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Khun stalked over to the corner of the room, his pocket and lighthouse following him obediently.
“Bam?” he asked, resisting the urge to snap at the other man. “What’s wrong?”
Across the room, the rest of Team Sweet and Sour kept up the shinsu exercises Khun had instructed them to practice, though their hearts weren’t really in it. Ehwa, at least, was keeping an eye out for how Khun’s call went. If Bam’s plan succeeded, they would all be able to catch a break for the afternoon…
“I’m training your motley crew right now,” Khun hissed at his pocket. “What happened?”
Ewha strained her ears, but wasn’t able to pick up anything Bam said.
“Wh—Bam! Oi!”
There was a pause before Khun whipped around. Ehwa hastily returned to her exercises, but Khun didn’t pay her any mind, clapping loudly instead.
“Alright, everyone,” Khun announced impatiently. “Bam’s gotten himself into some trouble or something, probably got caught up with some helpless kids he can’t leave behind. I’m going to go fetch him, and I’d like you all to continue these exercises. But,” he pauses delicately. “I don’t expect you guys to stay so disciplined the entire time. You may take breaks as you need.”
Khun almost immediately regretted those words, seeing Team Sweet and Sour’s faces split into grins.
Nothing’s going to get done today, Khun thought to himself as he grabbed his coat.
***
The 30th floor is, of course, most famous for the Workshop Battle, with its entire livelihood built around the glistening coastlines whose waters were perennially a deep ultramarine. Countless hotels dotted the seaside, and most tourists who went to the 30th floor never ventured far from the urban shopping centers that had sprung into existence shortly after the coastlines became a must-see destination in the Tower. However, if you wandered far enough inland, far enough away from the hustle and bustle of the tourism industry, the back roads would take you to an open expanse of farmland that supported not only the residents of the 30th floor, but also those of the floors above and below.
It was next to an irrigation gutter where Khun found Bam squatted, staring at something Khun didn’t care to see.
“Kind of a far-out place, you know?” Khun called, jogging the last few steps to close the distance.
Bam pointed inside the gutter.
“There’re snails here,” he said, and he was right. Several leaves drifted lazily along the clear water, and perched on the walls near the water level were several large snails with nondescript brown shells.
“What?” Khun glanced at where Bam was gesturing, and quickly agreed. “Yes, there are snails. But what are you doing out here, Bam? What are we doing out here, in this, in this…”
Khun gestured widely at the vast fields of crops reaching as far as the eye could see.
“…in this desolate place?” he finished.
Bam stared at Khun expressionlessly, and for a fleeting moment Khun thought he saw disappointment on Bam’s face, but Bam stood up briskly and Khun dismissed the thought.
“Walk with me,” Bam requested, turning away without looking to see if Khun was following. Khun gaped at Bam’s back, looked helplessly at his lighthouse in case someone had hacked it and could see the bullshit Khun had to deal with, before dashing off to rejoin Bam.
They trudged along in silence for a while, kicking up little clouds of dust on the gravelly road. Khun had only passed two other people here, and the emptiness was beginning to unsettle him just a bit, though Bam seemed unfazed. Archimedes could be seen just on the horizon, but from here Khun wondered if the speck in the distance was truly the airship, or whether it was just an illusion conjured out of conviction.
“…Where are you taking me?” Khun asked at last.
Bam didn’t answer, didn’t look at Khun at all as he continued walking.
“You know,” Bam murmured, his voice so gentle that Khun had to strain his ears to hear him over the water gurgling softly through the gutters running alongside the road. “I spent a lot of time alone like this. Both in FUG, and before that, in the cave.”
Khun’s eyes widened, but he kept pace with Bam. He knew that Bam had suffered terribly in the times they were apart, but that was mostly swept under the rug whenever they were together, buried in the chaos of whatever mess they had gotten into. Bam rarely opened up about his past, and Khun was smart enough to keep his mouth shut and let Bam do the talking if he wanted to learn something new about him.
“I don’t mind it so much, anymore. Especially if it means that I can have the agency to control at least some of what happens around me. But for the others…well…”
Bam kicked a rock that was lying in his path. It bounced several times, before rolling to a stop a ways away. Bam’s eyes followed the rock until it came to a stop, and he turned his gaze onto Khun.
“I know I’m not normal, Khun. I feel too much and too little all at once. I can’t properly get close to people…” He kicked the rock again. “…but I can’t let them go, either.
