Chapter Text
It is an undeniable fact that everyone in the world, at some point, has questioned what it would be like to know everything. Countless religions were built around beings with infinite knowledge, and countless authors have tried their damnest to express the inexplicable experience of omnipotence. The power of knowing everything is a concept that humans fundamentally cannot understand—thus, the incomprehensibility of the question made it one of the most interesting concepts to ponder over.
There was a question: How would it feel to experience everything?
Mingi had the answer: It was hell.
There was a time when Mingi questioned the same thing.
Obviously, he never thought that he would actually find the answer to the question, but it was fun to think about. He had an interest in learning just about anything, which led to him spending his every waking moment surrounded by books rather than other people. He always had a question, and every time he went out, he would find more and more to learn about.
Mingi knew he was known for always being in his own world, but he didn't think that was really a fault of his. Being in his own world meant he was thinking, and if he was thinking, he was being smart. Everything fascinated him, from something as miniscule as the life cycle of a goldfish to the life cycle of the burning sphere of gas in the sky.
The most common victims of his curiousity were his parents. His mother had given him the gift of valuing everything in life and a strong sense of justice. No matter how big, how small, how significant or insignificant it was, there was value in it. He supposed that it was just her passing on her beliefs (which included animism, he'd learnt later on), but he used to take it to heart. It might have even been part of the cause for Mingi's insistence on knowing everything about anything—since everything had value, everything was worth learning about, right?
Mingi learnt resilience through playing baseball with his father. All it had taken was one passing glimpse of a game while Mingi had been walking down the street with his father, at, what, four years old? He'd immediately ran towards the mesh that closed off the ongoing game, eyes wide as saucers, and dragged his father along with him. After that, Mingi was in the park every other day, with a baseball in one hand and a bat in the other. He wasn't a natural prodigy at it—by all means, he started off pretty badly—but his father had drilled persistence into him, and he got better over time.
So, it could be argued that Mingi was one of those people who wanted to know everything.
Of course, with this motivation, came the question of experiencing everything. Omnipotence was something Mingi was always intrigued by, with it being related to his hobby of being interested in everything, but, for a human like him, it was simply a dream.
Once, he had asked his mother about it.
"You want to know how to know everything?"
A tiny, little, 5 year-old Mingi nodded to his mother.
"Well it's possible…" she hesitantly said, looking mildly discomforted. In true toddler fashion, Mingi's younger self did not notice that.
"What?! Really?!" he had exclaimed in excitement. "No way, how?!"
"Shh, shh, don't get excited," his mother hushed and let out a deep sigh. "Oh, how should I explain this? You see, there are a lot of different people in the world, and you know everyone is important in their own way, right?"
"Right!" Mingi beamed.
"Well, there are very, very few people who are different in a bad way. They have abilities that are supernatural and may seem cool, but they are dangerous. Their powers—It's been used for wars and to hurt people. They can't hold themselves back, so the government locks them away to keep people like us safe. You could have an ability that lets you know everything, but it could hurt a lot of people. You don't want to hurt anyone, do you?"
Mingi was silent for a moment, before shaking his head with disappointment.
"Good. Now let's not think of that and think of something better, hm? You should choose what you want to be when you grow up so you won't have this silly dream anymore."
But Mingi never stopped dreaming. It only became clearer as he grew up and, with the incredible discovery of the internet, spent all his time in his room studying and absorbing as much knowledge as he could. He was practically a walking encyclopedia with all he knew, knowing facts on just about anything.
Mingi was happy with his life. He may not have friends, but he found companionship in the smell of new books and research. He didn't feel the need to seek human interaction when he had his mother and father. His mother would listen as Mingi rambled on about whatever new topic he'd learned that day, and his father would take him out to play baseball every week. The only thing that Mingi worried about was his parents — he knew they were concerned for him, wanting him to make friends, but Mingi just couldn't understand why he had to when he already had all he needed.
When he was in his first year of high school, Mingi told himself he would make some friends, if only for his parents' sake. He didn't want them to worry about something so trivial.
But he never got the chance. Halfway through his first day of school, he was called to the office to be picked up. Confused, he reluctantly moved out of his seat and took his bag with him, then walked down the long, endless halls of the school. He got lost, and ended up having to be escorted by a passing teacher.
Mingi could never forget what greeted him in the office. His mother sat on the bench, hair hanging over her face, with a foreign expression. He'd never seen such despair and hopelessness on her face before.
