boosoonhao

____________________

the thing that minghao misses the most, the thing that reminds him vividly, almost eerily of his home country, is painting. he’d been a commodity, of sorts, back then; words like ‘artist’ and ‘genius’ and ‘prodigy’ tacked onto his name, spoken in soft, admiring tones. colors splashed against canvases; yellows and reds and blacks and blues. smudges of color on his face, underneath his fingernails, the smell of wet, thick liquid.

there was a shirt he used to wear back then, whenever he painted. white, soft fabric and bold, black letters. what font was it again – times new roman? – what did it say? freedom? such a foreign concept. but minghao remembers that shirt, remembers the sensation of smooth fabric against his skin, and somehow that keeps him sane on the days when he feels like he might burst.

once he’s safely out of sight, tucked away in a private nook right outside town, he gets off his bike, rips the gloves off of his hands. he shrugs his backpack from his narrow shoulders, clutches at the straps as he steps over rotten wood and grey stone. the air smells almost clean here; the sound of leaves rustling in a faint wind making minghao’s ears twitch to attention. if he closes his eyes and pretends, maybe he could hear the hums of birds, the hurried steps of forest animals.

pretenses are important in palatium, they keep you alive. daydreams, on the other hand; they’ll end up killing you. something metallic and hollow smacks against something else inside of minghao’s bag. not too far now, he promises, as if the contents of his bag have minds of their own. or maybe it’s himself that he’s reassuring. who can tell, these days.

the cans of paint he got from one of wonwoo’s girls. wonwoo hates when people refer to them like that, does not like the implication. the girls don’t mind, especially not the one who had gotten minghao the cans. they know how much wonwoo puts on the line for them; they wear the title as a badge of honor. not that it matters. what matters is that the girl had smuggled paint for him. minghao doesn’t ask how, only listens to the way the cans clink together in his bag.

the abandoned house, he’d found on his own. creaking floors and moldy corners; it’s a wonder the building still stands. remnants of whoever used to live there lingers in every room; a sundress there, a golden pen there, picture frames with nothing in them. it’s the most haunted thing minghao has ever seen, but it’s his, in a sense, and nothing else really is anymore. the inside walls used to be white, he thinks, the exterior of the house a faded red. when he first stumbled upon the uninhabited home the inside had turned a dull sort of yellow-y color. when he enters now, there are colors everywhere; symbols and drawings of his own creation. it feels like walking into an alternative universe. a world of his own.

when he steps inside this time, though, there’s someone else there.

you’re staring at the wall directly in front of him, your back turned to him. you do not see him enter, but there’s no doubt that you hear the way the door moan as he pushes it open. for a moment minghao thinks he’s been caught; that you’re an enforcer come to take him away. he imagines every public execution he’s been forced to witness, puts himself right in the center of it; the mental image enough to block his airways. it’s not until you twist around to face him that he realizes that you’re a woman. he hates himself for his first thought, then; that he has the upper hand.

“ah,” you mutter, gaze dropping from minghao’s face to his hands; stained with color and pale at the knuckles with the strength of his grip at the straps of his bag. “so you’re the one who’s been painting my house.”

____________________

it’s not your house, per se, minghao finds out. it is– actually, it is quite an impressive story; your parents rebels way back when the peacekeeper first took to power. professors, the both of them, too smart, too educated to bow down as easily as most of the masses. their marriage had been ‘voided’, your mother promised to another man; a man more suited to her genetics. the house had been their summer home, at the time. a quaint little cottage. minghao suspects it must have been quite cozy, at some point.

they had managed to stay hidden for seven years, a feat so impressive that minghao doesn’t even believe it at first. you’d been born in the very room you’re both standing in, spent the first years of your life here.

and then the enforcers came.

that explains the two graves in the garden behind the house.

“in town they call me lee,” you tell him, a stubbornness tinting your tone, a sort of distaste covering your tongue as you utter the last name, the one shared by the orphans of palatium. “but that implies i’ve been saved,” you spit. “at least that’s the intention.” minghao understands what you mean, has seen the posters and heard the sermons about the charity of the silent nuns. what goodness they all possess, dedicating their lives to the unfortunate children whose parents are lost either to illness or to sin. that’s clearly not the way you look at it.

minghao glances around the room, at the walls and at the droplets of paint staining the old floors.

“i’m sorry for intruding,” he tells you uncertainly. it feels strange, offering an apology freely. he hasn’t done that since he lived in a free country. “and for ruining your walls.” minghao used to be very proud of his creative abilities, used to relish in the way people looked at his artworks in exhibitions. he feels awkward, now; exposed, almost as if he’s been doing something wrong. he has, he supposes. painting is, after all, illegal.

“oh no,” you breathe, turn your head back to look at the nearest wall. there was this town hall building in his country that minghao used to love visiting. a bright house made of bricks; a clocktower in the middle of it all, a garden on the right side. minghao’s never been particularly good at realism in his art, but somehow the painting reminds him of that building anyways. “it’s beautiful,” you tell him, voice soft and airy.

“where is that?” you ask, fingers gliding along the painting. his own fingertips itch as if he’s the one dragging his hand over the surface. he feels coarse canvases beneath his thumb. “you’re not from here, are you?”

minghao blinks. “you guessed that just from a painting?”

laughter fills the space, makes the room feel ridiculously large and horribly cramped all at once; the sound of your voice echoing through the living room and tickling at his neck. “no,” you admit. “everyone knows who you are.”

at that, he grimaces. the only way his existence in the middle districts could be any more eye catching was if they put up posters proclaiming his crimes, and the government’s mercy for letting him live in the middle districts rather than the lower. the more he thinks about it, the more surprised he is that they haven’t actually done that.

“i heard you got at least twenty people across the border before you got caught,” you whisper. it’s not something minghao hasn’t heard before, the words following him everywhere he goes. a scandal, they call it. unheard of. should be executed. he nods his head slowly, does not trust his voice. “that was very brave,” you continue, mouth curling into something sad, something strangely reminiscent of a smile. “i’m sorry this is your reward.”

____________________

most people minghao know are born into the country known as palatium; his friends the first generation of adults who know nothing but the closed off walls and the strict regime. he can’t help but thinking you, more than anyone else, has been truly exposed to what it means to be a citizen of palatium; what it takes– what it takes; what it steals, robs, rips away from you, strips and destroys and tears from the very crevices of your soul. the first time – that is, the time after the first – he finds you at the house after your somewhat unorthodox introduction, it’s behind the house. trees hang over the roof as if they threaten to cave the ceiling in, as if they want to consume the house entirely.

he’s not sure what possesses him to go looking for you; he’s already been at the house countless times without your presence. somehow, the house feels emptier, now. so he looks. it’s not hard to find you, there aren’t many places to hide, and when he spots your hunched over form through a window (there’s a draft there, as if the winds beckons him in your direction) he feels a sort of tug. for a moment he’s not even sure that he should approach. in the end minghao’s still too curious for his own good.

“the artist returns,” you murmur, back turned to him. that seems to be your way of greeting. minghao doesn’t know how he’d mistaken you for an enforcer the first time; as you stand in front of the two wooden crosses, there’s nothing that’s not small, vulnerable about you. distinctly feminine, though he can’t stand that even he has started thinking that way. it’s unnerving, how easily one’s mind is reshaped.

“i hope i’m not intruding,” he mutters uncertainly, gaze dropping to look at the graves. there are no names there, but then, there are probably no bodies either. bodies aren’t buried in palatium.

you shrug, a barely there lift of your shoulders. you turn to look at him. there is red along your lines, like a rim of blood framing your eyes. you’ve been crying. minghao understands the compulsion, he feels like he wants to cry all the time.

you rub at your eyes, unbothered by how obvious that gesture is. “of course not,” you tell him with a twitch of your lips. you lean your head back, glance at his backpack. “i know you usually come on mondays.”

when minghao was an artist, people sought him out all the time. twitter dms, small compliments while in the line at starbucks. he wasn’t a celebrity, but he was known enough to never be lonely. he had forgotten what it felt like to be sought after. to have your quirks remembered and accomodated.

“i was wondering,” you continue, clearing your throat. for the first time, you remind him of the women he’ll see in the streets in town; meek and docile and almost afraid to look a man in the eye. it’s not because the gaze is familiar, or the stance is the same, somehow you remind him of the meek women purely for the difference in your coyness. in those girls, the ones who seem to have given up on freedom (freedom; like minghao’s shirt, like the studio that smelled of paint and freshly picked flowers), diverted gazes are a sign of subservience.

subservience. what a word. what a backwards way of life. minghao remembers his mother talking about the marches she participated in when she was young; the demonstrations for equal rights and equal pay. he wonders what the women of palatium would think of such a thing.

in any case– when you divert your gaze, gnaw on your bottom lip as if unsure whether or not your words are appropriate, it does not look like, does not feel like subservience. it looks like having power, and choosing to give it away. it makes minghao tingle, in a way that he hasn’t in a long, long time. it makes him want to paint.

“i was wondering if i could–” you pause, and minghao does not doubt that you’re weighing your options. he thinks he can guess at your thought process just by looking at the way your eyebrows furrow, echoing the slight frown that curls your mouth. ‘on one hand’, you’re probably telling yourself. ‘he’s in the same boat, he’s breaking the law, too.’ you blink, hands tangling into the fabric of your worn, too big sweater. ‘on the other,’ you might argue, ‘he’s got a lot more to prove, a lot more to win by turning me in.’ clarity takes precedence in your expression; you’ve made up your mind. “if you could show me how to paint.”

half empty cans of paint clink and clank together in his backpack. if he closes his eyes, minghao can hear the sound of the wind, can pretend to hear the buzz of insects and the hum of birds. minghao doesn’t need to close his eyes, the sight in front of him is welcome, for once.

____________________

minghao’s gloves feel scratchy against his skin, feels like a sort of prison of their own. like they’re coiled around his throat rather than covering his paint stained hands. no one really asks any questions about them anymore, though some used to be very curious. seokmin still eyes him almost distrustingly, as if he’s hiding something. minghao supposes that he is; only wonwoo knows about the cans of paint.

“you’re different,” jihoon notes, nursing his black eye with a wet cloth against his face. minghao wonders if he knows who you are, if you grew up at the same convent. it’s a possibility, a probability, even. but minghao does not ask, has learned that questions are just as dangerous as confessions. there’s a tint of teasing coated on the fluid tones of jihoon’s voice. not for the first time, minghao thinks that the smaller man could have the voice of a singer, had singing been allowed in palatium. it would certainly suit him more than the fights in the underground. “have you finally assimilated?”

the word is a joke, more than anything else. a part of the speech the peacekeeper had held in order to use minghao to spread the government’s propaganda. look, they’d say. here’s a heathen, a sinner. we will give him a chance to assimilate, to understand that our way is the way of righteousness. minghao has never been further away from assimilation. he thinks about fingers covered in blues, in reds; in purple. he wonders if you ever got the stains off your skin. he should get a second pair of gloves, just in case.

he never sees you in town, though he knows you must live somewhere. there are ghettos and apartments reserved for the lees of the country; cramped rooms and broken showers. seokmin and jihoon lives on a shared square of space, sleep on the hard mattress in shifts. he wonders who you share a room with. he wonders how you are, when you’re not surrounded by color.

“i don’t know,” minghao murmurs, so delayed that jihoon doesn’t seem to catch on at first. jeonghan sits in his corner, his jaw tight. thinking about the risks he’s taking, no doubt; minghao has heard the pretty man has found himself a partner. unmatched. that’s dangerous. that’s asking for it.

minghao’s stomach knots. he grasps for a distraction, finds that each subject that sticks to his mind is a distraction that needs a distraction on it’s own. “where’s wonwoo?”

silence. things are happening, minghao knows. things that are bigger than a hidden house and splashes of color.

“the woman from the lower district,” seokmin replies with a voice that drips of suspicion. “she’s taking him to see the firestarter.”

‘the firestarter’, that’s jun; leader of the aberrants. there was a time when the factions were visibly divided, when they only met for fights and for shows of power. things are happening. minghao has seen the tall man from the high district whisper words of information into jihoon’s ears during fights, has seen the blows grow softer with the passing months.

minghao should care. this is the important stuff. all he can think of is color, and a shirt with the word ‘freedom’ on it.

____________________

one of the upsides of being born in a free country, is that minghao is much quicker to recognize things, feelings that his friends don’t know the name of. seokmin might always be suspicious, but he rarely knows what he’s suspicious of. it’s just a general, constant feeling. minghao knows why he’s suspicious. when he’s scared, he knows why he’s scared.

when he enters the house, two months after the first time he did so, and he feels his heart pound loudly in his chest at the sight of the back of your neck (there’s a smudge of yellow there, he wants to rub it away with his thumb), he knows what that means, too.

his breath catches when you turn around to greet him. there’s something about it, about the light flooding through the glassless windows and giving your skin a strange, inhuman sort of glow. about the wall in front of you, the one that used to have his town hall building on it, but that’s now covered in squiggles and shapes and abstract symbols. it’s not something he would’ve put on display, back when he was an artist, but it’s something he would’ve decorated his wall with; something he would’ve privately held closer to his heart than his other works.

a month ago, you might’ve said ‘oh, minghao.’, in that wondering, pleasantly surprised tone of voice that makes minghao’s neck prickle. ‘it’s not monday.’ you might’ve observed. now, his spontaneous visits are not so unexpected anymore. minghao likes to think that you come around more often, too, because you’re as eager to see him as he is to see you. now, he’s greeted by a soft smile, a softer voice, just a murmur of ‘hello’.

he sits beside you, watches as you let your fingers flit across the canvas – because that’s what it is; not a wall, not a decaying surface of wood, but a canvas – fingers decorated in color. blues and yellows to create a vibrant green. reds and blues to create rich, royal purple. he gives you a pair of gloves that he’d managed to trade his weekly proviants for. his stomach rumbles, protests against the lack of food, but it’s worth it for the look of adoration when he’d handed you the leather that resembles the pair in his own back pocket.

you tell him about your parents, about your first memories from before the enforcers came. about peace, about solitude. you know a few letters, you proclaim with pride. your parents had made sure of that, before they perished. it breaks his heart, how pleased you are as you press your index finger against the surface in front of you, scrawl an awkward, not quite right ‘a’ there. b, c, d, e. that’s the extent of your knowledge. that is it. that’s all you have to cling to. minghao’s mother would have screamed.

he tells you about his own childhood, about growing up in a free country. he tells you about his mother, about the women’s marches and the co-ed universities. you marvel, hang onto his every word. ‘i’d love to visit some time,’ you tell him. he knows he shouldn’t say anything, that false hope is as poisonous as anything in palatium, but when he opens his mouth, the words still fall out. ‘i’ll take you some time. we’ll go together.’

and maybe it’s selfish, maybe it’s dangerous, but he still thinks that it’s worth it for the way your face lights up, mouth wide enough to cause a strain to your cheeks. that time, when minghao has to leave, you stand up with him, perched on your toes. you put your hands on his shoulder and you kiss his cheek. there’s something strange in the expression on your face, something minghao can’t quite decipher. but then that might just be due to the swimming, dizzying feeling in his stomach.

