposed to be anything but a cool older brother figure for Ryeowook to look up to. He wanted to see confidence on his cousin’s face; he needed Sungmin to be a reassuring and strong presence. No weakness, no guilt, no pain.

Even if it was his fault.

Yesung was flying.

He spread his arms out, lining them right along his thin, scaly wings, and dipped one arm slightly towards the right. Instantly, his body responded, rolling over in midair before righting itself again.

Droplets of water struck his face as he zipped up into the clouds, but he didn’t mind. The images before his eyes were fractured into dozens of tiny pieces, but his vision wasn’t hindered at all. In fact, it was enhanced by his antennae as they tested the air and tasted the weather. It was going to be a beautiful day. He could feel it.

He stopped flapping his wings for a moment and just hovered in the air. For a brief moment, he hung still. Then a warm updraft rushed under his wings, lifting him higher, higher, higher into the sky. The turquoise of the atmosphere looked so close, he felt that he could just stretch his arms right out and touch it. And so he tried, reaching his fingertips for that elusive blue, even though he knew he couldn’t touch it. But who was there to judge? He was alone, thousands of miles above the ground. It was peaceful and quiet, save for the ecstatic beating of his heart.

He folded his wings and plummeted towards the ground.

Down he fell, accelerating more and more as he went. What was that physics equation for speed again? The acceleration of a free falling object was nine-point-eight meters per second-squared, he was falling nine-point-eight meters per second faster with each passing second; at this rate he’d splat on the ground and there wouldn’t be enough of him to scrap off the sidewalk, but he didn’t care, he just kept falling faster, faster, faster-

His wings shot out just as his hair grazed the ground, and up he flew. An exhilarated laugh burst from his lips and he did a little celebratory flip.

The sun was warm on his back, heating up his wings. He landed down on the ground with barely a rustle and lay sprawled on his stomach for a moment, basking in the warmth of the sunlight. How wonderful it was, he thought, to be able to fly.

A part of him knew that this was only a dream, but he ignored that part. For now, in the moments before he woke up, he would grasp onto his dream and hold it tightly.

Ryeowook was drowning.

Just moments ago, everything had been going perfectly. He and Sungmin had checked each other’s scuba gear and found no problems. After helping each other suit up, they’d made the hundred foot dive to explore a local underwater cave. As Sungmin admired the rock formations and the scenery, Ryeowook stayed outside and played with the aquatic creatures that had stopped by to check out this curious new species of fish.

It wasn’t his first time scuba diving. In fact, he’d been certified several months ago. Naturally, Sungmin had briefed him on all the potential dangers again before they’d made their descent. His cousin was overprotective that way.

The weather was beautiful and the seas were calm. It was the perfect day for diving. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

So of course, something did.

A sudden rush of water, an underwater current caught him up like a ball of scrap paper, slamming him into the wall of the cave. He grunted in pain, his back throbbing. As he glanced down, his eyes widened in horror as something plummeted quickly to the ocean floor. His oxygen tank.

He had to get to the surface. Without thinking, he dropped his weights and began rocketing upwards.

It hurt to kick. He stretched his arms up, heading for the surface, clawing at the water as he was propelled straight up by his vest. He knew he was supposed to ascend slowly, that speeding through zones of different gas pressures could be dangerous, but he didn’t care. All he wanted was the get to the surface; he needed air, he needed air, airairairair-

Some force on his back lifted him up the rest of the way as he tore his mask off and gasped in a breath. That force continued to lift him up, past the surface, high above the water-

“Ryeowook? Ryeowook!” He opened his eyes groggily to find Zhou Mi shaking his shoulder. “Are you alright? You were tossing and whimpering in your sleep.”

"I’m fine,” Ryeowook mumbled in embarrassment.

Zhou Mi smiled sympathetically and pushed the boy’s sweaty bangs off his forehead. “Bad dream again?”

“No!” Ryeowook said a little too quickly.

The nurse just nodded in understanding. “Well then, if you don’t mind, may I just sit here with you for a while? I wanted to read for a little bit.”

Ryeowook nodded and Zhou Mi settled into the chair beside him, pulling out a small paperback. Ignoring the concerned way the nurse was watching him over the top of the pages, Ryeowook’s mind went back to his dream.

No, not his dream. His accident.

As he’d lain in the boat, gasping for air, he’d felt a tingling in his chest and especially in his back. Every breath he’d taken had been painful, like his lungs were being squeezed outside his body. In fact, he hadn’t felt like he was the one in the situation. He’d felt strangely disconnected from his body, especially his legs, which were like dead weights.

Sungmin had called for help and the Coast Guard had rushed him to the hospital. Doctors had told him he had something called “the bends,” a term that he was familiar with from scuba training.

Decompression sickness, occurring when an ascent was made too quickly. Nitrogen bubbles had formed in his bloodstream and tissues, due to the differences in gas pressure.

They’d sealed him in a recompression chamber to equalize the pressure in his blood. And that’s when they’d noticed his fractured spine, which had gone unnoticed in light of the more pressing issue.

They’d speculated that his oxygen tank hadn’t been strapped on properly, causing it to come loose when the ocean current had slammed him into the cave. Sungmin’s guilty look upon hearing that haunted some of his dreams as well; though Ryeowook’s parents insisted it wasn’t Sungmin’s fault, they all knew that it was.

Usually, his nightmare ended moments before he’d reached the surface, allowing him to live those moments of desperation over and over again. The pain in his back, the aching of his lungs, the hot tears running down his face as he wondered if he’d ever reached the top, which was just so far away…

In his nightmares, he never made it.

But tonight had been different. Tonight, something had helped him out of the water, carrying him high above the sea. For the brief moment before he’d been shaken awake, he’d been floating in air, not in water.

He turned his head towards the nurse by his side and the motion instantly drew Zhou Mi’s attention. “Are you alright?”

“Zhou Mi?” Ryeowook asked hesitantly. “Can people fly?”