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Jeonghan blows himself in half. It takes a few tries, but he succeeds faster than expected. All the blood and flesh splattered around the cell will further help his cause, quite a perk as he doesn’t have the time to do clean-up before he dies. He’s sorry that Dokyeom must see this. He had turned around, but either way the sight would have been quite shocking. There isn’t that much of a difference in a choice between seeing someone shoot themselves in the back or stomach. Or maybe there is. The latter, you have less gore splashed over you.
On that note, Jeonghan thinks before the parts of his brain that piece together coherent sentences turn off from the lack of fuel, Joshua is probably going to be pissed when he gets home.
Regeneration starts happening as soon as the connection between his heart and brain is severed. Thing is, it takes a little while for advanced thought to become possible in the fleshy nugget of an organ that carries out the task and thus ensuring some amount of physical safety is imperative during the period between his body returning to life and the mind breaking through the lake of animalistic unconsciousness from where all living things hail from. Lose this little window and they’re like any other human, trapped in the fleshy prison of their own mortality. Luckily, even with forewarning most people are so fascinated at the sight of a whole body knitting itself together that they forget about most everything else, and well, standing awed and horrified or whatever they feel that leaves them slack-jawed is cutting their short little lives even more to the quick when the person regenerating wants to kill you. He hasn’t had to undergo being stuck in limbo yet, and he plans never to. Pain is pain because it signals something detrimental to your existence, Jeonghan wants to keep on existing, ergo, less pain is good.
But some of it, he knows, is unavoidable. Like now, when the bullets inside him are a better path to salvation than any medicine. When you can’t turn away from the gates it’s faster to find your way out of hell. Jeonghan trusts Dokyeom to do his job properly. A freshly bleeding body is better for maximum impact, after all. He does wonder if he’ll be the same person afterwards.
-
“Did they believe you?”
Dokyeom still can’t look at him properly. Jeonghan notices. He’s expected it, but all the same he can’t help but reach out and pat his protegee on the head, running his fingers through the longer strands at the back of Dokyeom's neck. He tries to keep his face impassive. Nobody’s there to see it, but the mind has a curious habit of tricking itself. It’s the very same principle smiling at yourself in the mirror works on and one he’s utilized more than once. If he acts unaffected, he’ll soon become unaffected. When minutes pass and Dokyeom’s breathing refuses to calm down, he sighs, and takes off his shirt. At the sight of his torso Dokyeom flinches away, only for Jeonghan to catch his wrist and pull him around.
“Look,” he says forcefully. He gestures to the smooth skin covering his stomach. “I’m fine. Everything’s fine.”
On the cement of the cell floor Dokyeom curls into himself, weakly pulling his wrist loose from Jeonghan’s grip to lace their fingers together. “I know,” he sniffles. “But you weren’t fine before. You blew yourself into pieces in front of me. You did it because of me.” He taps his feet a few times on the floor.
“I did it because I had to, not because of you,” Jeonghan corrects him. “You convinced them that you’d killed me, which is the reason we’re not being stuffed full of bullets right now. Better a traitor than a dead man, don’t you think, Kyeom-ah?”
“Jeon will send for you soon, probably,” he continues, trying to approximate how much time had passed since the men had discovered his body. Half of it, at least, and a lot of entrails and other minor offal. Jeonghan assumes Dokyeom had scattered the rest of his head around too (it’s not like he could see it). Everything except my brain, he’d told Dokyeom. And even that you don’t have to keep perfectly undamaged. It’ll regrow anyway.
From when can it be said a man is someone different? From when is he recreated, and not only reborn? His scars never regenerate with him, Jeonghan’s known from when he returned to consciousness to find his own head staring back, still in the motercycle helmet he'd put on before setting out. There had been no one else around, luckily. No-one to send him to a hospital and force him to explain what he had no idea to. Later, after sneaking back into his room with an awkward greeting to his sister, Jeonghan had stood in front of the mirror and stared at the blank canvas that had replaced the landscape of childhood experiences once carved into his skin. He had realized later, though, his memory was perfectly intact.
“Make sure he knows your worth,” he instructs Dokyeom, who nods tiredly. “I know, hyung,” he says. “’Better an arrogant servant than a defeated dog’.”
