IV. Chanyeol

“Hey, Chanyeol.”

He looked up and saw him, his eyes crinkled and bright, his smile broad across his cheeks. Chanyeol mimicked the smile, the happiness seeping from the latter’s bones contagious.

“Baekhyun. How are you?”

The smaller stood there, rolling his ankle and fidgeted with his hands behind his back. He gnawed on his lower lip, looking small and defenseless. Chanyeol wanted to hug him, and beat up whatever was bothering him. Hesitant, Baekhyun pulled out the chair across from Chanyeol and sat across from him, the broad, faux-wooden table separating them across a great distance.

Baekhyun released a breath, settling his hands on the table. “Do you think there’s more out there, Chanyeol?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

He shifted in his chair, fluttering his hands in the way he always did when he was anxious. Chanyeol frowned. “Baekhyun, what do you mean by that? Is something wrong?”

“No, I just…” Baekhyun trailed off, his eyes painfully empty. “I wonder if there’s anything past us. Anything greater...”

“We are only freshmen in college, Baek-”

“I know!” he said. “I know, I just can’t help but think we’re meant for something else. That we’re not necessarily supposed to be here.”

Chanyeol laughed. “So, what? You believe in aliens now?”

“Chanyeol!” He loved when Baekhyun whined. “You’re not taking me seriously.”

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I don’t...understand what you’re getting at, but I guess it makes sense. Maybe you’re destined to cure cancer or something.”

Baekhyun scowled. “No, not me,” he said. “All of us; The nine of us are meant for something bigger than this.”

Chanyeol looked at him with consideration, his arms crossed across his chest. Baekhyun’s features were soft, yet troubled, his eyebrows drawn together across his sweaty brow, his dark bangs hanging in his face in thick strands, hiding the worry glazing over his eyes.

“Where is this coming from?”

“I had a dream-”

“You have a lot of dreams, Baekhyun.”

“None like this,” he said, jaw set and knuckles white. “This one was different. I know it.”

“You’re just stressed for midterms.”

“Don’t brush me off, Chanyeol.”

Baekhyun’s sadness switched to frustration quickly, standing from his chair and pouting. “We’re meant for something, Chanyeol. I don’t know what. I don’t know why. But we are. You’ll see.”

It wasn’t until months later that Chanyeol realized Baekhyun was right.

“Jongdae!” He cried as he saw the latter snap against the wall like a rag doll, his spine seemingly crumpled as his entire body slumped at the base. Chanyeol felt his insides crawl with enraged flames of red, the anger manifesting upon his palms and melting him from the inside. He thought he had it, the flames controlling the damn robot as it flailed and struggled for freedom, yet he hadn’t perceived the robot’s range. He didn’t perceive a lot of things.

Red. Fire. Red. Fire. It danced in his eyes as he watched the robot sink in the deep ravine below, the ground splitting as ends of the grass curled and the dirt and rock beneath the surface split, the jagged ends like spears or javelins. Red. Fire. Pain.

Everything hurt. The ground closed up over the robot’s head, the grass and soil mending, flowers sprouting along the ragged seam. They all stood, silence falling upon the destroyed room. Xiumin sobbed.

“Guys! He’s hurt, we need to get him to the hospital!”

Chanyeol didn’t turn. He stared at a particular flower along the ground, the grass slowly mending beneath it. It was dainty, its petals white with tender dusts of yellow as if each small canvas was delicately hand-painted. He reached out and grazed the sides of the petals with his forefinger, the delicacy tickling at his skin, and Chanyeol swore he never felt anything so soft. The petals curled against his skin, and Chanyeol took it by the fragile base: a small green tether tying it to the grass. He pulled it from its neck, standing up to cradle the disjointed flower head in his palm, the tiny bud insignificant against his broad palm. The flower glared at him, its soft petals once serene now gleaming with contempt. Chanyeol ruined it, pulled it from its source of life, the withered stem now left in the grass with no beauty to provide. Chanyeol took the beauty out of a lot of things.