(love, love, love. such a strange thing, such a paradox. it makes minghao feel weak, vulnerable, exposed. it makes him feel strong, invincible. he didn’t think such a thing existed in such a dull, colorless place as palatium.

in the back of his mind, he thinks about jeonghan; who always seems to be walking on pins and needles, always worried, always waiting for bad news.

the spot your lips have touched on his face feels warm, even hours later when he’s racing kwon soonyoung and dino of the aberrants. he doesn’t even care that he loses.)

____________________

when he enters the house – your house? his house? yours? shared? minghao’s head spins – there’s a sort of tension lining the walls. a heaviness that not even the childish yellow suns and exaggerated flowers painted along the tired wallpaper of the house can quite manage to alleviate. you’re sitting in front of the wall you were staring at the first time minghao had seen you. there are different paintings there now; your first meeting feels like a lifetime ago. minghao can’t even remember what he used to paint before you.

minghao sits down next to you, feels an unbearable urge to reach for your hand where it lies fisted in your lap. asking someone if something’s wrong seems like a useless exercise. the answer is either going to be ‘yes’ or a lie, and there’s not much to do about it regardless. still, he asks, voice careful; barely above a whisper. you exhale. the look on your face is not so much coated in sadness as it is in resignation. and that might be worse.

“i have to tell you something,” you murmur, fingers reaching to fiddle with a folder lying right in front of you. the paper is beige, official looking. there’s only one reason to give a woman a folder. minghao’s heart drops. you lift your gaze, then, turn your head around to look at him. maybe you’re a good actress, maybe you have everyone fooled with your coy smiles and your soft voice. you don’t fool minghao.

“yeah,” you croak, facade almost completely falling as your lip twitches. you push the folder around on the dirty floor. you open it. as per the laws, you cannot read, and as such the folder consists only of images. there’s the blue palatium logo at the top, engoldened with the symbol that represents the soulmate method of marriages. underneath are pictures. minghao recognizes the face. “i’ve been matched.”

“choi seungcheol,” minghao says. the name has never sounded so bitter, the face of the high district racer never looked so much like an enemy. minghao never carried the same sort of disdain towards the nobles as his allies did; right now he swear he would rip seungcheol apart limb by limb had he had the chance. you must see the anger on his face, because you swiftly close the folder and hide it underneath your folded legs.

“he seems nice enough,” you hum, lift your arm gingerly to place your hand at his shoulder. your nails dig into his skin. somehow the pain grounds him. “i had a suspicion he was part of the nobles,” you continue, the twinkle in your eyes muted but still ablaze, still more alive than anything minghao has experienced in his five years living in palatium. “he didn’t seem like– like how i expected him to be.”

minghao puts his hand over yours. your fingers interlace. minghao can’t get himself to look at it, too afraid that the sight might completely unravel him. “you’ve already met with him?”

“a few times,” you reply vaguely, your voice tight.

minghao thinks back to his shirt back when he was a painter – a real one, one who sold pictures; not someone who just painted because it was all he could do to keep himself from going crazy – the one with the word ‘freedom’ on it. he feels as if caterpillars are crawling underneath his skin. the font, it wasn’t times new roman, he suddenly remembers. but surely it was something with serifs.

“a few times,” he repeats, only distantly aware of the sound of his own voice. he sounds hollow, like the sound of empty cans of paint clinking together in his backpack. “why didn’t you tell me?”

you sigh, untangle your fingers from his own. instead, you let them wander along the lines of his face, touch unhurried and fingertips leaving goosebumps in their wake. it strikes minghao that he won’t get the chance to get used to that sensation, that he’s barely caught up to the erratic beat your presence brings to his heart. there are a lot of times – or maybe just one unending, five year long instance – where minghao feels like things are not fair in palatium. this knowledge, this shattering sort of revelation still manages to throw him off, to make him choke.

“what good would it do, minghao?” you murmur, the question inherently rhetoric. the answer is easy, of course; it wouldn’t do any good. it would only have brought an earlier end to this thing that never even got to start. “i didn’t want you to know until you had to,” you add, and for a moment that makes minghao angry. angry that he has been kept in the dark, angry that you made a decision without him. he shakes this feeling before it festers; in truth you do not owe him anything. in truth you are entitled to the few choices you are allowed to make. he catches your hand as it makes its ascent towards his hair, brings it back down to his cheek.

for some reason he can only think of sans serif fonts; arial, calibri, helvetica. the palatium logo has a serif font; one minghao has never seen before. one that looks grotesque and horrible where minghao’s freedom shirt looked clean, sophisticated. for the life of him he can’t remember the name of the font.

“minghao, i–” you stutter, and for a moment your expression is completely open. there are many emotions he can’t remember the name of anymore, the sensations muddled and exchanged for a monotonous, but necessary indifference. fear. worry. helplessness. shadows of things that are too heartbreaking to name. your eyes look wet. your clear your throat. “take care of my house for me, will you?”

(if minghao kisses you then, hungrily and desperately and with a mouth far too open, if he swallows your breaths and curls his fingers around your ears, pulls you close and sobs into your mouth, unable to speak in any other language than a physical, silent sort of language, then that is between you, minghao and a house that belongs to no one, and to the both of you.

if promises slip between lips and get tangled with the kisses, if forbidden words are whispered between clinking teeth and echo-y cries, then that is a secret for the two of you to bear together.)

perpetua, minghao thinks as he steps towards his bike. the font on his shirt was called perpetua. he remembers because it reminds him of the word ‘perpetual’. ‘everlasting’. ‘never ending’.

~~

For as long as there has been a forest, there has been Guardians; chosen beings of various species tasked with keeping the peace in the enclosed area of magical energies. The King was – at least as far as legends go –the first Guardian, as old as the forest itself and impossibly wise. No one knows how long he’s been around, or even what he truly is, but his authority is unquestionable. Wonwoo peers to his side, glances over at the ancient leader as the three of them; the King, the old human woman and Wonwoo himself, walk towards the clearing. 

As far as fabled creatures go, the King is an outlier even within the collection of his own people. Wonwoo knows faeries, he knows imps, he knows mermaids and dryads. There are mutations, combinations, halflings of most every species that reside within the Dead Forest that seem almost impossible on their own, but there is no one quite like the Forest King; who is not really a creature at all, as much as he is an entity. His head is adorned by two bright, soothingly glowing horns, both delicate and strong in appearance as they arch towards the sky like some sort of crown. In fact, his whole being seems to be bathed in this barely noticeable but somehow unavoidable light; his face softened by the smooth glow against ageless skin and his skin radiating with heat that makes Wonwoo feel as calm as he feels awestruck. 

The King’s steps echo through the darkness of the woods; four discordant clops of hooves against dirt. In the distance, Wonwoo hears voices. They must be early, then. 

“You were chosen as Guardian for a reason, Wonwoo,” the hollow, echo-y voice of the King comes from his side. When caught unaware, Wonwoo almost finds himself believing that the king is speaking directly in his head; had anyone told the dryad that his king was omnipotent, he would not be surprised. But as Wonwoo blinks and readjusts his attention towards his revered leader, he sees the King gazing right back at him, a calm expression curling the edges of his mouth upwards. “There is no reason to worry.” 

Wonwoo almost tells his king it’s not his role of Guardian he doubts; Wonwoo wears the title with as much pride as his dormant emotional spectrum allows him to and is willing to go great lengths to protect his reputation as the first dryad Guardian the Dead Forest has seen. It’s the task, the station dubbed ‘human protector’ that Wonwoo has his reservations about. 

At his side, the old woman hums, almost like some ominous sort of reminder of exactly what it is Wonwoo fears. He remembers – quite vividly – how the woman had looked when she first arrived; how long the scouting team had looked before finally finding her. The first woman Wonwoo had encountered in his lifetime at least had the common sense to sit tight, to wait for her death with trembling limbs and quiet sobs. The woman next to Wonwoo on the other hand, though she might be old and slow now, had been far less submissive. 

Wonwoo doesn’t know what this new one will be like; if she’ll be sitting by the clearing with a blindfold wet with tears or if they’ll have to scour the forest to find her curled up and bleeding behind some stub somewhere deep inside the woods. 

And even more unsettling, Wonwoo doesn’t know which option he’d prefer. 

“I’m not nervous,” Wonwoo simply responds instead, once he realizes that he’s been quiet for too long. Decades ago he might have refrained from conversing so casually with the King; both terrified and impressed with the power he wields and the dignity with which he does it, but Wonwoo has long since learned that his ruler is far more fond of comrades than he is of followers. Wonwoo never was good at pleasantries anyways. The King laughs; a full sound reminiscent of the sound of bells dancing in the wind, surprisingly soft and easy for such a monumentally powerful creature. 

“It’s just,” Wonwoo continues, head cocked to the side and eyes wandering along the soft flutter of tall grass at his feet. Daylight is fading quickly now; beams of sunshine running between thick tree trunks and hiding behind heavy clusters of branches and leaves. “The forest is very loud tonight.”

He swears he can hear footsteps, low murmurs and angry thoughts. They’re not even near the clearing yet. 

“The sacrifice is a crude tradition,” the old woman muses, voice steady and calm and strangely detached from the cruelty of her own people. Perhaps not so strange, considering years and years ago she was the one trapped in the forest, running blindly around between the trees. “No doubt the forest knows as well.” The wind roars, as if in agreement. 

Wonwoo, despite not having been present at the previous collections, have to agree. If he closes his eyes he can imagine it vividly; a row of humans clutching at a tight piece of rope, a crowd of people huddled just outside the forest. To make sure they don’t get lost, the old woman had explained once, though Wonwoo thinks that if they’re that afraid they might be better of staying out entirely. The forest doesn’t want them anyways.

His thoughts are still muddled, still full of cruel imagery when the three of them reach the clearing. There’s almost no sunlight left now, the forest covered in a muted darkness that makes the trees seem taller than they are, gives an illusion of hunched over shadows looming over them. Wonwoo isn’t afraid of the shadows. He’s more afraid of the human sitting quietly on the flat of a large, flat roundness of the cut down tree in the middle of the clearing. 

The blindfold – a precaution meant to confuse, to make sure the sacrifice doesn’t manage to wander off out of the forest before being claimed by whatever horrible, vengeful creature the humans believe reside in the woods – has fallen down, no longer obscuring your eyes. You twist your head around at the sound of footsteps, gaze hard as you make eye contact with Wonwoo. There’s something dark and unsettling in the stubbornness of your glare, but it might just be a trick of moonlight and darkness mixing up and settling like a bewitching sort of fog over the clearing. Your hands are tied, resting easily on your lap. Wonwoo can’t see your mouth, but somehow he knows you’re frowning, your brows furrowed and your body rigid as you regard the three of them. 

“Ah,” the old woman gasps, her own wrinkled fingers clutching at the rounded top of her cane. There’s something almost heartbreaking about the sheer amount of empathy in the sound. Beside Wonwoo, the King is very quiet. “She’s much younger this time.” 

Wonwoo knows very little of human lifespans, their ages so fickle and their time entirely too short to properly catalogue the stages they go through from birth til death. But he remembers how the old woman looked when she first arrived; youthful and vibrant and colorful, nothing like the shriveled up figure next to him now. You’re much the same, if a lot more dangerous looking; the glint in your eye entirely antagonistic and the stiffness of your shoulders balancing somewhere along the line between predator and prey. But he can tell, somehow, that the woman is right. When the woman arrived, she looked like she was finished growing, like the only way forward was into the decline that comes with aging. You look like you’re barely past the stage of blooming. Like you’re only just beginning. 

Wonwoo supposes that’s a tragedy, somehow. 

“Child,” the King murmurs, and you jerk your body away as if stung. Not in fear, Wonwoo realizes, but in disgust. If the King notices, he pays it no mind. He speaks in what Wonwoo assumes the King thinks is a soothing voice, but it’s hard to be soothing when you sound like a specter echoing inside someone’s head. “Don’t be afraid, we’re not here to hurt you.”

The old woman steps over with slow, careful steps. Wonwoo can’t tell if she does so deliberately or because her legs simply cannot carry her as swiftly as they used to. She fumbles with the bindings around your hands, rids you of the fabric covering your mouth. Just like Wonwoo suspected, your mouth is turned down, lips spread thin across your face. 

You do not speak, not when the woman urges you to stand, not when she guides you towards Wonwoo and the King. Not a single word when the woman asks your name, or when the King offers his sympathies, not when he promises your safety within the forest. 

Wonwoo doesn’t fear shadows. But he will admit that he finds the ones flitting and dancing over your face unsettling, at the very least.

~~

Wonwoo’s home is a wonder. He doesn’t have to be an outsider to know that there’s something almost unreal about the beauty of the heart of the Dead Forest after dark; lanterns glowing with the faint buzz of fireflies and ivies curled around trees. It’s an open enough space; small huts in the treetops for the faeries, bigger ones on the ground for elves and other humanoid creatures. There’s a new one freshly built right next to the spot that Wonwoo has claimed as his own, a humble yet pretty thing of deep greens and splashes of colored flowers.

The King is still talking; Wonwoo hears his own name, hears the word Guardian, and when he twists to key into the conversation he is immediately met by your hard, stubborn gaze. Not as hostile as it was earlier; something that looks vaguely like admiration fleeting in the color of your irises as your gaze glides along the tree tops. Wonwoo almost feels like he’s intruding, as if his presence taints the moment.

The light in your eyes fades as you stare him down, and soon enough there is only that muted sort of distaste left. It’s not that strange for a human to be suspicious towards the forest; to Wonwoo’s knowledge the humans grow up with horrible tales of relentless, bloodthirsty monsters only kept at bay with sacrifice. Even with Wonwoo’s general distrust in humans, he can empathize with the fear you must feel. 

Still, there’s a distinct lack of a tremble, a forceful stubbornness to how you keep your eyes locked with his, that makes him thing fear is not a deciding factor in your stiffness and your tight lip. 

“If there is anything you need,” the old woman says, ignoring the way you grimace at her touch. “Don’t hesitate to ask.” Wonwoo can see your jaw moving, as if you’re chewing on words you can’t quite manage to say. 

Wonwoo resists the urge to sigh. Somehow he thinks his job will be a lot harder than the last Guardian’s.

___

Seven days pass before Wonwoo hears you speak. For the first two, he wasn’t even sure that you could, your main way of communication seemingly being through intimidating glares and a permanently down-turned lip, and it’s only the old woman’s reassurances – not that they’re necessary – that lets the dryad know that you do, in fact, have a tongue. 

A part of Wonwoo is relieved; he’s not much for small talk himself and strictly speaking your reluctance to do as much as speak to him makes his duties as Guardian almost laughably easy. For all intents and purposes you’re the perfect subject, spending your days sulking in your hut or talking walks along the safer parts of the forest. Wonwoo needs only stay close, to make sure you don’t get lost and carefully watch your progress – or lack thereof.

The other part of Wonwoo, the part that seems somehow uncharacteristically loud, feels agitated. He feels as if he’s walking on pins and needles, carefully avoiding your poisonous glares and silent judgments. He feels antsy, skin creeping, as if you might snap at him at any given moment.

Which perhaps makes his first actual conversation with you wholly unsurprising. 

“Do you have to do that?” You ask, shoulders stiff as you crane your neck to look back at him. Your hair shimmers in the stray rays of sunshine piercing through the thick of treetops in the forest, makes you look almost inhuman and gives your eyes a golden sort of glow. It does little to diminish the angry knit of your brow, only serves to strengthen the intensity of your frown. Wonwoo stops as well, caught somewhere between astonishment that you’d spoken to him so freely and uncertainty at your abrupt question. 

