Chapter Text
It wasn’t that Chan was ungrateful. He knew that, in the grand scheme of things, he was actually really lucky; he was employed, could afford to keep a roof over his head and his stomach full (barely), had a closet full of clothes for all sorts of weather, was literate (which was, he thought, a trait that a shocking number of people seemed to be lacking, despite their objective ability to physically read), had gone to school, was able to spend what little extra time and money he had on his silly little hobbies… He was, all told, doing a lot better than a lot of people. And he was grateful for that, he really was! It was just… just…
God, it was all just so miserable, wasn’t it?
What was the fucking point? Work, home, work, home, work, home, day off watching anime in bed, work, home, gym, anime in bed—over and over and over again until he wasn’t even sure he knew what month it was without pulling his phone out to check. He got along well with everyone at work—even skirting around the wrath of his tyrannical boss—and had exchanged numbers with a couple of them, but it never really went anywhere. Nobody had prepared him for how hard it was to make friends as an adult! It had been so easy in school when he saw and sat next to the same people every single day, people who were guaranteed to be the same age. Now it was fucking impossible! He could compliment people on their stupid nerd merch all he wanted, but adults were always on their way somewhere, so it never turned into a conversation that turned into a friendship the way it had in school.
So there he was, a loser in his mid-twenties with no fucking friends besides people he knew online that lived too far away to hang out with. His social roster consisted of coworkers, customers he wanted to scream at for being so fucking selfish all the time, and a shitty roommate he’d met through an online posting searching for a roommate because the economy was in shambles and nobody their age could afford to rent a place by themselves anymore because all the good jobs were still taken by old people who were either: A.) Greedy, or B.) Too afraid to retire in case they got fired first and had their retirement benefits pulled out from underneath them. Old people who would then turn around and bitch about how people his age weren’t trying hard enough because the economy had irreparably changed since back in my day.
Oh, and the planet was on fire. In multiple places.
Quarter-life crisis sure was a nice way of saying the kids want to trade places with the elderly and just fucking die already .
And yet, even during his scalding hot showers when he had nothing to do but think, he found that he didn’t really want to die. It was just easier to drop a lol i wish i was dead in the Discord than it was to confront all the layers of bullshit the modern world had let build up in its pursuit of meaningless wealth for an elite few riding on the backs of everyone else. In spite of it all, no matter how unbalanced his brain chemicals might be and no matter how much he might grumble to his online friends about how he wished the store he worked at would just burn down with him in it, he didn’t actually want to die. More than anything, he wanted to wake up and find that the world had fixed itself into what he knew it was capable of being.
Because, even though it seemed like it was always the worst kind of people who got to the top of the social ladder, he knew what the majority of people were like. Sure, sure, customers were insufferable with the way they just left shit on the wrong shelves or dropped their trash on the floor and walked away, but it wasn’t really their fault if they’d never worked retail and didn’t know what a fucking nightmare it was to be cleaning up after other grown-ass people all day. The majority of people—not customers, people —were… good. He truly believed that. He saw it in the way they smiled at each other when they held the door for strangers. He saw it in the way they waved at babies they caught staring at them. He saw it in the way even awkward, shy-looking kids grinned and screamed and danced at concerts when one of their favorite songs came on. It was toe-tapping in cafes when a good song was on the radio, it was checking to see if a penny was lucky or not before picking it up, it was a tall person getting something off a high shelf in a grocery store for a short person, it was the sparkle in their eyes when their meal was brought to the table. People were good and he loved them, and he knew that they were capable of fixing the mess they’d gotten themselves into. People were cleaning beaches and parks in their free time, inventing new ways to recycle plastics, studying harder than ever to cure diseases others said were incurable—because they were good, because they had hope.
