Hearts Awakened, Live Alive

Yeosang: A Strange Encounter

"For fuck's sake," Yeosang swore, shaking out his arm as a wholly unpleasant, and frankly painful, electric shock went up his arm and jolted his entire body. This was the most annoying part of the surgery he had gotten done. Whenever he updated his systems—which he didn't do very often due to their price tag—this always happened. The update would install no problem, but then it came down to recalibrating his nervous system so that everything worked seamlessly with no annoying delays. Unfortunately, the process usually involved inconvenient side effects which included a series of annoying twitches he couldn't control and painful shocks in various places around his body.

He checked the small calibrating device in his pocket, sighing when he saw that he was only halfway done with the process. He clipped it onto his belt with an eye roll, adjusting the two wires he had plugged into the implants in his neck. How annoying. He was glad he had decided to download an upgraded software for his eyes last night before he went to bed. He didn't think he could handle his eyes going in and out of focus uncontrollably for a few hours on top of the electric shocks and twitches going through his body. Sometimes he really hated how much he relied on technology. He needed it to do everything, even something as basic as seeing the world around him and moving from one spot to another, to live a normal life.

"Ow! Oh my god!" Yeosang exclaimed as another shock went up his spine this time. He dropped the wire cutters he'd been holding, sitting back to lean against the wall as he waited for the pain to subside. He was so going to send a strongly worded email to his distributor. This was ridiculous. He could hardly get any work done.

He reminded himself of how nice it was going to be to finally have an upgraded operating system for not only his central nervous system but his peripheral as well after all this was over. It'd been forever since he'd been able to afford an update of this magnitude and it was starting to show. His reflexes had been slower, his reactions a bit delayed, and his movements occasionally choppy and very ungraceful. He couldn't wait, honestly. He'd been suffering through all those drawbacks for too long. While cybernetic technology and biometric implants had been relatively mainstream for years by this point, they were still very expensive to get a hold of and cost even more to keep up. Yeosang had used the last of his inheritance money from his parents to pay for the surgery after the break-in at their last hideout and he hadn't been able to buy a system upgrade of this magnitude since. That had been two years ago. He was ready for an update. His eyes were already loads better than before. He could even increase the magnification and highlight certain components of the real world all with a simple thought. He was having a field day with them as he worked on his security systems; if only his biometric nervous system could calibrate faster...

He sighed again, taking a shaky breath in once the pain had passed. Picking back up his wire cutters, he got back to work repairing and reworking his security system in the main room of the warehouse. No one was here right now; though, he suspected Jongho would show up eventually. He always did. Like clockwork after his classes, the younger man would come to the hideout and hover around Yeosang until Hongjoong told him to do otherwise.

A notification popped up within his field of vision—another helpful new feature his eyes had—it notified him of new movement of the premises. Speak of the devil... Yeosang waited for the inevitable.

He heard footsteps approaching him.

"Afternoon, Jongho-yah," Yeosang said once the footsteps halted and a shadow cast over him.

"Hey," he greeted in return. Yeosang looked up at him, a little surprised to see the man fully dressed in his uniform already. Though, he guessed it made sense; Ghost could pop in at any moment now. Better to be prepared than to be caught unaware, he supposed.