Jeonghan gives him another pat to the head while trying to keep himself from smiling too fondly. “Good. Let’s hope he eats it up as well.”
“But hyung,” asks Dokyeom, looking around the bare little cell with nothing but the metal bed with its legs fixed to the floor, “where will you go?”
If he’s unlucky he’ll never be able to eat cotton candy again, Jeonghan thinks as he stands up. Unlike the frame it lies in the mattress lifts easily enough. It’s a worn old thing, probably infused with various bodily products both manufactured and... organic… in nature. The springs have collapsed somewhat from overuse, which means when flipped over it most likely could, with some pressure, mold around a body lying underneath it. Maybe if the psychological trauma is strong enough it could count as sufficient brain damage to be reset next time he dies. He looks around at Dokyeom, gestures at him to come nearer. The smile he gives is half directed at the man before him and half at the prospect of yet another death for pay. Life, or rather, a life becomes cheap when it is in unlimited supply.
Ah, economics, he thinks, then says, “help me with turning this over, Dokyeom-ah?” as he prepares himself for what the bottom of the mattress might be like. Maybe there'd be mushrooms.
-
After three of Jeon’s men come and take Dokyeom away, Jeonghan slips out from under the mattress. Time seems to thicken under pressure, he thinks, like water vapor in an enclosed chamber. When crowded together enough it matters little that its individual components used to move in different speeds. Molecules are so tiny by themselves they’re invisible to the naked eye, but if you crank up the pressure in the chamber at some point you manage to smoosh them together close enough that they stay in groups that continue to grow larger. To the naïve observer this looks like the water has suddenly appeared on the walls. (Re?-) Genesis, of sorts. Is it the same with him, the regeneration he undergoes after each death? Time slowing down and thickening, and him being born within this limbo? He chuckles to himself right after the thought. I have too many questions, he thinks, and no answers. I will dig myself into a hole someday with all this burrowing.
Being careful to mute his footsteps, he rounds a corner and stops mid-stride. His lips part involuntarily, hand rising to around the level of his neck before falling loose to the side at the sight he meets.
“Fuck,” he says. His voice echoes, too loud, through the corridor. It doesn’t really matter, though.
-
“One of Joshua’s kids?” asks the man called Jihoon. From the briefings he’d attended before being sent to infiltrate Jeon Wonwoo’s organization, Seokmin knows he’s the right-hand man to Boss Jeon himself. His Joshua to Choi Seungcheol's Jeon Wonwoo, as he supposes it could be said. “Choi bragged so much about him when he first got Hong, do you know?” Jihoon says. “Couldn’t stop talking about his boy from America with arms like guns and the face of an angel.” The corner of his mouth pulls down in a grimace. “Fucking obsessed. He selects men like he's picking out a flower bouquet.”
He gestures to where Seokmin is standing to attention, hands cuffed behind his back and two of Jeon’s men flanking him. “And look where all that LA sunniness got him. Betrayal from his own men. Though,” he grins, brows lifting, “from a street dog like you, it probably isn’t important enough for him to even bat an eye.”
Seokmin keeps his gaze lowered around Jihoon’s knees. The dark material of his suit is shiner there, a few rough patches breaking the sheen in places, likely from the times it’s been scraped against rough surfaces while its wearer was in action. They shift as Jihoon steps closer to him, the harsh fluorescence overhead granting a dull sort of glow to the floor around him.
“Little dog,” he hears Jihoon say. He also hears some shuffling noises and the sound of a heavy weight landing on the floor. “Look up.”
He does, and sees what looks like a long, cylindrical punching bag lying in the center of the room. The rest of the sparse furnishings of the room, a mostly bare desk and some chairs, had already been moved to the sides when he had been pushed in. Now he notices the metal hook dangling from the middle of the ceiling.
“You know what that is?” Jihoon continues without pausing to hear his answer. "Hang it up, and don’t stop hitting it until I tell you to.” He flicks his hand towards the two men, and Seokmin feels the handcuffs loosen. He brings his hands forward, shaking them a few times to get the blood flowing properly, and walks to where the bag is lying. It’s strangely solid, keeping its general form even while slumped to the floor. The weight, though, is much less than he expected, enough for him to easily hook it up. He nearly gives it a sqeeze of consolation (since it's about to undergo extreme abuse) before he remembers the audience.
