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Kim Roksu is no stranger to building walls. He has spent a year as a construction worker, some time before the apocalypse and after military service. He has helped rebuild safe havens over and over again with his teammates, with fellow survivors. He has rebuilt a company, without.
He has rebuilt himself from scratch a few hundred times; he is always ready to do it again.
When Roksu awakens in a new body, his heart quakes, and the walls shoring his emotions tremble. Before anything else, he seals up the cracks and pulls down the shutters on longing and loss and brewing panic. Before anything else, he packs himself away.
Logically, his assessment of the situation is thus: He has been dropped into a world he doesn’t belong in. There is no point in hoping to return.
“Young master Cale.” An old butler says, and he answers to the new name with the familiarity of putting name to face. His name to his face. His body to the story he has read only the worst parts of.
Maybe they’re the better parts. There is no way of knowing.
Cale Henituse is beaten up for a drunken comment. He loses his brother to the Plaza bombing. The rest of the kingdom falls after. He dies on the battlefield, the sole survivor of countless bloody clashes, when his luck runs out alongside the heroes’. Everyone’s luck runs out eventually. Everyone dies.
Except.
Cale stops himself from following that line of thought, instead grabbing his emotional mortar and spade and meticulously sealing the crack in Guilt’s wall.
He is used to having no luck at all, so this is nothing to worry about. His plans will be foolproof. Everything will be fine.
As long as he does not get his heart involved, everything will be fine.
1
The first issue that he encounters is the pair of kids that he starts to feed. They warn him about the tree, and he settles their concerns easily. He, too, would try to prevent a semi-consistent food source from walking to what appears to be certain death. It is smart of them; showing concern increases generosity from the benefactor.
Cale gives them more food. Only because it makes little difference to his newfound wealth.
He acknowledges the creeping vines of Envy and hacks them out of his chest. There is no point being envious of the children he feeds, no point envying children with a semi-reliable source of food. There is no point envying those that can love others enough to show it.
Cale puts it all aside.
Everyone fears him at first, before they learn to put that aside for the profit they can make from a disgraced heir’s sudden inanity. They do not respect him, but they can use him if they are willing to pretend. Money really can buy everything – some things just take longer than others to be bought.
2
The second issue comes with the cats. The Cats, he suspects. The children from earlier.
With them comes, after all, the start of the main plot.
“Come with me,” he says, now to Choi Han as well as the cats. “I can feed you.”
The Cats (he has confirmed they are thus) are happy with their food. Cale gets some manpower. There has been no blood shed. The emotions bricked up in the back of his brain are left ignored.
He considers it a resounding success.
All Cale has to do now is send everyone away. The original was hated—Cale thinks on it overnight and decides it’s better just to be disliked. Disliked enough that no one would willingly approach him for anything. Not quite so far that they would abandon him without anything to his name.
Send the heroes-in-making away, and then sequester himself somewhere in the forest, with two children who can protect him better than he could hope to protect them.
But Choi Han returns with a princess mage and Lock in tow before he can. Cale is useless, but he is rich, and knows a few cheat codes. So he helps. Helping is a generous term for locking the trio in a training room and making sure they don’t all collapse from exhaustion afterwards. Cale would rather they walk themselves back.
With the Cats come expectations and imaginations.
The Henituses, at least, are fine—he, as with the original, is not one of them. The fortress he has built around his heart does not tremble; Cale is too familiar with this situation to be moved in any way. He feels the same as he did in his youth, at the park watching kids who knew what it felt like to laugh.
He invites himself down to dinner, savouring foods so delectable he couldn’t have dreamed of them in even the best times of his home world. The meal would be better if the Henituses were better at hiding their attentions. It is exhausting to feel them gawk at every move he makes.
No, he does not fit. Yes, he eats with them anyway.
There might be muffled screaming from somewhere deep inside him. There is always screaming. Cale has long since tuned it out.
The Henituses see hope in him, apparently. They know not how to weave it into anything powerful enough to salvage a bridge already burned. Cale’s specialty lies in building walls around his heart, not bridges. The only bridges he knows how to build are for his own benefit. So when they offer—well.
He asks Count Deruth for money. It is the only thing they can give him that is worth anything.
Love would be too much. He has forgotten how to ask for it, and he does not have the patience anymore to beg.
It will come. Or it won’t.
3
With the third issue, the dragon, maybe it does.
“Be free,” he tells it, “do everything there is to do.”
It follows him. Of everything to do with unlimited power, it follows him. The Cats like the new child, though, and Cale will not be the person to tell a dragon, ‘no’, so it stays.
He stays.
The third issue is the dragon, and with him comes a crack in Cale’s walls. It is not a big one, and it is not somewhere that would require urgent repairs—not somewhere that exposes his vulnerabilities, not somewhere that does stupid things like dare to dream.