Chan didn’t really hate the world. He just hated being exhausted. He hated being an insomniac who was constantly running on empty but had to pretend like he was full of energy at work every day. He understood that there would always be some give-and-take, that he would always have to offer some form of work in order to eat, but wasn’t it kinda bullshit that he had to feel like he was dead on his feet just to earn some pieces of paper to trade for food? He’d rather help the farmer and get a cut of the crop; at least then he’d feel like his work had some kind of meaning. He hated that it had gotten to this point—that so many people, so young, felt like it was all pointless when he knew that it wasn’t.
It would never be pointless. Not as long as there were people to meet, music to listen to, art to make, shows to watch. He hadn’t met all the people who would make him happy. He hadn’t listened to all the music he’d love, hadn’t made all the things he’d make, hadn’t even watched all the fucking anime he was going to watch. God knew his fucking plan to watch list alone was long enough to keep him alive for at least another decade, and that was assuming he didn’t add anything new to it or get distracted by new releases each season. So he took a deep breath, rinsed his hair, and got out of the shower.
Tomorrow would be another long day at work.
-
For all his internal hype about optimism, sometimes Chan really did just want to quit his job and waste away in the corner of his room like a little bug. It would definitely take less effort than he’d put in today, at least. When he’d taken this job at a furniture store, he’d done so with the hope that maybe, just maybe, it would be more pleasant than the stores he’d worked at before. He’d been wrong. If anything, the people were more obnoxious because they were making big purchases of mostly want items; the amount of times he heard shit like, Oh, well, I just don’t like my old couch anymore… made him want to scream. Imagine being able to just buy a new couch because you decided you didn’t like the old one anymore! Ugh, living in that tax bracket must be a dream. But he didn’t. He lived in a tax bracket where he had to keep all of his furniture until it was literally falling apart, and once it finally gave up, he’d usually replace it with another cheap, secondhand piece.
Being poor was fucking exhausting, mentally and physically. What must it be like to have a cushy desk job? As he biked back towards his apartment—on a bicycle, mind you, because gas for a motorbike was expensive, insurance for a car was astronomical, and he didn’t want to keep paying for a new bus pass every month—he couldn’t help but think that, no matter how soul-sucking it might be, at least a desk job would give him freedom from having to figure out how to ask someone to stop their kid from jumping on the display beds. He hated this fucking job. He hated the people who shopped at his store. He was so fucking annoyed by the continued existence of his job it was stupid.
The only thing giving him enough energy to keep pedaling his goddamn bike was the music pumping through his earbuds. They were wired, of course; he couldn’t justify the cost of good-quality wireless earbuds, and he definitely wasn’t going to buy cheap ones he’d just have to keep replacing. That was stupid. His wired earbuds were fine, thank you very much, not outdated or impractical or anything; they didn’t need charging and he couldn’t accidentally lose one earbud and have to buy an entirely new pair. He was doing fine!
Those wireless earbud cases were so cute, though…
The song changed and he chuckled to himself. It was the opening theme song of an anime he’d finished watching a couple weeks ago, and if he was being honest, the OP was the best part of the entire show. He hadn’t really anticipated quality content from a show that marketed itself as a BL harem, of course, but… for a guy who liked guys, it was hard to be picky about representational media. If the anime promised that there were gonna be dudes making out in it, he’d probably end up watching it. So he did. He’d slogged through all twelve episodes of an isekai where a stupid fucking audience self-insert character woke up in a hospital, almost immediately fucked the male nurse that was taking care of him, and then proceeded to meet six other men he’d also fuck. The anime wasn’t nearly as graphic as the manga—according to people in the comments, anyway; Chan wasn’t going to waste his time reading the damn thing—but it was enough to piss off the homophobes, and wasn’t that what counted?
Anyway, the characters in the harem hadn’t even been that good-looking, not by harem anime standards. The actual plot was some poorly fleshed-out bullshit about there’s a rebellion brewing that has to be stopped, and maybe the anime would’ve been better if they’d actually engaged with that concept a bit more; one of the harem members was the nation’s prince, for God’s sake! He was responsible for leading the charge against the rebellion! There’d been so much potential for a good story, but it had been wasted in favor of the characters all taking their turns getting dicked down.
