Hansol doesn’t go directly back to his room.  The red ink stained into his skin itches and he wants to wash away any trace of its existence.  He rubs at the mark as he walks.  He wishes that he could explain even once why he’d worn the bandana so long that the color bled into his skin.  The words always get caught in his throat.

He walks by Xero’s room—past door after closed door.  He had assumed finding the bathroom would be easy but the hallway is dimly lit and every room looks identical to the one before.  He is questioning whether he should turn back and try to use the kitchen sink when he notices light spilling into the hallway.  On his approach he discovers a short corridor. 

With slow footsteps he heads down the new corridor.  He knows he hasn’t found the bathroom because instead of a doorway he finds that the wall on his left ends in a shorter wall.  Hansol peers around where the full wall meets the low, half wall.  Cabinets line one side of the room and a fridge stands against the wall but the fluorescent room is taken up mostly by a plastic table.  At the table sits Gohn who is distractedly digging cereal out of its box with his hand, a few stray pieces escaping to bounce onto the floor.

“Hey shortstop,” Gohn greets without looking up, subsequently funneling the handful of cereal into his mouth.

Heart beating loudly in his ears, Hansol emerges from his hiding spot behind the wall, already excusing himself, “I was just looking for the bathroom.”

Gohn breathes a laugh through his nose and chews for a moment until he can speak again. “Don’t worry, kid.  It’s just across out that way and across the hall,” he gestures in the direction as if there is no wall in the way.  “The door’s painted black.  You can’t miss it.  Most important room in the house.”  An eye-smile lights up his face as he chuckles at his own joke. 

The older is speaking to him casually enough but Hansol knows he’s been caught snooping around where he shouldn’t be once again.  He struggles to make another excuse that fails to form.

When the air fizzles to silence, Gohn takes advantage of the fact that Hansol is still standing there and continues, “Well, if you’re not in a rush, welcome to the break room.  It’s the second most important room in the house cause there’s some random food and it’s usually quiet when I’m not in here.” He laughs lightly in a higher tone than Hansol had expected. “If you’re ever feeling hungry come here instead of the kitchen because the kitchen is Sangdo’s and he’ll literally notice if 15 grains of salt are missing and whine to you about budgets.”

Perhaps in response to Hansol’s persistent silence, Gohn doesn’t speak again but shakes the cereal, tilting the open box toward Hansol who feigningly declines the offer.  The older shrugs and continues munching his way along, expecting Hansol to continue on his way.

Hansol stays.

Gohn’s eyes move back to the younger.  “Come join me,” he invites, pushing out the chair opposite him with his foot.

Hansol moves cautiously to obey as Gohn continues, “We didn’t really get a chance to talk to at dinner.”

Hansol wants to say that it wasn’t a big deal but experience tells him he’s being spoken to, not conversed with, and he should keep his mouth shut.

“You met Jenissi, I hear.”  Gohn’s tone is light but there’s a heavier feeling of expectation.

 Hansol knows he’s supposed to answer this time.  “Sort of.”

 Gohn seems to be looking through the opposite wall over Hansol’s head.  “We go way back, he and I.”  The words feel like a warning.  “I sort of look out for him.” 

Hansol can’t seem to get settled in the chair. 

 Gohn puts his eyes on him again, forcing his gaze down. “Try to understand him.”

 Hansol feels a firm note of defense that makes the other’s intentions fall into place.  The way Gohn felt his words didn’t convey ‘try to understand him,’ they said ‘try not to think about him at all:  forget everything you saw.  It’s not for you to know.'

As if he never mentioned Jenissi, Gohn breaks back into his earlier mood.  It’s momentarily blinding, like clouds rolling quickly by the sun.  Hansol blinks the light only he can see away.

“So, you’re rooming with Xero, huh?”

 Hansol has the presence of mind to nod, unable to completely look up from his lap.

 “God help you.”

“I like Xero,” Hansol blurts out protectively before he can stop himself.  He immediately sees that Gohn was joking and didn’t mean any harm by it.  He wants to slide out of the chair.

 “Xero’s a good kid,” Gohn agrees.  Somehow Gohn isn’t aware yet that he should be furious. “I think being younger than everyone has been making him stir crazy.  It’s good that you’re staying around.  It’ll be nice for him.  He’s a cannon of suppressed energy though and he’s probably going to explode all over you.”

