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ROUND 1
SION vs. YUSHI
Sohee watches from the pod as the first contestants are brought out onto the stage. They’re clad in monochrome, one black and one white, and their microphones float in the air above the stage. A hush falls over the crowd, and someone’s untimely cough gets stifled by the onlooker beside him. Then the first notes begin, music trickling out from the speakers hidden throughout the arena.
He’s heard this song before. He remembers Sion working on it a lifetime ago, showing Yushi what he’d written, notes scrawled along the printed staves. This might be the first and last time he performs it. Their voices blend together so perfectly, and it’s hard for him to tear his eyes away. Yushi’s smiling brighter than Sohee’s ever seen, and Sion looks like a prince, shining so radiantly on stage tonight.
It’s almost enough to make him forget about the timer flashing in the air above the stage, the display reading both of their names. He sees the alien crowd frantically pressing buttons on their remotes, and then he looks away as the song crescendos, then slows to an end.
A single gunshot rings out through the air, and the crowd explodes.
SION WIN
Sohee was born on the streets in a world devoid of humanity. He didn’t remember much of that time, but what he did was bleak.
The ruined city was his prison growing up, and he did what he could to survive, stealing when he wanted to, begging when he needed to. Their alien rulers were mean but complacent when they deigned to survey the city, and Sohee learned from one of the older kids in his gang that it was always okay to steal from them. Pickpocketing was easy when he was so small, so slight, and the leaders liked to send him after the ones who were so fat off their riches they couldn’t see him even if they wanted to.
Then he was caught one day, picked clean up into the air by an alien who must’ve been three meters tall, an amorphous sort of creature that left slime on Sohee’s skin where it touched him. The alien said something in a language Sohee didn’t understand.
“Just kill me,” Sohee said, and one of the alien’s tentacles came to rest against his pulse, gripping his neck.
The alien said something else, and it wasn’t until later, years after that alien took him in and fed him and clothed him and taught him their language, that Sohee found out what it was.
I like that look in your eyes. I’ll keep you.
ROUND 2
SHOTARO vs. WONBIN
There’s bile in Sohee’s throat. The cleaners worked quickly, clearing the stage of the blood and gore after they dragged Sion off the stage. Sion had sat there motionless, lifeless, staring at Yushi’s limp body as if he could will him back to life. In the end it was futile. This was what finally broke him after years in the training center, years of monthly evaluations and diets and everything their handlers thought were necessary to make them the perfect contestants.
The host announces a break before the next matchup, and Sohee takes a moment to relax. He unclenches his fists, watching the way blood returns to his starved hands. That could be him soon. He hope it isn’t.
The next round is over before it even begins. There’s a swell of excitement in the crowd as soon as Wonbin’s name is announced, and Sohee remembers something Wonbin had told him years ago in the training center. He’d fallen in with a rich family who’d built him from the ground up, and he worried that they would use their influence to sway the trainers. Give him a leg up on the evaluations, let him have a snack every so often, turn a blind eye when he goes away for two weeks and comes back with a new look.
Maybe Shotaro never stood a chance. It’s a shame, too; Sohee remembers him in brief glimpses. They were in different cohorts, but from what Sohee saw, he was nice. An incredible dancer, really, but a little naïve, maybe, a little too kind for the sort of people he was surrounded by. Sohee once heard from the handlers that Shotaro’s personality was a liability, that he would be crushed by the cruel world that existed outside the training center.
And so he was.
WONBIN WIN
He spent most of his days in a very large room, the walls painted to resemble a blue sky with wispy white clouds that always stayed in one spot. In the topmost corner was a bright sun, and Sohee heard from the older children that there were cameras in it. There were cameras everywhere, they explained. In the artificial yellow sun, in the flowers that dotted the fields, in the eyes of their handlers.
It was in one of the smaller rooms that were decorated to resemble gardens that he met Wonbin.
Sohee fiddled with the ties of the shift they dressed all the trainees in as he wandered around, looking for something to do after the morning’s lessons. It was scratchy and fit poorly, but he had no other option. There was a boy in the corner sitting up against a tree, flowers scattered around him, and Sohee made his way over. He was small and thin, and Sohee peered down at him.