“Chanyeol, what are you waiting for?” Minseok said. He was still crying. “Let’s go!”

“We can’t go to a hospital,” he said.

“What the hell, Chanyeol?” Minseok furiously wiped at his eyes which were rimmed a bright red that almost rivaled Chanyeol’s eye- he could see the reflection of his iridescent eye in the glare of Minseok’s tears. “Why not? He’s hurt.”

Pain. Chanyeol knew. He knew how dangerous it was to leave such a terrible head wound untreated. Jongdae bled everywhere, hues of crimson seeping into the collar of his shirt, staining a crisp white to a sinister red, the blood creeping down his entire chest and crawling along the length of his torso. Smears curled around Jongdae’s temples and jawline, tracing each curve and edge perfectly. Chanyeol wanted to vomit at the sight. He tightened his fist around the flower, and bit back an angered cry as he could hear the petals crumbling beneath his fingers, rolling the delicate petals into useless flakes. He let the fall to the ground in a flurry.

Chanyeol wanted the others out of the way. All that mattered before was the team and their sole purpose. Classes and outside friendships took the back burner, and all nine boys set their hearts onto what the orbs destined for them. What Baekhyun destined for them. Without Baekhyun and Yixing, the team was falling apart into shambles, just as the delicate flower crumpled within his hands. That fragile stem, the anchor for such an exquisite fragment of nature, kept the entire flower grounded. Yixing and Baekhyun, they found out too late, were the stem, yet Baekhyun was also the petals: the beauty and worth within such a tiring and confusing circumstance. Chanyeol wanted them out of the way, because when their two friends disappeared, so did the base of the team. Now, they fall apart in front of tasks so simple if only the nine orbs were reunited. The others gave up the search. They only obscured Chanyeol’s endgame: find Baekhyun, restore order, restore happiness. He wanted to bring back the light.

If only the others hadn’t been so naive.

“We don’t know what doctors can find,” he said. “What happened to trying to keep our identities a secret? We’re not very good at it.”

“You’re the one who won’t adopt a secret identity!”

“I don’t need one.” Chanyeol swallowed. “We don’t need any.”

A name meant nothing but a few syllables strung together to identify. It holds no connotation except for the one the holder gives. The actions of a person, what they stand for, what they do, serve more as criteria to be graded than a name. As heroes, they didn’t need these other names. As college students, they did. In school, they’d lie, make false promises, and use words to evade actions, but with the power of orbs pulsating through their veins, they had to act. Their names meant nothing as they absorbed their power into their skin. Baekhyun believed in actions and meaningful words. He also believed in names. He also refused to adopt a pseudonym for himself once they obtained their orbs. However, to Baekhyun, he wasn’t any different between his college student self and heroic self. Baekhyun had always been a light, his power only an external exemplification of such. He was always strong and bright, always using action to express his needs, desires and concerns. Chanyeol didn’t. Before, he never acted, only hid behind empty vessels of emotion and promise, too petrified to pursue much of anything past his friendships with the other boys, and his lack of action then even drove a wedge between them.

“I’ll call myself Xiumin!”

“Ooh! What about Chen?”

Chanyeol watched Baekhyun from where he sat on the other side of the couch. He seemed the least stressed about their sudden change, surely because he was the reason for such a miracle.

They had talked for hours within their dorm, half of them living down at the time, only to spend every waking moment in Chanyeol, Baekhyun, and Yixing’s dorm, especially every Friday for pizza night.

After a boisterous night of recounting their first fight against the robot, they began to turn in one by one until the three of them remained.

“I’ve always wanted to be called Lay,” Yixing snorted as he dozed off on the couch. “That’ll be my name.”

Chanyeol turned expectantly to Baekhyun.

“What about you, Baekhyunee?”

