It seems that random inspiration has struck yet again. I told myself I wouldn't start another multi-chapter fic until I'd finished a few others...but, I lied. Hope you guys like this one. ~ Sage
Prologue
A silkworm moth has no mouth.
Its delicate body is round, soft and milky white, as are its ironic wings, which are too weak to support its heavy body. Unable to fly, the moth is doomed to crawl and drag itself along, winged but earthbound for the remainder of its brief adulthood.
Defenseless, flightless and famished, the moth has but a few days to find a mate and breed before it starves to death. Whether the moths produce offspring or not doesn't change their fate; either way they will die within a week, gone in an eye blink like a shooting star, like fleeting peacock tails of light chasing and vanishing on its plunge into darkness.
The moths' young, once hatched, are small and frail and just as powdery white. Long ago the silkworms thrived in the wild. But after centuries of domestication by humans for their silk, the worms can no longer survive without assistance. If they are not directly placed on their food source, the worms will wander aimlessly and die of starvation, or be plucked from the trees by predators.
It takes five tries to become an adult. Five evolutions to get it right, five struggles to shed old flesh and grow anew—a different mask, a stronger armor—but the successful are few. After five rounds of molting, the worms spin themselves a silken cocoon before finally emerging into adulthood—defenseless, flightless and famished.
Some call it a poetic existence. Others pathetic.
"What a lame life," the child huffs, shaking his head after his mother tells him of the silkworms. "They can't even eat when they grow up. They just have babies and die."
Then, when they come upon it, his mother holds up an old hanbok at the markets they frequented. The traditional robe for males, now considered an antique donned only for special occasions, is sewn with the richest of silks. Nowadays everything is synthetic, merely facades of former glories. But if she searches carefully, she believes that beautiful, genuine silk woven in the old ways can be found.
She places his small hands onto golden threads shimmering like sunrays, onto deep blood vermilions gaping like an open wound. He curls and caresses plump fingers over fabrics as soft and milky as those moths, into strands that wove and danced into swirls of cloud and dragon scales, into myriad shapes of violet and azure-turquoise blossoms.
"Look at this robe," she says. "It took thousands of silkworms to make it. How could a 'lame' creature create something so lovely? Their lives have a purpose."
"People abused the worms to make this thing, Ummah," the boy retorts, his hands dropping from the silk. "Hanbok does not have to be their purpose."
"That's not what I mean," his mother said.
"Then what do you mean?"
I can't tell you yet. You are too young anyhow.
"I'm going to make you hanbok some day," she replies. "Every good Korean boy needs one."
I can only give you wings.
"Mom," the boy grumbles with a scowl. "They're itchy and heavy. Can't I just get a new dobok? Sah boo nim said I need one."
"One day you'll appreciate it, Hwoarang," she sighs, fingering the robe one last time before moving on to the next vendor. "Hopefully for all the right reasons."
Don't crawl and drag yourself along like me. Find a way to fly.
1 – Hatchling
-Seoul-
She rarely slept.
Like an adoring but forgetful mother, Seoul cradled millions of souls, nurturing and feeding and destroying them from a sky-scraped, neon-eyed womb.
Her many tongues—subways and trains and congested highways—led into a mouth salivating from music and laughter, pulsing with pink and yellow lights that bewildered the mind and dazzled the eyes. Her food gnawed at your gut as desire would upon seeing someone beautiful—tender galbi and fiercely seasoned pulkogi, freshly steamed rice and kimchi. Sated you could never be for Seoul could only offer you more—neither with nor without.
Inhale the smells of the sky and road and become dizzy on gasoline and stir fried oil, on a whore's perfume and her pasty pink lipstick. Lean in and decipher the faint aromas of peonies long dead, dumped in the garbage alongside wilted roses and wreaths of evergreen. A child's breath sweetened by coconut candy, black trees humbled by the rain and the humidity, the fading wafts of a boy's cheap cologne as he pursued a pretty girl off the street. The gardens, sown in the traditional way, stared quietly back at passersby, offering stone arched bridges and pale-blossomed trees for contemplation and inspiration.
But beyond her smiles and fluorescent eyes were the dark corners of Seoul's mind. Pink and gold lights faded to black as the alleyways and red-light districts came alive. The gang bangers hustled and bled for cash, sex and drugs, smashing cigarette butts into concrete and stone. Girls so beautiful it made your heart ache peered at you from curtained rooms, their painted eagle eyes and glistening mouths promising a good time in exchange for a few won. Someone's lost children slept and fought and made love in the ashes and charcoal, telling war stories and getting high in dimly lit doorways, greeting visitors with a lazy haze of smoke.
He stared into his Seoul and fell in love.
She was his only mother now.
Six years ago, when he was nine, cancer claimed his real mother, his hanbok-obsessed, raven-haired mother. His father had abandoned him when he was seven, so he didn't find it worth pining for someone who had never wanted him in the first place. Eight years later and he could still feel the bastard's fingerprints on him. Hwoarang had been his father's favorite punching bag after all, particularly after drunken trysts with another man's wife.
Hwoarang missed his mother though, even if they'd had their fair amount of quarreling and disagreements. He missed her daily lectures, as irritating as they could be, and the morning green tea that she'd forced down his throat until he'd learned to like the taste. God, he even missed her smell. Could he even remember how she smelled?
Unlike with his father, Ummah wasn't someone he could deny and disguise with this gang, with this supposedly masculine display of strength and power. Hell, they were posturing like a troop of male baboons over a blade of grass. He knew that. But he needed them as much as they needed him—at least, he hoped so.
"Oi."
