He finished writing the bullet points on his whiteboard, the book propped open in his fingers, straining to stay open as he completed his work: A Venn-diagram, on one side their current analysis of Brave New World, and on the other circle, their previous reading of 1984. Discussing the most recent chapters as a group discussion seemed equally fitting to get his previous lesson across because he was feeling exceptionally lazy that day and didn’t want to follow his planned lesson. Not to mention, the students always seemed to enjoy these types of classes more, where they had the chance to freely chat with one another or had the opportunity to shout out answers at him instead of having to raise their hands. Plus, as long as they stayed on topic with their discussions, he didn’t exactly care if they were answering the Venn-diagram as much. Didn’t matter. As long as they were learning.
It was that “lack of control,” as his coworkers called it when they walked in (Not particularly fond of him or the methods he used to teach his students, but sincerely, he didn’t give a shit because the students actually liked him and his classes so, fuck you), that interrupted him as he finished writing down one of the student’s similarities between the two stories. To his surprise, one of his less attentive students, considering the boy never seemed to want to engage with the material they analyzed no matter how much he tried to encourage him to attempt so, was the one who spoke up. He spoke loud enough to hear the weight of his question while the group discussions quietly brewed around the classroom atmosphere, “Mr. Han, I don’t understand this story as much. Why is this called a dystopia? To me, it seems like a Utopia. There’s no war, there’s no famine, there’s no need for philosophy, everyone had their dream jobs, what’s wrong with that?”
“By simply thinking that, ‘why is this a dystopia and not a utopia’, you’re proving a degree of freedom, autonomy, and individual thought that the people of Brave New World aren’t privileged to have,” He readily answered, adding a little flourish of decoration to his scribbles on the whiteboard. A little smiley face and underlines of keywords the student used that he knew would be important to the later assessments, plus, his kids could snap a photo and study the important information later on. Once finished, he snapped the cap of the whiteboard marker back on and turned to address the student’s question, “The society of Brave New World is only a utopia if you are the kind of person that will sacrifice individual freedoms and property rights for stability. You might have an easier life, however, internal freedoms, the capacity for higher thought, the rationality to learn what you like, the inability to not do what you want, interrupting an authority, for example…”
This question comes up every time I teach this story.
But for the first time, one of the students he had been fighting against tirelessly took interest in what they were discussing. For that purpose alone, the teacher settled his lower back against the whiteboard behind him, allowing himself a moment to comb through his words with meticulous consideration. He tapped the capped blue ink whiteboard marker against his chin as he tried to explain to the thirty-something pairs of eyes glued to him while he explained, “To feel the sympathy you do for others and to know that war and famine is wrong, why it is wrong, to understand the pain that comes with itー. That isn’t possible. You wouldn’t have the ability to. You might know it is good that it’s gone, but you wouldn’t be able to feel or rationalize why it’s a good thing.
“Feeling negatively… Hmmm…. Guilt, sorrow, sadness, pain, those are a part of the human experience. When those feelings are removed from you, and you are given distractions to never feel such difficult things, the very thing that makes you human is gone. The ability to know what is right and wrong… To feel it vividly… ‘When man cannot choose, he ceases to be man‘. Even if what you choose is to feel pain. To feel sympathy, anger, hatred, guilt, all of it… You no longer become human when you are apathetic and complacent. You’re only a puppet.
“That’s the point of Brave New World. It’s within you to feel happiness. But there is nothing more human within you than to feel hatred, suffering, and painー But it isn’t the suffering so much as the freedom of choice. Your actions that follow. Consequences. It’s human to choose peace. But it is more human to shoulder the pain and consequence that comes with it,” Jisung concluded, continuing to tap the whiteboard marker as he double checked his words in his mind. He stopped the rhythm he kept knocking on his chin, but kept a grip on the marker still as he proceeded, lifting himself off the whiteboard to continue the discussion exercise, “So… Um… I ranted a bit, but does that make sense? Does anyone else have any other questions?”
“Follow them.”
“Where do you think these guys are going?”