"Eomma," Mingi called out, rushing to her side and embracing her, offering comfort where he could. "Did something happen? Why are you taking me out of school early? Where's Appa?"
"Your father—" his mother broke out in a sob. "He's gone, Mingi. He's gone."
The world felt like a blur after that. Things came and went. The funeral was small and quaint, fitting for a man who was happy with a humble life, but Mingi barely remembered it. He was in a daze, and when his mother ushered him to the podium so he could say his speech, his mouth went dry. Mingi ended up sitting outside the chapel, listening to his family and his father's friends say their goodbyes while he couldn't muster the courage to see his father's burnt corpse in the casket.
A fire.
Mingi's father had died in a fire, being caught in the crossfire while shopping in one of the shadier parts of town. He was at a pawn shop, and when he got out of the restroom, the whole building was engulfed in flames and his cries for help were drowned out by the shouting and engines roaring outside.
Someone had given Mingi a pack of vintage baseball trading cards, with the edges of the box being blackened and charred. They said his father had it on him when he died, likely a gift for Mingi that he never got to give. Mingi threw out everything he had relating to baseball — all his bats, pitching gloves, and baseballs — but he couldn't bring himself to get rid of his fathers last gift to him. It lay unopened in a box underneath Mingi's bed, untouched since it was put there.
Under his request, Mingi's mother took him out of school and started homeschooling him. It wasn't like she had to do much. Mingi was able to get good grades by himself just fine, but she was never worried about that. Mingi rarely — if ever — left his room, only coming out for essentials. He knew that his mother tried her hardest to bring him out of his shell, but everything just felt so empty. All he knew how to do was rot on his bed, staring up at the ceiling blankly or engulf himself in stories and research.
"Put some casual clothes on, Mingi," his mother had told him from his doorframe, about two months after the fire. "We're going to the aquarium."
After Mingi fished out decent clothes from his closet, he walked past the shrine for his father in the hallway to meet his mother at the door. The car ride was awkward, with his mother making comments in an attempt to strike up a conversation, but Mingi could only respond with short, non-committal answers. He just didn't have the energy to do anything more.
Mingi thinks that day was the last time he could see beauty in anything.
The fish were pretty. He could admit that even if he didn't really feel like anything anymore. Despite having read so many classic novels and iconic poems, Mingi couldn't gather any flowery, poetic words to describe the fish. Their fins flowed like pleasant silk and their movements were captivating. He was entranced, standing in front of the cool glass of the tank and staring with wide eyes filled with wonder. Blue light illuminating the creatures danced on the fishes’ scales, giving them an otherworldly glow. He could’ve stood there for hours on end, watching those beautiful fish. In the corner of his eye, his mother smiled at him, happy to see some light in her son's eyes again.
Mingi didn’t want to blink. He didn’t want to take his eyes away, not even for a minute. But he couldn't resist his instincts. He didn’t even notice he blinked, but he did notice his change in surroundings. He was in… a bunker, maybe? And there was a desolate field outside the window with fire burning in the distance. He blinked again, and he was in a large, grand theater, a place that Mingi could never be able to afford to be in. He blinked, and then he was in a church. And a space auditorium. And an airplane cockpit. And a stage. And an infinite amount of other places, all at once.
Mingi’s senses were flooded with trillions of different experiences, emotions, and memories. It felt like someone had taken a dagger and stabbed Mingi through his head— no, the pain was worse than that. Colors and blurry faces danced across his vision, each one blending into each other. Every time he blinked, it tripled. He felt like each world was clamoring for his attention, grabbing at his brain until he was torn apart.
— laughter, love, sadness, rage, grief, laughter, love, grief, sadness, rage, laughter, love, grief, rage, emptiness, everything —
He couldn't tell what was real, or that everything he was experiencing was real.
— faces and people and monsters and animals and mice and men and God and women —
They were all the same. They all blended into each other, everything flashing behind his eyes and fighting for his attention.
— explosions, whirring, roaring, screaming, crying, music, ticking, ticking, ticking, ticking —
That wasn’t even the only thing. His ears hurt more than anything else. They pounded, feeling like they’d been bursted a thousand times over. Each noise felt like a stab to his ear, another attack to his eardrums. Sure, there were some pleasant sounds, but the loudest, most egregious noises overwhelmed him.