“I don’t need a fake name, Chanyeol,” he said, scratching at the underside of his jaw.

Chanyeol blinked. “It’s not a fake name, more of… a secret identity!”

“My identity couldn’t be a secret even if I tried,” he laughed. “This...doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change who we are. Jongdae’s the same old goofball, Minseok’s still a worried parent with Jumnyeon. Sehun’s still the kid. None of us are any different. Maybe our abilities have changed. But we’re still the same lost college kids deep down.”

“You’re taking the fun out of being a superhero,” Chanyeol pouted, eliciting a laugh from Baekhyun.

Baekhyun shrugged with a light, playful grin. “Sorry, Yeol, but I’m just telling you what I think. If we end up actually making a difference, why hide who we really are?”

“Did you get Sehun on board with this philosophy?” he teased. “He refused to pick one too.”

“No. Sehun just couldn’t think of one. He tried playing it off cool.”

Chanyeol smiled at the memory.

“It doesn’t matter.” Suho rounded the corner, leaning on Sehun for support, his face marred with his own blood. Kyungsoo stepped up beside Sehun and helped support their leader’s weight. He looked over at Chanyeol, Minseok, and Jongdae. “We’re getting Jongdae to the hospital, and we’ll all wait for him to recover.”

“Suho, you’re okay,” Kai said as he appeared beside them from wisps of Stygian blackness in mid-air. He stood in front of their leader, broad hands planted on his shoulders as he looked him up and down. He was wearing his pedestrian clothing. “Your orb. Where is it?”

Suho’s face was pallor and sunken, his hair dangling against his forehead in strings. Blood coated the entirety of his left pant leg from the knee down. Chanyeol shifted, his foot working against the other abandoned flowers sprouted from the grass, grinding them to dust.

They all froze as their leader spoke. “RF_05 took it. It’s gone,” he said. “It’s not important. We need to get Jongdae to the hospital.”

“You too, Suho,” Sehun chided, his brow knotted, the distress radiating from him like an odor. “You’re hurt.”

“How did you lose your orb?!”

Sehun pressed his hand on Chanyeol’s chest, his eyes wide, angry, and rimmed with tears. “Chanyeol, stop it!” he said. “We can’t be fighting right now.”

“We are already down two members.” Chanyeol swatted at Sehun’s hand. “If he hadn’t been so careless-”

“I was attacked at class, Chanyeol,” Suho interjected. “It caught me off guard, and it got my orb, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get it back.”

Chanyeol scowled, glancing past the glass doors leading into the emergency room. Before they began to fight, Sehun dragged both of them outside. The others, Minseok, Kyungsoo, and Jongin waited inside for news on Jongdae’s condition.

“It shouldn't have happened at all,” he said under his breath.

“Stop that, Chanyeol,” Sehun said, still occupying the space between Chanyeol and Suho. “I know you’re mad. And I know we cause a lot of damage today at the school, but it’s nothing we can’t recover from. We need to stay united. You’re the only one that seems to have issues with that.”

“He could’ve died,” he snapped. “I know you think I’m some villain to this team, but his stupidity got us and himself nearly killed!”

“He was attacked..”

“He wasn’t prepared.” Chanyeol clenched his jaw. “We used to be college students first. Now, we’re heroes first, students second.”

“Maybe to you,” Suho began.

“No, it’s not just me. This is what we were meant to do. There’s more than this college life you’re so stuck up in. There’s a bigger picture. Baekhyun gave it to us, so how could you disrespect him to throw it away?”

“Chanyeol-“

When Suho had emerged from the emergency room, his leg wrapped in bandages, arm pulled into a sling, and stitches lining his left temple, Chanyeol snapped. All he saw was red- a red so suffocating that he felt himself drowning beneath a thick sea of dread and terror. He saw smiles sewed together with frowns: a particular smile of thick rays of brightness dimmed behind a sheet of black. He saw Baekhyun, trapped in a dark, grimy well, struggling to keep his head up as oil crept up, tickling at his jawline. He gasped and cried, the light bursting from his palms flickering away to a mere glow. He was drowning. Everything hurt.

