7/26

  Field hospital outside of Denver International Airport

  10:00 PM

  We talk more, though every couple of minutes I have to clear up some more Scourge. I don't want to tell my brother “our brother made the Dracosys” in front of... Anyone. So I end up getting him up to date with the Dracosys in general, which he is uninformed about. Mercy helps for a while before she has to head off to bed. Ji-Ho says he'll stay up late with me.

  “Don't they have dungeons in Canada?” I ask.

  “I think there's a few, but none in Vancouver,” Ji-Ho says, shrugging.

  A medical person comes up to us. She nervously pulls a lock of her black hair behind her ear. “So, I, uh, are you David Han?”

  My brother gives a half smile, tilts his head and looks away. It looks like he's being shy, but my Wisdom is telling me that his movements are practiced and he's done this exact routine many times before. “Yeah, I am.” He sighs wistfully, as if his slight fame is something bittersweet.

  Fully grown adult CDC personnel Dr. Maggie Newsome, as her name tag labels her, turns into a 13 year old fan girl. “Oh, wow, so I've seen every episode of Arresting Heat, and I have to say your scenes are, just so, so, so soooooo” she trails off.

  Ji-Ho Han is now David Han, minor TV star and dude clearly practiced at picking up chicks. He tilts his head forward and looks into her eyes. “Sooo?”

  The doctor, a damn middle aged woman, blushes until she turns bright red before whispering out, “sexy.”

  I walk away to slap someone with my magic spork.

  “Hey, you already cured me!” the guy says, rubbing the back of his hand.

  “Ah, sorry.” I turn to a medical person. “Who needs magic sporking?”

  “I think Maggie does,” one of the nurses says as she watches my brother and the doctor flirt heavily. I roll my eyes.

  I'm still not sure what to think about Ji-Ho. In my memory, he was this cool, popular guy I wished I was. Now that I'm an adult, former soldier and husband to be, popularity and looking cool seem like deeply unimportant things. While thinking about this I literally just saved three lives. Not that it's a contest or anything, but I have a lot more perspective than I used to.

  Maybe that's something Hak-Kun never got. He stayed the same while we moved on.

  David Han exchanges information with the doctor, and he walks over to where I'm hovering over a patient, waiting another 12 seconds before I can cure them. “Sorry, that just happens sometimes.” He doesn't actually sound sorry.

  “Sure, sure,” I mutter. “Is she your type or something?”

  Ji-Ho shrugs. “I'll go out with anyone who asks. Sometimes it's nothing, sometimes it's something. But I don't know until I actually get to know someone.”

  I slap a guy with my spork. “No girlfriend, then?”

  Ji-Ho frowns like he's been asked that before and doesn't like answering. “I just don't do long term stuff. It triggers my anxiety because of, well, mom.”

  “Mom?” I raise an eyebrow at that.

  Ji-Ho takes a deep breath. “Losing mom really, really fucked up dad. It changed him. It made him who he is today. I don't think I can go through something like that.”

  “Dad's always been like he is.”

  “You don't remember before 9/11? Damn. I guess you were only five. Well, no, he hasn't always been like that. Before, when mom was alive, he made jokes. He learned all these English puns and dad jokes to help himself learn English, and to make us laugh. He smiled. He was a good dad. And then mom died.”

  I spork slap my next patient a bit too hard and she yells at me. I apologize.

  “Mom's death changed everything. Dad blamed the government. He got bitter. He stopped smiling. He-” Ji-Ho sighs, a sigh that's full of sadness, but also acceptance. “He wasn't a good dad anymore. He barely held it together.”

  I shake my head in disbelief. “He was an adult. He should have dealt with it better.”

  Ji-Ho puts his hand on my shoulder. “Jun, I get that you don't remember much from back then, but you have to know, they were in love. They were the real thing. Soul mates, if you believe in that. That's what he lost. He lost part of his .”

  I spork another person, very lightly this time.

  Ji-Ho continues. “And I see the same connection with you and Mercy.”

  My breath catches. The idea that I'm like my dad is sort of horrific. What I remember is a man who always put work first. A man who put Hak-Kun second, and me and Ji-Ho like 20th and 21st. He would go entire days without talking to me. One time I got really scraped up falling off my bike. I came home covered in blood and he just looked at me and said “stop failing so much.” is the man I know. is the man I remember. The person Ji-Ho is describing doesn't exist.

  Ji-Ho pulls out his phone and taps away at it. “I don't know if it'll help, but my therapist had me write down everything I remember about mom. I'll text you a link.”

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  “You don't have to stay up with me,” I say, trying to politely ask him to get the fuck out.

  He gives me a sad smile. “Maybe I'll go get dinner. But I'll come back later.”

  Ji-Ho walks out of the tent as I cure another patient.

  “He's trying to be nice,” the person I just cured says with a soft, high pitched voice. I look down and realize that it's a boy, probably 6 or 7 years old. His parents are there, crying their eyes out. A doctor checks the kid for Scourge with an ability, gives them the OK, and they dive hug the kid.