A plethora of emotions — from anger to grief to joy to pain — exploded in Mingi’s chest. While he felt uncontrollable joy, he also felt the worst agony of any lifetime. Like any other person, Mingi did the only thing he could while being overloaded with the experiences of countless lifetimes: he screamed.
He screeched, letting out guttural roars, as he stumbled back and fell to the floor, writhing in pain. Mingi clawed at his skin, scratching hard enough to draw blood as he just wished to make it all stop, please please please, just make it stop — and though his eyes were blown wide, they were glazed over and unfocused. He didn't notice his mother hesitantly holding her hands over him, unsure of what to do, as someone claimed that Mingi was having a seizure. Even as Mingi cried from the sheer anguish and pain he was being put through, the tears on his face didn't register to him.
Mingi didn’t slip out of consciousness — at least, not fully. He sifted through worlds, trying to make sense of himself. As he was placed in a cold hospital bed with a methodically beeping heart monitor attached to him, he watched millions upon millions of worlds. He was experiencing everything, being everywhere across the multiverse, all at once. He was everything — from the tamest of humans, to a star as old as time, to the lengthiest reddit post.
Mingi didn't even remember who he was. He latched onto the consciousness of himself from another universe — one where he was normal, and there wasn't such a thing as abilities. He was just a normal kid, with a complete family and a best friend, going to school and training to be an idol as soon as his classes ended. Something happened, and he managed to forget he wasn't even from that world at all. Mingi's memories were rewritten with the identity of himself from that world, and he didn't even know he had an ability — let alone that powers were real.
Mingi stayed like that for two years — two years in that world, anyway. He had many accomplishments. He joined a company, befriending the first trainee there and finding out that his own best friend had joined that company too. The number of trainees grew, and soon, Mingi had seven other members he was going to debut with, and he wouldn't change it for the world. But as time passed, his unease grew. There was something buried in the back of his mind, reminding him that he wasn't supposed to be there.
It all made sense the night before they were about to debut. He was watching a nature documentary with his best friend to go to sleep, throat going dry when he saw koi fish on the screen, swimming just as gracefully as they did in the aquarium. It all came back to him — the fire, the aquarium, the feeling of being everywhere and everything, all at once. Mingi held his head in pain and, with a horrifying enlightenment, he realized that looming sense of dread was really his discomfort with suppressing everything he was supposed to experience.
Mingi stumbled out of bed, ignoring his best friend's calls, and tripped over himself as he tried to escape from the pain. He knew it was his time to leave this world. Cutting off his connection to that universe, Mingi woke up in a different world, living another life, while experiencing another life. It all blended together until, eventually, Mingi shot out of bed with a sharp gasp in his original world.
Only four months had passed in his world. In that time, he had supposedly been in a coma. Really, as he'd come to learn after countless interviews, tests, and examinations, he had just been subjected to the full power of his ability. He spent a year in that hospital, trying to make sense of his new world, and his mother visited him as much as she could. Mingi could barely look at her — everything was so different, and after experiencing countless lives, he couldn't look at his mother in the same way again.
There were worlds where she was gentle and ones where she hated him, as well as worlds where she was something more terrifying than the most horrible monsters and ones where she simply didn't exist.
Everything was real and not at the same time. Mingi saw through the eyes of countless versions of himself, viewing the same thing in a million different ways at one time. The doctors could never understand it. No matter how many therapists they sent in, psychologists or neuroscientists, none of them got it. They would never know the pain he felt, being forced to see so much all at once, from the meaningless descriptions he gave them. Eventually, he stopped talking to them all together, and the hospital had to release him even though he knew damn well they wanted to experiment on him more.
Mingi's first year in hell had changed him irrevocably. He gained a new truth, crafted from the endless experiences he gained. Throughout all that pain, suffering, and infinite possibilities, he reached a final conclusion.
Nothing matters.
In the grand scheme of things, nothing ever matters.
Everything was insignificant — nothing more than grains of sand waiting to be washed away by the ocean. Each achievement, each triumphant moment, would be drowned out by sorrow, and sorrow would be drowned out by another emotion until it all faded into nothing. Everyone in the world was just small and stupid, living in a nonsensical world that made them feel like even smaller pieces of shit. There was no meaning to anything, so why pursue ambition or any passions? Really, why pursue anything? There was no point nor purpose.