“I’m over this,” he growled as he stepped back through the double doors. He could feel Suho and Sehun’s eyes burning holes into his back as he left.

Inside the waiting room, Minseok sat, curled up in the uncomforting plastic chair. Kyungsoo was beside him, fitting his head into the slope of his neck, his own eyes exhausted. Chanyeol’s insides stung and crawl. He was drowning with Baekhyun.

“Easy now.”

Minseok and Kyungsoo helped Jongdae into the dormitory, his head heavily bandaged. With the disheartening news of a nasty concussion and cracked ribs, the doctors discharged him with the fair warning for him to get plenty of bed rest.

Chanyeol knew he wasn’t being fair. He knew he was unjust in the way resentment and jealousy bubbled up inside of him and boiled his blood. If his red eye translated to his civilian form, he would be sure it would be glowing, his anger projecting through such a vivid hue of bright crimson. This jealousy shouldn’t exist, he thought. He was glad Jongdae made it back to them in one piece, even at the expense of a hefty hospital bill and invasive questions on the doctor's’ end. After all, he was his friend, no matter how his actions seemed to refute this.

All Chanyeol could do was bite back his jealousy- not for himself, but rather for Baekhyun. He had no one to support him- wherever he went- and he hated how the others could forget about him and Yixing so easily. They had been an inseparable piece of the puzzle, yet the team had stopped looking. And every night, as Chanyeol tossed and turned from such vivid nightmares that they etched into his vision, he resented them for it even more. That’s why he had decided to barricade himself off: create an opportunity for him to go looking for his best friend, but after weeks turns into months and the case turned cold, Chanyeol found himself just as rejected as the others.

He watched bitterly as Jongdae sagged into the couch, his face knotted into a grimace. “It’s ok, guys,” he said. “I’ve had worse.”

Minseok tearfully laughed. “Sure, hot shot.” He brushed some hair from Jongdae’s bandaged forehead. “And don’t think this will get you out of homework, sir. I’ll pick up your work every day after classes.”

Jongdae groaned and slumped his head against the back of the couch, whining incoherently and allowing Sehun to prop his legs up on the coffee table, a throw pillow supporting his ankles.

He turned his head. “What about you Suho? Are you alright?”

Their leader stood off to the side, his face pale and scraped, and arm still taut in the sling. “I’m fine,” he said. “I got off lucky, thanks to all of you.”

“We never leave a man behind,” Jongin said, stepping through the door lastly and shutting it behind him. The others all turned to face him.

Chanyeol wasn’t sure how he felt about Jongin; at first, he was a fun, high-spirited kid with a laugh of gold, but his orb changed him in ways both he and Baekhyun feared. He was colder, more calculated- as if the essence of his power absorbed into his being, altering his soul and blending him into a personified void- his presence a shimmering black. Chanyeol also saw the way he glanced at Suho behind his back, eyes heavy and narrowed, eyebrows furrowed as if the weight of the world rested upon them.

Silence again fell upon them, and everyone moved to the couch and the floor, surrounding Suho and Jongdae in a protective, concerned circle. Chanyeol kept on the outskirts, looking over everyone with a resting scowl. The room was quiet, save for their soft musings of how they were going to repair the lecture hall, with Sehun quickly refuted. Chanyeol paid no mind to them.

His entire body ached. Pain. Fear. The agony and fright crept at his fingertips in a frostbite numbness, and Chanyeol clenched his fist to make sure his fingers were still even there. He shivered, his heart racing in his chest and pounding at his ribcage. This was happening more and more.

