◻

The morning was warm and the afternoon muggy. There were spiders living on the ceiling. Seunghyun watched a generation of them crawl out from a dark patch in the upper corner of the wall. They were so small he could barely see them. He wondered how sentient spiders were and if their parents had a sense of familial duty. Did they reign the babies in and lead them around like ducks or did they pop them out and leave them, the way turtles did on beaches?

The spiders on the roof of his hotel room didn't do much, parents or otherwise. Did spiders have mothers and fathers? Did it take two spiders to create more spiders? Maybe they procreated on their own, whatever that was called. Aual reproduction. They were essentially monsters after all.

The side-table clock showed the time. His head throbbed, a painful tic behind his left eye.

It was 3pm.

The spiders were localised in the far left corner. He tried counting them but always gave up at twenty-five, the magic number. They moved a lot. One broke away from the teeming pack and ventured out on it's own. It came towards him in erratic twists and turns, like it was looking for something. When it ventured too near, Seunghyun closed his eyes. He imagined it falling onto his face. The thought paralysed him.

He was used to being still. He was good at it.

He hadn't been able to move in a while. How long had it been? An hour? Two? Twenty? It was sheer muscle memory and unconscious responsibility that raised him from the bed to take a piss. After that, he lay right back down and disappeared. He was a part of the mattress. Seunghyun was paisley and tints of gold and green. He threw the sheets off a while ago. They were wet. He hoped it was sweat. The whole room was stifling.
 

◻

He was alone on the stage. The microphone in his hand was gold, it shimmered in the light and was warm to the touch. He gripped it tightly. Girls were screaming. He couldn't see their faces. They had banners and light-boards with messages on them for Seungri and for Jiyong. 'I heart you,' and plain names, 'Daesung' and 'Youngbae'. Overfamiliar. There was music playing. Something tickled the back of his neck.

A fan-chant began. Seunghyun couldn't make out the words but it grew louder. More voices chimed in from the dark. There was an audience. A whole venue of people and he was responsible for them. He felt a churning in his gut and his forearms glistened with sweat.

Big Bang. He was performing. He had to sing.

The spotlight withdrew and the audience lit up. They were in a gymnasium. A girls middle school. He could see them all. Hundreds of people, maybe thousands. An ocean of faces. He didn't know how they all fit. They were watching him. All of them. He brought the microphone to his lips and spoke what came naturally.

'Section A, you flank the left. Section B, the right. Section C, try to box them in'.

The fan chants quietened and dull thuds sounded from somewhere in the distance, gradually drawing closer, louder. The stage below him shook momentarily. Easily forgotten. There was confusion in the audience.

'Sections D, E and F,' he spoke quietly. 'You're the front line'.

There was a murmur from the crowd. Disagreement. Fear. Lowest paying ticket holders had to die first. That was life. A and B section paid more. They paid to be closer and for little plastic trinkets to wave in the air. They could live longer.

Painted in red across the far wall were the words P'ohang-dong.

There was a little boy near the stage. He was only four or five. Seunghyun wondered how he would hold a gun with hands so small.

A window shattered and then another, glass fell over the crowd. There was silence, a deafening ring like tinnitus. It enveloped everything. For moments, there was nothing but the ringing. Then it broke, like a pop in the inner ear.

Screaming erupted and Seunghyun closed his eyes. When he opened them, they were in a venue with tiered seating. Screaming girls lined every row. Signs hung everywhere that read 'Big Bang'. Their music played through speakers in the roof.

He could see faces in the crowd but not their eyes. Did they have eyes? They should. Everyone had eyes.

Glass shattered and parts of the ceiling caved in. Metal beams and supports fell inwards and struck abandoned seats. The thud from earlier was clear now. Explosions drawing near. He could see spiders filing in through the hole in the ceiling fanning outwards above them.

Is that who we're fighting, he wondered, the spiders? He couldn't remember.

He watched the girls in the crowd screaming, trying to get out of the building as fast as possible. He spoke through the microphone, gold and shimmering in the light, 'Single file'. He was calm. They had to be calm too but they weren't. They were fighting a war. How could they win if everyone ran away?

Seunghyun watched them. They didn't follow his instructions. He wasn't a leader. He couldn't stop people. He was nobody.

Spiders edged up and over the barricades, over the side of the stage and came closer in a swarm. They moved as a single entity and swallowed his feet, surging upwards to devour him whole. He watched the kids, light-sticks and shining banners trampling one another on their way out of the building, surging out through the exits. The exit light was the wrong colour. Red like the sky.

Seunghyun told them all again, single file. 'Please exit in a calm orderly manner'.

There was a bang.

The spiders swallowed him up.

◻

'There are spiders living on the roof,' he said.

John followed his gaze and looked up at the ceiling before shrinking away. A masculine response. He had a frown on his face.

'Yes,' he answered.

The room was moist. Hot and muggy and unpleasant. Seunghyun had no pants on. He had no shirt on. He lay on the mattress in his boxers to get cool. The windows were open but there was no breeze to cool him. He was sweating. He'd been sweating for as long as he could remember. John wasn't. He had a turtleneck on and two jackets over that. How could he stand it?

'Do spiders have parents? How are they born?' Seunghyun asked. 'Eggs? Right?'

He remembered now. They laid