Fold 9 - The Room Without Eyes

The day of the resonance trial sync.

Saejin stood alone in the center of the resonance chamber. There were no cameras to document and no light beyond the pale diffusion rising from the floor itself. There was no furniture either, nothing to serve as anchor points, only the one line: a faint glowing curve across the floor, separating one half of the circle from the other. That was where Yuwon would stand, but for now, it was empty.

Saejin didn't move toward it, he stood with his hands lightly at his sides, eyes half-lowered. 

The frequency scanners were online, reading everything: posture, proximity, neural vibration, but no image, no sound files. Just resonance. He didn't know why that unsettled him more.

The door opened behind him and he could hear steady footsteps approaching: Yuwon. His coat was gone, his boots were silent as he walked. He looked like he belonged there. He crossed to his side of the circle and stopped at the line.

They didn't speak. For a long time they just stood there, facing each other.

"You weren't what I expected" Yuwon said.

For half a second, it seemed like he would stop himself from saying anything else, but he didn't:

"Does it still hurt? The one I left on your collarbone."

His gaze dropped to the base of Saejin's neck. "I went to the bone." 

The mark wasn't visible, but Yuwon knew exactly where it was. He could almost feel it through memory, sharp, lingering, like a taste he couldn't forget.

Saejin didn't respond and Yuwon didn't push for an answer. Instead, he kept watching him, studying the lines of his face.

"Is it always like this with you?"

Another silence followed. Yuwon's head tilted slightly. "Or just with me?"

Saejin's voice, when it came, was even: "I don't change shape for different rooms."

Yuwon smiled and stepped forward. The floor light shimmered under his foot as he crossed the line. Close, but not close enough to touch. 

"They said you don't like to talk" he said with a low voice, somehow restrained. 

Saejin's eyes lifted enough to meet Yuwon's gaze.

"They're not wrong."

"You're not afraid."

"No."

"But you're hiding something."

Saejin didn't answer. Yuwon stepped forward once more, close enough that their breaths mingled and the space between them felt alive.

And then the room responded: the light changed across the curved walls, subtle at first, then more clearly, color bleeding in, forming blurred shapes.

Images.

A glimpse of fabric moving through wind.

A hallway, long and dim, stretching into shadow.

A hand pulling a zipper shut.

Another letting go.

They were not only memories, not exactly, more like impressions. Half-formed moments. The chamber wasn't displaying footage, it was surfacing something internal, that belonged to both of them.

Yuwon watched a faint scene ripple across the wall to his right: a train window, rain streaking sideways, a pale reflection of someone looking back. Was it his? Saejin's? Hard to say.

"You feel familiar" Yuwon said.

"Familiarity can be projection" Saejin replied.

"Maybe" Yuwon said. "But not resonance."

Behind them, another image flickered into focus:

A collarbone, marred with a half-healed scar.

A darkened stairwell.

The outline of someone waiting, but no one arriving.

Yuwon closed his eyes briefly, as if to center himself.

"When you touched me before" he said, "that wasn't just guiding. It felt like..."

He paused, searching for the right way... Saejin didn't interrupt.

"...like something came apart. And reassembled into something simpler. And... clearer. But also terrifying."

Another pulse moved through the room, hard to ignore.

"It stayed with you too, didn't it?" Yuwon asked.

Saejin made his first step forward. Now they stood close enough to share the air between breaths. The walls around them quieted but not completely, the images continued to move, just slower now.

A hand pressed against glass.

A pair of feet on snow.

Saejin's hand raised and hovered in the space between them, fingers just shy of skin. It passed over Yuwon's jaw, along the curve of his cheekbone, brushing the fine edge where heat rose from skin. And then, slowly, Saejin closed the distance. Fingertips met cheek. It wasn't just contact, it was mapping, like he was learning the outline of something only his hands could understand: the side of Yuwon's face, the slope beneath his eye, the arc of his brow. He moved like he was remembering something that had never been spoken aloud.

Yuwon didn't flinch.

The room's light dimmed slightly. The walls pulsed and new imagery flickered: a bloodstained towel left on tile. The blurred outline of a fire escape in the rain. A scar along someone's shoulder, barely healed.

Yuwon's eyes remained steady, his breathing slow and deliberate. Saejin's hand moved downward, fingers gliding past the edge of his jaw, pausing briefly at his neck. The pads of his fingers hovered above the hollow of Yuwon's throat, where breath and blood met in rhythm.

The images changed again: a child's drawing torn in half. A key dropped in a drain. Someone yelling, too far away to understand.

"I didn't know skin could remember" Saejin said quietly.

Yuwon's hand lifted as well, hesitantly at first, then with the same searching intent. He reached for Saejin's wrist, brushing his thumb against the bone just beneath the skin. Tracing, not holding. The contact was a sort of mutual discovery.

"I've touched people before" Yuwon murmured, "but it's never felt like… a conversation."

A kind of weightlessness settled between them. Saejin's hand finally lowered, only for the other to rise in its place, fingers brushing over Yuwon's shoulder. His touch followed the edge where fabric ended and skin began, as if trying to memorize every line and texture beneath his fingertips.

On the walls: a subway car, empty except for one figure. A cracked phone screen. Two chairs, one always empty.

"You carry silence like it's armor."

 Yuwon didn't hesitate. "It was."

 A pause followed then Saejin again: "And now?"

 "Still heavy" Yuwon answered smiling warmly.

A trace of a smile flickered at the corner of Saejin's lips too.

Then the chamber stirred again with an unexpected ripple:

"Too close."

Saejin's breath caught, barely, and his hand froze in midair, suspended just above Yuwon's skin. Something had brushed against him, internally, a presence observing through his own mind. His expression stayed still but inside, he recognized it. It was old, familiar. Something he'd felt before and never fully named.

"…Did you feel that?"  Yuwon asked, voice low.

Saejin didn't answer. Instead, he slowly lowered his hand. Yuwon watched him, sensing something had changed, but not yet understanding what. Neither stepped back, but the light softened and the images on the wall slowed until they stilled entirely. Like a tide pulling back, leaving only wet sand behind. Saejin's eyes lingered on Yuwon's face for a few moments, then he stepped back, just enough to let the air return between them.