 Gohn is so frank and casual that Hansol feels encouraged enough to say, “I think he already exploded.”

 “Did he get extra cute on you?”

 Hansol nods.

 Gohn laughs. 

Hansol can’t imagine Gohn faking a laugh.  Gohn emits a different feeling than the others.  If Xero was stardust, Gohn seemed to hold a sense of something ordinary in a place of strangeness.  For one, he had said as a matter-of-fact that Xero was younger than all of them.  Hansol had started with the same feeling of course, but Xero told him it wasn’t so simple.  Gohn doesn’t seem to care.  Even the moment before when his thoughts had been darker, underneath the layers his aura was a steady shine like the feel of sunlight on a metal door.

 “So did Xero keep you up?” Gohn wonders, “That why you’re still awake?”

 Hansol struggles to find an answer that won’t be a lie and won’t get himself or anyone else in trouble.  He’s up for a lot of reasons, none of which he’s willing to share.

 “I’m up because of the grouch next door,” Gohn suddenly continues on. “Hojoon just checked in with him so I could go to bed whenever but how could I rob him of the pleasure of nagging me should the mood suddenly strike him? What kind of friend would I be then?”

 Hansol is too fixated on the idea that Gohn might be able to hear through the wall to stop and figure out why he seems so much more comfortable joking about Jenissi now (he has no doubt it's Jenissi the older is talking about).  Xero had said that Lion Line didn’t really have powers but Hansol’s pretty convinced being able to hear through walls is a power even if it is something that all of Lion Line can do.   Then again, he’s not sure that Gohn actually means he's waiting to hear nagging through the wall.

Gohn is watching him and he knows the older is waiting for him to use his turn to explain something—anything.  Hansol now sees that Gohn's openness before was a peace offering as a show of good faith.  Hansol scratches the back of his wrist.

The simplest answer is that he’s awake so he doesn’t go back to sleep.  It’s not a good answer.  It’s an answer that leads to more questions.  The current reason for being awake is that he wants to wash the red ink out of his skin.  It’s not a good answer.  He can’t explain how the ink got there.  It’s too dangerous an association here if P Goon’s reaction is any indication.  Deep down he’s still awake because he’s considering sneaking out the front door once no one’s watching him.  He’s not sure why he’s even still staying in this hangar.  When he headed toward the living room a big part of him planned on leaving.

He’s lying poorly to himself and knows it.  Being able to read emotions makes him a good lie detector even toward himself.  If he’d wanted to leave he would have found another way.  If he got caught it’s because he wanted to.  It’s the same thought process that got him to accept the red bandana.  He was more afraid of the danger out there than the danger in here—and for some reason, despite how hard he tries to deny it, he needs a connection.  Maybe things would have been different if he’d realized that before B—

“Careful there,” he hears Gohn warn with light concern.  Hansol knows he’s spaced out only as he comes back to himself.  “You’re going to draw blood if you keep scratching like that.”

Hansol starts, realizing he was dragging his nails across the red-stained wrist.  He darts his hands under the table so fast he bangs them on the edge.

Gohn’s expression is hovering uncertainly.  “You seem tense, is everything alright?”

“Yeah, I just. . .”

Gohn’s nostrils flare and Hansol freezes thinking he’s angry. Except he gathers nothing like anger in his face; he only seems to be testing the air.

“P Goon?” Gohn questions.

Hansol's eyes widen against his will.

“Did he give you a hard time?”

There is no safe way for Hansol to answer so he doesn’t, which is answer enough.

“Ah, you don’t have to worry about him.  He’s difficult for any of us to deal with when he’s in one of his moods.”

Since he has heard the same sentiment so many times, Hansol wants to believe it—but the words slip out, “I just make people angry.”

Gohn’s face is startled into a sadness he can’t quite conceal.  Even if he had succeeded, Hansol would have felt it:  as he does now.

He tries to stop the uncomfortable feeling. “It’s fine.  I’m used to it.”  It’s the wrong thing to say.  He feels the mood snap.

“Geez, kid, that’s. . . I mean. . .”

Hansol allows Gohn to struggle to find the right words.  He takes the time to build himself a wall to guard against the pity he feels brewing.

“P Goon gets cranky like that sometimes.  That’s not you at all.  But. . . ” Shaking his head, Gohn starts over:  “We’re different from other people—okay, that’s pretty obvious, sorry—normal people don’t usually recognize that we’re different, though.  But when we hang around them for too long whether they know what we are or not it starts to change them.”