A show is what he decides to give them after a moment of considering the slightly swaying mass. The sewn edges and the zipper around the base (which he presumed was to refill the bag) are the obvious weak spots for this one. A stronger blow first to lift the bag up into the air, and a following one with less power but carefully aimed at the seams. He follows the pattern a few times, switches up to avoid being too obvious, then repeats. The simple violence feels good after being cooped up in the cell too long. His knuckles and the bridge of his feet sting as blow after blow lands solidly against the thick vinyl, the rebound coursing through his body and sending shivers down his spine.
He gets lost in it, the sensation of forcing an unbending thing to his will, that he’s almost surprised when the lower zipper does start to split. Its teeth open little by little as Seokmin increases the force of his blows, eager to reach an end now that one is in sight. Sand pours out onto the dull grey of the floor in an uneven stream that grows larger every time he lands another punch. Then finally on one large swing, the entire base rips off and the rest of the contents fly out. There’s some sand, less than he’d expected.
And with it, a transparent plastic bag molded around a body wrapped in green tape. Seokmin stares at the hair lying beneath the busted punching bag, still swinging back and forth like a pendulum. He’d immediately recognized the colour, but he's refusing to accept it.
Because it will mean that the unmoving body in the bag is Jeonghan’s.
-
“Talk me through it,” Jihoon says, sitting in front of Wonwoo’s work desk. It’s fairly well organized—Mingyu must have visited recently—but for the general disheveled look of the man sitting behind it—more evidence of Mingyu visiting.
“You know they can regenerate, right?” Jihoon nods. “That’s about the only thing I know about them,” he says.
Wonwoo chuckles. “And that’s about the only thing I know, too. Lee Chan was very…secretive when he told me about them. The kid has this weird sense of loyalty.”
“Loyalty? When he’s literally selling you information on his boss?”
Shrugging, Wonwoo picks up a cigarette. At Jihoon’s glare, though, he quickly puts it back down. He coughs once. “Dunno. Seems to think that he can serve two people at once which, having been in his shoes, I can relate to.”
He reaches out and plucks the knife strapped to Jihoon’s arm from where he’s laid it on the desk, then points the blade at him. “Of course, things don’t usually turn out the way you want them to.”
Jihoon snorts. “You killed both. Let’s hope he doesn’t repeat that part. But returning to Yoon Jeonghan.”
“Ah yes,” Wonwoo says. “You know, it really is simple. They return to life, without any limit, it seems, in terms of how many pieces they're chopped into. Osiris would be jealous, maybe, if they weren’t still human after all that.”
He takes out a lighter and flicks on the flame. It springs to life in the shape of a falling teardrop, rippling slightly in an unfelt breeze.
“Every living thing needs to burn something to survive. Some use sulfur, did you know? Like in fire and brimstone. But humans use oxygen. That’s why we breathe.”
Sometimes, Jihoon wonders if his boss saves his long-winded lectures for his direct subordinates only. No way he could’ve earned the respect needed to overthrow his father and his brother if he replied to everyone’s questions like this. He gets the point, though. “So, if you take away their oxygen…”
“Even if they come back to life, they immediately die again from suffocation. Simple.” Wonwoo looks pleased. “Luckily enough, we’ve been sealing bodies with those vacuum packaging things for a while, as I’m sure you’re aware. There’s a market for them. Have I introduced you to Xu Minghao? He takes care of the business for us in that department.” He puts down the lighter. “But I digress. Anyhow, unless they can operate in very low oxygen levels, I doubt he’ll be struggling free anytime soon.”
“And Dokyeom?” Jihoon asks, though he already knows the answer. Wonwoo waves a hand.
“You heard him swear fealty to me. What better a way would there be to test his so-called loyalty than beating his friend to death?” He smiles. “The repetitive nature is just a bonus.”
-
In front of Seokmin, another punching bag is zipped closed. There’s a little more sand in it this time, maybe, but the stiffness remains the same.
Jihoon steps back from where he’d been testing the give and turns towards him.
“Again,” he orders, and Seokmin has no choice but to obey.