“It’s like I’m playing at having emotions. They’re so real to me, but somehow I can’t seem to share how I feel to others, and I can’t seem to respond to what I feel properly, either. Apparently I shouldn’t just be shouldering every burden that comes my way without relying on others at all.
“And you…”
Bam stopped, looked Khun straight in his eyes.
“You’re not normal, either.”
They stared at each other like this for several seconds, before Bam turned away.
“So please…don’t expect that the others can keep pace with us.”
Bam started walking again, but Khun refused to budge.
“So this is what it’s all about, eh?” Khun called out coldly.
Bam turned around wordlessly to face him.
“This whole thing. Calling me out here, making me come to the godforsaken place, it was all so you could give your pathetic little friends a break because they’re too weak to go up the Tower.”
Khun scoffed in disgust.
“I don’t even know why I try. I’m the one who’s spending all this time training them, because you want them up the Tower! You think they’re going to survive the next floors without intensive training? They barely made it out of the Workshop Battle alive!” he spat bitterly, turning on his heel. “I’m leaving.”
“So only the broken have the right to make it to the top of the Tower?” Bam asked evenly.
“I’m not broken,” Khun responded flatly, before repeating, “I’m leaving.”
“You are,” Bam told him softly. “We both are. We didn’t know happiness or love growing up. So we can live through bouts of endless training because it’s all we’ve ever known. But other people…”
Bam paused. There was no need to finish that sentence, really.
“Other people aren’t like that,” Khun finished resentfully. “So what do you want me to do? Carry them on my back with my strength and coddle them like you did when you were with them?”
Khun strode forward, looking Bam square in the eyes.
“You’re a lucky one,” Khun said, feeling almost giddy with recklessness. “You’ve grown stronger and stronger, and you haven’t yet hit a wall that you couldn’t overcome. So you feel comfortable picking up stray after stray.”
Khun’s voice hardened.
“But let’s say that you do reach the ends of your limits one day. Then what? If you can’t save everyone, who will you save then?”
Bam was quiet, and Khun pounced on the chance to steamroller on.
“Look, every person you want to save who can’t help you is like a coin. And yeah, a couple of coins don’t hold you back from winning fights, but if you’re carrying around millions of little coins suddenly they hold you back a lot, don’t you see?”
“It’s true,” Bam replied. “It’s true. I…can’t save everyone.”
Bam’s voice came out as a timid whisper, and for a moment Khun felt like he’d done something wrong, before his common sense kicked in, reminding Khun that the earlier Bam realized how ridiculous his behavior was, the better.
“But there’s got to be a better way, right? There has to be,” insisted Bam. “There has to be a way to the top without so much cruelty.”
Khun cast his gaze aside, not able to find the words to respond. This is just how the Tower is, he thought. But he knew that if he said as much, Bam might respond with something even more crazy, along the lines of, well, if that’s how the Tower is, maybe it needs to change. And changing the fundamental workings of the Tower might be even more impossible than the already-naïve wish of being able to save everyone. So Khun walked on, past Bam, deeper into the fields, the pastures, the orchards.
“…Khun?”
“We’re already out here. Might as well enjoy it. Ten thousand hours of training and ten thousand and six hours of training will end up doing about the same thing, so I’ll give them a break for this afternoon,” Khun announced to the empty air in front of him, an indirect peace offering. He peeked back to see Bam’s face alight with surprise and delight.
“Thank you, Khun,” Bam told him, and the two of them wandered off together, a kind yet monstrous Irregular and a cunning son of Khun, two little specks of dust lost in a pastoral fantasy for a single, golden fall afternoon.
***
“What’re you kids doing out here?” called out a gruff, distant voice.
For a moment Khun thought that they had somehow trespassed on some farmer’s private property, but they had remained on the dirt road, and there had been no signs or fences to indicate as such.
“We’re just wandering,” Bam replied cheerfully to the old man perched in his tractor a ball’s throw away.
The farmer shut off his machine, wiped the sweat off his brow and tossed his towel over his shoulder, approaching the two youths.
“Don’t see many Regulars coming this far out,” he said, in a not unfriendly way. “It’s good to see another soul here sometimes.”
“It’s probably going to be our last day on this floor, so we were looking to unwind before the exam tomorrow,” Bam explained. Khun personally thought that Bam was saying too much, but at the end of the day, a single farmer out in the boondocks wouldn’t change things all that much, so he didn’t stop him.