“What are you doing here alone?” Sohee asked, crouching down, and the boy recoiled. Sohee frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I— There’s nothing wrong with me,” the boy mumbled. When he looked up his eyes were watery and red. A scar crossed over his right brow, paler than the surrounding skin. “There’s something wrong with you. This is my room.”
“You can’t have a whole room to yourself,” Sohee said, feeling something like anger rise within him. There were so many kids in the training center, it wasn’t fair for this guy to demand ownership of an entire room.
“I can,” he said, jutting his chin out, and Sohee lunged at him, tackling him down onto the ground. They wrestled, and when the dust settled Sohee was flat on his back and staring up at the artificial sky. The boy’s forearm was pressed against his neck, and it was becoming increasingly harder and harder for Sohee to breathe.
“Fine, fine,” Sohee choked out, and the boy let him go, sitting up on Sohee’s stomach. “Jeez, you’re stronger than you look. What’s your name? I’m Sohee.”
“I’m Wonbin,” the boy said, and he clambered off, extending his hand to help Sohee up. He cocked his head to the side. “Maybe I’ll let you share this room with me. You’re not too bad.”
ROUND 4
EUNSEOK vs. SOHEE
Before Sohee knows it, it’s his turn. The stylists this morning had dressed him in a sweater that was soft and light against his skin with a pair of dark slacks, and a fluffy white beret was perched on the crown of his head. He feels like a doll, one of the humans they kept on display on the high streets for alien shoppers to buy, and he supposes that is what he was doing now, vying for the attention of as many aliens as he can.
He’s practiced for this song for what felt like ages, working with a teacher who corrected the tone and pitch of every note until he ran his throat ragged. He was in the studio from sunup until sundown with the vocal coaches his foster family had paid for, their hypersensitive ears on the alert for any aberrations in the music. They’d also started monitoring his caloric intake, making sure he was gaining weight, and when they realized they couldn’t fatten him up enough to hide his knobby bones before his stage, they shook their multiple heads and said, “We’ll just have to cover him up.”
He knows that Eunseok was practicing the same song he was. All those days Sohee spent in the studios, Eunseok was there, too, separated by just a soundproof wall. This was how they did it, randomly split up the trainees into duos and assign them a duet to perform on stage together that would draw out both of the participants’ charms. Sohee’s seen first-hand that every detail of the production is carefully orchestrated to draw in the highest viewership numbers: from the selection of trainees who are chosen to participate, to the pairings which aren’t as random as advertised, to the choices of songs and outfits.
Eunseok looks rattled. Under the bright and glaring lights, he looks shaken, his lower lip trembling. And Sohee can’t blame him at all— he knows that the contestants who’d lost in the two previous rounds were his friends. Sohee remembers seeing the three of them together before, Eunseok and Sungchan trailing after Shotaro like bees to honey. They used to do things like dig around in the dirt looking for bugs and wade into the streams to catch fish. Those days are over now, shattered.
Sohee reaches for the hem of his sweater, his fingers moving to instinctively grasp tight, feeling his own nerves start to break through, and then he remembers the cameras that are trained on him from every angle, the way every motion of it, however minute, however infinitesimal, is transmitted to all the screens in the world.
So he forces himself to relax, to unclench his jaw, to look out onto the crowd of grinning murderers and smile back at them. The microphone is like lead in his hands, but he lifts it up all the same. When the beginning notes ring out through the stadium, Sohee breathes in. Breathes out.
And he sings.
SOHEE WIN
The training center was cold. It always was this time of year, but it felt especially frigid.
Sohee wondered if the heating system was down. So he crawled out of his bunk bed, dragging a blanket with him and nearly slipping off the last two rungs, and darted down the hall to where Wonbin’s room was. He knew that Wonbin shared his room with another trainee, but when he unlocked the door with a keypad Sion told him that Wonbin hadn’t come back after practice.
“What?” Sohee said, very intelligently, and Sion shrugged.
“You can check on the roof. He goes up there sometimes at night. To think.”
There was a hidden route up to the roof from their dorms. The entrance was a crawl space behind one of the control rooms no one ever bothered to board up, and all they had to do from there was to take the service stairs up, up, up, until they made it to where a rickety and rusty door creaked open into the moonlight. Sohee stepped out gingerly, half-afraid that it was all a setup and an alien was going to jump out at him, shout “Surprise!” and then shoot him with a laser gun. Nothing of the sort happened.