“Do what?” He asks, voice almost breathless. This must be the wrong thing to say; he watches a muscle in your jaw twitch, observes as your body language become even more guarded than it usually is.

“Follow me around,” you elaborate, tones of your voice tinged with an almost nasal sort of annoyance. Your words echo into the empty space between the trees. “Stalk after me like some sort of puppy.” Wonwoo doesn’t exactly know what a puppy is, but he imagines it’s not a compliment. “I feel like I can’t even breathe with you all up in my space all the time.”

He frowns. “As Guardian–”

“I don’t give a shit about guardians,” you interrupt, voice louder, shriller. “I don’t give a fuck about your dumb forest or your dumb king or any of this.” Wonwoo thinks he hears a sort of crack in the syllables of your words, as if your conviction is tearing at the seams, confidence splitting and fading with every intake of breath. It’s such an emotional display, muted only slightly by your insistence of keeping a distance. “I don’t want it. I just want to be left alone.”

“You should be grateful,” Wonwoo says, unable to help himself. Empathy was never his strong suit, not a skill much needed for dryads in the first place. He says it not because he means to admonish you but because he truly believes it. Not even the first woman in his lifetime, the one with the loud sobs and the scared eyes, had been this reluctant to assimilate into the laws and society of the woods. And even then, she understood that the only thing the King wanted was to keep her safe.

But Wonwoo realizes, even before he sees the way your lip quivers, that maybe he should have thought twice before speaking this time.

“Is that so?” You reply, tongue sharp and tone betraying the fact that your question is not really a question at all. “I should be grateful that my family were willing, proud even, to sacrifice me to some sort of devilish, forest dwelling boogeyman? That my own people found it so easy to discard me for ‘the greater good’?” Your gaze is hard, jaw tight as you speak. “Should I be jumping at the opportunity to live out my pathetic life among creatures who can’t stand to look at me?” The implication is clear, and Wonwoo only barely manages not to divert his gaze, and even then it’s stubbornness than anything else that makes him keep his eyes on you. “All this, and there’s not even an actual boogeyman.”

For some reason, Wonwoo feels guilty; shame tugging tight the strings in his chest. Another sensation he isn’t particularly used to. He doesn’t stop you when you wander off in the direction of the huts, not even sparing him a second glance.

~~

Wonwoo feels as if he’s standing at the edge of the world, gathering up the courage to blindly jump off. Tension tugs at his nerves, sizzles underneath his skin and seeds of uncertainty seem to have taken up residence within every corner of his chest. 

Truthfully, he has never apologized for anything before, has never had to. Life with forest creatures, beings of serenity and peace, rarely get into arguments, rarely differ enough in spiritual wavelengths for misunderstandings to be made. Evidently, humanity is not quite so simple. And so, here Wonwoo stands, at the metaphorical edge of the world. 

It occurs to him that perhaps he has been the narrow-minded one. That maybe he takes for granted the sense of calm and belonging he feels beneath the shade of dark green trees. Not, mind you, a realization he comes to entirely on his own; it takes a talking to as stern as he imagines the old woman to be able to give to truly make him reconsider his stance about what he had previously written off as ungratefulness.

So he does something he’s never done before – a somehow common occurrence these days – and he puts himself in your shoes. He imagines that his people raise him as a savior, as a means to and end, as a something rather than a someone. He listens to the old woman describe her youth praised as a hero, all up to the day she was tied up and blindfolded and lead into the place she’d been told horror stories of ever since she was born.

He imagines that his own King abandons him, leaves him to die so his people can live. He imagines all of this, and he feels ill. It’s such an inconceivable thing, such an impossibility, and yet, the evidence of such a thing existing is right there, tucked behind the curtains of a floral hut. He inhales, horrified to find his breath uneven, and then he knocks at the wooden edges of your hut.

He’s not at all surprised to see your expression harden as you stick your head out of the hut to inspect his crouched over form, but he will admit that some of his resolve seems to scurry away at the sight of you. Wonwoo isn’t a cowardly man, but it seems you know how to bring out the poorest parts of him. 

”What?” You mutter, voice somewhere between a hiss and a murmur. You haven’t spoken a word to him since your argument, he’s barely even seen you outside your little home, and somehow, even if your tone is less than friendly, the sound is welcome. 

Wonwoo falters. He clears his throat, diverts his eyes. His apology lies on his tongue, coated in something thick and sticky, and he can’t quite seem to get it out. You stare unblinkingly at him as he opens his mouth, closes it again. 

”Come,” he says at last, deciding to change tactics. You open your mouth, undoubtedly to complain or refuse, but Wonwoo holds up his hands in a disarming gesture, making your mouth shut again with an audible snap. “I want to show you something.”

___

There’s a place in the forest that Wonwoo has, at least privately, claimed as his own. A humble clearing decorated by a crystal clear pond, a quiet little sanctuary where time seems to stand completely still. Untouched by both humanity and forest creatures, it’s the place where Wonwoo feels the most at rest. There’s always been sort of a reassurance in that he’s the only one who knows about it, that aside from the swarm of beautifully colored butterflies, no one but Wonwoo breathes in this space. 

The moment you step into the clearing, Wonwoo hears your sharp intake of breath, a sort of quiet, unrestrained gasp that makes his eyes instinctively look for your expression. He’s reminded of when you first entered the heart of the forest, unbridled wonder softening your features and making you look like an entirely new person. You blink, mouth open and hands curled into loose fists, and when you turn to look at him, there is – for perhaps the first time – no venom to be seen in your eyes.

”What is this place?” You ask breathlessly, standing on the very edge of the clearing as if you’re afraid you’ll ruin it by getting too close. Wonwoo feels like he’s on display, as if he’s showing you the deepest, most private parts of himself. In a sense, he might as well be. Wonwoo doesn’t have secrets, he only has this one, private thing. Dryads are raised to be selfless, to be humble and open. This place might be the closest thing Wonwoo has to humanity.

”It’s–” he starts, cuts himself off. He feels strangely vulnerable, oddly out of place. Somehow he wants to impress you, to gain your approval. Which isn’t something he’s really excelled at so far, it seems. “You said you wanted to be alone,” he tries, words awkwardly tumbling out of his mouth. “This is where I go to be alone.” 

You hum; a surprisingly soft sound for someone who’s been anything but, and the smoothness of it sends shivers down his spine. “So this is your apology.” It’s not a question, but it’s not as accusatory as Wonwoo would’ve expected either. There’s a hint of playfulness, of something light and almost teasing in the tone of your voice. Wonwoo blinks, and he thinks the slight upwards curve of your mouth might be a trick of the light.

”I’ve been told I can be,” he pauses, reluctant to admit his shortcomings. You look at him expectantly, and Wonwoo’s face heats up. It’s never done that before. “Narrow-minded,” he finishes lamely. At that, you snort somewhat derogatorily, and Wonwoo thinks he should probably be offended. “I’d like for you to– to enjoy your life here.” 

Wonwoo sees the flicker of something akin to sadness flash across your features, and it strikes him that ‘enjoying your life here’ might not be exactly what you’d wanted for yourself. That it might not really be as ideal a situation as the King and the old woman – and Wonwoo too, he realized – thinks it to be. For as much as a safehaven for the sacrifices the forest is, it is not the natural home of a human. A strange kind of grief takes hold of him, a foreign and horrible sensation that grips at his chest and makes his throat tight. 

”In any case,” he hurries, the silence too heavy for him to handle. “When you need to be alone, I can, uh, I can take you here.”

This time, you really do smile; a soft and almost unnoticeable thing that – though it seems genuine – lacks the sort of joy to it that Wonwoo is used to see from the faeries and the elves, whose mouths are locked in a permanent, decorative upturn of lips. “I accept your apology,” you tell him, head bowed ever so slightly and voice impossibly soft. “Thank you.” 

He’s changing, Wonwoo thinks. He doesn’t know why, or how he knows, but he’s changing. 

~~

With the blink of an eye, what used to be Wonwoo’s sanctuary is suddenly a shared thing. You ask him to take you there almost every day, spending hours just sitting with your feet dipping in the water of the pond or lying flat out on the soft grass. There was one time you’d disappeared from your hut without anyone noticing, and Wonwoo almost had a panic attack before he realized that there was really only one place to look for you. 

The animosity is completely gone; exchanged for a slow build of easy quips and curious questions. Wonwoo doesn’t think he’s spoken so much in his entire lifespan; the overexposure to your inquisitive nature almost making him winded at times. Rarely do you talk about yourself, or your life before the sacrifice. Maybe it’s because Wonwoo doesn’t ask. Common courtesy dictates that he probably should. 

He doesn’t. Perhaps because he’s scared to. Wonwoo has never been a Guardian before, but he’s seen multiple of them at work throughout his life. He’s seen them handle their humans with care, with respect and with empathy. He’s seen them be distant and cordial. He’s never seen them sprawled on the grass trading jokes or whispering secrets. He’s never seen them share parts of themselves with the outsiders.

Wonwoo’s tip toeing so close to the edge he feels like he might as well be free-falling.

___

“How old are you?” You ask one day, form relaxed as you lean against the trunk of a thick tree right by the pond. Wonwoo’s sitting next to you, so close your shoulders are almost bumping against each other. You’re twirling a yellow flower between your fingers, head leaning towards him in a way that suggest a sense of comfort that Wonwoo never imagined someone would have towards him. He finds that he doesn’t mind it. “I mean you look pretty young, compared to the other ones, but it’s kind of hard to guesstimate the age of a tree.”

Wonwoo frowns, unsure of what to make of the new descriptor of himself and suddenly strangely self-conscious. “Does it matter?”

The flower in your hand stops twirling. “I suppose it doesn’t,” you mutter, but you can’t quite conceal the twinge of disappointment in your voice. Wonwoo peers down at you, finds himself oddly charmed by your pout and the way your brows knit together.

It’s not the first time in the past few weeks he’s found himself endeared by your oddities; with time he comes to enjoy your company in a way that makes him almost worried. Dryads are emphatic, caring creatures by nature, but they are supposed to be elusive, untouchable for things who are not of their own blood. For as much as you are his responsibility, his given task; he feels protective. Gaining your favor has been an uphill battle, and even now you are quick to withdraw when you feel he doesn’t respond in the way you want him to. In short, you don’t feel like a subject; you feel like something much more, something dangerous, something–

“I think you’ve made me sick,” the words are out before he realizes he’s even opened his mouth. It’s not the most eloquent thing to say, but it’s not a lie either. With every instance of prolonged exposure, Wonwoo feels as if he’s about to crawl out of his own skin. He feels hot and cold at the same time, he feels as if he can’t even think. Wonwoo has always been a creature of logic, of collected calmness and emotional distance. He feels off-kilter and strange with this newfound sort of affection he feels for this human life he’s supposed to protect. 

It’s not an entirely unpleasant feeling, but it makes him nervous nonetheless.

“Excuse me?” You shift to look up at him from your laid back position against the tree trunk, expression part worry, part incredulous. “Look, I’m sorry I asked about your age, I didn’t know it was such a touchy subject, but you don’t have to be rude.”

“No,” Wonwoo amends, voice slow and careful as he searches for a better way to word himself. “I feel sick,” he puts a hand to his chest, grasps at the fabric of his soft, silky tunic. “My chest feels heavy. I’m dizzy, distracted. It hurts to be near you, but it hurts to be away, too.” Even as he’s speaking, Wonwoo feels the rate of his heart speed up and the palms of his hands turn clammy. “Is this some kind of human illness?”

For a long moment, you only stare at him, silence hanging between you like a heavy blanket. He wonders if he’s offended you, or if he’s describing something incurable, something you’re afraid to name. You drop the flower and Wonwoo watches as it falls into your lap as you push yourself up into a straighter position. 

“I don’t,” you murmur, so quietly and softly that Wonwoo almost has to lean in to hear you. “I don’t think that’s an illness, Wonwoo.” 

You refuse to elaborate further, even though Wonwoo prods and questions; even goes as far as attempting to blackmail you, and the dryad feels as if he’s missing something. Something obvious, something important.

___

The answer comes in the form of a conversation with the old woman. At first Wonwoo insists he’s going to let it go, that he doesn’t care about your human secrets. But as time passes, the condition only worsens, and by the end of the month, Wonwoo feels like he can’t breathe in your company. It’s like everything changes after the conversation about his supposed non-illness; Wonwoo is at all times acutely aware of your presence, even when you’re not by his side. He feels tingly, jittery, like he’s trying to burst out of his own body. There are times when his hands reach out all on their own, eager to touch; as if the feel of your skin beneath his palm would somehow ease his discomfort.

It must be more obvious than he thinks, considering it’s the old woman who seeks him out and pulls him aside in the end.

“It looks like the two of you’ve gotten close,” she says, a sort of playful accusation lacing the shivering tones of her voice. Wonwoo doesn’t know much about humanity, but he knows about death. It looms over the old woman like a ghost, clings to her body so tightly he swears he can smell it. Death never bothered Wonwoo before; dryads get dreadfully old and fade elegantly. The prospect of returning to the earth never scared him. But Wonwoo looks at the old woman and he sees you; as vividly as if he’s staring into the future. And that; that scares him. The fact that the old woman was like you when she arrived, and with the snap of time’s fingers, this is all that’s left.

“I guess,” he mutters, reluctant to be truthful. For a moment this urge confuses him, makes him think that maybe he’s ashamed. A second later he realizes it’s possessiveness that grips at his insides, a wish to keep his closeness to you private, a secret only meant for the two of you. 

“That’s nice,” the woman sighs contentedly. “It’s good to see some humanity in you.”

“Humanity,” Wonwoo echoes, the word leaving a bitter taste in his mouth. “Is that what this crushing, mind-numbing sensation is?” Instinctively, he reaches for his chest, presses his palm over his heart. Even now, it’s throbbing; thudding against his rib cage so quickly he can barely count the beats. “All humans feel so helpless around their close ones?”

For a second, the woman seems taken aback with his openness. Wonwoo does not blame her; words and confessions tumble out of his mouth too fast for his mind to keep up, yet another side effect of his strange, human affliction. A distinctly un-dryad feature Wonwoo isn’t quite sure how to deal with. She gazes at him, a clever sort of smile toying with her wrinkled face. 

“Ah,” she muses, leaning back in her plush, custom made chair. “I suppose in a sense it is.” Leave it to an old woman to be cryptic, Wonwoo thinks to himself, in a voice that sound suspiciously like yours. “That’s love, Wonwoo,” she adds, hands folded in her lap as she peers at him through barely open eyes. “That’s just being in love.”

~~

The concept of love is not one that Wonwoo is particularly familiar with. Dryads’ way of love is that of the earth; they love nature and all of earth’s creations, but they do so in a way that is not meant for the individual. A dryad doesn’t love selfishly, doesn’t long to possess. The love that the old woman describes, the one that resonates and echoes within him, is distinctly selfish. The want to possess, the need to be close, the wish to have your feelings returned. All of these things scare Wonwoo; they should not exist within him. But he looks at you, at the way your fingertips glide along the blank surface of the pond, and he cannot find it in him to deny it.

