Sublimation(116)

So maybe he’ll just ask.

He picks up a screwdriver from the cabinet next to the terminal. He goes back to the gate. He inspects the joint. The screw. The half-inch of metal keeping the Mitosis gate threaded.

He thinks for a moment. Maybe YJ would have been paralyzed by this choice. But Yujin? He would have taken the chance and run with it. That’s what he had done, anyway. He came to the States. He reintegrated.

This could go wrong in so many ways. But he wants to be the sort of person—the sort of people—who are brave.



* * *



The knife, the apple, the river, the wine-dark sea. The distance between knowing and not knowing. The distance between action and inaction.



* * *



“Okay, let’s do this,” Yujin says to himself, and begins to dismantle the gate.





SOYOUNG-ROSE


The sound of rapid-fire knocking on Soyoung’s door echoes through the living room. Soyoung freezes, throws a blanket over the new laptop and the other computer junk that she’s been setting up, the hard drives that she’s already begun copying all the data from.

It’s Yujin. He’s peering against the peephole as if he’ll be able to look inside. It’s been two hours since they last saw each other, for what Soyoung assumed would be the last time. Soyoung yanks the door open.

“Why are you here?”

“Let me in,” Yujin says. “I’ll leave in a second, if you want me to. But I have to show you something.”

Soyoung lets him in. He’s standing awkwardly, but other than that, he looks pretty much the same as two hours ago. She’s oddly happy to see him, like her hindbrain hasn’t caught up to the current circumstances.

“Did something go wrong? Did I trip an alarm on my way out or something?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says. “No alarms or anything. I just—okay, it’s easier to show you.”

Yujin takes off his jacket. Then he starts unbuttoning his shirt. Soyoung’s too surprised to tell him to stop stripping. She wants to know where this is going. With every button, it becomes obvious that there’s something taped to his chest. The shirt falls to the ground. There’s something strapped to his arms, too. Polished steel. Soyoung squints.

“Is that the Mitosis terminal? And—oh my god, it’s the gate. You disassembled the gate and—you duct taped everything to yourself and stole the prototype?”

“Yes,” he says. “Can you help me get this off?”

Soyoung goes to grab the kitchen shears.



* * *



The fisherman, walking back to the edge of the sea. Eve, walking into the wasteland. Odysseus, wiping the blood of suitors off his limbs, marveling at his instance’s memories of his homeland. The woman on the bay, catching her lover’s instance in her arms. Whatever happens next is whatever happens next.



* * *



Soyoung snips across the tape, gingerly pulling the cut edge away. It must hurt, but Yujin doesn’t complain. He’s holding his arm above the table, where they’ve put a blanket to catch the piece of the Mitosis gate when it falls. The peeling duct tape reveals inch after inch of skin as it’s removed.

“Why’d you do this?”

“Well, at first, I thought it might be useful for you. Physical proof goes further than files. You can put it in checked baggage, give reporters a demonstration or something.”

“You’re assuming I’m taking a plane.”

“It’s what I would do, if I were you,” he says, and winces as the tape rips hair off his skin. The first piece of the Mitosis gate falls on the blanket with a soft thump. It’s a one-of-a-kind prototype, and it’s sitting on Rose’s old Hello Kitty blanket.

Yujin removes his arm and holds the other one over the blanket, and Soyoung repeats the process. First the cut, then the pull.

“If you don’t want it, if you don’t think it’s useful, I’ll take it back. I’ll come up with something. But I wanted to ask you one more thing.”

“Sure,” Soyoung says. “And I do want it.”

She hadn’t thought about stealing the gate. That had seemed too audacious to even suggest. But having the Mitosis gate would be useful. As a prop, a tool, or just to be dismantled and reverse-engineered.

Soyoung pulls more tape back. Yujin holds his arm very still. He’s not looking at her when he begins to speak again, slowly, and then all at once.

“You asked me to let you go, in the lab,” he says. “Not to help you. You couldn’t even imagine a reality where I’d help you. And I guess you were right. Who I am now isn’t someone useful to you, wherever you’re going. And maybe I’m more useful to you like this, here. I’ll cover for you as much as I can. As much as my stupid self-preservation allows. But there is a very large part of me that wants to go with you. And if you want me, I’m yours. Whatever parts of me that you want to take with you.”

She stops removing the tape. She stares at him. Yujin doesn’t change through the viewing. He continues to look like himself. Like Yujin, like YJ. She wonders what parts of him prompted him to say this. To ask her to use the Mitosis gate to carve him into whatever she might want of him.

“You changed your mind so quickly. Why?”