Instead, he found Wonbin sitting on the very edge of the roof, his legs dangling over the city below. Sohee clutched his blanket ever tighter around himself, his only defense against the white powder that fell from the sky.
“What are you doing here alone?” Sohee asked, and he suddenly felt like he’d had this conversation with Wonbin before, years ago. “Aren’t you cold?”
Wonbin shrugged. He patted the space beside him, and Sohee sat down carefully, keeping his eyes trained on Wonbin so he didn’t have to look down at the ground that was hundreds of meters away. “Yeah, I guess so.”
Sohee reached behind him and tucked the other end of the blanket around Wonbin’s shoulder. “You’ll get sick if you sit like this for too long. Couldn’t sleep?”
Wonbin looked at him then. His hair was longer than it was before, curling at his neck, halfway to his shoulders. That scar from before was still there, brighter and paler now that the rest of his eyebrow had grown out around it. “Look,” he said, and he held his hands out to Sohee. A bright blue PASS was flashing between his cupped hands. “I made it through.”
Sohee exhaled. “Congrats,” he said. “I knew you’d make it.”
“Don’t lie.”
“I’m not lying!”
Sohee resisted the urge to kick Wonbin, cognizant of how precariously high up in the air they were. It was a wonder Wonbin was able to sit out here for so long. He was normally so scared of heights.
“You’ll win,” Sohee said. He didn’t look at Wonbin as he said that, worried that something could show through in his eyes. Didn’t know what it was, but he worried all the same. “I know you’re going to win, no matter who your competition is.”
Wonbin was quiet. Then, in a voice so small Sohee wasn’t sure if it was him or the wind, he said, “I’m scared.”
Sohee felt a curious prickle along his skin, flickering down his arms, then centered in the palms of his hands, and he looked down. Held his hands out, palms up, and there it was, the PASS that appeared like a beacon in the night sky.
“Wonbin,” Sohee whispered, hushed, and Wonbin stared back at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
Around them, the first snow of the year fell.
ROUND 5
SION vs. WONBIN
They’re given two weeks to prepare for the next round. Wonbin stays with Sohee, occupying the now-empty lower bunk, and Sohee doesn’t ask why. He doesn’t want to know what happened with Sion, if the outpouring of grief was too much for Wonbin to bear, if Wonbin left of his own volition. He doesn’t ask. Instead, he gives Wonbin an extra blanket at night and tells him to kick his bed if he needs anything.
Wonbin is quieter now. He takes up less space than he used to, which is saying something because Wonbin has never been one to make himself the star of the show. But now he’s the one being headhunted for advertisements and pulled from the studio to a photoshoot. Surely there are regulations against this, surely he needs time to be on his own, to practice. But the half-moons underneath Wonbin’s eyes grow ever darker and he grows quieter and soon Sohee learns that he needs to mind his own business.
And they go on like this, in tortuous circles winding their way around the necks of everyone involved, and it gets to a point where Sohee wants to stop dead in his tracks in the middle of the hallway and scream because Wonbin is all skin and bones and Sion is a shell of his former self and Anton hasn’t spoken to anyone else in days. But the enforcers are watching, waiting for someone to slip up, and he’ll be damned if he’s the first to. So he grits his teeth and heads back into the studio and goes back to practicing the same chords.
Weeks later, they bring Sion out on stage first, and the crowd erupts. They’d all seen the same storyline broadcasted on screens worldwide— that of a boy who so loved another he knelt by that lifeless body until he was dragged away. Sion is clothed in mourning colors, in fabric so black it seems to swallow him up, the darkness all-encompassing. His eyes are hard as he looks out onto the crowd.
Then it’s Wonbin taking the stage in a flowing white number, his sleeves trailing after him, eerily reminiscent of one of those sea creatures that could kill with a single sting. Sohee’s read about them before— jellyfish, they were called in the past, and before the seas dried up they stung those who wandered into their domain.
Sohee slouches in his chair. It’s uncomfortable, but he forces his muscles to relax, his entire body to loosen. He’s too tense, too invested in the outcome when he has to focus on his own match after this. But he keeps his eyes trained on the figures in front of him, the way Wonbin and Sion step forward to their microphones suspended in space. The crowd hushes, and the music starts. It’s a beautiful song, the one they’ve chosen, but then Sion starts to crack. He misses a note here, a cue there, and just a minute in he unravels.