Love. The word echoes, bounces around the inside of his rib cage. Love, love, love. It might as well be an illness, for all the good it does him. Love is an impossibility; there is no place for such a trivial thing in the Dead Forest. Not for him, and certainly not for you, whose existence is but a mere droplet in the vast sea of dryad lifespans. The inside of him feels rotted, in a way that’s both horrible and exhilarating.

“Wonwoo,” you call, pulling the dryad out of his thoughts. He realizes he’s been staring, brows furrowed so tightly his head hurts and it takes deliberate action to ease them out again. “Is something wrong? You look like you’ve eaten something gross.” 

He blinks, watches you carefully. Wonwoo remembers his initial thoughts months ago, when he was treading the forest path to find you sitting on your wooden pedestal, bound and gagged and waiting for whatever you might’ve imagined the Dead Forest to harbor. He remembers his derogatory thoughts and your antagonistic posture. Perhaps this is his punishment, he thinks, for underestimating you in the first place. Perhaps this blossoming, wild feeling in his chest is what he gets, for thinking himself better than you.

“No,” he says, stepping over soft grass to sit next to you. Here, he feels content despite himself, tilting his head and closing his eyes to listen to the soft breeze caressing his skin. “No, everything is fine.” 

___

The old woman passes away during the summer. As quietly, as peacefully as she’d lived, she drifts asleep in her chair, a gentle curve of a smile adorning her wrinkled face. Human death always seems to come sneaking up on Wonwoo; it’s hard to gauge just when a human is at the end of their lifespan, their final couple of decades riddled with weakness and minor or major illnesses. The first woman had passed in a fit of a violent, painful illness that the forest creatures could do nothing about, if nothing else, Wonwoo is thankful for this one going gently.

Still, there’s an ache in his chest, something that feels both similar and completely different from the one he’d identified as his romantic affection towards you. Something dark and gloomy that makes his throat tight and his mind numb. Grief, he realizes only after seeing the hollowed out expression on your face. A distinctly human emotion; reserved for beings with no lasting footprint left on the planet. Dryads do not grieve each other, for they know that death is merely the soul returning to the earth where it belongs. It’s just the next step in the everlasting adventure that is existing. For humanity, it’s the end of the line.

Wonwoo isn’t sure if he grieves for himself, or if he grieves for the heartbroken look on your face, for the way your voice sounds muted when you request that Wonwoo leaves you alone for a while. 

So he does. Wonwoo leaves you to sort your own grief out and he waits. He watches. Watches the King’s glow, muted now; flickering almost like a candle blowing dangerously against the wind. Wonwoo supposes he’s not the only one struggling with the exposure of human emotion. He has never seen his King like this, never seen him walk so quietly, as if he doesn’t want to be observed. It makes him feel less alone, somehow, and he guesses that’s humanity as well; a concept that seems to have overcome him completely, tainted him to the point of no return.

He can’t even find it in him to curse it, not when he’s too preoccupied worrying over the closed curtain of your hut.

___

(When you first arrived, you had been reluctant to integrate yourself into the society of the forest. Wonwoo is not so self-obsessed that he believes it was himself who single-handedly helped you over this hurdle; he knows that the now deceased woman played a big part in making the forest feel like a home. Wonwoo tries to imagine a place where he’s the odd one out, where he has nothing – not even a lifespan – in common with the creatures around him. He imagines that having that one person, a single piece of comfort, was instrumental to the fact that he was able to watch you interact with faeries and dryads alike. 

Once the woman is gone, you seem to lose your footing. You rarely leave the hut, and when you do it’s with eyes glued to the ground. Wonwoo sees the rim of red around your eyes, knows that you’ve been crying. The fact that he never sees you do so does little to soothe the stinging sensation in his chest.

It feels like deja-vu when he knocks on the wood of your hut and urges you to follow his lead.)

“I worry,” Wonwoo tells you frankly once you’ve reached the sanctuary. He takes you to the tree where you like to sit, signals for you to sit down before he follows suit. His shoulder brushes against yours. He leans into it, courage ignited when he feels you sag against him in return. The contact makes his heart swell, even as the feeling battles against the growing sensation of pain that seems to rattle his rib cage. “You’re not happy here. Not anymore.” 

It’s not a question, because Wonwoo does not need to ask. When you first arrived, Wonwoo swore he would never understand your irregular switches of emotion, that your expressions and gestures would continue to confuse and distract him until you withered away like the rest of the women. Now, though, he recognizes the furrow of your brow, the downwards tug of your lips, and he feels heavy. An illness, he had thought; some human borne disease he had caught through over exposure. He knows better now, but somehow he feels even more clueless. What is love, when your lifespan is so ridiculously short and insignificant? What is the point, when you could be gone within just the blink of an eye? There is none, he concludes, but the yearning persists, and his body feels just as heavy. 

“No, Wonwoo,” you admit, an attempt at easiness to your voice that doesn’t quite convince him. No use in denying it, but then he admires that part of you; the blunt yet somehow pillowed honesty you seem to possess. “I am not.” 

“What was your village like?” He asks, painfully aware that it’s the first time he inquires about your life before the forest. Part of him doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to think about the possibility that you preferred your time without him, but he supposes it’s a conversation long overdue anyways. “Were you happier there?”

You inhale, shoulders stiff as if you’re preparing for a fight. It’s a defensive stance that Wonwoo hasn’t seen on you in a while. 

“I guess,” you begin, brows furrowed. It’s almost as if you struggle to remember, as if the memories are so distant by now they become blurry. “I guess I was happy. In the beginning. Before I knew about this whole sacrifice bullshit.”

“When did you find out?”

“When I was ten,” you tell him, voice carefully carefree. Maybe you think you can conceal the heaviness of the topic with a gentle tone, but Wonwoo recognizes the twitch of your jaw, notices the way your fist curls into grass as you speak. “There was a ceremony and everything. A cleansing, they called it, to make sure you’d be accepted by the forest.” It sounds silly, when you put it like that; both you and Wonwoo know that the forest makes no judgments about your state, that the King would gladly welcome any who stepped inside; be they willing or sacrifice. But you both know that there is no such thing as a creature demanding sacrifice either, so he supposes the point is moot. “Apparently it was decided on the day I was born. I didn’t even know.”

“The other one—“ Wonwoo catches himself, mindful now of how he objectifies and dehumanizes the women who come to the forest. How despite the now deceased woman being with them for half a century, he never called – never even thought of – her by name. “Solar was happy. She lived a good life here.”

You sigh. He thinks he might have said the wrong thing. Again. “I am not Solar.”

“I know,” he murmurs, barely hears his own voice over the beating of his heart. “Solar was simple. She wasn’t as stubborn as you. You’re so much more.” He stumbles over words and half-finished confessions, grasps after something to say that might soothe your miserable grieving. “Is it me? Did I fail as Guardian?”

When you reach for his hand, weave your fingers between his own, a part of Wonwoo feels like it’s being ripped apart. He watches, carefully commits to memory the feel of your palm against his, the look of his long, slim digits intertwined with your shorter, human fingers. If nothing else, he wants to remember that; despite the sensation of oncoming heartbreak, he wants to keep the feeling of togetherness, of intimacy, close to his chest.

“No, you didn’t fail,” you whisper, hand squeezing his own. “Even if you’re a bit dense sometimes.” You lean your head on his shoulder, and it feels as if something locks into place. “You’re a wonder, Wonwoo.”

For a blissful, quiet moment, that is all there is. Your head against his shoulder and your palm against his. Wonwoo almost thinks you’ve fallen asleep, only knows you haven’t by the stolen glances at your face. He doesn’t want to ask, but the question lies ready on his tongue. He wills himself to choke it back down, to just take this moment for what it is and pretend like he doesn’t know the answer. But his newfound humanity gets the best of him, and again, Wonwoo opens his mouth.

“Then,” he hesitates, mind mulling over this question he does not want to hear the answer to. “If you could leave,” you do not look his way, head carefully lowered and gaze fixed at your own feet. “Would you?”

You do not respond, perhaps because you don’t really need to. Wonwoo’s chest aches. He has an urge to reach for you, to keep you trapped between his arms and make sure you never leave. 

But he can’t. He just sits there, with his bleeding heart and his unease. It feels as if he’s wilting.

~~

Wonwoo feels as if he’s standing at the edge of the world. It’s not the same feeling as it was before. 

The King sits before him, glow still muted but slowly returning, the two of them tucked away in the King’s own living quarters. It’s a humble thing; only a few necessities here and there, the main space of the room occupied by the wooden, decorated throne the entity sits on. Wonwoo has never felt the need to keep secrets from his King, has never had anything private to even keep secret, but worry seeps into his skin. It’s no simple favor he’s about to request.

“I think,” he begins, tries to keep his voice calm and unaffected. “I think we should bring the human back to her people.”

The King hums, the sound echoing and bouncing inside Wonwoo’s head. It’s hard to know whether it’s a disapproving sound or not; but then that has always been the case with the leader of the forest creatures. “Back to the humans? To the people who sacrificed her? What makes you think that?”

“She’s not happy here. Not after– after Solar died,” Wonwoo doesn’t miss the flicker of light around the King’s form. He wonders, in the back of his mind, if the King and the old woman were closer than he’d noticed. “Keeping her here against her wishes would be cruel.”

Wonwoo clears his throat. He has always been a creature of logic; perhaps this time he can put it to good use. “Besides, if the humans see one of their own return safely, perhaps this tradition of theirs can finally end.”

“That is not such a bad argument,” the King agrees, and Wonwoo inhales. Never has doing the right thing felt so awful. “But what of you, then, Wonwoo?”

“What do you mean?”

The King looks at him knowingly. “You’ve grown fond of this human. What will you do if she leaves? Once she does, you know she can never return.” 

Wonwoo’s willpower wavers. He knows this, of course, but hearing it rom none other than the king makes it real in a way it wasn’t before. Part of him wishes that when he presents you with the opportunity to leave you’ll refuse it, that you’ll choose to stay by his side for as long as your human lifespan allows you to. But Wonwoo is not stupid, and the sting in his chest tells him that even if that was so, he would not want to keep you chained up to a place you do not belong. 

Even if he wishes he could.

“I know,” he says instead, swallowing thickly. “My duty as Guardian is first and foremost to ensure the sacrifice’s happiness. This is it.”

“And if I told you to discard of your duties and speak freely?”

“My priorities remain the same.”

It’s as close to an admission as Wonwoo has ever spoken out loud; he can tell by the look on the King’s face that the eternal being is not surprised. Wonwoo wonders if he’s been tested somehow. He wonders if he just passed or failed.

“When I appointed you as Guardian I told you it was for a reason, that you did not need to worry,” the King tells him, fondness vivid in the tone of his voice. “You have done your duties, now allow yourself some selfishness.” Wonwoo almost thinks he’s heard the King wrong; that he must have somehow misspoken. To encourage selfishness is not something Wonwoo has ever encountered before, to hear it from the King himself is close to an impossibility. 

“If you do not wish to part ways with the human, I will not force you to,” the King says. “But know that the same rules apply. You will not be able to return.”

“You’re telling me I can leave?” Wonwoo asks in a rush of air. It’s such a foreign concept; a dryad leaving the Dead Forest, that he cannot really be certain the King is telling the truth. “But no one has ever left the forest before.”

The King inclines his head. “As you said, it might be time for changes. Perhaps this is the catalyst for a new era, a time where humans need not be scared of the forest, and we not so scared of the world outside.”

“I don’t–” Wonwoo’s voice cracks. A thousand things seem to come to life inside of him. Fear, elation, excitement, terror. He imagines walking out of the forest that has been his home for his entire lifetime. He imagines doing so with you by his side. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Then do not rush. It’s a big decision,” something like a laugh echoes in the King’s voice. “Shall you choose to go, know you’ll leave behind your immortality. You will live and die like the humans do.”

“Thank you,” is all Wonwoo manages to respond. And then he bows, before he leaves the King’s abode.

___

When Wonwoo leaves the King’s living quarters, there is only one place he can think to go. He doesn’t go to his sanctuary, like he would before when he needed to think. He doesn’t go to his own given spot, doesn’t retreat into his tree-form for some much needed solitude. Instead, Wonwoo makes a direct line towards the hut where he knows you’ll be.

He doesn’t knock, too frenzied and energized to even stop for a second to consider proper etiquette. Instead, Wonwoo rushes in, manages to give you quite the fright in the process.

“Jeez, Wonwoo,” you mutter, hands clasped above your chest. You’re sitting in the middle of the floor of your simple hut, mindlessly toying with a self-made flower crown. “Do you not know how to knock?”

On any other day, Wonwoo might’ve apologized. On any other day, he wouldn’t have barged in in the first place, but Wonwoo looks at you and it becomes clear as day what choice he is about to make. Suddenly he feels like every moment not spent truthfully and openly has been a waste. He is not about to waste any more.

“Do you want to leave?” He asks, the question abrupt as it tumbles out of his mouth. You open your mouth, brows furrowed as you look him up and down. “I mean— you wanted to leave, right? To go back to the humans.”

Your mouth turns down at the edges, and Wonwoo finds that he wants to trace the lines of your lips. “I— yeah? But Wonwoo, I don’t mean—“

“I know,” he interrupts, hoping that he’s right in his assumptions about what you were going to say. He steps closer, crouches down next to you. “You can leave. We— we can leave. We’ll go together.”

Wonwoo has never been the adventurous sort; has been perfectly comfortable with his quiet life in the forest. But as he reaches for your hands, envelops them in his own, it feels like an adventure. Venturing out of the forest; it feels like an adventure.

“We?” You echo, staring down at your hands. “What are you talking about?”

“The King has granted permission for you to go back to your people,” Wonwoo tries to speak slower, tries not to notice the sizzle in his skin as he rubs his thumbs across the back of your hands. “And me as well, if you’ll have me.”

“You– you’d leave? For me?” There is disbelief and amazement coating the tones of your voice, and for a dizzying, blinding moment, Wonwoo fears that maybe he has not become as integral a part of you as you have of him. “Wonwoo, I can’t ask you to do that.”

“I’m asking you to let me,” he tells you, careful circles pressed into your skin. “You’ve changed everything I used to know about myself. I can’t be without you, and I want you to be happy. If you can’t be happy here, then we’ll leave.”

“There’ll be hundreds like me,” Wonwoo sees your lip quiver, hears uncertainty and self-consciousness in your voice. He lets go of your hands, glides his fingers up along your arms; tips traveling along the curve of your neck until he reaches your cheeks. There, he stops, carefully cupping your face. Wonwoo hasn’t experienced closeness before, finds that it’s an entirely instinctual thing. He drags his thumbs along the soft skin above your cheekbones, gaze locked to yours. “don’t throw away your life for me.”

“No,” he murmurs, with a confidence that surprises even him. “There’s no one like you. I’m sure I could go to the ends of the world and not find a creature half as stubborn.” At that, you laugh; a soft and fragile sound that echoes like bells in Wonwoo’s sharp ears. It makes him want to lean into it, to consume the sound and trap it within himself.

“Looks like it’s rubbing off on you,” you tell him, a teasing edge to the sound of your voice. “Is this what you really want?” You continue, quieter now, more serious. You reach to gently touch his face, leaving tingles in the wake of your fingertips against his skin. “Do you really think I’m worth it?”

