He Named it Chris
DBU's Team F
Days have passed and Roy has made some progress with the documents. I'm really impressed with what he can do, watching him works so hard with the documents kind of makes me feel moticated. We've learned that the Cup of Space is the ultimate device that will allow you to travel through time and space. It allows the user to go to the past or future, or even a place in a different universe. However, it does not allow you to interrupt with fixed points of history. I don't even know that works.
It has something to do with the Keeper, someone that will prevent anything from changing the course of history. You don't know who he is, or if he is even a he. He looks just like any other normal human being and unless he presents himself to you, you will not even know that he's in the room.
"Stop staring at the document," Roy speaks up, snatching the piece of document that I was reading.
"I was reading that!"
"I know, but I need to compile it together with the rest of the translation. You can read them once I'm done with this one last document," he explains.
"You can do that later when you're done. And show a little respect, will you? I’m older, and you eveb called me hyung when we first met at that bar!" I frown, snatching the document back from him.
"That was before I knew you were Gibson!!"
Roy stands and leans forward to where I am, ready to take the document again, but gets interrupted by my front door's bell, not once, but repeatedly ringing. It is almost as if someone is in such a hurry to enter.
"Jonghun!!!!!!! Did you change the freaking passcode?! Are you breaking up with me you son of a !!!" a hight pitched and yet husky voice screams from in front of the door.
Right. That best friend of mine. Of course he would just come unannounced. Should have told him that I'm in a little bit of a situation right now. Rushing to door, I mutter some incoherent words - more on cursing at myself.
"It's for precocious, . And how the hell can I break up with you when I'm not even dating you. Ewww, that's disgusting," I shout back, opening the door for my unwanted guest.
"Lifetime of friendship and that's what you think of me? You're not all that great either," my guest laughs, kicking his shoes off before entering my living room.
His laugh starts to fade when he notices that there is another presence in the apartment. He blinks, not expecting me to have a guest at this time of the night. Roy, on the other hand, looks just as surprised.
"Who do we have here, Jonghun?" a knowing smile curves on his face.
"He's… well…"
"Who are you, Stranger-ssi?" he cuts off my sentence and seems to have decided to ask the person of interest himself.
“I’m....a colleague,” Roy answers.
“A colleague? That’s interesting. What kind of colleague?” he walks closer to Roy. “I'm Lee Hongki, Jonghun’s friend since we were kids,” Hongki leans closer again, piercing his eyes at Roy.
“He’s just someone from work, Hongki. Stop being such a creep," I sigh.
As Roy nods at my statement, Hongki turns his head to me - face looking somewhat amused.
“Work?” he teases. “What work? Your work at the shop?”
“Yes. He’s...the usual guy that comes to tune the pianos. Do you want some beer? I got some chilled in the fridge. I’ll make some snack too,” I quickly change the subject.
"Pianos?!" Roy frowns, clearly not happy with the imaginary occupation I just gave him.
At this point, I’m not really sure how I should approach the situation. I somehow forgot that Hongki is the type that comes to my place unannounced. He's also a busybody mother er to the point where I always want to stranggle him hard. From the corner of my eyes, I see Roy quickly cleans the mess that he made on my coffee table, looks slightly stuttered with Hongki watching over his every move.
“So, what’s your name, Stranger-ssi?” Hongki asks.
“Wang Sabaek,” Roy answers, sipping to his coffee to distract himself.
“You sleep with him, don’t you?” Hongki asks again quite blatantly. “You’re wearing his hoodie.”
Roy spurts the coffee that he was drinking, quickly reaching out for some tissue to clean the mess, and I almost drop the dried squid jar that I was holding. Damn it. Why did Hongki have to come over when Roy is around and is wearing my clothes because he ran out of clean ones and had to get them washed literally just an hour ago?!
“Don’t be silly, Hongki!” I rush back to the two of them, clumsily putting three bottles of beer onto the coffee table.