The boy turned to his friend Sung, a brutally built but skittish seventeen-year-old. He'd been the first to accept Hwoarang as the new gang leader. As of now, he was the only member Hwoarang trusted.
"Mwo?"
"Stop thinking, man," Sung half jested, lighting a cigarette. "It makes everyone nervous. You get too fuckin' quiet."
Hwoarang smirked and declined the cigarette his friend offered.
"Just remembering some shit, that's all. Nothing important enough to make you fools nervous," the gang leader replied, eyes clouding over once more.
Sung let it go, knowing not to pry too much into his leader's heavily guarded personal life.
The gang always became fidgety whenever their leader fell into silence, but they dealt with it—or, at least, learned to deal with it. It wasn't good to get on Hwoarang's bad side; as young as he was, Hwoarang was as violent as they came. Though half of the members were at least two years his senior, they understood—and experienced—Hwoarang's prowess with the streets. It wasn't solely due to his elegant and fierce deliverance of Tae Kwon Do either; the boy was a rabid wolf, lost and crazy and ready to kill to save its desperate, hungry ass. He was a hunting hawk plummeting headfirst toward solid earth for another taste of blood.
Blood Talon, they called him sometimes. After ousting Kwan from his former leadership position—and nearly killing the twenty-year-old in the process—Hwoarang's comrades quickly learned their place.
But it was true that he wasn't his usual sharp-tongued, hotheaded self tonight. Perhaps it was because today was the anniversary of his mother's death.
"So who's next?" Sung inquired, obliterating his cigarette beneath a leather boot before lighting another. "Those pussies up in Jung-gu? Or is it Mapo-gu again?"
"Jung-gu," Hwoarang replied, momentarily forgetting his mother as a smile tore at his mouth. "Those sons of bitches tried to kill Baek. Dunno what the hell for. But the bastards will pay."
"They're tryin' to get to you, dumbass," Sung smirked. "Everyone knows how much that old fart means to you, so killing him would be gold."
"Shibal-nom," Hwoarang snarled, but the boy knew his friend was right.
To say that Hwoarang fought well was a massive understatement; he consistently defeated-dominated-every rival gang, as well as the members of his own. But he had yet to understand the politics of gang life. He was violent yes, but not yet calculating, neither manipulative nor strategic. He was only fifteen after all, a child who'd been raised on principles of peace and discipline, as both mother and sah boo nim had emphasized. But Hwoarang had always been attracted to trouble. That adrenaline and heart-rate shattering thrill of escaping death's clutches time and again, of successfully hustling more won than he could fit in his pockets was the most exhilarating high there could be.
But he knew that pure violence wasn't enough. If he didn't learn and adapt quickly the gang would find a way to demote him—or kill him.
The leader smiled, however, unafraid; he enjoyed the challenge. Butterflies of adrenaline were already swarming dangerously in his gut, up and down skin and vein and bone.
They were always fearless and rebellious at the worst of times. All teenage boys thought they were immortal after all, gods among pawns and princes. All it took was one moment to change everything, but Hwoarang didn't care about that. He was top dog after all, king of Seoul, alpha wolf and Tae Kwon Do prodigy. He planned on living forever, if not until he was hundreds of years old, then at least in conversation and in memory. He'd the best street leader South Korea would ever know! He'd be unfor-fucking-gettable.
"They're comin' tonight," Hwoarang said, running long fingers through hair as dark as his mother's. His legs were already itching to pulverize flesh and bone.
"How do you know?" Sung asked.
"Trust me. After a beating from Baek—"
"You'd know about those, wouldn't ya."
Hwoarang shot Sung a murderous look.
"—the Jung-gu boys will be thirsting for blood. It'll take more than an amateur thug and his weenie knife to take down my teacher."
"Doo San is pretty fuckin' scary, just sayin."
Hwoarang smirked. "Knowing Baek, he had those morons bawling for their ancestors."
Sung laughed, seizing another cigarette. "Shit, man. Woulda loved to see that."
"Gather the others, Sung," Hwoarang ordered, finally snapping from his quiet reverie. "We'll wait for our enemies at dusk, out by Yul Hyansaek myoji."
"Where your mother is buried," Sung commented.
"Yeah," the gang leader muttered. "Where my mother is buried."
"But ain't that, uh, like, dissin' your mom's spirit, man? She might pull something freaky and start haunting you n' stuff," Sung said nervously, glancing at his leader for signs of retaliation.
Hwoarang laughed humorlessly. Sung was lucky that Hwoarang liked him. Had it been any way otherwise, the seventeen-year-old would have been beaten on the spot.
"My mom's dead, Sung," Hwoarang growled.
He always became cruel and scathing when wounded. Irrational. Insulting. Dangerous. It was all just another mask to cover up the scarring wounds and the blood that just wouldn't clot.
"Gone," he continued. "Poof! Eaten up by cancer and gone like her damn silkworms. You know silkworms, right? Little idiot things that did nothing but eat, shit, fuck and die."
"Kinda like humans."
"Shut up Il-Sung. Now do what I say and go get Kwan and the others."
-Soul-
The truth is that I would give anything to have my mother come back and tell me about silkworms.
I'd give my right leg to listen to her drone about them for hours. Just to have her back would be nice. Hearing her voice would be nice.
She never did get the chance to sew me hanbok.
But I'm fifteen, right? I'm not supposed to care.
Glossary
hanbok - traditional Korean robe for men
ummah - mother
dobok - Tae Kwon Do uniform
sah boo nim - a more endearing term for "instructor" or "master" in Tae Kwon Do
galbi - grilled ribs, either beef or pork
pulkogi - marinated barbecue beef
won - Korean currency
mwo - what
shibal-nom - fuck you
myoji - cemetery