Wonwoo relents, then, gives into his ever growing urges and leans completely into you. His lips press against yours and you gasp into his mouth, the sound only encouraging him further. He pulls at your face, presses fingertips into your skin hard enough to hurt. His eyes close and his mouth moves on its own, a low shudder starting from the back of his neck with the sensation of your soft, pillowy lips against his own. 

Your own arms wind around his neck, and suddenly there is no space left, your chest flush against his own and your heart pounding and knocking against his rip cage at a speed that matches his. He pulls, tugs, squeezes as if he wants to merge your bodies together completely. It’s such an overwhelming sensation that he nearly feels like he’s about to explode. Only the need for oxygen makes him pull away, pressing his forehead against yours.

He exhales; it’s as if he’s been unfinished, as if he’s been lacking, as if only now, only with this moment has he become a whole, completed being. He feels elevated, invincible. And he knows, with a certainty he has never felt before, that there is only one way to answer your question.

“Yes.”

~~

TWO MONTHS LATER

Wonwoo sits inside the metal box – a vehicle, you’d told him; a car – leans against the transparent glass at his side. To his left, you’ve got your hands on a circular device, fingers tapping against the smooth, not quite soft material it’s made of. The car makes a loud, booming sound. The sound used to scare him, but he supposes you were right in saying it’s something you get used to quickly.

You turn to look at him, remove a hand from the wheel to grasp one of his. “Wonwoo,” you murmur, thumb stroking pleasant circles into the skin of his palm. “Are you awake?”

He turns to face you, takes in the appearance of a human in its natural habitat. You’re cleaner than you ever was in the forest – thanks to a miracle of a machine called the shower – dressed in a large sweater and pants made out of a coarse, blue fabric. Your hair is tied behind your head and a pair of dark tinted glasses rests at the tip of your nose. There’s something vibrant and alive about your features that he never used to see in the forest. His chest tightens, but it’s a wholly wonderful feeling. 

“Yes,” he replies, twists his hand to grasp yours, intertwining your fingers. For weeks, the two of you have been on the road, searching for what you call ‘the hunters’. It sounds like an ominous sort of organization, but you reassure him that they are, as you call them, ‘the good guys’. “Have we arrived?”

You sigh, lean back against the soft backrest of your seat. “No, not yet,” you mutter, an apologetic tint to your voice. “This is proving to be much harder than I thought it’d be.” 

You don’t need to tell Wonwoo that; he can see the signs of fatigue easily in the lines of your face. Dark circles paint the underside of your eyes, your body language slower than it used to be. Wonwoo wants to soothe your ailments, to will your tiredness away. As it is, all he can really do is squeeze your hand. He hums. 

“We’ll get there,” he says, though he doesn’t even really know where there is. He puts his trust in you, refrains from voicing his concerns about your appearance. “We should stop for the night. You’re tired.”

You open your mouth, a deep, loud exhale falling out from between your lips. He’s right, and he knows that you know it. You only ever make a sound like that when you’re about to give in. His mouth twitches with a self-satisfactory smile.

“The car tonight, then?” You ask rhetorically; there’s not a single house in sight, only a road that seems to go on forever. “I’m sure you’re glad you gave up your immortality for this.” You try to play it off as a joke, but Wonwoo hears the bitterness, the latent sorrow of a return that did not go as planned.

A cult, you’d called it; a group of zealous people with a singular goal and the moral depravity to obtain them by any possible means. Returning to your home outside the forest had sent you right into the middle of a meeting between a dozen masked humans, each more shocked than the next at your appearance. They had seemed nice enough at first, if a bit too interested in Wonwoo’s clearly inhuman form. 

A mere fortnight had passed before they had attempted a second sacrifice. Wonwoo swears that the sight of you, tied to a pyre in the middle of an otherwise friendly looking town square, will never quite leave him. Dryads are, first and foremost, creatures of peace, of tranquility. But Wonwoo is no longer a dryad, and his allegiance rests solely with the human he has sworn to spend his now limited lifetime protecting.

He wonders what his King would say, had he known that Wonwoo used the tiny bit of magic he has left to slay an entire human village. 

Or what he would say, had Wonwoo told him he would do it again. 

“Even death,” Wonwoo says, bringing your hand up to his face, leans against it and brushes his nose against your knuckles. “Would be worth your safety and happiness.” It’s a strong sentiment, way past the range of emotions Wonwoo used to feel just a year ago. Not as strong, though, as the sentiments he keeps to himself, the ones that feel too big, too grand to say out loud. 

Something as simple as the fact that he loves you, so much and so strongly that not even the darkest creatures of the underworld could shake his commitment. It feels like a statement too true to say out loud, as if the magic would be broken if he opened his mouth.

“Even losing your home? Everyone you love?”

But then, you always had a way of forcing his hand.

“You are my home,” he says, gazing out at the darkness of the outer world. So many things he has not seen yet. Things bound to be worse, better, stranger than the cult and the forest. “You are–”

The car stops, and you twist around quickly to face him. There’s a genuine sort of smile on your face, a more common occurrence now than ever before. You take his face between your hands, fingertips tracing the lines of his cheekbones. A warmth spreads through his body as he places his own hands on top of yours. “Silly plant boy,” you murmur with affection. “I love you, too.” You press a kiss to his lips, a quick, casual thing. Even that feels like a blessing; a closeness so comfortable that gestures need not be grand anymore.

“We’ll figure it out,” you add, confidently now, seemingly invigorated by your own confession. “We’ll find the hunters and stop that stupid cult,” you grimace at the mention of your previous home and the implications of their depravities. “But first, let’s get some rest.”

Wonwoo might never get used to sleeping in the back of a car, your body heavy on top of his own and your even breathing tickling at his throat, and he might never truly get rid of the queasiness that comes with hours spent riding inside it. But the feel of your hand resting at his side, your legs tangled with his and your lip pressed to the pulse of his neck–

Soonyoung screams, and the sound seems to tear through your skin, grip and claw at your very flesh and bone, and when your head whips back in his direction, the young boy is grasping at his face with his right hand; blood pouring from between his fingers like a thick, slow river.

A voice bellows from somewhere right next to you, or somewhere far away, making your bones rattle and the hair at the back of your neck stand. You’d recognize that voice everywhere, because the voice belongs, undoubtedly, to yourself. “Get your fucking hands off of me!”

“Look away,” a second, just as familiar voice commands; tones an impossible mixture of low and high in the sort of strange way that only Chan ever managed to produce. When you look at Soonyoung’s body once again, the boy is crumpled on the floor and his left arm is missing. “Look away,” the disembodied voice of Lee Chan repeats. And then; in a tone that sounds not quite like him anymore, that sounds almost like someone else, someone whose voice you’ve heard in whispers and in hollow echoes: “You have to kill me.”

You wake up with a jerk that pulls your upper body right into a sitting position, your intake of breath so desperate that it hurts your throat. Your heart hammers painfully in your chest.

Jeonghan sits on the other side of a roaring fire, both his hands gripping around the rifle as he leans his weight against it. His eyes does not leave yours, nor does he say anything. The flickering flames between you gives his face long shadows, makes his eyes look dark and dead as they gaze at you unblinkingly.

Somehow, you can’t quite keep eye contact.

“What do we do now?” You ask, when the sun is starting to set and the fire has long since died. You’re not sure what the span of your question really is, if you’re wondering what you’re supposed to do right now, or if you’re asking how the fuck you’re supposed to move on from the fact that Jeonghan has killed your friend. Maybe you’re asking about the lack of resources you now have; food and tents and ammunition left behind with Seokmin and Chan. Maybe you’re just trying to fill the silence.

Jeonghan looks like he wants to yell, his jaw tight and his mouth a grim line. Or maybe he wants to cry. He doesn’t look in your direction, and as such you can’t really tell the difference. You’re reminded, oddly, about his prickly behavior when you first met him; over ten years ago now. He’d divert his gazes and ignore your approaches, a sense of aloofness always surrounding him like a thick fog. That’s just how he was, you’d learned; an innate sort of disinterest bred from laziness rather than spite. It had been a wholly different thing when you came back, right before the outbreak. That, certainly, had been a show of resentment.

You’re not completely sure what is going through his head now.

“They were right,” he says at last, monotony pulling at his voice. He makes sure not to mention any names; you can’t tell if he does it for you or for himself. “We need to find people.” He gets up from his position on the other end of the dead fire, circles around it to crouch down next to you.

There’s hesitation in his fingers when he reaches for your shoulder, tugs you close to his body. He inhales, his body almost inhumanly warm against yours. You hadn’t even noticed that you were freezing. “Hope they were right about the damn safe haven.”

(He’s never touched you like that before; always been assertive and sure in his actions. You remember, vividly now, the look on his face when he’d first approached you; made bold and red-faced by whisky. His grip on your hips had been certain, much like an anchor.

He’d been the one to make the first move, back then, but the lack of hesitation in his approach had made it abundantly clear that he knew he wasn’t going to get rejected. Later you’d ponder at that; re-examine your every move and trace your steps. Everyone always said you wore your heart on your sleeve. If you’re being completely honest, you’d been too elated to really care.)

(A classmate of yours had, a lifetime ago, compared Jeonghan to a particularly prickly rose. Beautiful, but with thorns that were bound to hurt. More trouble than it was worth, the girls in your class would say, shoulders rising with noncommittal shrugs and wistfulness shining in their gazes.

Your mother always said, with a voice as affectionate as it was chiding, that you never quite knew how to back away from a challenge.

And you always liked roses.)

”Why’d you do it, the first time?” You ask, not wholly willing to look him in the face as you pose him the question. Images of discarded clothing and reddened cheeks drift to the forefront of your mind. An easier time, you muse, though it had felt like the – and this is the truly ridiculous part – end of the world at the time. “At Chan’s birthday?”

“Why do you think?” He replies, though it’s not a reply at all. It’s a distraction, at best, a redirection of the confessions you’re trying to drag out of him. You tilt your head back, exhale.

The stars wink down at you, almost as if they know.

(The first time you slept with Jeonghan, you could’ve easily called it an accident; a result of too much alcohol and too much tension. You still remember, if you close your eyes and forget the world for a moment, how he’d smelled of liquor, how his hand had trailed down your naked arm to clasp at your fingers. At that moment, you’d felt fragile; like a string tugged to far in two opposite directions, bound to snap at any second. It wasn’t such a bad feeling.

The second time– there weren’t really any excuses for the second time. Just a sort of longing trapped beneath your ribcage easily mistaken for lust and an itch to touch resting at the very tips of your fingers. Just gazes that lasted too long, words with hidden meanings and quirks of lips that made you unable to even follow conversations anymore.

By the fifth – or the seventh – time, something warm, something full was lurking, bubbling at your blood and frazzling your nerves, and by then you were already too far gone to question it anymore.)

”Do you think anyone else knew?” You wonder, thinking back to Soonyoung’s apparent ignorance at the last party he ever threw before perishing. That train of thought is a dangerous one, and you look over at Jeonghan, then, if only for a distraction. He levels you with a sort of almost frustrated look on his face. There’s a splatter of dirt – or blood – painted onto his right cheek. Your fingers itch with the impulse to reach over and rub it off.

“Everyone knew,” he says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Heat rises to your face, and for a moment you’re almost relieved that even in this situation you have it in you to get embarrassed. When you manage to stutter out a ‘how’, your lover sighs, tangles a hand into the mess that your hair has become after days – or is it weeks, now? months? – of running around in the woods. “Because you’re far less subtle than you think,” he murmurs, and if it weren’t for the strange softness in his eyes and in the tired tone of his voice you might have thought it was an insult. “Because no one’s as oblivious as you are.”

You think you know what he’s trying to say, but Jeonghan leans over, presses his lips carefully to yours before you can gather up the vocabulary needed to confirm your suspicions.

(The truth of it is this, simple and stupid and blatant and horrible in hindsight; you loved Jeonghan as a teenager– a confusing and ignorant sort of love that only silly teenagers possess, but a love nonetheless. When you left, you told yourself it was because Jeonghan never would return those feelings in full, that your agreement was a purely physical one on his part.

When you left, you knew those thoughts were lies, a huge disservice and injustice to the boy you left behind.

But you left, nonetheless.)

Calling it an ambush might be giving the monsters a tad more credit than their rotting brains really deserve, but it happens just as the sun is disappearing behind the trees above you. It happens when you’ve finally managed to find some semblance of calm, too placated by the recent lack of danger.

It happens just as the seasons are changing; yellow, orange and red leaves falling from trees in a way that would be beautiful under any other circumstance. It’s getting dark quickly, it’s getting cold, and Jeonghan’s body shivers as he leans against you, his forehead shimmering with a layer of sweat that makes his face seem strangely translucent in the ebbing evening light.

Somehow, you think they must be evolving. When the outbreak just happened, you could hear them from a mile away; stumbling over roots and tripping over their feet, groaning in mindless, numb moans and walking with slow, unsure steps.

These attackers, you don’t notice until they’re too close, looming over you with blank, glassy gazes that makes your heart hammer too loudly in your chest. Too close, and you’re both totally unprepared.

Jeonghan’s rifle is low on ammunition and your fingers are frozen, numb as you tighten your grip around it, dragging a sluggish Jeonghan to his feet. The last time you were in this position; surrounded on all sides by creatures not quite dead, but definitely not alive, it had felt cathartic. You had been more than willing to let the monsters have their way with you. The only thought in your head now, as Jeonghan leans against your side, is that you have to run.

And the only way out is through.

There’s nothing but the clothes at your back and the rush of adrenaline in your veins to help you force your way through the horde of undead circling you. You stick out your elbow, bash the blunt end of the rifle into the blank face of any creature that dares to approach, and somehow, you manage to escape their clutches unharmed.

That thought does not give you the relief you hoped it would. Jeonghan’s body is heavy against your shoulder, despite his attempts to raise himself, despite his protestations that he can walk on his own. His breath feels like fire against your neck. Behind you, the groaning continues. You’re too terrified to even spare a glance in the direction of the sound, head too filled with the singular, desperate thought of safety to slow down even when Jeonghan murmurs your name against your skin, tugs at your sleeve in an attempt to make you stop.

Relief comes in the form of a cave, so discreet and hidden that you almost miss it’s entrance as you pass by. Your sharp intakes of breath feels like razors down your throat, and you can’t truly be sure if the liquid collecting at your chin is sweat or tears. Jeonghan’s voice is raspy, dragging and slow as he repeats your name again, low and almost like a prayer. You finally collect your wits enough to look at him once you’re sure that you’re far enough into the cave that you’re willing to let him go. He falls against the cold, wet rocks that make up the walls, and when your gaze zeroes in on him, your blood freezes.

There, on the very edge of his left shoulder, partially hidden behind a shivering, clutching hand, you see the burning reds of ripped skin and punctured flesh. His jacket is stained, tattered and filthy with blood and saliva. Deliriously, you mourn the ruined state of the garment. A full three beats of your heart passes before your brain truly catches up to the situation, and then you fall to your knees so suddenly, so harshly that your entire body vibrates when your knees hit the ground.

“Oh, god,” you choke, fingers gripping at Jeonghan’s face, cupping his cheeks and feeling the fever burn against your palm. He puts his free hand over one of yours, breaths slowly, heavily. Your throat closes, imaginary coils wrapping around your neck as Jeonghan feebly grips your fingers, and for a moment you think you’re going to throw up. You want to run. You want this fucking nightmare to end.