“Aw!” the old man exclaimed. “Sad to see y’all are leaving so soon. If you were staying for just another few days I’d invite you to bring your friends back here to pick some apples. It’s the peak of the season right now, but I do understand that it’s quite a trek to even get out here, so I won’t bother y’all with the idea in that case.”
Bam glanced at Khun.
“We still have time,” Bam suggested. “We might not be able to bring our teams here, but we could pick some apples and bring them back. You have space in your lighthouse, right?”
“Ah—” Khun balked for a moment. “I mean, yes, I’ve got space in my lighthouse, but—”
“I’ve never picked apples before,” Bam said, as though that settled everything. “Have you?”
“Well, no, that’s not really something you do at all,” Khun replied.
“It’ll be a new experience for both of us then. And we can bring them back for everyone, too. I’m sure Rak would love to try this new fruit. Maybe he’ll like it even more than he likes bananas.”
Bam watched Khun’s face very carefully as he continued, the edge of his lips turning up slightly.
“Live a little, won’t you?”
“Oh, alright,” Khun said brusquely. “How much is it to pick apples? I’ll pay.”
The old man grinned, the wrinkles in his sun-baked skin deepening.
“It’ll be by weight,” he told them, leading them to an old shed, where he grabbed a ladder, some clippers, two pairs of gloves and a large bucket. “Since you’ll already have the labor costs covered.”
He dumped the collection of tools into Khun and Bam’s arms.
“You’ll have to return these after you’re done. Though I don’t know what you’d want with stealing these, they probably aren’t worth much to you.”
After Khun and Bam had found a prospective tree with flashes of red peeking out behind the leaves, the farmer left them alone, instead returning to till his fields after his harvest of potatoes.
“Rather trusting, eh?” Khun muttered, holding the ladder steady for Bam to climb. “We could totally just steal a bunch of his fruit. It wouldn’t even be hard with my lighthouse.”
“But we’re not going to,” Bam pointed out reasonably, testing his weight on the old ladder. “Money isn’t really an issue for either of us.”
“You’re right,” Khun agreed heartily. “Let’s pick a lot. Some of the money in the Khun family treasury could stand to go back into circulation.”
Bam chuckled.
“No skin off your back, eh?” he asked, reaching up to grab hold of an apple, red with a streak of yellow, adorn with small speckles. “Clippers, please.”
Khun handed Bam the gloves and the clippers.
“Not my fault Eduan and his secretaries don’t read the fine print of their finances as closely as they should,” he retorted. “Maybe they don’t find it weird that there’s an entire building in the estate that doesn’t really exist. Either way I’m not complaining.”
“I’m not asking you t—wait, don’t throw it!” Bam yelled, realizing that Khun was about to toss the apple Bam had just handed him into the bucket. Khun, understanding a moment too late, flailed in an attempt to grab the apple out of midair, but only managed to smack it straight into the hard iron bottom of the bucket.
Khun and Bam stared in silence at the apple in the bucket, unable to say anything in the wake of the heavy thunk that was the sound of fruity flesh meeting cold metal.
“It’s going to bruise…” Bam murmured, almost too mournfully.
“No it’s not,” Khun said decisively, reaching into the bucket. “Destroy the evidence. Nobody needs to know.”
“Are you allowed—?”
Khun unapologetically started eating the apple, staring at Bam as though daring him to stop Khun.
“Look,” he said between bites. “If you really feel that bad, we can, I don’t know, we can tip the guy when we pay him.”
“That’s true,” Bam said, though he still appeared deeply troubled.
After Khun had tossed the core away (“You can’t eat the seeds,” Bam had announced proudly. This he learned from Rachel. Khun already knew this, but he pretended that it was news to him.), they returned to picking apples, slowly making their way across a small patch of the orchard. This time, Khun took care to place the picked fruit gently inside the bucket.
“You know,” Bam said, silhouetted by the golden rays of the setting sun, “I think I’m at peace. When it’s all over, I’d like to come back here. Maybe run my own farm, or orchard, or something similar.”
Khun snorted.
“You want to do this for a living?” he asked derisively. “I mean, this is fine for fun, but there’s not much of a sense of purpose, is there?”
“Hmm…” Bam tipped his head to one side as he slid the blades of the clippers underneath the leaves. “It brings life to things. Everyone needs to eat at the end of the day, you know? We’re all equal in front of a plate of food.”
Snip.