Sohee forces himself to watch. The final vote count blinks in the night sky, and Sion turns to Wonbin, murmuring something Sohee can’t quite make out.
When Sion falls, there is a smile on his face.
WONBIN WIN
One night, Wonbin came to Sohee’s room. The door opened for him nearly noiselessly, only the soft whooshing of air any indication that anyone had entered at all. Seunghan was asleep on the bunk below Sohee’s, and as Wonbin climbed up the stairs, Sohee stirred. It was still dark when he opened his eyes, saw the inky blackness of the starless sky outside.
“Move,” Wonbin murmured, shoving himself in between the rails and Sohee’s back, and Sohee squinted back at him, turning around to face Wonbin as he dragged the edge of Sohee’s blanket over himself.
“What?” Sohee rasped, sleep still on his tongue, and Wonbin’s eyes were luminous as he stared back at him. Wonbin reached over, fingers on Sohee’s jaw, guiding him back around. “Nightmares again?”
“Sleep, Sohee. We still have practice in the morning.”
They laid like that for a few minutes until he stopped keeping count, and Sohee heard Wonbin’s breathing even out behind him. He was solid and practically radiating heat, the way humans did, and Sohee decided that it was nice. He found that he didn’t mind it as much as he would’ve if he’d done this during the daytime. Wonbin’s hand was warm where it rested on Sohee’s stomach, his breath hot against Sohee’s nape. Under the blanket of night, perhaps this, too, was alright. He closed his eyes, and he went back to sleep.
ROUND 6
SOHEE vs. ANTON
There’s a commotion backstage. They’ve cut the cameras, put up screens around the stage. The crowd is shouting, demanding answers. Sohee turns in his chair, watching as the enforcers swarm, whispering to each other. Missing, he hears in the undercurrent of their staticky voices, and when he looks to his side, he realizes that he hasn’t seen Anton this entire time. He was there earlier in the green room before Sohee went out on stage, adjusting his outfit and checking his headset, but after that—
Sohee stands on unsteady legs, pushing his way out of his seat and running down the steps and following the crowd that’s gathered, and the collar around his neck starts to beep, warning, and he stops.
“We should go,” Wonbin says, quiet, from somewhere behind Sohee, and he turns. There’s blood splattered all over the front of Wonbin’s shirt, and Wonbin notices Sohee’s gaze drift downward. He curls a hand in the cotton. “They’ll let you go straight to the finals if they can’t find him.”
The implications of that haven't begun to sink in yet. Instead, he follows Wonbin back to the green room, where Wonbin grabs a bottle of water from the fridge and passes it to Sohee.
“You don’t think he—” Sohee starts. Stops. Can’t finish his thought.
“He wouldn’t,” Wonbin says, but he sounds unsure. They’d all seen the breakdown Anton had on stage after the conclusion of the third round. Sungchan used to dote on Anton like a younger brother, and when their matchup was first announced, Anton had tried desperately to get them swapped to different brackets. It didn’t work, and Anton emerged from the stage the sole victor.
The enforcers find Anton’s dress shoes on the roof, neatly arranged just below the ledge. They give Sohee the bye to the next round, telling him that he can go after he gives a quick interview about how lucky he is to not have to compete. Wonbin sighs, exhausted, and Sohee turns to him.
“I hope he escaped,” Wonbin says. Hope springs eternal, and Sohee swallows. Even so.
“I hope so, too.” Then, quieter, “They still haven’t found him.”
“Well, anyway. I’ll get out of your room tonight so you can have your own space again,” Wonbin promises. There’s a wayward fleck of blood high on his cheekbones. If it were darker, Sohee would have thought it was a new beauty mark. “Just have to move my stuff back to my old room.”
Don’t go, please don’t go, Sohee wants to say. The words become trapped in his throat, sticky and clotting. Stay with me. You’re all I have left.
Instead, he says, “Okay. Do you need any help?”
Wonbin smiles at him, small, brittle. “No, that’s alright. I’ll be gone by tomorrow morning.”
SOHEE WIN
“Sohee,” Wonbin said. His hand closed around Sohee’s wrist, tight enough to keep him there, loose enough that Sohee could slip out if he wanted.