Whatever. He really did know better than to expect deep, thoughtful plotting from a harem anime. He’d just… he hadn’t ever watched a BL harem before, so maybe he’d gotten his hopes up a little bit, y’know? Just a little. He was allowed to be disappointed about stuff like this, right? He’d spent valuable time off work watching that show, after all, and it had been for nothing! No pay-off! He didn’t even like any of the characters enough to validate the time investment!
And still, he knew that he’d watch it if they made a second season. He had to support this stupid gay shit if he wanted to see more, better stupid gay shit in the future. Prove that there was interest in it, blah, blah, blah… Whatever.
Chan sighed. Traffic ahead of him in the street seemed to have gotten a little backed up, and he really didn’t like the idea of getting squished between impatient cars, so he hopped his bike up onto the edge of the sidewalk. The street may have been full of store closers in their cars on their way home, but the sidewalks were mostly empty; all the shops were closed now, so where the fuck were any pedestrians gonna go besides home? He rode along past the cars in the street, trying hard to focus on just getting himself home, showered, and in bed. He’d probably watch a couple episodes of the anime he was watching now—an actually good one with a decent plot, thank you very much—while slowly nibbling at whatever leftovers he could scrounge out of the fridge, then he’d lay there and stare at the wall until he passed out. The usual. And he’d do it all again tomorrow. That was just how his life was these days.
He braked as the crosswalk light up ahead turned red. He was in his neighborhood now and eager to get back, and though there didn't seem to be anyone coming, he knew better than to try to cross on a red light. People who watched isekai anime joked about trucks for a reason. And hit by a car while illegally crossing wasn't very high on his list of preferred ways to die, so. He'd wait a couple more minutes at the empty crossing, dreaming about the hot shower waiting for him…
Somewhere in the apartment building looming overhead—a building he'd always found tacky and purposefully avoided moving into—the sharp, piercing squeal of metal giving up cut through the night air and filled the silent seconds at the end of that shitty anime's OP. The sound of the metal snapping was followed by a horrified scream.
Chan looked up just in time to see a hefty window air conditioning unit plummeting towards the ground—towards him.
Oh, son of a bitch.
-
Fuck , Chan's head hurt. He opened his eyes for a split second, only to immediately close them as the bright sunlight filling the room felt like a nail to the brain. What the fuck happened? He'd been on his way home from work, and then… someone's AC unit broke and fell on him? Was he remembering that right? he could probably get some answers if he opened his eyes and searched for the call button—he must be in the hospital, because this definitely wasn't his bed—but he really just… kinda wanted to go back to sleep. God, he was so fucking fired. His boss wouldn't keep him on the payroll if he wasn't working because of an injury. Shit. Shit. He was so fucked. What was he gonna do? Where could he quickly get a new job? He—
—He heard the door open. He sighed through his nose and convinced himself to open his eyes, as painfully bright as it was in this damn room. He blinked a couple times as he looked around. Uh… this was a hospital, right? It didn't look much like one. The room was suspiciously empty, devoid of machines and the usual such hospital room chaos. He hadn't noticed how silent it was until just now; he wasn't hooked up to a heart monitor, and wasn't that… wrong?
He looked over towards the door.
His breath caught.
He knew that face. It was… different, of course, from the picture in his mind, but that was to be expected when there was a physical version of a goddamn drawing standing in front of him.
It was the nurse. The nurse, the one from that stupid fucking anime he'd watched. He was approaching Chan's bedside with a smile on his face and a clipboard in his hands, the sharp shapes of his body highlighted by a form-fitting white uniform.