Mingi didn't tell anyone his truth. There was no point — if they couldn't understand his ability, it wasn't a far stretch to assume they couldn't understand his ideology either. He accepted his irrelevance, knowing that he was just one in a billion, a mere smudge on the canvas of the multiverse. He would rather be apathetic and alone than face the world — or worlds, in his case.
His mother brought him home and tried to coax him into talking, but she gave up after a month. Mingi knew it was difficult for her, with his catatonic state and apathy. He would spend his days sitting in front of the TV or scrolling on his phone, but he spent most of his time staring at the wall, watching billions of possibilities unfold. He didn't go back to school, go outside, or see anyone. Mingi would feed himself if he remembered then go off to rot in his room, drowning in the comfort of apathy for eternity.
So, it wasn't a surprise when his mother appeared at the foot of his doorway, peering into the dirty old room with a bitter expression on her face.
"Pack your bags. You're leaving."
That was the last he heard from her. Mingi only brought his essentials, noise-cancelling headphones, and a few sets of clothes. She didn't look at him when he walked out the door, and he didn't look back. They didn't need to exchange words to know why she had given him up.
There was a cab waiting for him, and he let the driver put his suitcase in the back as he crawled into the backseat. Mingi stared at the back of the headrest for — what — five hours? He didn't notice the time nor the change in surroundings, too engrossed in watching other worlds to pay attention to his own.
And that was how Mingi ended up here.
He looked up at the creaking sign that read "KQ Boarding School" with a few of the letters hanging and one or two entirely gone. Below that, in a smaller print, it read "For Juveniles and Powered Individuals". A tall gate surrounded the school and a few guards were stationed outside, smoking and conversing with each other in a heated debate. They didn't even realize Mingi was there.
Mingi stared at them, giving them a nasty glare, for around 10 minutes before one of them finally noticed him.
"Oh— hey there, kid, didn't notice ya there," the guard said with a half smile, turning towards him. "Welcome to KQ! Are you waiting for your trial or are you an ability user?"
Mingi only raised his brow, as if he were questioning the guard.
"Ah, you don't know? Don't worry, the Token will figure you out," the guard said, opening the gates for him and taking his suitcase. "I'll put your bag in your room. Off you go, kid."
The gates screeched as they creaked open, moving erratically at an incredulously slow rate and dragging against the pavement. It opened up to a large, lifeless campus with buildings full of graffiti and the odd patch of blood here and there. Safe to say, it wasn't a pretty sight. Mingi could guess that he arrived during the school day based off the lack of students running around and causing havoc, but it was hard to tell the time with the cloudy, grey sky hanging over his head.
Mingi stood there for a while. It wasn't just that he didn't really want to go into his new school, which was also his first high school — but those damn lazy guards didn't even tell him where to go or what to do. So, he took the route that required the least effort and yielded the best rewards: doing nothing.
He let his eyes glaze over, allowing his consciousness to be split between millions of worlds, experiencing everything, everywhere, all at once. The silence of the school yard served to help him in tuning his world out, concentrating his focus on a more peaceful world.
If Mingi had to describe how his ability worked, he would probably compare it to the sliders on a mixing console — he could turn his connection to them up or down, keeping all of them at a low volume in the back of his mind or bringing his awareness of them up to the maximum. Even if he experienced everything at the same time, the human brain couldn't possibly process everything at the same time. So, he had to adapt and learn how to manage on his own. Still, it was really difficult to manage countless universes in his every waking moment.
When Mingi had the energy, he tried to look for worlds where he wasn't alive — not alive in the sense that he wasn't a living, breathing being. His favorite place to look for was a world where all life on Earth had died out long ago and Mingi was simply a rock. No thoughts, no feelings… just existing. Mingi would watch the sky from where he was positioned near the edge of a cliff, staring at the shifting seasons and familiar view until he inevitably got a headache and was forced to split his attention between different worlds without a choice.
"Hello?"
Mingi was startled out of his thoughts and the other reality, dialing into his own world to see a small boy standing in front of him. Well, he wasn't quite small, but Mingi was tall enough to call anyone small. Mingi wasn't certain if the boy in question was a student. He looked so… out of place, with a tailored suit and pearls on his neck, alongside a rose brooch pinned to his chest. His dress shoes were spotless and he had a striking appearance, with a face that could've been carved by Michaelangelo.
"I haven't seen you before," the boy's voice was surprisingly deep, betraying his feminine features. "Did you arrive just now?"