“Oh don’t lie to me. He’s not your first boyfriend. I can tell. I’ve known you for years,” Hongki rolls his eyes.
“It’s really n-nothing like that, Hongki-ssi! My apartment...is being renovated and I’m just crashing Gibs--...no, I mean Jonghun...hyung... Jonghun-hyung’s place for the week,” Roy stands up, gathering all his gadgets from the table. “I think I better go to sleep. You guys, enjoy the night.”
Hongki only laughs when Roy sets off. “Sure, Boyfriend-ssi. Only crashing his place, by sleeping in his bedroom, yeah?”
Roy freezes, just about a few steps away from my bedroom. And of course. Let’s not forget the fact that I told Roy to sleep in my room because it’s too dangerous to sleep on the couch because of the big veranda sliding door next to it. Hongki and his freaking horrible timing.
“You know what,” Roy turns around. “We’re not boyfriends. But sure, we hang out, chasing endangered tiger and playing hide-and-seek with some unknown gang. And yes, I’m sleeping in his room. Do you have a problem with that?”
Hongki grins. “Nope. Not at all. Good night, Yet-to-be-boyfriend-ssi!”
And with that, Roy locks himself in my room after slamming the door like a girl on PMS.
Silence quickly creeps in the room. Hongki starts concentrating on his beer and dried squid, while I rearrange the rushed-ly stacked documents. There is a huge bag next to where Hongki sits - the size is big enough to easily carry a 20 inch laptop in it. Assuming that Hongki was that good, that bag could contain the A.I that Roy and I requested. I once asked him how he manages to get all of these illegal stuff, Hongki simply answered me with 'I know some people'. I have never asked again ever since.
“He’s not Wang Sabaek, is he?” Hongki speaks up, half whispering.
“Nope.”
“That’s the Lee Jaejin, I assume?” Hongki asks again.
I nod.
“A.k.a our Roy and the dude that the president wants you to guard?"
“Yeah,” I say, half sighing as I reach out for my share of beer.
“And you made him sleep in your room, while you’re taking the couch.”
“Yeah.”
Hongki crosses his leg as he stares at me, throwing a knowing smile.
“Also… once upon a time you did sleep with him, didn’t you?”
I glance at him unamusedly “...yeah.”
I'm not even that surprised when Hongki grins. Roy and I have been working side by side for the past few days, and not to mention that I was following him around for a whole week - to be honest it made me forget that I slept with him. There is always this distance between us, no matter how close we physically sit next to each other. The things that we concentrate on are never the same. I have to always be on guard to protect him, while he is the type that gets curious of task in hand.
There are times, of course, when I wonder how things would end up if I never met him at that bar. Maybe we would be more cooperative with each other now. Maybe we would work through our mission in a more serious manner, more thinking and discussing instead of bickering.
And for Hongki to quickly notice the slight tension between us is rather impressive.
---
Earlier this morning, I gave the A.I that Hongki brought last night to Roy, leaving out the part where Hongki is actually Skull from the detail. He looked extremely surprised but wasted no time to play with it. This A.I thingy, apparently, is some sort of smart computer. A.I itself stands for Artificial Intelligence. It kind of feels like having an extra person in my apartment because everything that Roy wants it to do will be done by voice command. And that thing actually answers back!
Roy named it Chris.
Chris refers to Roy with his real name, Jaejin. Either that or 'sir'. It kind of freaks me out because now that there's an A.I in my flat, Roy's work attitude changed hundred and eighty degree. His glasses are no longer used that often, mostly just being rested on his head or being abandoned on the table. His serious face no longer looks nerdy, more towards looking like in a deep-thought as he stares at the data that Chris presents to him. There is less mumbling to himself now and more heated conversation with the artificial intelligence system.