He clutched at his chest through his sweatshirt, his eyes screwed shut as he struggled to catch his breath. Pain overtook him, jabbing at his chest before radiating throughout his entire torso, electric shocks dancing all over his skin. He felt needles poking and prodding at his skin, pinning him down like a bug jabbed on the edge of a pin, squirming for freedom and relief. Every nerve ending in his body screamed in white-hot agony that ripped through his entire body and tore at his flesh. The agony rushed up to his shoulders and neck faster than he could blink, the electricity wrapping around his neck in tendrils, and Chanyeol couldn’t open his eyes to see if Jongdae had decided to turn on him.

The blackness behind his eyelids faded to a dull yet sinister crimson, as if blood began to seep behind his eyelids, flooding whatever vision remained from his pain-induced coma. He felt disconnected from his body, the cold slimy sensation of blood running down his sides and his face, yet nothing was there, his entire body trembling, yet he had no control of his muscles. Ghosted hands tugged at the hem of his hoodie, poking into his side and grabbing onto his neck, jerking him from side to side, flaring the agony sparking throughout his entire body.

He begged for it to stop, but the voice slipping past bloodied and chapped lips was not his own.

“Stop!” He cried. “Please!”

It wasn’t his voice. It wasn’t his voice.

All at once, as quick as it came, the pain disappeared into a numbing mist.

“Chanyeol!”

When he opened his eyes, his body numb and quivering, he was on the ground, Jongin, Sehun, Kyungsoo, and Suho leaning over him, their eyes wide and faces knotted. Chanyeol could barely make out their features, his vision blurred and dancing with black and white spots. He could still hear the foreign cries ringing in his ears, and he could feel the ghost hands lingering over him, weighing his body down.

More tangible hands grabbed at his shoulders, jerking his body side to side. Chanyeol bit his tongue and pried the hands from his body, his fingers trembling as he tried to grasp the foreign hands.

“What happened?”

“I didn’t see him get hurt in the fight-”

“Maybe it’s his orb!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Guys, he’s waking up!”

The assault of overlapping voices against his throbbing skull nearly drove him insane. A rough groan slipped past his lips as he allowed his body to slump against the floor, his eyes fluttering shut as the world around him spun too quickly.

“Chanyeol.” He felt someone lean down beside him. Suho. “Are you hurt?”

He cursed, forcing his eyes back open. “No,” he said, his entire body weak and heavy. “What…What happened?”

“You collapsed,” his leader said, his voice quiet and gentle. “You started convulsing. You don’t remember anything?”

Chanyeol struggled to gather his thoughts. Everything in his brain jumped around, completely scattered, but every fragmented thought and expression came back to one thing: fear and pain.

“I was so scared,” he gasped, and Chanyeol struggled to blink back the onslaught of tears burning at his eyes. “He’s so scared.”

“Who’s scared, Chanyeol?” Suho touched his shoulder.

“I heard him. He was crying,” Chanyeol said. He wasn’t sure where the words came from, but they tumbled from his lips like an avalanche. “They’re hurting him. I felt everything.”

There was a moment of silence, and Chanyeol imagined Suho was glancing back at the others, who were no doubt hovering closely. “We should go back to the hospital.”

Chanyeol shot upright, his hands clamoring for something to anchor himself onto. “It’s not me,” he said, his panic swarming behind his already tight and throbbing chest. Suho grabbed onto his forearms.

He wracked his mind, searching for who cried out in such unbearable agony- who suffered such terrible torture. Chanyeol wasn’t feeling his own sensations, but rather, a projection of someone else’s- someone’s absolute misery crept into his own bones and soaked him to the core.

But who?

“It’s Baekhyun,” Chanyeol whispered, staring Suho in the eye. The latter’s expression flickered. “It’s him. He’s hurting.”

“You’re delirious-”

“No, Junmyeon. I’m right. I know I am.” He recognized, now, the desperate voice crying for his help. “I’ve felt it before. I just...was never sure what it was. But now I know.”

Chanyeol swallowed. “It’s Baekhyun. I can feel him. We’re connected.”