There were three options here. One: Chan was higher than a kite and absolutely tripping balls on some sort of medication as he lay in a hospital bed in Seoul. Two: Chan was knocked the fuck out somewhere, either bleeding to death beneath that AC unit or conked out in the aforementioned actual Korean hospital bed, and this was a dream he was having because that anime had been on his mind right before he'd gotten knocked out. Or, the worst option, Three: Chan had, somehow or another, gotten himself isekai'ed into the world of that anime by having it on his mind right before the moment of his untimely death.
Suddenly losing his job because of an injury didn’t seem like the worst possible thing that could happen to him. No. Fucking. Way. No fucking way this was happening, right? He had to be tripping balls somewhere in Seoul. He was not in an anime world. He did not get isekai’ed. That was stupid. That was impossible. Even if the multiverse theory was true, surely people didn’t just get their souls transported to another universe when they died, right? Especially considering that he still remembered everything about himself, so… what did that mean? Oh, he hated this.
The nurse cleared his throat. Chan already knew what he was going to say. “It’s good to see that you’re awake,” he said, exactly as expected. “We were starting to worry.”
Chan sucked in a deep breath. He was not doing this, whatever this was. He wasn’t going to play along and try to repeat whatever phrases of dialogue he could remember from the show, absolutely no way. He was going to do everything in his power to keep convincing himself that he was just high in a hospital bed in the real world, of course, but no matter what the case was, he didn’t want to be like the protagonist of the anime. Harem protagonists were always fucking insufferable! They didn’t even try to maintain their relationships; they just existed and the other characters fell all over them for no reason.
Also, Chan wasn’t a slut. It wasn’t, like, a moral thing or whatever—he couldn’t care less, actually, considering that mammals were sexual animals by nature and it didn’t fucking matter how many people somebody slept with—; it was just… look, he worked retail, okay? He barely had any energy as it was, and he was constantly being used to his absolute limits at work, so the thought of expending any extra effort for sex when he could just get off himself and then go to sleep… nah. As much as he liked guys, nah. It was just too much fucking work .
So: Chan would not be this show’s protagonist, for however long he was here. Whether he’d been isekai’ed or was just having a morphine-induced dream, he was not going to be the dull, self-obsessed, slutty MC of this fucking anime. He was going to be himself, come hell or high water.
With that decision made, he took a deep breath and met the nurse’s eyes. In the show, the protagonist had had a short inner monologue about how hot the nurse was and how he might as well shoot his shot, so he’d said something flirty that had effectively flustered the poor guy.
Yeah, that wasn’t gonna happen. “What happened? How did I get here?”
Those were normal questions to ask, he thought. Regular things he needed to know. No room for misunderstanding his intentions, either.
The nurse nodded and glanced down at his clipboard. “Right. You were dropped off here by a good samaritan who found you battered on the edge of town. Your injuries are consistent with a battle with a monster. Do you have any memory of something like that?”
Right. There were monsters in this universe. Of course there were. The anime never got too in-depth with them; the protagonist was too busy getting in-depth with his harem to do any actual exploring. Anyway, his only memories were of his life before he presumably got crushed beneath an AC unit, and he couldn’t very well tell the nurse about modern-day Seoul and be seen as sane, so he had to think on his feet here. If he couldn’t be Bang Chan from Seoul, then he’d be… uh… uh…
“No,” he said right before the silence could start to get awkward. “I don’t—I don’t remember anything.”
Ah, yes, because he’d always wanted to play the role of the fucking amnesiac. Goddamn it. Well, it was easier than making up an entirely new identity off the top of his head, at least. The nurse’s brow furrowed in concern. “Do you know your name, at least? We don’t have any information about you for your records. We’d like to be able to call you by name while you’re here, at the very least.”
Did amnesiacs remember their names? He only knew drama and anime amnesia rules; would a real nurse be able to see through him? Then again, did this… did this guy really count as a real nurse? He wasn’t sure. Fuck. Whatever! This was all bullshit! He was winging it! “Uh, Chan. It’s… Chan.”
“Is that it?”