The crack forms in the place where he stores anger and resentment, and it leaks only a need for revenge. No one should get away with hurting innocents, and empathetic conviction now joins his logic.
Cale, amidst everything else, makes another plan. Vengeance is only complete when it has been paid in full. Dishonouring a cruel heir is a pittance compared to entrapping someone in an existence with pain and humiliation as their only constants.
The dragon is bright despite his pains, and Cale takes his cues from the little creature to help him feel safe. Lavish meals, gentle pets when asked for, positive affirmation. Choice. Freedom.
Of everything he does, seeing the children smile is the most rewarding. It is the only time he feels like he has done something right.
4
The fourth issue starts in the capital, then spirals rapidly out of his control in a series of events.
The North-eastern nobles tell him to sit still. It is the easiest part of being Cale that he has encountered so far. Sit still.
Be seen, not heard.
Help us pretend you are anyone but you.
He is very, very still.
But then the bombs do not add up, and something is going wrong, and Cale is not still anymore. He is not successful, either.
People die. The future has changed; he does not know why.
There is a prince amidst the chaos who sees right through him.
Yes, Cale almost shouts, exactly! I am trash! Do not honour me.
He is not entirely thrilled, but that is natural. Alberu’s smile strains once they find privacy, and Cale grimaces in reply, and they dislike each other in equal amounts. Neither will let that deter them from a profitable deal.
Cale asks for money. Again.
What need does he have to be a hero? He has failed everyone he ever wanted to save. To be a hero in another world feels like condemnation branded across his sclera: look at what you could have done, had you cared enough to try. Think of who you could have saved.
The walls shake, and as always, the epicentre is Guilt. His logic holds firm against it, and he emerges from the capital untouched by his emotions.
Cale does not have the time, nor the privilege, to mourn.
To distract him, there is Tunka, and Paseton, and Whitira. He uses them as necessary, directs them on how to use him. Then there is Litana, and a pair of twins, and an everlasting flame.
It snowballs from there.
5
The fifth issue culminates with the place that everyone calls a home. Cale drains himself into a thin silver shield that covers the sky, and wonders why he is even trying.
The people can run away. The Henituses are rich enough to pay triple the losses. Cale himself has gathered enough allies for a retake to be easy. He stands, though.
He stays.
It hurts. But it always does, and though he dislikes the pain, it is not a troublesome thing. He heals quickly, after all. Repairing a city will take significantly longer than the ancient power repairing him. And when will he get to slack off then?
Protecting things hurts, he thinks. I am pinned beneath my own shield. It would be much better to attack. Cale modifies a few of his plans to be proactive and aggressive.
But his heart. It burns, and it breaks, and it mends as he stands with a city at his back. It falters, but does not stop.
Later, he feels disgusted by the way the crowds look up to him in awe. It is disrespectful not to appreciate their well-wishes—good thing that Cale Henituse has never been known for his respect.
Everyone treats him like something fragile. It is good that they have noticed; he does not have to make excuses for himself. It is annoying at the same time.
He has carved out a life here. The imbalance inside him, killing him slowly, is nothing worth tending to if he has nowhere to retreat and relax after.
The walls of his heart grow thin once he acknowledges that. He has a life here; it is mostly his own.
As it turns out. In its entirety, Cale’s fifth issue is the family. The one he had thought would not be an issue but turns out to be one anyway. The family. The Henituses, who think him someone long gone. Everyone else, as collated individuals of immense power. And Cale. Somehow.
His fifth issue is his family. Each one shows him gratitude he has not earned, and adamantly stands by his non-existent generosity. They see something in him that does not exist. Cale pretends he does not see it too.
They have no reason to be so close; he makes it obvious that he is using them, milking their power for all it is worth.
Cale catches himself slipping, walls crumbling before he can start to repair them. He takes up meditation to calm the brewing storm in his chest. His own form of meditation, where he empties not his mind but his heart. It is therapeutic. It is numbing. Cale cannot find it in him to care about the difference.
+ 1
Here is the release.
It involves people that are closer to him than he thought they were, the Super Rock Villa, and what is apparently an intervention.
Eruhaben starts, as the wisest and oldest. “We have our concerns, you unfortunate bastard, that you aren’t processing the true magnitude of your feats.”
“Huh? Why?” It is a ridiculous statement. What need does he have for processing what has happened? It is already done. He must move on.
Someone sighs. Maybe several do. Cale isn’t sure who—his eyes are swollen almost shut from crying in his sleep. It has become a regular occurrence, for reasons unknown to him.
“We mean, dongsaeng, that you are not processing your emotions. You see, most humans would have broken down from the sheer pressure of our collective presence. Most humans would also consider coughing blood to be cause for concern. And most, if given the chance, would actually rest.”