“Who knows, I doubt even they know with the way they’re going in circles…” Jisung murmured underneath his breath, briefly lifting himself up from the rough cement of the rooftop to adjust the pinching earbud planted against his eardrums. He adjusted himself against the ground; Inching the phone screen lit with the call from the bounty hunter chattering in his ears closer to him in the case he needed to hang up, anchoring himself farther to the ground as he moved his legs wider for a steady base, repositioning the rest of his rifle to sit properly against the crux of his shoulder, the laptop by his side hijacked onto the CCTV system of the strip club and the office building above. He lowered his eye into the sight again, shifting the barrel until the crosshairs found the bounty hunter jogging through the windows, “Just keep an eye on them…”
It had taken a few days. Revisiting the strip club in the evenings until early morning, scouting through the crowds that passed through that establishment’s closed doors and drawn blinds hiding it’s sin from the outside world, staking out as Mimho liked to call it. Stalking would be the more accurate term for what they were doing, however. A few days of searching, another day of scouring to double-check those faces were the ones familiar to them in their pictures. Another scoping out the surrounding area and sneaking into the building’s CCTV cameras, the live view feeding onto Jisung’s laptop to keep an eye inside the club and in the building. Because his expertise laid outside of the realm of close range combat, he decided to act as reconnaissance for the bounty hunter. Maintaining that distance he knew and welcomed.
Which led to their current predicament. While Minho had been stalking the group of researchers for an hour or so while they were partying their lives away inside the strip club, sitting on the phone call with Jisung while he sat nearby to them and listened in on a rather uninteresting conversation about their plans for that weekend, they had eventually stood up and left from their booth in the club. While the bounty hunter tailed close behind them and Jisung watched their movements to feed the information to Minho so he wouldn’t be left behind, the researchers went down that hallway. Leaving through the staff entrance that rude man who bumped into Jisung went through. Leading to the vacant office space above; What looked to be supporting offices for the strippers and other business related to the club, or simply normal cubicle offices unrelated to anything else toward the top of the space.
And, because the windows were wide open, that meant Jisung had the opportunity to assemble his rifle and provide a more…. Practical backup.
Somewhat. Between the CCTV information he kept an eye on Minho through, and the occasional flicker he managed to see of the bounty hunter jogging through the hallways to keep up with the researchers as stealthily as he was able to, he believed his job would be somewhat easy. But, considering he would occasionally lose Minho around a corner or the CCTV had bare spots pointing away from certain rooms or corridors, the job of providing aerial support was proving to be more difficult than he originally thought. Not to mention, when he watched the researchers go into the building’s stairwell and lost them on the cameras, he had to remind him, “Don’t go in there. I can’t keep a visual on you. This is different than the people you usually deal with; you’re not bounty hunting anymore; you don’t know who you’ll run into. Find another way up, there’s an elevator and I’ll tell you the floorー”
In his earbud, the bounty hunter’s uttered voice interrupted him in the middle of his thought, “Stop worrying so much. They’re a bunch of researchers, what are they going to do? Lecture me about chemistry to death? They’re unarmed, I’m the only one who can do any damage right now.”
Jisung’s finger traced over the trigger of his rifle. Occupying him as he watched Minho through the fuzzy lenses of the cheap cameras, jogging silently down the hallway the researchers had previously escaped down until he reached the same stairwell entrance, “You’re going to get yourself killed. Keep to the hallways, I can’tー”
Against his repeated advice, Minho slipped through the entrance of the stairwell anyway. Both the CCTV cameras and the sight of his rifle losing visual on him.
“Or don’t listen to anything I say and give me a hernia. Sure,” The hitman scoffed, an irritation boiling into his veins as he disregarded anything else on the laptop’s screens. No point in paying attention to that at the moment, not until Minho left the stairwells. He ripped his hand off the trigger of his rifle, hurriedly swiping his bangs back away from his forehead to calm himself. To keep from yelling whatever profanities he was silently swearing Minho out with, to distract himself before he belted out a lecture into his earbud’s microphone about how idiotic the other was behaving by not considering his words; No he typical wasn’t a violent or aggressive person, but somehow that man managed to press all the wrong buttons on his veins to rile him up.