He nodded. “That’s… all I have.”
“Do you know how old you are?”
He’d rather not talk about it, thanks. It would just make him question all of the decisions that had led him to whatever the fuck was happening right now. “Not exactly,” he lied. “Mid-twenties, I guess?”
The nurse scribbled something down on his papers. “That’s about what we figured,” he said, “but we couldn’t be sure until we talked to you. How do you feel?”
“My head hurts,” Chan sighed, “and my back is sore. But I’m mostly okay. What’d you guys do for me?”
“Your back was quite mangled by the monster, so we stitched it up and sealed it with magic. Aside from that, we've only used a few standard magic treatments to keep your condition stable and comfortable,” the nurse replied. Chan had no idea what those standard magic treatments might be, but if they kept him from falling apart, he was fine with it. “Luckily, none of your wounds approached being life-threatening on their own; it was just the amount of them that had us concerned. Your unconsciousness was likely due to blood loss, and if you’re missing memories right now, you must’ve hit your head—but we didn’t find any swelling or wounds on your head during our examination.”
About that time, the door opened again, and in walked the doctor. “Thought I heard voices,” he said, and while Chan found the older man to be a bit more to his taste than the nurse, he still wasn’t interested in starting a harem or anything here. “Did you find anything out?” he asked the nurse.
“Our patient’s name is Chan, and he’s about as old as we thought he was,” the nurse answered, “but he seems to be experiencing some memory loss after his accident. I think we ought to keep him for observation for a couple of days, just in case.”
The doctor leaned over next to the nurse to read the notes he’d written. “Mm. I agree, in that case.” He looked up to Chan again. “I’d hate to release you and have something happen, since we don’t know why you’re missing your memories. We’ll keep you for a few more days, run some more tests, and see what we can do for you.”
Chan nodded. “Okay. That’s fine.” It wasn’t like he had anywhere else to go, so. Whatever. He just hoped the food here wasn’t shit.
And then the doctor had the nerve to say, “If you’d like, we can also reach out to the Imperial Soldiers and ask if we can borrow a man who may be able to help us track down someone who knows you, like family or an employer. We don’t want to release you onto the street, of course, but we also need to have some sort of reference when we take down your information for credit.”
Chan was silent for a long time, just… sitting there, blinking, soaking in the doctor’s words. A reference. For credit. Like family, or an employer.
Chan had just woken up from—as far as they knew—being knocked into amnesiac unconsciousness by a fucking monster somewhere, and they were already skirting around the subject of payment? Holy shit. Sure, that was, like, a pretty big plot point in the anime, but he hadn’t expected it to happen to him! The protagonist had moved in with the nurse and found a job—whereat he fucked his boss, by the way—to start paying the hospital back, but Chan had hoped that maybe, just maybe he could avoid a similar fate by avoiding following the same path with the nurse that the protagonist had taken.
Apparently not. All worlds were the same, he supposed. Capitalism was capitalism—anywhere that money existed, it would sit at the top of peoples’ priority lists. Son of a bitch. He didn’t have a fucking job in this universe! He didn’t want to find a job in this universe! You’re telling him he got crushed by an AC just to wake up in a world where still had to work to pay off debts he hadn’t had a choice but to incur if he wanted to stay alive? What the fuck! What the actual fuck! There was no justice in existence!
He swallowed hard. “I’ll, um, try to remember something while I’m here,” he said. “Hopefully it won’t be necessary to put in so much effort for me.”
The doctor gave him a sympathetic smile. “It’s no problem. We’ll do whatever we can to help you.” He tapped the nurse’s arm. “Come on, let’s go talk about some other treatments we can try for him while he gets some more rest, alright?”