“Besides…when it’s all over, when it’s really all over and I don’t have anything more that I need to fight for…” Bam turned the apple over in his hand, before handing it to Khun. “I think I’d like to do something where I’ll never need to hurt another person.”
Khun took the apple from Bam, but didn’t squat down to put it in the growing mound of apples in the bucket.
“Yeah,” Khun said. “Yeah, I think I’d like that too, actually.”
They stared at each other, a silent moment of understanding passing between them.
“I’m sorry you have to be the hero. You don’t deserve this.”
The words fell out of Khun’s lips, almost sinking through the earth with their weight.
“I’m sorry,” came the reply. “I’m sorry, too.”
Bam climbed down the ladder for the last time.
“It’s time to head back,” he said simply.
Khun nodded wordlessly.
The orchard’s owner was as jovial as ever when Khun and Bam made their way back to the farmhouse. Khun was carrying the bucket of apples, and Bam had the ladder lifted so that one of the rungs were resting on his shoulder.
“Ho-ho!” exclaimed the farmer. “The boys are back. How was it? Did y’all have fun?”
“Yeah,” Bam said, while Khun grunted noncommittally.
“It’s very peaceful here,” Bam continued. “I loved the atmosphere.”
The old man chuckled as he grabbed the bucket and placed it on a rickety-looking scale. As he punched in numbers on the machine, he winked mischievously at the two. “Say, would the two of you be interested in some pies or cider? Apples don’t have to be eaten fresh, you know.”
Khun glanced at Bam, not a bit charmed by the sales pitch, but Bam was already looking at him expectantly.
“Up to you,” Khun said, rolling his eyes.
Bam tipped his head to one side thoughtfully. “Let’s see what you have.”
The old man laughed deeply, from the belly, and ambled over to one of the three refrigerators lining the wall of the farmhouse shed, gesturing for Khun and Bam to join him.
“Here, I’ve got some apple pies—not fresh, unfortunately, but still as good as ever if you stick it in an oven for a good ten minutes—” He pulled out two pies with simple slits in the crust. “—and here I’ve got a nice bottle of cider, fresh squeezed yesterday afternoon—” A jug of amber liquid joined the pies on the wooden table. “—I’ve even got some apple butter, it’s got a nice spike of cinnamon to it, it’s heavenly on some warm, fluffy bread.” A small mason jar of pale yellow spread speckled with brown was added to the pile.
“Do you think that’s enough for everyone, Khun-ssi?” asked Bam.
Khun appraised the goods, calculating in his head how much everyone would probably want, then barked, “Have you got another bottle of cider?”
***
As Khun and Bam neared the hotel that they’d come to call home on this floor, they spotted a group of familiar silhouettes approaching them from the opposite direction.
“Bam! Khun!” shouted Wangnan, waving energetically at both of them.
“Wangnan! Everyone!”
Bam dashed up to meet the rest of Team Sweet and Sour. He glanced around—Goseng and Ehwa were carrying grocery bags filled with…chips? Miseng was proudly carrying a single egg carton, and beside her, Prince had at least four 24-count cartons in his arms. Horyang, whose hands were gripping the handles of multiple buckets of orange fruit, effortlessly lifted an arm in greeting.
“What are these?” Bam asked curiously. “I’ve never seen this kind of fruit before.” He pulled one out of the buckets, admiring the its pleasant hue (it reminded Bam of the sunrise) and the symmetrical leaves where it had once connected to the tree. Pressing down on the skin gingerly, Bam was met with firm, unyielding flesh.
“Persimmons,” Horyang responded stoically.
“There are soft ones too,” Ehwa added. “Prince, open up the cartons, Bam needs to see—”
After a moment of fumbling, an oblong (and completely different, in Bam’s opinion) fruit was pushed into Bam’s hand. Though it was still orange, it was more like molten lava than the sunrise.
“This is a persimmon, too?” he asked, genuinely surprised.
“Yes!” Miseng piped up. “You have to try it! It’s so good!”
Bam smiled.
“Did you all have fun? It was a nice break, wasn’t it?”
There was a chorus of satisfied yeses, and Bam glanced at Khun, who was taking his sweet time strolling on over.
“Tomorrow we’re going back to our planned training regimen!” Khun announced, still unwilling to concede to Bam’s claim that breaks were good and necessary for everyone.
“He’s just being disagreeable,” Bam told them mischievously. “Wait ‘til you see how much he spent on cider for us all.”