He pauses for Hansol to chew over his words.  The younger is perplexed by the cascade of half-formed thoughts.  “We don’t really understand why it happens,” Gohn continues,  drawing his words along like he's hoping Hansol will figure things out without him having to say it. “It’s probably a survival instinct.  We’re against nature:  so sometimes people will start acting like they’re trying to get rid of us.  And sometimes that can make it seem like we’re good at making people upset or angry.”

Some kind of twisting emotions are overcoming Hansol.  “I don’t understand.”  Hansol doesn’t know how to say he has been doing this to people like them.  He doesn't let himself have problems with normal people—he tries not to spend much time around them. 

A tight feeling starts constricting in his throat.  That wasn’t entirely true. He’s at the bottom of the front steps as the door slams shut.  His palms sting from where they scraped the ground to break his fall.

“It doesn’t happen right away,” Gohn presses.  “Sometimes it takes years after we present as different.  The more time we spend around a person the worse it gets.”

Hansol feels the creeping, awful sensation of being buried in the dark.  His scalp burns and Gohn’s voice is faded and distant.

“It’s why we all live in this place.  We don’t have to worry about screwing each other up and we won’t hurt any of the regular folk on the outside.  It’s not like we can go home. . .” he trails off, touched by his own words.  “I don’t mean to be weird,” he hears Gohn say, “I just don’t want you to misunderstand.  I know that it can be difficult when people start to turn on us.  Especially family.”

The careful words are a slap.  All of the oxygen is out of the room.  He had been trying to think about anything but them.  The day was already so heavy.  He barely catches the tail end of Gohn’s sentence, “. . . people react to us as a threat instinctually, but it doesn’t mean they’re bad people.  They just lash out from some kind of disturbance at our presence.  We can actually drive people crazy after a while—”

A thought shudders its way up from Hansol’s gut into his throat and he feels sick, barely saying, “It’s my fault?”

Gohn’s eyes grow wide.  He seems surprised more that he’s suddenly been proven right about his assumptions than anything, “Oh—that’s not what I meant —”

Hansol feels the world collapsing around him for the second time that day.  "I made them that way.  They couldn’t help themselves.   I made them. . .”

“Well, no, I mean--in a way but you didn't--”

Gohn doesn't even ask who he's talking about.  All the looks that had been shared over his head that day:  they must have known about home all along.

Hansol can’t catch a breath.   He’s going to throw up.  They could have been normal.  They could have been happy.  If it wasn’t for him.  Everything they’d said—

The old feelings are starting to choke him with unwanted hands.  His head is spinning.  He had thought it before:  that he had been at fault for his parents hating him—hurting him.  But it was worse.  He had caused it. 

“Hansol, are you okay?”

Anxiety is pushing into his senses causing the whole world to slant.  It was his fault.  And he’s lost the only person who had ever been able to stop the feeling clawing through his throat.  And maybe that’s his fault too.  Maybe he didn’t just hurt normal people.  Maybe he was doing this to everyone.  His skin is burning.  His whole body is burning from the inside out.  He shouldn’t be near anyone.  His parents said they could have been happy if it wasn’t for him.  The emotions fogging the inside of his eyes are humid as they smother him.  Breathing hurts too much to even try.

A/N I'm sorry to end it here especially because the next chapter isn't the conclusion to this.  Here's a picture of Winnie the Pooh being hugged by Tigger to make happy feelings with.  I've been having a tough adjustment period to student teaching so I've been struggling to post but I think I've got things worked out so I shouldn't make you all wait so long next time! (yay!)   I'm also uncertain about courtesy warning for readers. I'm not sure if this story needs them much.  I definitely don't think any chapters quality as M but "heads-up" warnings are a little harder for me to figure out.  Like I didn't think this chapter needed one.  Was I correct? If not please let me know so I can act accordingly.  If I ever feel a little iffy I'll throw an asterics up at the top saying if you're not sure to scroll down to the author's note and check for warnings.  I hope that's a good way to do it.  I think some characters have heavy things they're carrying but the story doesn't include elements like descriptive flashback to make those real and present in the text.   So hopefully that will be good!  Thank you again for reading and for waiting and for those of you who comment! <3  --coraroc