Sohee stayed. Turned around, slow.
They hadn’t spoken to each other much since that night, and as much as Sohee liked to think it was due to their more rigorous schedules in preparation for their live stages, he knew it wasn’t. Wonbin was avoiding him, eating at a different table during lunchtime and occasionally skipping dinners, and even Sion seemed perturbed by this behavior. Anton had asked, once, if Wonbin was currently going through puberty, and they’d laughed it off before coming to the sobering realization that it could’ve been true. None of them had ever asked Wonbin what the parameters of his existence were like, if his creators had programmed what they knew as puberty for him.
“Wonbin,” Sohee replied. There was suspicion creeping into his voice, he knew. It was hard not to be, not at this stage of what was now a competition.
Wonbin swallowed. Sohee could see his Adam’s apple bob, the reddening of his ears.
“I wanted— I wanted to—” Wonbin started, and that was all the warning Sohee had before Wonbin darted forward, cupping Sohee’s face in his hands, and kissed him.
It was clumsy, teeth scraping against each other, and Sohee accidentally bit down on Wonbin’s lower lip in his haste to get away.
“Wonbin!” Sohee hissed, rubbing the back of his hand against his lips, backing away. He hadn’t ever thought of Wonbin like that, considered him as good a friend as any, but that was his first kiss. The concept of kissing anyone at all, period, was a nebulous idea in his mind. “What the fuck?”
“I’m sorry,” Wonbin said, and he stepped forward, his hands out in supplication. His gait was unsteady, like he was walking on new legs. “I just thought—”
“Thought what?”
Wonbin’s eyes were like water again. He said, “I thought I wouldn’t ever have the chance. I saw some of the others doing it, and I wanted to try. I’m sorry.”
Sohee’s breath caught. He watched Wonbin turn on his heel and move to leave.
“Wonbin,” Sohee shouted, and Wonbin stopped in his tracks. He was listening. “We’ll see each other again. We will.”
ROUND 7
WONBIN vs. SOHEE
The song they’ve chosen is one from centuries ago, back when the earth was still whole. Sohee unearths it from a collection of love songs, and Wonbin is more than happy with the selection when they first listen to it, hovering over an old computer with the file playing on the speakers. And when Wonbin suggests they practice together, Sohee goes along with it, taking his hand and following him to a spare room.
They trade off, Wonbin practicing while Sohee naps on the couch, and when it’s time to swap out, Wonbin taps Sohee on the shoulder, gesturing at him to use the studio. It becomes routine for them, the days passing by in these moments, punctuated by the occasional interview or advertisement shoot. Most of the tension, the strangeness from before is gone now, melted away with their grief. And one day, Sohee is napping, soaking in the sun, when he startles awake. Wonbin is hovering over him, his face too close, and his eyes go wide.
“What are you looking at?” Sohee whispers, gaze fixed on a spot somewhere between Wonbin’s eyes, above his nose.
Wonbin moves to pull away, and Sohee grabs him, hand around the back of his neck.
“You,” Wonbin admits.
It’s enough for Sohee to pull Wonbin down on the couch with him, their knees knocking against each other on the way down, and Sohee grunts as Wonbin’s weight lands on his stomach. Wonbin pushes himself up on both elbows, reaching up to brush the hair out of his eyes. They’ve dyed his hair blonde for the finals, and Sohee watches as Wonbin tucks a wayward lock of hair behind his ear.
“Wonbin,” Sohee says, his hands hovering over Wonbin’s back, roving over his side, landing somewhere looped loosely around Wonbin’s neck. He leans up, kisses the corner of Wonbin’s mouth, and Wonbin jerks like he’s been electrocuted. His face is rapidly reddening, and Sohee pats his cheek. “Is this okay?”
“Yeah,” Wonbin huffs out before he ducks down to meet Sohee against the plush pillow, and then they’re hard-pressed to get any practice done for the rest of the day.
They spend the night before the final round together, skin to skin, legs tangled in the blanket, and Wonbin curls a hand over Sohee’s, clutched to the skin over his heart. They’re quiet, their breathing the only sounds in the night. Again Wonbin is like a furnace against his skin, so Sohee tucks his cold feet against Wonbin’s calves. Wonbin yelps, squirming away, but Sohee grabs onto his arm and holds him steady until he relents.