“Jeonghan, no,” you whisper, unable to even wrap your head around anything but an uneven mantra of his name. You think about Minghao; about his missing arm. You wonder where he is, if he’s still alive, if it had hurt when he forced his best friend to saw off his limb.

You glance around the dim cave, desperate for something, anything sharp enough. It’s a ridiculous thought for more than one reason, but your head feels like it’s about to explode and sense has long since left you. Jeonghan’s hand slips away from yours, fingers curling around your chin. He twists your head back in his direction, forces you to meet his gaze. The light in his irises seem to be dimming, flickering and fading with each intake of breath.

“There’s nothing you can do,” he tells you, his voice strangely clear and determined; a stark contrast with how bleak and pained his face looks. He presses a chaste, hurried kiss to the grim frown on your face, and his lips tastes like ashes in your mouth. His fingers curl around your ear, nails digging into your skin roughly enough to bruise. “You have to kill me.”

In the movies, the protagonist always seems to adjust to their surroundings so easily. Sure, they never enjoy having to kill their friends and family, but they do it with a stiff upper lip and a sense of determination. The only feeling that floats around in your gut as Jeonghan’s words echo in the dark cave is despair. Not again, you think, hanging onto your sanity by just a measly, frayed thread. Not this shit again, not Jeonghan. For a moment you think about refusing. You think about that time Minghao and Jun first found you, about your willingness to die back then.

You see yourself refusing; crying and begging and clinging to your lover until death comes for you both. You’ve been here before; you left Soonyoung when it all started and you let Jeonghan put a bullet in Chan’s brain when he first started changing. You’re not sure if you can go through it again, if your sanity can take another loss.

You tell Jeonghan this; a fragile, broken whisper of ‘i don’t know if i can’, fingers shivering against his skin. His body jerks as if in response, and he clutches at his torn shoulder, a hiss of pain erupting from between his teeth.

“You can,” he assures you stubbornly with gritted teeth. “You will. For me,” he kisses you again; deeper, this time, with the distinct taste of goodbye on his tongue. Jeonghan always was guarded with strangers, careful with acquaintances, but he could never truly hide with his kisses. You remember, suddenly, the desperation and lust in your escapades when you were younger, his vulnerability when he first pressed his lips against you in the tent. A hint of honesty, an aftertaste of truth. You’re not sure if you can stomach this one, the regrets and the wants and the needs and the wishes.

But still, you echo them all tenfold in your reciprocation; the regrets of not being honest and open about your feelings way back when, the wants of ‘another time, in another life’ – the crushing, bitter taste of unused, wasted potential of the ‘us’ that could have been between you. When at last he lets go of your face, leans his head against black stone, you inhale as if you’ve been held under water, the sound jagged and painful to your own ears.

Jeonghan nods, and you get up on wobbly feet, take a few steps back. Every fiber of your skin itches, protests, as if the very nerves beneath your skin knows that you have touched Jeonghan for the last time. Your entire body feels heavy and numb as you lift the rifle, take aim. You inhale, blinking away tears.

“As soon as it’s done, you run,” Jeonghan tells you, his voice the steadiest thing in the entire world, vivid and clear like a lighthouse. “You don’t look, you don’t hesitate. The sound will attract them.”

You nod, not trusting yourself to open your mouth without screaming.

“I love you,” he says. “I’m sorry for not saying it before.”

You sob, then; a broken and lonely sound that hurts as it tears itself out of your throat. Your grip on the rifle wavers and your fingers clutch helplessly at the wood and the metal of the weapon. “I love you, too.”

You steady your aim.

The sound of the gunshot echoes, bounces, hits your body like a tangible, heavy object. You shut your eyes, tears spilling and breath frenzied. There’s a low buzzing noise in your head, and then you swear you go deaf.

Days melt into each other after that. You’re not even sure which way you’re walking, nor how long you’ve been on your own when at last you fall apart, crumpled like a rag doll against the trunk of a tree. The grass beneath your fingers feel almost like barbs against your skin, and the bark digging into the back of your neck reminds you of jagged, sharp teeth.

For a while, there’s only silence, save from the slow, humming tune of the wind rustling at treetops and making leaves fall and gather by your outstretched legs. There are no birds, you realize; no insects or critters. You can’t even remember the last time you heard the sound of a bird singing, or of animals skittering away from unfamiliar noises.

Then; footsteps. You hear the creaking of twigs snapping underneath the pressure of boots as if the sound comes from inside your head rather than from somewhere around you, and only vaguely are you aware that you need to get back on your feet. Run, Jeonghan had said. You feel like you’ve been running for years.

A voice rumbles over the silence of the forest, shrill and high as it echoes in your head. It doesn’t sound like a zombie, you think, but when you open your eyes (when did they even close in the first place?), your vision is blurred, uneven. The ground looks like a slope, trees leaning in towards you with branches like claws. You can’t be sure if the hammering in your body comes from panic or from your organs finally giving out.

“There’s someone here,” the voice says, loud enough to make your head pound. More voices follow, another set of footsteps making the ground beneath you vibrate. You squint, try to make sense of the lines appearing in your vision. ‘Infected?’ you hear another voice ask, a click that can only be the cocking of a gun following the question. “I can’t see any injuries,” the first voice replies, putting a cold hand against your face.

“Holy shit,” a new, distinctly familiar voice half-yells, syllables stunted with a sudden intake of breath. You can’t quite place it, can’t quite feel your legs, but the wide, dark eyes that come into view have a bizarre, delirious sort of deja vu to them. The voice murmurs your name, figure dropping to its knees next to the first voice. A hand grasps your shoulder and the voice repeats your name. The figure is missing an arm.

“Where’s Chan?” the man asks, stumbling over the question as if he’s not quite proficient in the language. “Where’s Jeonghan?”

“Minghao,” the first voice warns, and your heart does a weird sort of jump at the name. You recognize him then; with his slightly too-big lips and almost inhumanly long neck. Even as his edges blur, fade into the yellows and oranges of the woods, Minghao is easily distinguishable, if only for the virtue of being known. “She looks about three quarters dead, let’s save the questions for later, yeah?”

Minghao inhales, the sound loud and piercing, somehow. He hooks his hand underneath your arm, gets you on your feet with the help of the other man. You feel off-kilter, sideways, and it takes four heartbeats to realize it’s because of the height difference between the two men, rather than the world being turned on its side.

“It’s okay,” he murmurs, a strangled sort of moan falling out of your mouth as you struggle to stand upright. Minghao’s arm reaches down your back to clutch tightly at your hip. “You’re okay. We found it.” Your head falls against his shoulder and your brain seems to liquify. You can’t quite remember the last time someone told you anything was okay, can’t tell if the word still holds any meaning at all.

during the pre-marriage sessions; recorded meetings in dull, grey rooms at the center of the golden circle, you had seemed like the perfect picture of the kind of woman soonyoung’s supposed to be with. agreeable, pretty, good genes. demure, but not without personality; nothing of that dead, distasteful glare that seems a genetic trait of people from the middle districts.

where you’d been reserved but susceptible during the interviews, you are now cold; eyes shimmering with visible disdain as soonyoung comes in during the quiet, soft yellow hours of the morning. there’s a layer of sweat hidden beneath his trained exterior, a smell of gasoline sticking to his fingers. he glances at the clock right above the entrance to the living room. 5.15 in the morning. he hadn’t expected you awake already, had thought he’d be able to slip inside unnoticed and wash the evidence of his illicit nightly adventures off before falling under your scrutiny.

you’re observant, he’s noticed; quick to pick up on his habits and his preferences. you make him breakfast, cook him dinners; coffee ready on the table every morning, even though he can tell that you despise it. that your fingers twitch with the want to dunk the hot liquid that you’re not allowed to drink yourself right in his face.

he wonders if you think he’s cheating; that his nightly escapades are of the sexual nature. ‘men are creatures of the flesh’, soonyoung’s father used to say. ‘if denied their right in the home, who can blame them for seeking satisfaction somewhere else?’. soonyoung thinks this was meant as a jab towards his mother, who meant that women had one job, and one job only. in any case, the idea never sat right with him. not even now, not even when you sleep fully clothed at the very edge of your shared bed.

and if you do think that’s what he’s doing; do you care? does the slight downwards pull of your lips come from the idea of him entangled with someone else during secret meetings in the night, or does it come from the disdain of the walls that surround you on every side like a lavish, pretty jail cell?

soonyoung can’t tell which option he’d prefer.

(he can’t even tell if any of them are preferable at all.)

____________________

the scariest thing about you, soonyoung finds, is how outspoken you are. he’d heard about it, of course; about the silver tongued rebels of the middle districts. he’d always questioned it; like, would they not be easy to spot, easy to pluck from the normal people and place in their proper places of gallows and cells? evidently, such a line of thought was too simple, too idealistic; here you are, right in front of him, speaking in tones that could only be described as vulgar, illegal.

this thought, soonyoung admits with reluctance, is strangely exciting.

“you smell like whisky,” you murmur when soonyoung comes home from meeting his three closest friends. drinking alcohol is frowned upon, for sure, but not illegal. not for him. still, he feels a sort of guilt tug at his spine. a magical power of yours, that; making him squirm and question everything he’s been so sure of before. you divert your gaze, stare out the window. your voice is nothing but a murmur when you open your mouth again; “must be nice.”

bitterness does not make itself scarce in your expression, nor in your tone, and soonyoung’s jaw tightens. “do you want some?”

he surprises himself by being completely serious. you twist your head back to look at him, watches as he produces a half full bottle of burning, brown liquid from the bag slung over his shoulder. looking for the signs of a test, no doubt; for any traces of challenge. you blink, surprised to find none, soonyoung supposes. he steps quickly over to the cabinet, finds two glasses there and sits himself down on the chair left of yours. you do not take your eyes off of him, not as he shifts to make himself comfortable, not as he pours the liquid into the two glasses.

the only sound in the room is that of whisky being poured, the only smell the strong stench of liquor. he’ll break this one law, he thinks, without giving it too much of a thought. you’ve already presented your cards, already complained and opposed, already made yourself vulnerable. he hopes, with a thud of his heart, that you won’t make him regret this lapse of judgement.

you hum, reach for the glass, twirl the liquid around in the clear glass. “might as well,” you relent at last. “maybe alcohol is what it takes to make this district survivable.”

soonyoung chokes on whisky.

“you’re quite bold,” he murmurs, not without reluctant admiration in his voice. “what’s to stop me from reporting you to the enforcers?”

you tilt your head, watch him with dangerous eyes. “ah,” you breathe, lean your head against the knuckles of your hand. “to the rebellious future enforcer choi seungcheol?” you tap your fingers against your cheekbone, lip curling into something not quite – but close, very close – a smile. amber liquid swirls around the glass, splashes against the rims in something that soonyoung can’t describe as anything but a show of power. “or to boo seungkwan, future brainwasher in command?”

it could be a coincidence that those are the names you choose to mention, of course, but there’s cleverness visible in the arch of your brows, and when you sit back upright in the chair, it’s with the intimidating, powerful aura of any high judge soonyoung has ever met. people used to say – at least people say that people used to say – that men went for women who reminded them of their mothers. of course, people don’t say it anymore; men do not go for women at all, they let the soulmate system choose for them. but in that moment, soonyoung thinks he understands what people used to mean.

“leverage,” you tell him, chug down the last bit of whisky in your glass, looks very little like the image of a ‘proper lady’ that soonyoung has grown up with. you put the glass down on the flat surface of the table, bring your hands up in front of your face, curl your fingers into a fist and flick your wrists in a gesture that soonyoung recognizes only because he’s done it himself countless times. “vroom vroom,” you add, as if he needs the audio to understand what you’re implying. a shiver climb soonyoung’s spine, makes his head tingle. “that’s why you’re not going to report me to the enforcers.”

he stares, throat thick with something that feels a hell of a lot like fear. it’s not something soonyoung feels particularly often, not since he lived with his parents. not since they shut down his dance studio and interrogated him for suspicions of rebellion. he hadn’t been one, then. sometimes he wonders if that was what did it. maybe he’ll ask what you think; you seem to be an expert on the subject of resistance.

“don’t look so shocked,” you murmur, tone a hair’s breadth from mockery. “you always smell like gasoline.”

____________________

“my mother wants to have us over for dinner,” he tells you, watches as you try to keep your emotions under wraps. soonyoung might not have known you for very long, might not actually know you very well at all despite your name tattooed at the top of his wrist, but he recognizes your tells, by now. a twitch at the edge of your lips, a quick, tense rise of your shoulders. to your credit, you do not break eye contact.

things have been… different, since the evening he shared his whisky with you. for one, soonyoung can’t quite help looking over his back when he leaves to ride his bike, can’t help the feeling that you’re always watching. and second, you’ve been far less hostile, though still as loud and assertive in your trash talk. he wouldn’t call it friendly, would hesitate even over ‘amicable’. but he feels it is a win, nonetheless. third, it happens again. it becomes a pattern. for weeks, soonyoung shares his whisky with you, until the bottle is empty and the distance returns.

he knows this, though; there is no mistaking the wave of absolute disgust that paints your otherwise pretty face at the mention of his mother.

he imagines what she must represent to you; a woman born in freedom, who willingly, gladly traded her — and in some small part, every other woman in palatium’s — rights away for a place in the new elite. soonyoung’s father was a nobody before; barely even worthy of living in the high district. soonyoung’s mother, on the other hand, created the soulmate method of marriages. for that, she’s allowed some small, secret perks. books, food, alcohol. clearance to the golden circle. except, soonyoung suspects, it’s not as secret as the elite might think.

“why are you staring at me?” you question at last, defiance blatant and on display in both your tone and your expression. “surely i, the subservient wife, have no say in matters like these.”

“you’re anything but subservient,” soonyoung mutters, mostly to himself. the glare you shoot him is enough to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand. he clears his throat. “i can make up an excuse,” he tells you; the reason he brought it up in the first place. a choice. soonyoung is starting to realize that even in his perpetual state of nodding his head and playing along, he’s taken his freedom for granted. “if you don’t want to go.”

you inhale through your nose, stare at soonyoung from your position by the kitchen counter. in truth, soonyoung had considered not even bringing the invite up, had considered just politely declining the offer and continue putting the inevitable encounter off. but then he’d remembered the bitter commentary you’d made during one of your illicit evenings of soft buzzes and heated almost-arguments; the biting comments about your lack of choices.

he kinda wishes he could have presented you with a better one.

“no,” you tell him, quieter than he expects. he never seems to quite get used to the few and far between moments where you don’t seem to get sick at the mere sight of him. “no, it’s fine,” you sigh, drag a hand through your hair, can’t seem to settle on somewhere to look. “let’s just get it over with.”

____________________

he catches you eyeing the bookcase in the hallway of his mother’s home; something that looks like a cross between envy and resignation ghosting over your features. he wouldn’t even have noticed, had he not been looking for it.

he hopes no one else notices.

“soonyoung, darling,” soonyoung mother enthuses, brings her arms around his neck to envelop him in a bone crushing hug. to the uninitiated onlooker, it must seem like a heartwarming reunion; a mother and a son together again. soonyoung knows better, though, has been on the receiving end of his mother’s overbearing affection enough times to know the truth behind it. soonyoung’s mother might not have a whole lot of power, despite her innovative ideas and her rows and rows of books, but she sure knows how to assert it.

the word for it used to be ‘matriarch’, he knows. of course, that word has disappeared into the box of forgotten things, just like ‘actress’ and ‘queen’.

