At first Hanbin can only taste the mud, cacky and thick at the front of his mouth. His head spins, and for a frightful few seconds he is forced to confront the brutality of his situation without context.

The skies are dark enough that he couldn't possibly be in the inner city, though not so dark that he can't make out the lightning twisting its way along the inner edges of the clouds. They must be in the suburbs.

Blood drips from the hole where Hanbin's incisor used to be until roughly ten seconds ago. It hits the back of tongue and like the proverbial red pill drags him kicking and screaming into the waking universe.

He sits up, looks around. Woosung is running at him, face as dark as the clouds.

"What are you waiting for? Get up!" He roars, and then a fist collides with Hanbin's face.

Not a particularly good hit, he hasn't lost anymore teeth. Woosung's awful at this game.

More than enough time is granted for Hanbin to get to his feet, far too much. In theory it's the details like that that don't matter so much under present circumstances, in practice Woosung is dead meat.

Hanbin shoves him hard in the shoulder and he stumbles. No real technique on either of their parts, but Woosung takes the hint and sets his feet far enough apart to aid his balance.

A dull ache builds at the back of Hanbin's thighs that foreshadows a morning in the ring spent fighting around the stings of muscles cramping themselves into corners; or worse, ankles too weak to function. Their operators don't like them practicing off the clock like this, but they know they only get good showmanship out of them when they've had time to hone their craft. The result is inevitably rings filled with sleep deprived, battered young bodies ready to kill each other over their next meal.

"Be your own personal Jesus," Hanbin's operator had laughed at him on the day he arrived in the barracks, "cause God sure as ain't gonna help you out there."

If Hanbin had been in his place, he would have said the exact same thing. Or he would have delivered the exact same sentiment. 'Believe in yourself!' Or some other worn out idiom that failed to describe the brutality of the system.

The trouble of course, with religious imagery, is that belief is personal. So when Woosung was told to reimagine himself as Christ he saw a god, and Hanbin saw a martyr.

It goes a little something like this: Hanbin starts out ahead of the crowd, demonstrates that he knows exactly what he's doing. When the hoards catch up he lets himself be swallowed by their ranks and he doesn't flinch if a bloodbath gets going. He just keeps on plodding on, until he's the last one left or someone overtakes him. Woosung always goes out early, but he goes down kicking and screaming, and he brags about even the smallest of victories as if they tore him out of the ring by nature of their triumph.

Exactly the same. Every time. And Hanbin's sentimental and Woosung's a little bit more in love than he lets on, so when they have food to share they do so in the showers when no one's looking, and when they have time to spare they kick the crap out of each other in the rain.

Almost true - Woosung kicks the crap out of Hanbin as best he can. Woosung is very bad at kicking the crap out of anyone and this is why he never wins the games he plays.

Back straight, shoulders square, you stand your ground Kim Hanbin, you take everything he's got.

Again, way too slow, Woosung moves into position and swipes at Hanbin's jaw. Blocked. Aims for his knees. Blocked. Tries a more complicated kick and falls on his arse.

"You'll never win like that," Hanbin snaps.

"Yeah well at least I'm trying."

"You're not trying."

Woosung nods, "right. You're just giving in."

Out of nowhere, pain tears through Hanbin's neck, across his stomach, in his mouth where his teeth sink into his tongue. Was this how it happened before? Is this the source of all that blood and filth?

"It's not like you ever tried either-" Woosung's fist finds Hanbin's face. "-you run good, fight a little better but you never let yourself-" his body settles on Hanbin's belly and the wind is knocked out of the both of them "-be better than this. It's like you want someone to kill you."

Another fist to the face. Another tooth gone. Woosung's doing alright from this angle.

Hanbin doesn’t care if he dies in the ring, just so long as people know that's where he came from, just so long as he goes out bloody. That ought to get people's attention.

The moment the fight goes out of Woosung is always unbearably obvious. The muscle tension that holds him in the mindset of the ring runner lets go all of a sudden and Hanbin can't help peering up at him with the same expression Woosung spares him whenever he passes too close to a bloodbath. It's horrible, caring about other people, makes you feel like the uncompromising selfishness hardwired into this society makes you a bad person.

"I'm gonna tell you a secret," Woosung hisses, pulling himself up and holding out a rarely seen hand of assistance, "there's nothing in this city worth dying for Hanbin. You might as well live."