The nurse gave Chan a lingering glance, and for a second there, Chan got the feeling he was being sized up. Not in a threatening way, but more in a… well, in a way he hadn’t signed up for. He didn’t want the protagonist’s unworked-for charm! He didn’t want to seduce this goddamn nurse! “Thank you,” he said. “I’ll… get back to sleep. My head still hurts, so…”
That got the nurse to come back to reality, at least. He smiled and nodded. “Right. Rest well, and we’ll come back later with a more comprehensive treatment plan for the next few days.”
Ugh. “Okay. Thank you.”
The men left the room then, leaving Chan alone again. He let out a long sigh and stared hard up at the ceiling. His head did hurt, but he definitely wasn’t going back to sleep. He didn’t want to stay here and get further in debt that he knew he couldn’t pay off, nor did he want to pay off. This was bullshit. He wanted to wake up in his world again, but he wasn’t going to risk going to sleep here only to pass time and wake up when those two came back to tell him about all the expensive shit they were going to do to him. If he was actually stuck here in this world… nope. Nope!
He flung the covers back and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Shivered when the cool air of the room touched the bare skin of his back.
If there was a camera in this room, he’d be staring directly into it. Ain’t. No. Way.
He reached back as best as he could, and sure enough, he’d been dressed in an open-back hospital gown. It was actual cloth, not one of those weird papery ones they liked to use in modern hospitals, but the small belt ties did basically nothing to keep it shut. As he stood up, he could feel that even the barest hint of a breeze would have his entire fucking ass out for the entire world to see. Because why wouldn’t it? He took a breath and started to look around the room again, quietly opening any drawers he could find to look through in hopes of finding a pair of pants. Surely he’d been wearing clothes when he was dropped off here, right? Surely…
There were, in fact, no pants to be found in that room. All he could do was tie the belt as tightly as he could and hope to God he could hold it closed. He didn’t know what was on the other side of that door, and quite frankly, he wasn’t willing to find out.
He’d take his chances with the window. It was a first-floor window, already cracked open so he could get some fresh air while he was resting in here, and it seemed to open into a shockingly clean alleyway. Then again, most of the anime had taken place in what was obviously the well-off part of town, so it went without saying that everything would be clean and nice here. Stupid. Whatever. He was gonna crawl out that window, try to fucking beg for some goddamn clothes somewhere, and then he’d be out of this city and onto the next by nightfall. Everything that happened in this place was not his problem. This protagonist’s plot was not going to be his.
He slipped out the window and cringed when his feet touched the stone street. The street was as clean as it could be, sure, but it was still dirty. Ugh. He hadn’t even gotten a pair of hospital socks. Fuckin’ bullshit. Whatever. Whatever! He hated it here! He was just gonna do whatever he had to do to stay alive and out of debt!
He kept to the alleys as he slunk his way through town, pausing at occasional trash piles to look for any sign of free, usable clothing. He was sure he looked more suspicious than he ever had in his fucking life, but what could he do about it? He wasn’t just gonna sit there and let them charge him money he couldn’t make! He didn’t know anyone here, and this was one of those old-timey worlds where you had to have a personal reference to get a job, so fuck that! He wasn’t gonna be stuck begging at every hiring place in town until someone took pity on him and hired him even though he couldn’t provide a character reference. He wasn’t gonna be stuck in debt in a fantasy world! He didn’t care if he had to try to pull clothes out of the trash somewhere!
Slowly but surely, the streets began to get a little bit darker. Aside from the sun setting, he couldn’t help but notice that the actual materials of the buildings were getting… well, darker. Dingier. Poorer. Somehow, he’d wandered from the uptown region to this place—something of an urban slum, the kind of place he’d never be caught dead alone after dark in the real world. But it was too late now, wasn’t it? He was already there and the sun had already painted the sky brilliant orange and red as it set, so he’d just have to make the most of it. Maybe he’d be able to find something in the trash around here; there had barely been anything uptown, but there were more trash heaps around here, so he may be able to find something or another.