  If their son had died, would it have destroyed their relationship? When my mom died, did it destroy my dad? And if Mercy died, would it destroy me?

  I take a second to look around the tent at all the people who are cured and all the people waiting to be cured. Probably all of them have people at home, waiting for them. How many lives am I saving? How many people won't be emotionally destroyed because I can cheat the system?

  And how many have died because of Hak-Kun? How many lives has he destroyed?

  Before the Dracosys, we were all cogs in a machine. We could change the things around us, but that was it. But with the Dracosys, the amount of good or evil one person can do is vastly magnified. Yeah, I can cure hundreds of people. Also, someone could kill just as many.

  The scale and scope of causality stretches before me like a web. Each act of good or evil sending waves out, rippling and rebounding in ways sometimes unforeseeable.

  The US, and specifically the CIA under George Bush, fucked up a lot of shit in other countries. Because of that, 9/11 happened. Which led to my father becoming an asshole and me having a shitty childhood. Because of that, I joined the army. Being in the army gave me the training to survive the Dracosys. Surviving the Dracosys gave me the power to save these people. Which means this little kid in front of me doesn't die. His parents get to take him home. He gets to live on. And do good, maybe. All because George H. W. Bush was a capitalist, imperialist fucktard.

  I ask the child, “hey kid, what do you want to be when you grow up?”

  He looks up at me over his still crying parents. He calmly and seriously says, “hostage negotiator.”

  Well shit, I was expecting doctor, maybe firefighter. “Hostage negotiator?” I ask, incredulous.

  The kid nods. “Only really messed up people take hostages. So negotiators talk to people when they're at their worst, and need the most help.”

  What the crap! This kid has more Wisdom than I do and he's a quarter of my age. “Well, sounds like you'll be really good at it.”

  The kid's dad goes off to file some papers with the CDC. The kid, now less covered by parents, says, “I guess. Just, like, listen to your older brother while you still can.” His mom bursts into tears and hugs him more.

  100 Wisdom sucks. It sucks so much. When I had 5 Wisdom people said stuff to me and I just let it wash over me, not getting the hurt and pain behind their words.

  My 100 Wisdom tells me that this kid lost his older brother. Recently. And he-

  Fuck.

  And he is trying to look out for others. He's supposed to be a kid. He's obviously not a kid anymore.

  Fuck the Dracosys.

  Fuck the Dracosys.

  Fucking Hak-Kun.

  I can't do anything about what already happened to him. I can't do anything about his brother. But, maybe, I can do a little.

  “Have you ever met a talking cat?” I ask, summoning Biscuits on top of the kid's lap. Biscuits asks for pets and if there are snacks and if he can sleep in the blanket. The kid ecstatically yells across the room to tell his dad there's a talking cat.

  I have to move on to more sick people.

  My phone buzzes. It's a link to a file named “Mom Memories” from Ji-Ho. I tap it as I walk.

  I prepare myself for emotions.

  ...

  ...

  Fucking shit balls ass crack I WAS NOT PREPARED FOR EMOTIONS. I was just eaten by a blood sorcerer shark and this is worse. It feels like I just got punched in the stomach and kicked in the balls and also also also just FUCK.

  It's almost 20 minutes before I can look at the file again.

  ...

  ...

  Okay, okay. I can handle this. This is some more mundane stuff. I could definitely use more mundane memories about my mom. Stuff that would tell me what she was really like.

  ...

  ...

  Mom was big into recycling. That's cool. I think I vaguely remember the building being torn apart. Yeah, it was super loud but the men looked like they were having fun hitting walls with hammers.

  I remember her. I remember her smiling face in a hard hat. I remember her long black hair. Her voice. It was deep for a woman's voice. I remember dad saying people had to do what she said because of how she said it.

  I was not prepared for emotions.

  I was not prepared to suddenly remember my mother's smile.

  Haaaaaa. Okay. Okay. I'm okay. I can do this.

  So Ji-Ho wasn't kidding about her being generous. Donating books when you know you have two more kids who will soon age into them is actually a bit nuts. That's a level of intentional, premeditated donation that I wasn't aware existed.

  Ji-Ho buying clothes just to donate them later makes so much more sense now.

  ...

  ...

  It's strange to read that everyone knew that I was a bit autistic, since nobody mentioned it to me. I figured it out in high school. Until then I was just the weird loner kid for no reason in particular. Afterwards I was the weird loner kid a reason in particular.

  When I talked to Hak-Kun about Autism at the time, he just said, “obviously” with absolute derision.

  Huh. I scan my memories with my new Wisdom and come to the probably unsurprising realization that my younger brother was a huge dick. I don't even think it was dad's fault or anything. Hak-Kun just sucks.

  ...

  ...

  I AM STILL NOT PREPARED FOR THESE EMOTIONS.