Ah, Alberu. So sharp, yet so very wrong. “I am? I’ve been processing my emotions? I don’t see how that’s a public thing.”
“You only ever laugh or smile when around the children, or when causing trouble. You only frown when something inconveniences you. Outside of those expressions, Cale, you may as well be wearing a porcelain mask for all we can read of you.”
“And?” His eyes are sore, but he stares blankly at each of them anyways. “Just because I don’t show it doesn’t mean—”
Ron interrupts. “What did you feel after the attack on the plaza?”
“Annoyed? A bit tired.” The group exchange glances, as if he has said something wrong. He thinks for a moment, replays a Record. “Disappointed. I wasn’t as successful as I had hoped.”
“And after the fire in the Jungle?”
“Tired. Annoyed. I wasted a lot of the Fire Suppressing Water. But I got what I needed, so it works out.”
“How about—” Choi Han’s expression twists, as if he is thinking about something painful.
“Whatever it is, probably about the same. Depending on the success, I may have felt satisfied instead of disappointed, or more annoyed because it gave me even more to do.”
The intervention committee look at each other again. Cale is getting sick of it. His heart hurts, his head hurts, and he hadn’t had the time to meditate before this. “Listen, we’re basically done here, if that’s all you wanted to say. Is that not processing my emotions?”
“And how did you feel when the God of Death told you that you were meant to die?”
He blinks, caught off-guard, then replays that Record too. He doesn’t need to, but it feels like something to do.
That information had almost shaken him apart, the split second after the god first told him. Beyond that, Cale was unaffected. “I felt nothing? Why bother feeling anything about that? I can’t go back in time and kill myself to fix it, so why bother? I learnt something new.”
On, the clever child, speaks up before any of the adults can. “Cale nya, what did you feel when you took us in?”
The question is a knife to his chest, a crack in the chambers of Guilt. Nothing. I felt nothing.
Raon joins in. “What did you feel when you saved me?”
I—I don’t know. Satisfied? You were free. That was good. I didn’t need to feel anything else.
“How about when you play with us?”
“Proud.” The word falls out of his mouth before he can think. “You are children, you should be happy. You should have fun.”
The kids grin widely, snuggling closer on his lap.
“You understand why we’re concerned, right, punk? You feel tired, annoyed, disappointed, satisfied. And proud.” He shrugs at Eruhaben’s summary. That sounds about right.
Choi Han is staring anxiously at him, puppy eyed and pitying. He braces himself. “Cale-nim. Do you ever feel how much we care about you?”
He has not braced himself hard enough.
“Yes. I know you care.”
Alberu’s smile strains. “Then, to ensure that we really are on the same page, I will provide an example. If the White Star showed up, and you decided then and there to abandon us all, we would not keep you. We would buy you all the time we could, and if we died in the process, we would not blame you.”
“What stupid things are you thinking?” His voice shakes. It is not dissimilar to what is going on in his mind. “Why—”
“Because I—Because we love you,” the prince cuts him off, crushing the last of Cale’s excuses with steely conviction, “we would let you go.”
There is ringing in his ears. Something in his chest crumbles, and maybe the ringing is there to fill in the silence. Tides wash in tremorous waves over him, carried on them the debris of a house with no windows or doors. He scrambles, only for a moment, to stem the flow, but it is a cause far beyond lost.
The worst part is that there is no logical way he can reshape this. There is no way he can take this scene and shore everything back up into their neat rooms of controlled denial.
He stops trying.
“Cale-nim?”
“Dongsaeng?”
“Oi, punk!”
“Human! Human! What’s wrong?”
“Young master Cale.” The neutral address yanks him back, accompanied by the warm weight of a food tray on his lap.
“Ron?” His voice is weak, confused. It doesn’t make sense.
“Young master. I have brought everyone else out of the room. Here is your breakfast.”
“… thanks.” He mutters, half of himself still somewhere with the white noise and shattered bricks and the emotions without walls.
“The children have suggested we hold a family games night, and it has been agreed upon that this will be a fortnightly occurrence.”
“Games?”
“The young master will choose tonight’s game; something that can be played between six or more people. Since you know everyone best.”
“I haven’t played a game in years!”
“Then this is a good time to restart.” Cale shivers at the old man’s smile. “If you have no questions, then this old man will leave you to your meal. Your children suggested the new filling combinations for the pastries, so pay attention to them.”
“I will.” He says distractedly over the empty gurgle of his stomach. His breakfast looks even nicer than usual; Vicross must have been informed about the intervention. And oh, his kids are so creative, coming up with these new—
…
“Wait. My what?”
But Ron has already left the room.