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Soobin’s home wasn’t too grand or luxurious. There were some spiders on the roof that had the biggest web in the whole house, stretching from the water tank to the antenna that provided the Choi family with TV.
Soobin’s web was a humble collection of silk thread he had meticulously put together. It was located behind Yeonjun’s desk, and it held strongly from the cables hanging from his CPU and the speakers. The sound that came from the black boxes of sound, that Soobin didn’t understand, was annoying. The part of his web behind them was barely noticeable, just enough for Soobin to peek at Yeonjun while he studied.
Humans were freaky creations of nature. Gigantic and graceless, tumbling through the world with heavy steps and smashing insects with even heavier palms. As if that wasn’t enough to make them horrifying, they were plush on the outside! All soft and defenseless, with all the bits that would logically be inside of a body on its exterior. Soobin couldn’t relate.
Regardless of how strange humans were to the average spider, there was something different about this one. Yeonjun. Soobin didn’t know if he was considered handsome or not by the rest of his kind, or talented in any way, but he had gotten used to his company.
When Soobin was born, there were hundreds like him. It didn’t last long, as one of the humans, a tall angry looking woman had vacuumed most of his siblings. The ones that managed to avoid the scary machine, were crushed under a slipper. She also attacked them with toxic fumes.
Luckily, Soobin and Taehyun managed to survive. Their mom died not long after.
As young spiders, they both explored the enormous house, looking for a place to settle. Eventually, they both parted ways, deciding that they both liked different rooms the best.
“You need to be the first again, Yeonjun,” the human mumbled to himself. “You deserve the best grades in the university.” The sounds that came from his mouth always sounded high, pleasant. Yeonjun yawned, opening his mouth widely. Soobin observed, awed, the huge hole with abundant teeth and pink, shining skin. Fascinating!
Soobin just watched, thrilled, from the back of the speaker. He never dared get any closer, afraid the human might kill him. It was thrilling, the way Yeonjun turned a gigantic page and kept reading. Was there anything interesting there? All Soobin could ever spot were black stains on a white background, whenever a book was left open in the loneliness of the room.
Yeonjun sighed and rubbed his temples. “Jesus Christ,” he said when he heard his brother screaming through their shared wall. He hoped his parents would force Beomgyu to move his bed and playstation to the side of the room the furthest away from Yeonjun’s soon.
He wondered how it would be to get inside Yeonjun’s anatomically complicated human cavities. Would the tongue be soft and the teeth slippery? Would the skin of his cheek be squishy under his claws?
The yawn didn’t last long. Yeonjun returned to his previous position, with a hand against his cheek. Studying calculus was headache inducing. Every single time, no matter how well he did on the tests. He cursed his professor for actually testing the theoretical part of the class.
Suddenly, another human called for his name. Soobin noted, with horror, that it was the same person that had murdered his siblings. Yeonjun sighed again and left.
🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️
Taehyun liked being a spider. It was fun, walking on ceilings and walls. Making majestic webs and eating the prey they managed to catch. He also liked his brother Soobin, who lived in the room next door.
When he was younger, letting go of Soobin had been a hard decision. His brother was a very kind spider, always making sure he was well fed. They were used to sticking together when they were mere spiderlings. Now they were full grown adult spiders, with different desires for their lives.
Soobin had chosen Yeonjun’s room. Spacious and neat, with its baby blue walls and made bed. Taehyun didn’t find it fun, always static. There weren’t many things laying around, except books or clothes over the covers when Yeonjun wasn’t sure what to wear (a spectacle Soobin enjoyed watching).
Beomgyu’s bedroom was nothing like that. There were clothes on the floor, on and under the bed. There were toy soldiers thrown under furniture and playstation game boxes strewn across the room. There was always something new to find in the chaos.
Beomgyu said a string of heated words into his headset. Call of Duty took the worst out of him. He drank some of his Monster energy and kicked his pillow to the floor. If Taehyun could laugh, he would. Or if he could talk, he’d probably tell him to stop being so sensitive.
He liked sitting on the rocket lamp that hung from the ceiling and staring at the weird images going on the TV. One time Beomgyu threw his controller and part of the screen turned black.
“Beomgyu, could you shut up?!” Yeonjun yelled from the other side of the wall.
Beomgyu groaned. “Beomgyu, could you shut up?” He repeated, speaking nasally, mocking his older brother. The sigh Yeonjun let out could be heard from where Taehyun was sitting.
After a while, Beomgyu turned the playstation off and put the air channels instead. He wasn’t paying attention. He sat on the floor and played with his Nintendo switch, visiting his Animal Crossing villagers.
The room was dark, except for the light from the TV and the nintendo switch. It was probably because Beomgyu’s room was painted a bright green colour that was irritating to the eyes.
Taehyun wondered if the boy would notice if he got any closer. He could just fall down slowly from the lamp and land on the giant's head. He wondered what humans smelled like from up close. He had stepped on some wrinkly socks under the bed in the past and it smelled foul. He had a feeling that’s not what regular human scent was like, since the few times he had walked on Beomgyu’s sheets they smelled nice. Like what mosquitoes tasted like after they had a bit of human blood. And mosquitoes were Taehyun’s favourite.