This sucks. Mingi was having such a nice time not living in his own world for a year and now he was being forced to actually interact with people.
"I see you have. Please read this manual to get accustomed to the rules of the school and decide which club you will join," the statue-like boy said, handing Mingi an orange packet. "Your living quarters and keys are in here too."
Mingi didn't hear a single word, too distracting by the groans and screeches of a high school band tuning their instruments and the sight of himself as a princess in some of the realities he was currently trying to tune out. He only registered his own existence in his own world when the statue boy slipped the orange packet in his hand and smiled in amusement when Mingi's gaze finally fully focused on the statue boy for the first time.
"Henry Jo? Did you find the Cromer?" Mingi mumbled, with his mind still stuck in a different universe.
"I'm not the founder of KQ, nor do I know what the cromer is, but you're interesting," the boy said with an amused smile akin to a haunted porcelain doll. "If you need me, ask the birds."
An abrupt bang! of a ship's cannon erupted in Mingi's ear, and he instinctively squeezed his eyes shut and shot his hand up to cover it. As soon as the noise subsided, he cracked open his eyes, only to find the school yard empty again. He held the orange packet up to his face, examining the drawing of a little character drawn on it. The cuteness of it was far too adorable for such a miserable place. The drawing did serve a purpose though — in the speech bubble for it, there was a list of Mingi's classes and schedule.
He scoffed at the text. Introduction to algebra? Korean History? Basic Science? He learned all that before he even entered middle school, who the hell does the school think he is?
Mingi took the keys out and ripped out the part of the packet with his schedule, then promptly tossed the packet in the nearest trashcan. Rules were obsolete to him. He's seen thousands of possibilities and been in countless government institutions, but even if he had only half those experiences, he'd know that all the codes and principles were just bullshit.
Since Mingi's brain was too disoriented by all the change he was experiencing to go back to that peaceful world, he elected to walk across the school, strolling through the hallways as he tried to process the chaos in his head. Even though he was staring straight ahead, he wasn't really seeing anything. His vision was shifting through different realities with everything blending together until he could barely tell what reality he was in, as if someone had taken photos on the same roll of film over and over and over again.
And yet, as Mingi lost himself in the maze of the school, a recurring image kept appearing: a dove with an olive branch in its beak and a small rose brooch on its chest, with the sun shining behind it. Below the dove, there were words that read "THE TOKEN OF PEACE". That image was burnt into the back of his eyes from the amount of times he had seen it and it got to the point where Mingi, against his better judgement, focused on his reality and examined a large depiction of that symbol beneath a staircase.
It was a stark contrast from anything else he's seen in the school so far. The campus was dirty and disorganized, with graffiti plastered everywhere and a strange amount of calligraphy pens embedded in the walls. Obscene drawings and explicit language made up most of the imagery on the walls and Mingi could see more than a few stains of questionable origins. In contrast, the artwork was detailed — quality far better than the amateur scribbles surrounding it — and it was in a pristine condition.
The words in the image were the most concerning. The Token of Peace.
Where had he heard that before?
"Hey, what are you doing out here?"
Mingi, shaken out of his thoughts, looked up to see a round faced guy donning a black-and-white, many ear piercings, and chain necklaces. He studied Mingi for a moment before twisting his face in disgust, furrowing his brows.
"Eugh. A nobody. Your type of people are so weird you know."
Whatever that means.
"You know what? Come here," the boy said, and Mingi did as he was told. The boy took the ripped piece of the packet and skimmed it over before handing it back to Mingi. "Go to class and tell Hongjoong that his bowl cut is ugly as shit and he needs to use the bowl he used to cut his hair to feed his cat and tame that fucking thing."
And, as if it were against his will, Mingi picked up his feet and headed up the stairs, trudging towards his class even if he'd rather just fall on the floor and sleep. Honestly, that kid didn't have the right to say he was weird when he showed up, insulted Mingi, then told Mingi to insult someone he doesn't even know. He had half the mind to go back down and smack the guy for being so entitled but he really couldn't bring himself to care that much about it.
Now, where was his class?
206… 207… Ah, there. 208.
Mingi roughly shoved the door open, though he might’ve done it too aggressively judging by the loud thud that came from it. Every head in the classroom snapped towards Mingi— except for the teacher, who slept soundly at his desk. Although literally everyone was glaring at Mingi, only two kids seemed relevant to him: the pink haired guy with a piercing glare and generally uninviting demeanor and the shorty with a plethora of accessories and a very odd style. It didn't take a genius to guess which one was Hongjoong.