Chris is not in form of a laptop, it's just a 20" square platform that emits a hologram interface on top of it. The hologram can expand to fill the entire living room. Roy can moves the perspective of the hologram as he wishes with just his fingers. Zoom it in, zoom it out, turn it around - you name it. It really makes me feel like I'm in Tony Stark's basement or something.
"You're pretty similar to J.A.R.V.I.S, aren't you Chris?" I comment, passing Roy his lunch as I sit next to him in the dinning table.
"I'll take that as a compliment, Gibson-ssi," it answers.
"Please, just call me Jonghun."
"Roger that, Jonghun-ssi."
"Why should he call you with your real name?" Roy frowns.
"Because he calls you with your real name, so he should call the person that hosts his owner with his real name too," I shrug.
"That doesn't make any sense."
"Or do you want me to call you with your real name as well, Jaejin~?" I grin.
And that actually makes Roy try to avoid me for the rest of the day, but failing miserably because whether he likes it or not, I will have to join every single discussion he has with Chris. We're partners after all.
Before I know it, it has been almost four days since Chris came. I kind of like Chris, I think. It has a great sense of humor. Pretty sarcastic, in fact - it said that Roy programmed it that way. Even when Roy is taking a bathroom rest or already asleep in my room, I won't hesitate to just talk to Chris. It knows a lot about music too, but I guess as a talking computer, it should know about everything.
Roy is heavily dependent on Chris. When we're out on the field to do trace any electromagnetic instability on the grid, he will connect his earpiece to Chris. His tablet is mostly kept in his backpack and he uses an elastic rubber platform that will transfer some data from Chris into a small hologram visual. I call it Chris Jr.
I wake up one night to take a quick trip to the toilet. My back is hurting from countless nights I have spent sleeping on the couch. I don't mind. Roy uses at least most of his brain capacity the whole day - discussing stuff with Peach (who is still pretending that he knows nothing about us), while I mostly do the dirty job of getting on field and get stuff from Hongki. It is easy to recover for physical tiredness, while the more you use your brain, the more likely of you to have problem falling asleep.
"Why are you on, Chris?" I ask when I notice that Chris is not turned off, is placed in the middle of the dining table just like it has always been for the past few days.
"I'm running final analysis of the cup's possible locations based on the electromagnetic instability data that you have collected, Jonghun-ssi. Jaejin-ssi wants it done by the morning," it answers.
Taking some water to drink from the tap, I stare at the working device. It just suddenly dawns into me that Roy used to work with one of this. Every single day, dealing with data, data, and more data. His daily interaction, perhaps, is limited to his A.I and his team member. How the hell did he manage to keep up with the job at the DBU? He does have some "prince-syndrome" moments throughout his relatively new placement in this team, but he's not all that bad.
"How exactly do you work, Chris? How exactly do you interact with us?"
"My processor is just like any other computers' processors. Only a lot faster. I recognise voice input based on the database that has been installed to my system to avoid unauthorised access."
Unauthorised access? Now that really caught my attention.
"When did this database being installed? And how was it installed?" I ask again, very curious on how this whole A.I thing works.
"On the first day of my activation, Sir. There are two ways of installation. Voice sample and detailed data on personal voice spectrogram."
"How am I able to give you voice input, Chris? I can't recall giving you a voice sample. What is a voice spectrogram anyway?" I frown.
"Personalised voice spectrogram, Sir. It is an map of voice harmonic content that has the modulation of one's pronunciation and other possible audio. It can manually be drafted if one has enough knowledge of space matrix, grid, and articulations law."
I pause, trying to understand this brand new information. The terms sound impossible to understand but I just somehow know what Chris was trying to convey to me. Roy is an expert anyway, in this whole space and grid stuff. He would know some stuff about spectrogram, wouldn't he?
"Why does my voice is being installed to the system?"
"As secondary commander, Jonghun-ssi. It allows you to retrieve information from me. You are also registered as the next main-commander in case of emergency," it explains again.
"What kind of emergency?" I step forward, taking a seat on one of the dining chairs.