“For tomorrow,” Sohee starts, and Wonbin claps a hand over his mouth.
“No,” Wonbin says. “No, I don’t want to talk about it.”
Sohee licks Wonbin’s hand, and Wonbin lets go, muttering about how disgusting Sohee is sometimes, wiping his hand on Sohee’s blanket. Wonbin’s still complaining about it when Sohee speaks up again. “I want you to do your best tomorrow. I don’t want you to do something stupid.”
Wonbin is silent behind him, and the way he doesn’t respond tells Sohee all he needs to know. “I don’t know what you mean.”
Sohee rolls over in the circle of Wonbin’s arms, pressing a hand to Wonbin’s chest. “Don’t lose just for me. Don’t be stupid. I know you.”
“I can’t,” Wonbin says, and Sohee feels something in him break. “I don’t know how.”
“You have to,” Sohee urges. Hopes the way he’s asking— begging, really— is enough to drive his point home. “You have to promise me. Please.”
“You’re selfish. You want me to live without you and not the other way around.”
“Untrue.” A lie. “I just don’t you to hold back for me.”
Wonbin doesn’t look convinced, but he’s easy enough. A single kiss, and he’s already forgotten.
The next morning, as they’re getting ready, Wonbin calls for Sohee to come over. He needs help with his outfit, a tight black number— a little cropped top and leather pants, and Sohee wrinkles up his nose when he laces up the back of Wonbin’s shirt. Wonbin doesn’t say anything else, and Sohee is all the more grateful for it. He doesn’t need Wonbin to come out on stage looking like he needs a box of tissues.
Minutes before he’s set to step out on stage, he runs through the music one last time, mouths the words under his breath— he’s practiced it so many times he feels like he could sing it through in his sleep, but flashes of memories come to the forefront of his mind, unbidden. He remembers cold days and warm nights, the insistent press of a body against his, a mug of honey lemon tea shoved into his grateful hands. It comes and it comes and it doesn’t stop, and Sohee feels a pricking at the corners of his eyes, covers his mouth with his hands as he realizes that he’s crying.
It’s all a blur after that. Sohee barely remembers it— wiping away the tears with his sleeve before standing, checking his reflection in the mirror, deciding that he hasn’t fucked up his makeup too badly. And when he finally takes his first steps out onto that stage, guided by some of the staff members and the ever-present enforcers, he can’t stop himself from looking over to where Wonbin is already waiting. He’s a vision out there, his blond hair styled into voluminous waves and curls, a pair of glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, and with the lights shining down on him, Sohee can finally see the way his clothes glimmer and shine, the light reflecting off the tiny crystals in the fabric.
Sohee straightens his clothes, and he steps onto the podium. He finds his microphone in front of him, reaching for it with shaking hands. He wills himself to relax, to calm down, and when he sneaks a glance to the side, Wonbin is already looking at him. Sohee cocks his head, questioning, and Wonbin mouths good luck, and Sohee looks away again, his face burning. He hopes it doesn’t show up too brightly on the screens, hopes they think it’s a fervid sort of blush.
The music starts, the opening notes filtering through the speakers, and Wonbin opens his mouth first. “Don’t leave me, baby,” he croons, and Sohee can see in his peripheral vision the way Wonbin’s fingers linger on the mic. “Just turn around.”
It’s easy to forget where they are when Wonbin is looking at him like that, eyes bright underneath all of the lights. Sohee sings, his muscle memory taking over, but he’s transfixed, unable to tear his gaze from Wonbin’s. And Wonbin must feel the same— he steps forward, abandoning his position entirely, coming over to where Sohee stands, and it’s with a jolt that Sohee feels Wonbin’s hand, big and heavy on his waist. It’s nearly too much to bear, and it takes all of Sohee’s concentration to focus on singing, on finishing the stage, on giving the world the best performance he can.
Wonbin’s hand is on his jaw now. His thumb strokes small circles into Sohee’s overheated skin, and he’s close enough to kiss. So he leans forward, tips his chin into Wonbin’s waiting palm.
When it happens, Sohee doesn’t even feel it. But he sees the way Wonbin’s eyes widen, the way Wonbin reaches forward, both arms out, and—
? WIN