He walked straight towards the atrociously dressed boy — his footsteps echoing in the silent room — and glared down at Hongjoong. It really was a great thing to be tall, it made his intimidation attempts much easier.
"Hey," he said, voice raspy from disuse. Mingi cleared his throat before he continued. "Your bowl cut is ugly as shit and you need to use the bowl you used to cut your hair to feed your cat to tame that fucking thing."
"Excuse me?!" Hongjoong screeched, jumping out of his seat. The pink haired guy acted as a guard dog, somehow procuring a fucking calligraphy brush as tall as Mingi from behind his back, and protectively stepped in front of Hongjoong. "How dare you insult my hair! You know where you stand, right? You're a nobody! A damn nobody! Mark my words, when the fever festival comes around—"
"Hongjoong," the guard dog cut off the shorty, and he instantly deflated and lost all his intimidation. "He called me a cat. You know there's only one person who does that."
Hongjoong's face was impressively expressive, especially compared to his stoic partner. He scrunched up his nose, shifted his expression to disgust, which then turned into Hongjoong staring into space inquisitively, then finally settling on anger. Despite this, Mingi couldn't really feel scared of the boy with how he looked like a small, angry kitten next to the imposing presence of the guard dog.
"Freaking Jongho! I knew it!" Hongjoong exclaimed. "He's the only person in this shithole that has absolutely no sense of fashion at all, of course he'd make the nobody insult me!"
"Don't get too excited, we have to wait for the festival to get any real dirt on him," the guard dog added in the same deadpan tone he never seemed to deviate from, the complete opposite of the fluctuating tone of his haircut victim partner. "You can go bother him another day, we're supposed to be creating our game plan for this semester right now, you know."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever, we'll get that done someday," Hongjoong brushed off his partner and turned his attention towards Mingi with a mischievous grin. "Say, you're a nobody right? When did you get here?"
"It's my first day," Mingi really needed to drink some water, his voice was raspy and stitled. "Why does everyone keep calling me a nobody? Would it kill you to have a little decency?"
"Decency?! As in respect? Us?!" Hongjoong sputtered, eyes opening wider than the all encompassing black hole that Mingi was nearly consumed by in another reality. "Seonghwa and I are the pinnacle of respect. You're certainly not gonna find any sense of order or decency anywhere else in this school."
Funny that Hongjoong of all people is saying that, with his extremely "out there" appearance and questionable hairstyle choices. The boy that told him to insult Hongjoong wasn't wrong about that atrocious bowlcut.
"Well!" Hongjoong continued on, "You haven’t joined any clubs, yeah? That's what makes you a nobody! Consider joining the Calligraphy club: Our protection is absolute and the skills you gain from our guidance will prove to be valuable throughout your life and career. By entrusting yourself to be guided by me, Kim Hongjoong, and my co-leader, Park Seonghwa, the Calligraphy Club will lead you to victory in all your future prospects and a near-guaranteed honors roll ticket."
He sounded like a marketable business slogan trying to be as persuasive as possible to goad the listener into buying a product. The kid didn’t even try to sound genuine — he quite literally stood up straighter and held one arm behind his back and put his hand up like he was making a pledge. Mingi couldn't tell if he was being made fun of or if this was some elaborate, incredibly weird joke. What Mingi didn’t get is why they’d try to recruit a person who had just enrolled. Mingi hadn’t even been there for longer than a day, and he had quite literally offended both leaders in the past five minutes, so what were these people trying to play at?
The pink one put a bandaged hand (damaged from a fight, perhaps?) on shorty’s shoulder and pulled him back, leaning forward to whisper into his ear. Not once did his stone-cold expression break. Mingi could deduce that this was the Seonghwa that Hongjoong mentioned in his weird little speech. Unlike his guard dog, shorty didn’t hold back on speaking loudly.
“Ah. Right. Well, it’s not like we can tell him, since he probably didn't read the packet. Ah, the most frequent mistake made in this school, remember when the same thing happened to us, Hwa? I’m just giving him the option now, he’ll learn it’s worth it later.”