“it’s good to see you again, my boy,” she goes on, pats soonyoung’s shoulders with long fingers, their nails painted red. a bold move, that, considering nail polish is supposed to be outlawed. then again, rules never seemed to work the same way for the people residing in the golden circle. “and your wife is here as well,” she says at last, notes your presence as one would make note of a new haircut, a new pair of shoes. specifically, a less favorable haircut. soonyoung clears his throat uncomfortably. you refuse to respond.

(it’s the start of a very slow, very painful dinner.)

soonyoung’s mother, despite her active role in the marriage, seems adamant in her blatant ignoring of your presence.

“how’s everything going so far?” she asks, eyes trained right on her son. soonyoung feels the need to hide, to fill his mouth with potatoes and steak and hinder himself from being able to talk.

“it’s going fine, mother,” he replies vaguely, cowers from her inquisitive glare. he glances instead to his right, where you’re picking at your own food, eyes fixed on your maltreated potato. soonyoung’s mother hums, as if that answer has something secret hidden between the words that only she understands.

“it’s been three months,” she goes on, swirls a glass of something that looks like red wine between her fingers. “can i expect grandchildren soon?”

never one for small talk, that woman.

soonyoung hears, somehow, how you stiffen in your chair, the very mention of children a sore, taboo subject between the two of you. you’ll talk, at length, about the unfairness of society and your distaste for the inner circle, but you tastefully avoid subjects that pertain to your marriage, or the expectations that come with it. a part of your newfound almost-amicable relationship, soonyoung suspects.

“only time will tell,” he murmurs, feels two sets of intimidating female gazes heavy on him. he takes a large gulp of his whisky.

she hums again. “she’s not getting any younger, you know. the true purpose of the woman is to provide the man with a child.”

soonyoung doesn’t dare looking over at you. he’s sure the expression he’d find there would be enough to make him sweat. he’s always known that his mother was a bit of an extremist, even as far as the elite goes. he knows his mother is the very definition of a true believer. somehow, these things had been much easier to ignore before. he opens his mouth – to agree? to protest? he doesn’t know – but his mother chooses that moment to address you, finally, directly.

“isn’t that right, dear?” she asks sweetly. the following silence feels sort of like a death sentence. soonyoung wants to intervene. he doesn’t.

“of course,” you reply, voice flat and submissive in a whole nother way than how he’s used to. your subservience has been a mockery, before, a sort of inside joke on soonyoung’s expense, a proof of your opposition. there’s nothing of that present now, and when he finally manages to force his gaze over to your seat, your face is deathly pale. you still have not touched your food, but you still have the distinct expression of someone with a bad taste in their mouth.

you do not speak again the rest of the night.

____________________

after the dinner at soonyoung’s mother’s, there’s a tangible, heavy silence hanging over the kwon jr. household. you won’t speak to him, not when he buys a new bottle of whisky and tries to lure you into the sitting room to join him, not when he starts dropping small hints about his adventures during the night.

not even when he wakes up extra early to try – and horribly fail at – making you breakfast do you say a word to him, though you do push him aside to try and salvage the burnt eggs stuck to the dark pan on the stove. soonyoung feels helpless, in a completely unfamiliar, overwhelming sort of way. he’s always seen himself as a pretty empathetic person, even when being empathetic was not a good thing to be. he buried it when he had to, but it was always there, tucked inside his ribcage.

he’s not sure ‘empathy’ is enough to adequately describe how he feels as he watches you flitter around the house like a ghost.

it seems to boil over inside of you, five days after the dinner. he returns from watching mingyu fight in the underground, the smell of gasoline and of cigarettes sticking to his clothing and tugging at his skin. he loosens his tie and slinks up the stairs towards the bedroom. he doesn’t expect you to be awake.

you twist your head around when he enters, look at him with the same dead sort of gaze that has been haunting him for days and days now. the familiar feeling that’s not quite empathy, that tastes an awful lot like guilt, tugs on his chest. he used to think you were very loud. maybe that’s just another one of those things he took for granted.

you rise from your side of the bed, dressed only in your pale, white nightgown, and take a few determined steps towards him. you grasp at the front of his shirt, fingers doing quick work of his top buttons. soonyoung panics at your sudden aggression, takes a rushed, clumsy step back, but you only follow, wordlessly, keep working on the buttons of his clothes.

“hold– hold on,” he stutters, tries to grasp at your hands. you only press further, until he’s backed up against the door, eyes focused on the shirt and on the skin revealed by every button you undo. “what the hell are you doing?” your head snaps up at that, gaze hard and mouth set in a thin line. soonyoung feels exposed, vulnerable, his heart beating wildly in his chest.

“my job,” you reply, with a voice that sounds both eerily like your own and someone else’s entirely. you grip at the fabric of his shirt, try to pull it off of his shoulders. soonyoung’s own fly up to wrap around your elbows to stop you. “a woman’s only purpose is to provide her husband with children, and all that.”

“i don’t–” soonyoung starts, doesn’t quite know how to continue the sentence. i don’t think that. i don’t want that. somehow he doesn’t think any of the options would be particularly soothing, despite his efforts. your fingernails dig into his clothes, make crescent moons along the skin of his chest. it looks like you can’t decide whether to cry or to scream.

“do you know what happens to women who refuses to sleep with their husbands?” you ask, a sort of pathetic, fragile stuntedness to your voice. your fingers are still tightly clutched at the front of his unbuttoned shirt. they shiver; in fear or anger, soonyoung doesn’t know. “they get sent to the lower districts, branded for being ‘barren’.” soonyoung circles his hands around your wrists, tries to pull your hands away. your grip at his clothes tighten, and you stare him right in the eyes. “of course, most of the time it won’t come to that, because men have the habit of taking what they want whether the woman want it or not.”

there’s no word for it anymore, but the old one, the one that starts with an r, still echoes in the back of soonyoung’s head. he feels sick, feels the impulse to push you away from him and run away. his throat feels thick, mouth full of ashes.

“that won’t happen to you here,” he says, voice kept stable only by the conviction with which he says it. he presses his thumbs into your skin. your head is bowed; in shame or in disbelief, soonyoung can’t know. “nothing you don’t want will happen as long as i’m here.” he lets go of your wrists and they fall limply to your side. he takes hold of your face, feels ridiculously bold for doing so, guides your face up so you can see how much he means what he’s saying. somehow, he feels more honest than he’s done ever before. “i swear i’ll do anything to make you happy.”

in the old time, the time when you married someone you loved rather than someone whose genes matched your own, they used to have these beautiful ceremonies. soonyoung remembers overhearing talks about them during meetings when he was a child. something he always was especially entranced by was the concept of ‘vows’, of promises to keep and to honor. they got scrapped for something far more technical, of course, but the idea was especially appealing to soonyoung. this one will have to do, he thinks. there’s not a lot more he can promise, considering the circumstances. your eyes are wet. he finds that he wants to press his lips to your forehead.

he doesn’t. instead, he says, “i’ll sleep on the couch tonight. please get some rest.” and he leaves the room. he hears a sob through the door, and he swears something inside him cracks painfully.

and that is why he ends up in front of his mother’s bookcase once again a mere week later.

____________________

“what’s this?” you ask when he puts the book down in front of you on the table. soonyoung feels strangely disconnected to his own body; almost as if he’s standing in the corner of the room, watching himself present you with the book. people have gone to jail for less than this; people have been hanged.

but then, he participates in illegal races at night, attends betting matches in the underground once a month. he tells himself that’s why despite the rush of fear coursing through his veins, soonyoung does not hesitate once to give you the worn paperback. “it’s a book,” he replies lamely; knows it’s a mistake as soon as the words fall out of his mouth.

“obviously,” you bite back, the exclamation almost more a hiss than a word. soonyoung knows better than to talk down to you, by now, but he finds that old habits are hard to break. and you’ve been tense ever since visiting his mother, too, much easier to anger. he wonders if you still hear her words in your head when you close your eyes. the thought makes him nauseous. “what am i supposed to do with it? fold paper cranes?”

soonyoung blinks, gaze falling down to where your fingers lie curled and interlaced with each other on the surface of the table. you have pretty hands, he notice; prettier than he would have expected from the middle district. “can you?” he looks back up at your face, finds you squinting in his direction as if you’re loathe to even look at him. “i mean–” he amends, clears his throat. sits down on the chair on your left, folds his hands. he can’t quite look you in the eyes. “you want to learn to read, don’t you?”

you blink; scrunch up your nose as if in disbelief and mouth pulled down in a very distinct frown. soonyoung thinks you might be trying to play down how true his assumption is, but the light dust of red that appears at your cheekbones give you away. soonyoung feels awkward, as if his mouth is full of syrup. “i’ll teach you,” he tries, desperately needs for you to react in any way at all. when you don’t, he swallows, breathes out heavily. “if you want?”

it seems as if you’re silent for an eternity; trust still non-existent and doubt still lingering in every corner of your shared home and in every line of your face. hesitant fingers reach out to touch the front of the book, almost as if you’re afraid of breaking it. there a small twitch at the edges of your lips that might be a smile.

“thank you,” you whisper, and something in soonyoung’s chest seems to bloom.

(it becomes a routine. soonyoung points out letters, pronunciations, coaches you through the longer words and sentences. sometimes you’ll make attempts at reading entire pages out loud, eager to learn and thirsty for knowledge. sometimes he’ll read to you in bed, almost too distracted by the new sort of closeness and the way your eyes flit over the pages to even know what he’s reading.

it’s just a simple novel; a story he’d been obligated to read multiple times in school, but you eat it up, entranced by every word. one night you fall asleep with your head against his shoulder. that night, he’s supposed to meet up with seungcheol, mingyu and seungkwan for a race.

he finds that he can’t quite get himself to move.)

____________________

you’re a quick learner. much quicker than soonyoung was, much more proficient than he could ever hope to be. he tries to tell himself that the sense of pride that comes with your impressive learning curve is an innocent thing. tries to tell himself that the way he leans back and focuses fully on your voice, on the way your fingers clutch at the coarseness of paper doesn’t have anything to do with the soft tingle in the pit of his stomach.

“they work so hard to maintain this intellectual high ground over the lower regions,” you rattle on, uncaring for the fact that soonyoung can’t keep up even if he tried. probably you could make anything and everything into an hour long rant, he thinks, but not without affection. “‘the poor can’t be smart, they lack the education’, ‘women can’t be equal, can’t have any substantial thoughts; they can’t even read!’” you run a finger along the spine of the book. when soonyoung follows your finger, he notices that it’s shaking. your words sounds an awful lot like what he used to learn to be treason when he was a child; but then soonyoung is starting to realize that you commit treason with every intake of breath, every twitch of your brow.

then maybe he’s a traitor, too, for being so engulfed, so committed; for the way he hangs on to your every word as if they were holy. he’s surprisingly okay with that thought.

“but the elite are the ones keeping education away from us,” your finger stops moving, and soonyoung forces his gaze up to your face, pauses at the pinkness of your cupid’s bow, at the arch of your nose. every day, he’s finding details in your face that he wants to jot down in his journal, commit eternally to memory.

“honestly,” he murmurs. “even without the education, you’re probably ten times smarter than me.” it’s easier now, to spill sacrilege from his lips, to disregard his teachings for these secret truths between a man and his wife. sometimes he has to look over his shoulder before saying them, too scared of a housekeeper peeping or an enforcer storming the doors. it’s more worth it each time he does it; genuine smiles painted on your features as a reward for his morsels of genuiness.

you hum quietly, something dangerous flickering in your eyes. “that’s actually a pretty popular theory.”

“that women are smarter than men?” soonyoung finds the claim far less outrageous now than he would have six months ago. it’s impossible to be as staunch and sure as men are supposed to be in their own superiority, when he is so overexposed to your brilliance.

“no,” you reply with a laugh. “that i’m smarter than you. specifically.”

a joke, soonyoung registers. like the ones his father used to tell at dinners and during house parties. though, kwon sr. used to prefer the jokes about sex traitors, about women in high positions. soonyoung’s mother’s lip used to be very tight during these loud retellings. soonyoung finds that he prefers your joke; one that’s private and that puts you on a pedestal rather than pushes you down, that makes you refer to him as a friend rather than someone you’re stuck with.

he also finds that he wants to kiss you. that feeling he buries.

____________________

“soonyoung,” you murmur one night, quietly and carefully from your side of the bed. the divide has gotten smaller, for sure, but there’s still something invisible and terrible that seems to keep you sleeping with your back against him, that keeps him from daring to reach out and touch your hair while you sleep. he opens one eye, peers at you while you twist around in the bed to face him. he can barely make out your silhouette in the darkness, but he still knows exactly what you must look like.

“what is it?” he prompts when you seem to be hesitating. you exhale, and he feels the air on his face, resists the urge to shiver.

“you said–” you pause, shift slightly on the bed. he thinks you’re embarrassed, somehow. “you said you’d do anything,” you don’t finish the sentence, don’t need to. maybe the word ‘happy’ is too foreign on your tongue. soonyoung’s skin tingles. “did you mean it?”

“yes,” he replies, doesn’t even stop for a second to reconsider. truths never used to fall out of him so easily before. nothing is quite like before, he feels, with a sort of terrifying warmth at the pit of his stomach. you must be gathering up the courage to ask for something, he realizes. “is there?” he asks. “something i can do?”

silence. for one, two, three– “take me out,” you whisper, almost reluctantly; as if you have to force the request out of your mouth. “on your bike.”

soonyoung sits up, and you follow; the bed jiggling under the sudden movements. his first thought is to refuse, to protest. too daring, too dangerous, too many risks. but as his eyes adjust to the darkness and he’s able to see your face more clearly he sees the uncertain, bare expression that lingers there, and he finds that refusal is an impossibility. so instead, he whispers back, “okay. now?” watches with delight as the tension leaves your body and is replaced by relief.

“please.”

(he holds your hand as he drags you after him to the garage where soonyoung and his friend keeps their bikes, can’t help looking back every so often to remind himself how your fingers intertwined looks. something scary, something amazing sizzles underneath his skin. he knows what it is, but somehow he can’t quite remember the name.)

he doesn’t take you to the underground where the nightly fights are held, nor does he show you the streets everyone use for races. somehow, he doesn’t think that’s what you’re really interested in, even with how much you’ve probed him about it. instead, he takes you to a secluded hill, his private, secret little spot. it’s not much; nothing really is anymore, but it’s more than the house, more than the dull, brown walls you’re used to staring at.

your neck cranes backwards as you take in the sight; bends so far back that soonyoung has to instinctively put a hand at your back to make sure you don’t fall over. the stars are bright, here; twinkling and clear and alive in a way that soonyoung haven’t been able to spot anywhere else. sometimes you’ll gasp, or inhale as if you haven’t been able to breathe for months, and when you turn to thank him, the shimmer of your eyes seem to outshine every star in the night sky.

(love, he realizes, as you’re holding onto him, arms wrapped securely around his torso as you head back to the garage. the feeling is called love.)