“Baby, you need to relax, please,” From the lilt in his swung tone alone, Jisung could imagine what the bounty hunter looked like on the other side of the phone call; Relaxed as he hustled up the stairs and the faint jingling of his Doraemon keychain on his side filled between his bounding steps, a smug expression keeping his features slack that Jisung would’ve loved to smack straight off of him, probably talking with his hands to prove a point even if he wasn’t standing next to or anywhere near the older to see his gestures. As if he was there, knealt on the rooftop with Jisung as he bundled into his pitched black bomber jacket to keep warm, trying to convince him, “I’ve been bounty hunting for a while, and I’ve done this before. I know what I’m doing. I’m not completely stupid when it comes to this world.”
Running his fingers over the cold metal of his rifle, he traced his eyes over the lit windows of the building. A few illuminated without hints of movement from any living beings within those daunting room, many of the panes revealing a darkness of the walls inside, a few here and there only echoing the reflection of the city lights hovering with neon brilliance around them. The smooth surface of the emotionless weapon soothing to the tips of his fingers as he quickly shifted the subject to avoid any further frustration with that man, “How far up are they going? Can you estimate the floor so I can watch the windows?”
“Depends. Will you climb up my ass about it?”
“All I’m asking is that you stay where either I or the CCTV can pick up on your movements in case something happens or someone pulls a gun on you and you need support. It’s not that hard to follow directions. Not hard to do, Minho.”
“So bossy,” Minho murmured underneath his breath, taking the concrete steps of the stairwell two at a time to keep up with the pace of the researchers multiple flights of stairs above him. He couldn’t decide, whether or not the hitman’s irritation was irking or endearing to him; On one hand he understood the concern dripping off of his rantings, after all, Jisung was perched on top of an apartment complex on the north side while he was hauling himself up a concrete fire escape stairwell on the southern side opposite to him, a lack of windows, a lack of operational cameras to cover the floors he was scaling up to keep an eye on the three researchers and their light chatter echoing in the hallway; On the other hand, he wasn’t a kid, nor inept or new to the concept of the underside and the shady goings keeping the city running, so the lectures fell on deaf ears that shut him off the longer he ordered Minho around.
The sharp pinch of a clicking tongue irritated his eardrums as Jisung combated him once more, “I heard you. I’m not playing right now, Minho, this is your life on the line. So, are you an idiot or just incompetent?”
“Firecracker, if you keep talking to me like that, whispering in my ear and being angry and shit, I might just fall for you by the end of the night,” He couldn’t stop the gentle chuckle that pushed through his chest at the other’s seriousness. One odd sight it was, similar to the first night he met Jisung and the hitman swore him off of the street in front of Changbin’s house; A composed man, that rarely showed any other emotion in front of him aside from a chaste smile that never reached his skeptical gaze, but when he exploded, going off like the thundering of a gunshot. These uncharacteristic bursts of brief sparks that told anyone who saw him then he wasn’t as robotic as he appeared to be. At least, that’s what Minho assumed. That’s what he thought, but the hitman didn’t show any interest in letting him get close enough to truly know.
Either way, Jisung stopped talking to him as he bounded up the last few flights of stairs and hesitantly opened up the hefty fire door blocking him inside the passageway. First sticking his head out to spot where the researchers had gone in an eerily quiet hallway boarded with office spaces on either side of the sterile length of building. While he quietly stepped after them to see where they had turned a corner to, the other side of the line went dead, almost pin-drop silent a contrast to the noise he grew accustomed to hearing. His own earbud feeding back tinnitus in the sudden lack of a voice lecturing directly into the speaker, straight into his ear. So quiet, that even as Minho tried to keep alert to the whereabouts of the researchers, he spared a glance to unpocket his phone and check that the hitman hadn’t hung up on him for his joke.