“I’m right here, you know," Mingi muttered, mildly annoyed at being talked about right in front of his face. The other kids in the room had taken to gossiping with each other, whispering obnoxiously loud and not even hiding their opinions. God, Mingi was gonna get a headache from all this commotion. The shitty, rundown, flickering lights were starting to burn his eyes and each word another person said grated on Mingi's ears like a bow on an out-of-tune violin. This was taking far too much of his energy than he'd like.
"Yeah, yeah, we didn’t forget about you,” Seonghwa grumbled in a deep, gruff voice. Hongjoong giggled, spreading out his fan with a singular, snapping motion to cover his cheshire grin ever so slightly.
"Just think about our offer," the smaller one said, "It'll come in handy down the line."
What a vague statement. Mingi studied them as the two walked away, bickering with one another. Shit, was this how the rest of the clubs were going to be with him? His head hurt just thinking about how annoying that would be. In fact, Mingi's head was already hurting from all the hurdles and troubles of the day and he rubbed his forehead in a futile attempt to relieve his headache.
Mingi stumbled out of the classroom, nearly tripping over himself as he rushed to get fresh air and some peace and quiet. He didn't even notice the two club leaders going quiet as their gazes followed Mingi, watching him intently. Mingi didn't notice anything. His legs acted on their own as his mind was lost to the throes of his ability, being bombarded by explosions and visions from other universes. When he looked down, he saw himself stepping on rainbows, then blood, then water, then all of those at the same time.
This is bad, this is bad—
Mingi knew that when he got overwhelmed his control of his ability would slip, and reality would blend with other realities just as it did when he was first thrown into his own, personal hell. He knew this! It was a mistake to go along with what he was told and engage with this school. A rush of panic started to cause Mingi's chest to tighten, but he pushed against the sense of dread and discomfort that threatened to take hold of him again. He ran, and ran, and ran, till he found himself at the roof of the school building.
It was quiet. Only the faint caws of crows in the distance and the quiet strutting of a dove on the roof accompanied him. The sky was grey, with seemingly permanent clouds blocking the sun from shining through. It only served to make the run down school look worse than it did from the ground. And yet, despite all this, it was the perfect place for Mingi to decompress.
He breathed in and out — shallow, infrequent gasps fading into deep breaths — and slowly stepped towards the edge of the rooftop. He was gaining control of his ability again. Other worlds stopped overwhelming him, and he started to be able to make sense of his own world again. This is good… this is good.
Mingi looked down. The feet below him felt like they were disconnected from his body, objects that were a mile away from him that he would never regain access to again. Even if his feet looked like they were unreachable, it didn't compare to how impossibly far the ground seemed to be. Not for the first time, he wondered how it would be like to fall and finally rest, freed from his ability and the eternal torture it put him in. The allure of letting go of all his worries, all his pain, and all his responsibilities all seemed to lay in the ground that stood far out of reach.
To his surprise, his leg followed his command when he willed it to move forward, stepping off of the edge he was precariously balanced on. The prospect of being free was growing more and more appealing. Mingi glanced at the crows in the sky, flying at will without a care in the world. What a simple existence.
Mingi leaned forward and let himself fall, with the rush of his body accelerating towards the ground pumping through his veins. He's seen himself do this millions of times before, in millions of different realities. He was intimately familiar with the chase of death, running towards an escape to life and everything it entailed, and the fear and exhilaration that mixed together at the sight of the rapidly approached ground.
He squeezed his eyes shut just before he hit the floor and heard the sound of his skull cracking, accompanied by a searing pain that overtook his head. Mingi's body hit the floor with sickening cracks, and he knew more than a few of his bones were broken. He almost faded out of consciousness, nearly being taken by death's hands, when the pain in his body abruptly disappeared and he was left with a headache instead of a broken skull.
Mingi sat up with a groan, looking down at the ground where a splatter of blood should be. He glanced at his surroundings, checking to see if everything was the same as he remembered it. The graffitied walls, dirt ground, and empty yard — it was all the same.
Mingi couldn't kill himself. He knew this. And yet, he still tried to end his life anyways, with a small sliver of hope that maybe, just maybe, this time would be the one where he could finally find peace instead of having his mind stuffed in a reality that was exactly the same as his original one, with one difference — Mingi wasn't dead. And he would never die, not soon enough or of his own violation. Hope was never on Mingi's side.
So, Mingi laid there. His eyes glazed over as he stared, and stared, and stared, searching across realities for peace that he could never feel.