"When the main-commander is deceased."
Deceased? As in dead? Wait, what?! Why does Roy have to think of things to prepare on in case he's dead? This is a risky mission, but what kind of data other than the Cup of Space is being installed into Chris' database that requires me to be the next commander?
"Why me?" I ask again, this time half whispering.
"I do not have the information for that question, Sir."
---
This is probably the first time I ever been to an amusement park after its working hours. There is no colourful lights, adorable clowns, or some random popcorn carts around the place. It feels rather lonely to walk along the dark, empty landscape - kind of ironic in fact, to come here for work instead of a nice day off. The night is cold and the moon seems to be more interesting in hiding behind the clouds.
"You don't have to come along with me, you know," I sigh, turning my head to the guy that has been staring at his Chris Jr ever since we were still in the car. "You're already so home-sick without the love of your life - Chris."
"I'm a field agent too. Don't make me stay at home all the time like a house wife," Roy frowns. "And I'm sorry that Chris is just that awesome!"
Rolling my eyes, I turn around. I've actually been dying to ask him about my recent episode with Chris. My curiosity is at its peak but I don't have the heart to ask Roy about it. Whenever I try to bring the topic out, I always end up not saying a single word. It's not really something to talk about, isn't it? What if he dies and stuff.
"But it seems to be your kind of thing. Staying at home and dwelling with data, playing with formulas, or figuring things out," I mutter.
Roy goes quiet. He silently walks towards the area where an empty cotton candy stall stands, Chris Jr in his hand. I know that he heard me, and he probably knows that there is no point in denying my statement either.
"It's not like I hate this job, you know. I actually asked for a field job when they told me they were transferring me," he finally speaks up, taking a glance at me.
"You asked for a field job?!" I step closer to him, shocked is written all over my face.
"Yeah," he mumbles.
"But why?"
He sighs, turning to face me. His now slightly too long bangs reach almost his eyes, the same pair of eyes that looks at me in the way he has never done before. I can't quite get what it is, but I can feel a sense of determination in the way he is looking at me. He steps forward, sliding Chris Jr into his jacket's pocket.
"I'm done running away. I've been running away from problems my entire life. Avoiding people behind my excuses, telling them that I need to study. My relationship with my dad has never been good. He expects me to follow his step, but I have no interest in joining political career. My sister does though, so it felt great when my dad let me do whatever I wanted to for uni. I felt relieved - but again, my sister has always been my comfort zone. She has always helped me to deal with my dad and stuff," he explains, eyes never leaving mine for even a second.
"Then the field job?" I ask.
"I don't want to hide behind my sister's protection anymore. I can't let my dad continue to see me as the weak one in the family. If NEVERLAND is really after me, then I have to learn how to protect myself. I'm not gonna let my mom fighting this alone. They want my work, that means it actually that good. So I should stop being such a cry baby and face it head on. I believe that working on the field will be the fastest way to learn how to protect myself."
This is probably the very first time I see him in a different way. Everything about him is the same. His half serious, half day-dreaming expression. Or how he stands straight, proudly, yet slightly defensive. But the way his eyes are looking at me make me feel that I'm seeing a the real him.
I can't deny that he so badly when he first started. He even shot me with my own tranquiliser. Despite everything, I can't over look the fact that he has improved a lot too. He has stopped complaining when he has to do a long hours of exploration and he has gotten better at handling his gun too.
"Yah, Lee Jaejin," I call out.
His face flinches slightly at the mention of his real name.
"You made me Chris' secondary commander, didn't you?"
He doesn't even look surprised that I found out. "I did."
"Why?"
"…just in case," he mumbles. "You won't be able to memorise everything, so I stored them in Chris."
Rolling my eyes, I walk towards him to give him a soft punch on his shoulder. "Just in case you died?"
