Music: Me to you, you to me From the movie The Classic 

“How…. how is this possible?”

Baekhyun feels like he is carefully measuring out syllables. His mind reels backwards, replaying every single Visit he has had with Kyungsoo in a jumbled mess.

Kyungsoo offers him nothing more than a small smile.

Baekhyun’s eyes flash red. “How? HOW? Tell me. Tell me, Kyungsoo, or so help me I will destroy you, and this time there will be nothing of you left.”

Kyungsoo looks at him steadily, much like how someone would look at a child throwing a tantrum. 

“What is there to tell, except that, once upon a time I was the Founder. Once upon a time I signed cheque after cheque that build more and more of these places, that had more and more Guests for the government to make use of. Once upon a time I didn’t really care about what happened in these Rooms. What is there to tell, except that, sometimes life is funny that way. That sometimes life gives you things that are destroyed by your own creations.” 

Baekhyun shakes his head. “But you are … here now. You are the Founder. The Founder. Every single Room and piece of paper in the Centers belong to you. But you are here. At the mercy of the very same Examiners that you feed.” his mind reels as Baekhyun tries to piece together this bizarre twist of fate. Whenever he has heard people talk of the Founder he remembers how fearful people had been of that name, how that name had implied this all-knowing, all-powerful being, merciless, unforgiving, how when people left the Center, it was only always allegedly to be sent to the Founder and how the fact that they never came back spoke volumes.

But here, in front of him, sits that very same man, feared by many who never had even seen him, holding on to the edges of life with solely the fading power of his mind.  Here sits a man who could have had everything, Baekhyun thinks of the personal secretary, the enormous high-security apartment he had seen in the memories watching over the city, but seems to have walked away from it to hell willingly. Why. Why would anyone -

“Oh.” Baekhyun’s voice is soft, almost inaudible in the room. 

Kyungsoo sighs, as if he already knows what Baekhyun is going to say. He brushes Baekhyun’s hands aside and gets up, a little shakily, and starts fiddling with the music player on his desk, The white tunic they have put on him as the Examiners had fixed up after what Baekhyun has done slips a little, revealing a once smooth shoulder now marred with burned red scars. I did that, Baekhyun thinks, and he feels all at once a strange sense of nausea and possession. He lies down on the bed, arms spread across it, eyes following the deliberate movements of Kyungsoo. Even half broken he is a study in preciseness. 

“You left it behind because of him, because you had to find him.” Baekhyun reasons it out slowly, Kyungsoo says nothing. “You spent …. 6 years going from Center to Center trying to find him. Moving from place to place, eliminating one Center at a time. But why couldn’t you just - you are the Founder, don’t you have access to this kind of information?” Baekhyun looks at Kyungsoo questioningly. But then he thinks he already knows the answer. “The paper reports. They never leave the Centers, and they are burned if anyone ever even questions about the Guest. There is no way for you to ever find out… from the outside.”

Baekhyun almost  feels a sense wonder. He can almost imagine Kyungsoo, neatly arranging his plan of attack, listing out all the possible Centers, working out everything in to little details, how to be captured, how to stay alive till he finds him. He thinks of his square-tipped fingers splattered with pen ink as he makes extensive notes of those little things, he thinks of long nights and small shoulders hunched in sleepless effort. He thinks of Kyungsoo walking out of his apartment one fine day, towards a life of pain and misery and loneliness, never looking behind. Something gets caught in his throat. He doesn’t know what it is like to love like that, he doesn’t know what it is like to be loved like that, he thinks. 

A click sounds and music starts playing. It sounds familiar, maybe he has heard it in someone’s memory or maybe even in this very room since Kyungsoo is always playing some music or the other. Kyungsoo walks back to the bed and lies down next to him, their legs dangling from the side of the bed, kicking aimlessly at the air. 

 A guitar and then drums, and then it all merges into words.

He feels more than sees Kyungsoo turning his head towards him and he responds, curving his body in that direction. Kyungsoo blinks at him lazily and he is curled over the boy, his hand rubbing small circles into the boy’s hips. They are watching the setting sun in the glass window next to the bed as music plays in the background. He bends slightly brushing his lips lightly over the exposed skin on the boy’s shoulder.

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