rewrite the stars - jaywon

chapter 37

"Kid, it's okay. He's fine," Yeonjun's hand, a solid comforting presence, landed on Jungwon's back.

Yeonjun nodded at Soobin, who was dropping a tiny object, about the size of Jungwon's pinkie fingernail, into the palm of his hand.

Soobin lifted his hand, holding it out for Jungwon to see. It was a computer chip, small, embedded with a miniscule strip of pulsating light that ran the length of it.

"Say hi to Jay."

Jungwon looked from Jay's head, held still in his palm, to the chip in Soobin's hand.

"Hey, Jay," he breathed, in disbelief that that little thing held everything that had made Jay up, all of his quirks and eccentricities.

Soobin's fingers curled, closing over the chip, "Cute," he snorted.

He slid the chip into one of the slots on the metal box he'd plugged into the computer.

Jungwon silently reached over to grab Jay's shirt. He drew it closed over Jay's chest as Soobin fiddled with the computer, drawing up a couple windows of code and a third, smaller window.

"What are you doing there?" Jungwon asked, as his eyes flitted back and forth from Jay's still form to Soobin tapping away at the computer.

He heard Taehyun and Beomgyu making their way over. Distantly, he wondered if they had held back up until that moment because of Taehyun's apparent discomfort with Jay.

Frowning with concentration, Soobin didn't look away from the curved screen of the computer.

He pointed at one code window, "This is what the code should look like for a model gamma.... gamma..," he trailed off.

Jungwon helped him out, "Model gamma-eight-six-five-seven."

"Yeah, that," Soobin clicked at something in the smaller window, the one that wasn't code, then typed something. The corners of his mouth kept inching downwards.

Jungwon noticed a number in the smaller window, one that ticked up and up every second.

"This," Soobin pointed at the other code window, "is Jay's code."

He pointed, finally, at the small window nestled in between the two. Soobin looked at Jungwon, "And this is a little program I created. It's finding the discrepancies between them."

"Oh," Jungwon looked again at the small window. Even in the time it'd taken Soobin to explain its purpose, the number had risen higher. "There seem to be a lot of those."

"Yeah. Whoever tampered with your 'bot did a real bang-up job of it. Thorough, and crude."

"Crude?" Taehyun couldn't even look at Jay. He kept his eyes raised high, and pointed his gaze at the top of Soobin's head.

"Yeah. It's looking like whoever got to him kind of just... inserted a few lines with cascading effects which effectively cut off access to almost all of his artificial intelligence capabilities," Soobin spoke distractedly, as he continued to clack away at the computer's keyboard.

Jungwon hadn't understood half of what he'd said but he started to feel a creeping, cloying pain in his chest.

When no one replied, Soobin looked behind him at the group assembled around Jay and, apologetically, put whatever had been done in words they could comprehend, "I guess it's kinda like if someone could cut off most of your brain. It would cripple your ability to do anything beyond, you know, the basics."

"So he was lobotomized," Beomgyu said, bluntly.

Jungwon bit his lip. He wondered if it had hurt Jay, to have that done to him. If the carving up of his code reflected itself with physical pain.

Jungwon closed his eyes, breathed in, and out. When he opened them, he allowed himself to look at Jay. With his eyes closed, his face relaxed, Jay looked almost peaceful.

"Sort of," Soobin waved a hand, "Kinda. It'll be a hell of a lot easier to undo than an actual lobotomy, though. Thankfully, the brute who tried to neutralize his AI got lazy. Jay's code's still intact, just inaccessible."

No, Jungwon decided, Jay didn't just look peaceful. He looked as though he could be sleeping. Maybe, when he woke, this would all seem like just a bad dream to him.

"I can fix him, easily, but I can't guarantee he'll remember anything from before he got tampered with," Soobin said, a bit quieter.

Jungwon looked up, to find Soobin already looking at him.

With a gravity Jungwon wouldn't have thought him capable of possessing, Soobin inclined his head "Sorry."

Jungwon traced the lines of Jay's face with his eyes. His cheekbones, his lashes, the moles that dotted his skin. All Jungwon had wanted was for Jay to remember who he was. But maybe what he wanted didn't matter.

"That's okay," he said, even though it wasn't, not really, not at all.

"As long as he can start making new memories," Jungwon tried to convince himself, "that's all that matters."

The old Jay, though-- the one who smiled upon seeing Jungwon, the one who found him beautiful-- he couldn't quite grasp the idea that that Jay might be gone for good. And all because he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

— the end of chapter 37 ♡

place your bets – will jay's old
self return? or will he have to start
over and make new memories?