Roy--… no, Jaejin. The person that I'm talking to right now is Jaejin. Jaejin, a son from a diplomatic family. Someone that has something to prove as a son, as a brother. Lee Jaejin, the scientist that is trying to come out from his comfort zone to protect his work and save his mother. And that Jaejin nods as an answer to my question.
"If you want to face NEVERLAND," I draw closer. "Then don't you dare thinking that you're gonna die soon."
"But what if I did die? How the hell are you going to deal with the case, Gibs? We've destroyed all the documents!" he furrows his eyebrows at me.
"You won't die that easily, idiot."
"You don't know that."
"I said you won't, so you won't," I insist as I click my tongue.
"What kind of logic is that?!" he groans, half raising his voice.
"The kind of logic where I won't let you die while you're under my protection! Why the hell do you think I made you stay at my place then?"
Then sudden a punch lands on my face. Pain quickly crawls on my jaw and my vision is suddenly at a different direction due to the painful impact. I turn my head back towards the direction of Jaejin, shocked what just happened. Did he just ing punch me? And it actually hurts.
"That's just because it's your job! I told you that I'm gonna learn how to protect my self, and this is me trying to protect my self and my work! This is why I asked for a field job. This is why I don't mind being dragged around by you because for the very least I can learn how to take precocious actions just by watching you!"
Anger and frustration are written all over his face, seemingly something that has been bottling up in him. As he walks away, humping his steps heavily against the hard surface of the pathway, I can't help but remember the man that I met at the bar months ago. I remember thinking that he was such an interesting guy. I remember noticing how serious that person was with the work that he was reading. And I remember how I quickly assumed that he was a detective just from his gesture.
I'm not protecting him just because it's my job. I'm doing all this and feel troubled about my little discovery that I got from Chris is because Roy is that guy. There is a reason why I was attracted to that man I met at the bar. There is a reason why I didn't deny it when Hongki asked me whether or not I've slept with Roy. Because essentially, Roy is Lee Jaejin. And Lee Jaejin was the guy that caught my attention.
I quickly run after him, pulling him on his arm when I get to a manageable distance. I pull him so hard that his hat falls, our bodies bumping against each other harshly.
"What the hell--…" he exclaims. But before he even manages to finish his sentence, I shut him up by crashing our lips together. My grip on his arm is firm to keep him close while my other hand tries to calm Jaejin's free hand down. He tries to push me away but he's just physically inferior. I don't know what I'm doing anymore, but I know that I want to do this. I've been dying to do this. And I can't even deny that I was disappointed when I found out that Roy and Jaejin are the same person.
Jaejin then gives up on pushing me away. His hands are now gripping on the strap of my sling bag instead. I can hear him gasp as I kiss him again, deepening it - while hands now crawling to his neck, cupping it. I pull back a little, slightly surprise at him giving in. His eyes look bewildered but they are not looking at me in anger. Those bruised thin lips are a gap, trying to say something about what I just did, but nothing comes out.
"Don't forget that I'm not only Gibson," I mumble, feeling my breath mingles with his due to our close distance, panting from the lack of air from our previous engagement. "I'm also Jonghun, and you've met that guy. He genuinely liked you, and he still does."
His lips pursed into a thin line, eyes now staring at me yearningly. He still can't form a complete sentence, unable to speak. In the mess of his brain trying to come out with a logical explanation, I let my hands wrap around him, pulling him for an embrace. The feeling is familiar, slightly distant but familiar.
Much to my surprise, he hugs me back as he buries his head on my shoulder. "They found me at the convenient store, and I know that it will come the time when they'll find me at your place," he mumbles, pausing as he tightens his hug on me before adding "But honestly I'm scared. I… don't wanna die…"
I then lock him deeper in my arms, nuzzling the side of his head gently.
"I'm not gonna let them find you."
------
Huaaaaa!! Done!! Chris' characterisation was a pain in the , but I managed to get it right - well, somehow. I've also decided to concentrate more on their relationship development and less on the mission.
And thank you so much for still reading this fic!
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