He didn’t. That was confirmed to him once he saw the timer keeping track of how long they had kept that call going to feed information to one another; Jisung hadn’t hung up on him despite not saying anything. The rustling of his jacket faintly picked up by the microphone was enough to tell him he was simply not speaking too, instead of a present danger or anything of the sort.
With his phone still gripped in his hand, Minho snuck a glance to his surroundings to check where the researchers had gone. Only, he couldn’t see them anymore. The few things occupying his sight being the vacant hallway for the conjoining offices, the unused elevator he was passing by, and a blond man in a businessman’s uniform walking the opposite direction as him. Getting off of work even at this late hour? He glanced at the other man with his hands dug in his pockets, a frail body, the same height as Minho but slouched until he was shorter, visibly worn down. He slowed from his jog to pass by the office worker safely.
The blond flashed a friendly smile to him.
He removed his hands from his slacks. In one hand, a rag he covered his mouth and nose with. In the other, a small canisterー
Thatsー!
Before he could stop, a potently sweet-scented mist erupted from the canister.
Minho’s muscles went limp. His knees slammed against the ground as a coughing fit overcame him and the grip he kept on his phone slipping as the device clattered next to him. Slowly, the autonomy in his body sapped out of him until he crumpled.
“Oh noooooooooooooooo~~~~~!!! Poor thing, but you shouldn’t be so obvious following people!”
The blond man dropped the canister on the floor in front of him, the last of the mist steaming from the mouth of the can with hisses as his unresponsive body only gulped another inhale.
Huh…?
His gaze couldn’t decide between darkening or swimming with dizziness. His lungs couldn’t decide between inhaling and choking to cough out what entered his airway. His hands couldn’t decide between going limp against the roughly carpeted floors or twitching as they attempted to reawaken from their forced slumber. He wanted to hold his breath until the gas dissipated, he wanted to pull himself away from the canister, what looked almost like a repurposed can of pepper spray that poured whatever gas was inside right into his nostrils again, but couldn’t will himself to respond. Couldn’t will himself to move to grab his phone. Couldn’t will himself to respond through the slack of his tongue and the looseness of his jaw, despite a faint calling for his name through the earbud barely chipping away at the unconsciousness seeping into him.
The blond man, at least he thinks it was the blond man but his focus was too wavering to tell, nudged his shoulder a few times with the sole of his sneaker, “I thought you’d put up more of a fight… But I bet you were expecting some big, scary, gangster guy with a lot of tattoos and a massive gun, right? Riiggghhhhttt?????”
In his vision growing darker, he saw the silhouette of the man crouching down.
“Now, take a few deep breaths for me. When you wake up again, this will all be like… One big, bad, nightmare.”
Even if he struggled to resist it,
Minho’s consciousness gave out from beneath him and he was sent plummeting into a dreamless darkness.
“Wait, mister, did I kill you~?”
Jisung stared at his laptop screen. A horror raking its nauseating claws into his back as he could only watch the familiar face through the eye of the CCTV camera. He could only watch with the growing tremors of a palpable terror as that blond man stood up from his crouched position, reaching for the phone laid on the ground.
“What’s this?” He heard the curious murmur, the voice causing him to lock up as the man read the screen, “Who were you calling? Hmm… maybe… I’ve seen this number? It couldn’t be, Jー“
The hitman hung up the phone call before he could hear the last of his name slip off of that tongue.
The blond, almost ecstatically, whipped to check the upper corners of the hallway. Turning his head as his eyes searched for something.
They landed on the CCTV camera in the corner.
The blond man waved at him through the screen. Almost as if he knew Jisung would be watching him, he threw up a pair of peace signs too.
Jisung slammed the laptop closed. Hurriedly fixing to pack up the electronic in his backpack, before disassembling his rifle and latching it closed into his guitar case.
With a firm grip hovering over the stun gun in the back of his waistband, Jisung dashed to rescue Minho from what he knew to be the living Devil.
▄︻デ â•â•â”一á°.áŸËŽËŠË—
Wonder who this ray of sunshine is
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