He confirmed that nobody was coming from the opposite direction—the direction his ass would be facing, that is—and turned a corner. He was rushing now; he was moving as quickly as he could without his fucking robe coming untied, his eyes darting from the street in front of his feet to the branching alleys around him, checking for sharp objects he could step on or people who could cause problems for him.
And while his eyes were on his feet, they should’ve been up ahead of him. If they had been, he might not have run straight into a stranger’s arms like it was a goddamn shoujo anime.
He stumbled as he bounced back off of the person, and they reached out to stabilize him. With their hands on his arms, they asked, “Hey, you okay?”
Chan hesitated to look up, terrified that as soon as he did, he’d see another harem boy he’d have to dodge.
But it wasn’t. It was… he recognized this man, only barely, as a background character on the side of the Rebellion. Not a harem member for the protagonist, but canon fodder who hadn’t gotten any voiced lines before disappearing when his group’s leader was defeated. And he was cute. He was very, very cute. Round cheeks and wide eyes, messy black hair that hung down around his face, and a general aura of gentleness… Chan swallowed hard. When he looked down at the hands holding his arms, he could see a few tattoos peeking out from underneath the man's long sleeves.
Oh, for fuck's sake. If this was the real world, he definitely would've been trying to get this guy’s number.
The man asked again, “Seriously, man, are you alright? You look a bit out of it.”
Chan felt out of it, but… he nodded. “Yeah, sorry. I'm fine, thanks, I'm just trying to…” To what? Scrounge together some clothes so he could run from this town to dodge some debt? He couldn't say that! He—
The man raised an eyebrow. “Trying to outrun a doctor, looks like.”
Well, shit. It must've been obvious, but he'd hoped he wouldn't be called out on it. He sighed to himself. “I… yeah. I didn't go to the doctor for myself, okay? It wasn't my call.”
The man was silent for a moment as he stared at Chan, giving him this look like he was trying to read him. Then, “And I bet you can't pay him back, can you? So it's better to take your chances on the streets than to be in debt.”
Chan hesitated—then nodded. If this guy had originally been on the side of the Rebellion in the anime, Chan got the feeling he probably wouldn't rat Chan out for ditching on his debt. “Basically,” he said. “Do you happen to know where a guy could get a set of clothes before he leaves town?”
The man chuckled. “You've got your whole ass hanging out back there, don't you?”
“Look, this really isn't my proudest moment, so if you're not gonna help me—”
“—No, no, I didn't mean that I wouldn't!” the man exclaimed. He gave Chan a smile, and something about it was so, so much more comforting than the smiles he'd received from the nurse and the doctor. “I can get you some clothes. Come with me?”
“I can trust you?”
The man was still holding Chan's arms. He gave them a little squeeze and made an appreciative noise. “Even if you couldn't,” he said, “I bet you could knock me out if I tried anything. But I'm not like that. I have a personal rule to never leave a fellow broke bitch behind.” He grinned, and Chan's heart skipped a beat at how fucking cute it was. “My name's Jisung. You?”
Jisung. That was an awfully Korean name to be in an anime, but… then again, if this was a dream in Chan's dying moments or something, of course he'd fill in the blanks with more familiar information. So he wasn't going to waste time questioning it, not when another breeze reminded him just how naked he was. “Chan,” he replied. “I'm Chan. Thank you for your help.”
Jisung's smile grew. “It's my pleasure,” he said. He finally let go of Chan's arms to shrug off his jacket. He wore short sleeves beneath it, and sure enough, his arms had been turned into something of a canvas—an assortment of tattoos covered his pale skin, and Chan had to bite his tongue to keep from asking about them as Jisung offered him the jacket. “Here, you can tie this around your waist. I’d have for you to have some kind of… accident.” Chan agreed and took the jacket, tying the arms around his waist. When he was done, Jisung nodded in the direction he'd been walking when Chan ran into him. “Come on, the place is this way. I was headed there anyway.”
Otherwise alone, a half-step above being naked, and very confused, Chan obediently followed as Jisung led the way.