Taehyun stuck some of his silk on the lamp and dared to fall, just a tad. He was still hovering a few feet over the human. Beomgyu was too focused on his game to notice anything.
🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️
Yeonjun was studying again, this time for his biology exam. Soobin was staring from his corner, half-hidden behind the speaker. It wasn’t particularly interesting to see Yeonjun flip the pages and huff, or smile confidently when he realized he had the whole page memorized. His expressions were cute to Soobin, when he managed to get past the whole soft-fleshed exterior.
Yeonjun got up and left, which gave Soobin an opportunity to check whatever he was reading and see if it was, finally, something a spider like him could understand. To his surprise, the whole page had pictures of arachnids! He discovered the illustration of a variety of spiders and some other beings Soobin had never seen before but looked vaguely related to him.
He jumped with excitement, happily running around the page. He was astonished at all the images, trying to get it all in before Yeonjun came back.
He almost died when he sensed the vibration of a harsh thud around him. He scanned his surroundings and came to the startling realization that he was locked there. He inched close to the edge of the translucent cage. It was a thick material, so tightly pressed against the page that it was starting to wrinkle.
He turned around and he saw him, his human. Yeonjun, who stared at him with wide interested eyes. Soobin was afraid of what he would do to him because, no matter how enchanting, all spiders knew that humans were a violent species. How many stories of ruthless killings by the shoe of a child or the bottom of glasses had he heard in his short life? Too many to know how this interaction would end.
“Don’t worry, buddy.” Yeonjun said, and the book Soobin was standing on was lifted into the air. The spider panicked, circling around with panic. “I’m just going to let you out.”
Yeonjun opened the sliding door that was conveniently placed in his bedroom, and stepped out onto the backyard. He gently placed the book on the floor. Soobin was wide-eyed, with all of his eight eyes staring ahead at the human. Instead of crushing him to death, Yeonjun lifted the glass jar he had used to trap him.
“There you go. Hurry, I gotta keep studying.” Soobin had the suspicion that the human was well-aware that his language wasn’t undestandable by spiders.
Soobin didn’t move, stunned. He wondered what the human was expecting him to do. Yeonjun shook the book lightly and Soobin finally took the hint, getting down and hiding between the grass.
“Bye, little friend.” Yeonjun turned his back and soon, he disappeared into the room.
Soobin thought that he was quite silly for not knowing the spider’s home was behind his desktop. He would have to get in there in the morning somehow.
He decided to go see whatever was going on in the next room, the one Taehyun had chosen for himself. He saw Taehyun’s human. He was just as tall as Yeonjun and appeared even softer on the outside than him, terrifyingly so.
🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️
Taehyun was just a few inches away from Beomgyu’s head. The boy was still entranced by the lighthearted game, smiling softly. He lifted his huge arm, stretching after a few hours of playing in the same uncomfortable position.
Taehyun panicked. Beomgyu had accidentally broken his silk rope and he was falling. He landed on a pile of fluffy black hair. It was desperating, being lost among a sea of hair. He took the opportunity to satisfy his curiosity, getting a taste of how the human tasted like. It was weird, but not bad.
He started planning his exit. He walked, as superficially as he could to avoid disturbing the human. Then he reached a different part of the human, a smoother one. This one tasted different, saltier.
He froze when the human started moving. A humongous hand was swiped against Beomgyu’s forehead, trying to get away whatever it was that was tickling his forehead. To his utmost dread, what he found was Taehyun.
Beomgyu and Taehyun exchanged looks, and then Beomgyu started screaming his heart out. He lunged Taehyun away and stood up, trying to step on him.
Taehyun should have never tried to eliminate the distance. He was so stupid, crossing the boundaries of what was safe because he was curious. He was about to die, in the hands (feet?) of the human being he was obsessed with.
When Beomgyu finally reached him, Taehyun’s death was quick. He was grateful that he wasn’t being played with for long, that he wasn’t dismembered or drowned like some other spiders in the house had been.
He hoped that his older brother, Soobin, would never have to die because of the fury of men. He deserved a better fate.
🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️🕷️
Beomgyu quickly opened the door, deciding to go pee in the bushes instead of the bathroom (it wasn’t his fault it was so far away from his room). He needed some fresh air after being frightened by that goddamn spider. He shrugged, self-satisfied. Killing two birds with one stone, he was practical like that.
Soobin backed off, trying to get away from the giant’s way. To his misfortune, Beomgyu noticed him.
“Oh, damn. Another spider.” Beomgyu frowned with disgust. He had a terrible allergy to spiders, just like his mom. He still shuddered when he remembered the time a full nest of spiders hatched and his mom tried everything in his power to eradicate the danger.
He lifted his feet up.
Soobin tried to move away. A dirty sole getting close to him,drowning any light and all of his hope, was the last thing he witnessed before he died. His freshly squeezed body was next to his brother’s, both killed by the same shoe.
“What is it with spiders today?” Beomgyu wrinkled his nose with disgust, the spiders’ corpse glued to the bottom of his flip flop. He tried rubbing it off on the grass while he took his leak.