“soonyoung,” you call after him when you’re back in the house, stopping in the middle of the hallway. soonyoung swears he’ll never get used to how his name sounds in your voice. he turns around, takes note of the uncertain look in your eyes. “i’m–” you frown, take a step towards him. for a moment, you seem to weigh your options, to ponder how to go about whatever it is you’re trying to express. an inhale, an exhale. “ah, fuck it.” and then–

then your lips are on his, his face pulled forcefully to meet yours. your fingertips claw at his face, body pressing itself against him, and for a second soonyoung thinks his brain might have exploded. you tug at his face again, urge him to either respond or pull away.

soonyoung chooses the first option. he grabs your hips, digs his fingers into the fabric of your clothes and pull at your body as if he’d die without the contact. your mouth opens, tongue slipping out to lick at his mouth, and soonyoung groans, feels the vibrations of it through his whole body. he takes a few steps, presses you against the wall, and you bite down on his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. soonyoung can’t decide if the sensation is painful or pleasurable, he can’t remember his own last name. all he knows is that you rotate your hips, grinds against him in a way that makes him dizzy.

“upstairs,” you pant, and soonyoung takes the opportunity to explore your neck; bites and nibs at your skin and relishes in the reactions it gives him. your exhales are loud, shaky, and your fingers burrow into his shoulder in what seems more like a steadying action than anything else. “bed,” you add, as if you’ve forgotten how to construct proper sentences.

here, soonyoung falters. “you don’t have to–” he says, voice hoarse with something he can’t describe as anything but ‘lust’. another sin to add to the tally, he supposes. he pulls his head back, searching your face for anything to imply that you’re acting out of a sense of obligation. he finds your cheeks; reddened beyond anything he’s ever seen before. he finds your mouth; already swollen and hot pink against your skin. he finds your eyes; wild and alive and more than ever reminding him of the night full of stars.

he does not, however, see any doubt. still, he feels the need to reiterate; “i don’t expect anything.”

you laugh, at that, a breezy, easy thing that sounds almost like a symphony. you take his face between your hands, squish his cheeks and press a chaste, quick kiss to his lips.

“i know. i want to.”

and there’s something in the almost prideful way you say that, that you emphasize the word ‘want’, that makes soonyoung think he couldn’t ever deny you anything.

____________________

soonyoung stares. he leans on his arm, fingers splayed against soft linens and body cushioned by thick duvets. on the other side of the bed, you’re sleeping.

before – that is to say, before you realized that soonyoung was not your enemy, that he could even be your ally – you used to sleep with a body language so tight and rigid that soonyoung sometimes wondered if you ever actually slept at all. fully clothed in your heavy dresses and knotted corsets, arms stiff and legs curled at the very edge of the bed. it almost felt like sharing sleeping quarters with a heavy, big stone.

the sight that now greets him every morning before he has to leave to perform the mundane tasks that are expected of him, is something almost bizarrely opposite; something that makes his head spin even when he’s seen it time after time after time. your arms are stretched across the bed, reaching for the warmth of the space that soonyoung occupied mere minutes ago. sunlight puts an impossible sort of glow over your exposed skin and makes the back of soonyoung’s neck tingle. he reaches out, curls a lock of your hair around his finger.

a calculated mistake, so to speak. your eyes open. a slow, lazy action; even waking up has become a completely new, changed thing, unrecognizable in contrast to the eyes-wide-open, fully alerted way soonyoung has become accustomed to.

for a moment you just watch him, impassively; eyes barely open and fingers clutching at the white linens right by soonyoung’s thigh. you do not lean after his touch, nor away from it. this new, tentative closeness between you feels fragile at all times, and soonyoung worries, not for the first time, if he’s crossed a line.

“are you staring at me?” you ask, sleepiness tugging at your vocal chords. the sound makes soonyoung’s chest tighten with something he doesn’t quite recognize. it’s a warm, fuzzy feeling. the tip of soonyoung’s tongue tastes of the same illegal, dangerous thing that seems to surround everything involving you. soonyoung feels a surge of courage sizzling through his veins, lets his hand disappear fully into the mess of your hair. your eyes flutter close, a low rumble of a hum slipping past your lips.

“yes,” he admits, his thumb flitting along your cheekbone. your eyes open again, observe him carefully. soonyoung has known, probably ever since he started teaching you how to read, ever since you started letting your guard down and your mouth speak freely, that he is in love with you. he’d told you as much; that he’d do anything to ensure your happiness. he feels it now, though, harder and clearer than ever before in the pale sunlight and the soft glow that surrounds you both. it almost feels like peace, like freedom. “i love you.”

you inhale, raise your hand to glide along his thigh and reach for his burgunder tie. the silence feels overwhelming. and then you tug, almost forcefully enough to make soonyoung fall over you. he has to catch himself with his arms, cages you in between them, and your fingers reach, clutch at his face. he feels your breath over his mouth, and the anticipation is almost as deliriously wonderful as when your lips finally connect with his own.

the first kiss you shared, technically, was at your wedding. it was a standard procedure sort of thing; a nod back to other times where marriages were a free, voluntary thing. just the barest touch of lips against lips. you’d grimaced afterwards, and soonyoung had pretended not to noticed.

the second time– soonyoung can’t quite stop thinking about the second time. he finds that he struggles to put a name to it, to the rush of emotion and stress and confusion and relief, to the mess of it all. it had been a beginning, he now knows, though at the time he’d felt so overwhelmed that he’d thought it was an ending.

this; this lazy, casual press of lips, makes every nerve underneath soonyoung’s skin do somersaults. your arms wind around his neck, he lets himself fall against your body and against the softness of the bed, noses squished together and fingertips itching to touch. your own fingers move to ruffle his hair, to undo every attempt he’d made at making himself look presentable before leaving the house. he finds that he struggles to care.

“soonyoung,” you murmur, just a hair’s breadth away from him. he feels the vibrations of your voice through his entire body, shivers with the way his name sounds coming from your mouth. “i’m not–” here, you falter, and soonyoung’s throat feels constricted. you watch him, for a moment, fingers gliding along the skin of his face as if you’re trying to commit every line to memory. “i’m not bringing a child into this world.”

soonyoung’s breath stutters. even with the vagueness of the statement, the meaning is clear. he might have been the one to teach you how to read, but you’ve taught him how to read between the lines. hesitation twinkles in your eyes when soonyoung fails to immediately respond. he leans back in, presses his lips against yours; quickly, with an intake of breath. “i guess,” he murmurs, peppers your face with kisses. his hand clutches at the fabric of your shirt, right above your stomach.

“Can you do it?” He asks, sees as little a point in dawdling as you do. His hands are clenched at his sides, the syllables that drift out of his mouth stiff and tense. It’s a wonder, really, how much humans seem to care about mortality, considering their short, insignificant lives. 

“No,” you tell him earnestly. Well– mostly earnestly. You can, of course, if you pull the right strings and make the right deals. You’ve made some sort of preparations, so to speak; found the dead boy’s location and made sure the wrong creatures do not sink their claws in him. You’d rather leave the rest up to someone else. Joshua opens his mouth, probably to complain about deceit and waste of time, but you silence him with a swift palm raised in his direction. “But I know someone who can.”

~~

“And you’re sure this Hoseok guy is going to help?” Joshua asks, for the third time in as many hours. You tap a long finger impatiently against the fogged up window to you right, try not to let it show that you’re uncomfortable in your seat. You can’t really remember the last time you rode in a car, but you remember – quite vividly – where your reluctance to do so came from. Your whole body feels off-kilter, shaken and rattled by every hole in the road and by the ever present thrum of the motor. 

“I’ve already told you,” you mutter, struggle with how thick and clumsy your own tongue feels in your mouth; nausea pushing at the back of your throat. The man’s fast and careless driving does little to alleviate your motion sickness. “He owes me one. He’s going to help.” The memory of a city in flames drift to the forefront of your mind, an unwanted sort of nostalgia tickling at your bones and pulling the edges of your lips down just a fraction.

Joshua hums. There’s something discordant and unpleasant about the sound, despite the man’s soft, low tones. “And you demons sure do love your debts, huh.” 

There’s a sort of bite to his words that you deem wholly unnecessary, that makes you want to bite right back. For centuries, you’ve been content with letting the war between demons and hunters wage on without getting involved, only stepping in when it was asked of you and retreating as soon as your tasks were done. Somehow, you had not imagined that your re-entering into that feud would be on the side of the weak, temperamental humans. 

“You should be grateful,” you tell him, try to keep the poison out of your tone. You might not be human, might not be bound by the same emotional whims as the man next to you in the car, but you still remember the sting off losses of your own, and despite your reputation you’re not an emotionless, unsympathetic creature. To some extent, you do feel sorry for the guy. “Our love of debts is in your favor this time, after all.” You hope the air-quotes you can’t find the energy to physically make is visible enough in your voice. 

Joshua doesn’t respond, but when he glances over at your stiff form, his gaze has softened. You smooth your thumb over the scar along your thigh, and you swear you can feel the bumps of hastily done stitches that left protruding, circular scars on both sides of a thick, ugly line even through the fabric of your pants.

“We’ll see,” Joshua says, and you suppose you will.

~~

“Well, isn’t this an unlikely duo?” 

There’s something about Hoseok that never fails to make the back of your neck tingle. His voice might be pleasant and his expression might be bright, but there’s a distinct sense of mockery that never strays too far away from his lines and his octaves, and even as far as crossroad demons go, he might be the one who makes you the most uneasy. 

The demon in question claps his hands together over his chest, red eyes glowing almost ominously in the pale light of the morning. The hints of a sunrise peeking through the trees gives his tangerine hair a glow that reminds you, uncomfortably, of flames.

“It’s been a while, Hoseok,” you curtly reply, keep your distance as you step out of the car on wobbly legs. Joshua follows suit, stands at your side. You wonder how the demon-friendly boy is feeling now, stuck between two red-eyed monsters. “I hear you’ve been keeping yourself busy.” 

A grin spreads on Hoseok’s lips, slowly and sharply and with the distinct feel of threat reflected in his sparkling row of teeth. You remember when Hoseok was nothing but a simple deal-maker, when his antics were limited to fooling desperate humans. It’s apparent, by his square shoulders and his confident stance, that he enjoys his newfound infamy. 

He waves his hand in your direction, a low, rolling chuckle slipping past his lips. “Oh please,” he says, without an ounce of humility. “We’re not here to talk about me, I hope.” Joshua shifts, takes a step forward. You quickly put a hand on his shoulder, try not to cringe at the way his entire body seems to stiffen. You can’t really blame him, you suppose. 

“I’m here to cash in on that favor you owe me,” you tell the crossroad demon, taking great care not to let the uncertainty slip through your teeth and into the tones of your voice. Hoseok’s eyes seem to grow in intensity, and the air seems to crack as he disappears, reappearing right in front of you. His breaths fall against your nose, and somehow the demon smells like death. 

“Ain’t that interesting,” he tall man whispers, leveling you with a searching gaze that feels heavy against your skin. “I don’t suppose that favor has anything to do with this charming young man’s deceased companion?” There’s a glowing glint to his eyes that makes it blatantly obvious that Hoseok already knows about your recent visits to the underworld. Your jaw tightens, and you have to force yourself not to fold under his glare. 

“How do you know about that?” Joshua pipes up from your side, suspicion dripping from his soft voice. Your hand is still on his shoulder, fingernails digging into the fabric of his thick jacket. You hope he doesn’t notice the way your fingers twitch. 

“He’s got his fingers in a lot of pies,” you mutter, not without disdain. Hoseok takes it in stride, of course, a sort of wicked pride tugging at the edges of his mouth. 

“I do love pie,” he supplies with a jovial shrug. He takes a step back, and your stance relaxes a fraction. You never liked Hoseok much, even before he got chummy with the scum of the underworld. “I’m surprised, though,” he continues, tilting his head to the side. “That you’d use your get out of jail free-card on this human boy.” 

He’s fishing, you know, trying to dig into your head in that twisted way he does. Hoseok doesn’t just peddle in deals, and he is not above using your secrets against you if need be. You’re not about to give him any freebies, so you keep your mouth shut and in a thin line. 

“But then,” he murmurs, his voice gentle in a way that makes you feel profoundly uncomfortable. “You always had an affinity for humans, didn’t you?” 

You feel Joshua’s eyes on you. You ignore it. There’s complete silence dominates Hoseok’s crossroad, and it feels like the loudest thing you’ve ever heard. The crossroad demon’s lip twitches. 

“Not in the mood for catching up, I see,” he says with a sort of sharp intake of breath through his teeth, as if to just accentuate the awkwardness of the silence. With a crack, he’s disappeared and reappeared back in the middle of his crossroad. A waterfall of flow-y smoke falls from between his long, pale fingers, and he produces an intimidating silver knife. He drags the steel across his own palm, flicks dark, almost black blood in your direction. It splatters across the ground, sizzles and burns holes in the asphalt. 

“Twenty-four hours,” he tells you, dropping all of his playful pretenses and letting his true, low tones slip through his teeth instead. Somehow, Hoseok scares you less like this; seems far less threatening in his husky voice than in his fake pleasantries. “I hope you know what you’re doing, sweetheart.” 

And, well– that makes two of you.

~~

“I told you,” you sigh, breath fogging up the window as you lean your forehead against it, hands gripping at the plush of the passenger seat. “Twenty-three hours and you’ll have your boy back.” Joshua breathes harshly through his nose, keeps his eyes on the road. His hands grip at the steering wheel. 

“Yes,” he observes, with considerably less enthusiasm than you’d expected. “You’ve certainly made some powerful friends since the last time I saw you.” 

He addresses you as if he’s your father; as if he’s disapproving of your boyfriend or your new circle of friends. It’s strangely intimate for acquaintances, and you don’t really know how to respond to the accusation, such as it is. “I wouldn’t go that far,” you settle on, shifting your legs awkwardly in the cramped space of the car. “Anyways, I hope you didn’t have your friend cremated, otherwise this trip is completely wasted.” 

You think about the few hunter customs that you know of, of funeral pyres and of drowning your sorrows in revenge and booze. Joshua seems to have forgone all of that, but then, he’s not really a hunter, is he? He taps his fingers along the rubber of the steering wheel, eyes squinting as if he’s looking beyond the landscape rushing by and into some distant memory. 

“It was my fault we were at that river in the first place,” he says, as if he totally missed your jokey comment about cremation (which, to be fair, might have been for the best). You feel an emotional story coming, and you brace yourself. Joshua Hong might not be your least favorite human, but this trait that humans seem to all possess, this need to share, you could be without. “We were on our way to visit his sister, and I just had to stop and look for fucking rocks.” 

You blink at that, mystified by the nonsensical notion of stopping by a river to look for rocks, until you remember that the boy had, the last time the two of you met, had a collection of small, colorful stones in the pocket of his jacket. He had told you at the time, with a needle sticking into the skin of your thigh and a bottle of vodka on the ground next to him, that he needed something to collect, something to keep him grounded in all the crazy he was surrounded by. 

“He was gone before I even managed to pull him out of the water,” he says it with the sort of detachment that only someone who has spent too much time agonizing over a tragedy can manage. No wonder he looks like he hasn’t slept since; you’ve seen river spirits before, know how violent and ravenous they can get. People give demons and vampires flack for killing without a reason; water spirits kill for sport, feed on the look of pain and fear in their victims eyes. 

Truth be told, you’re not sure what to say. You’re not sure why you’re even still with the  boy, why you’re enduring yet another horrid ride in his vehicle from hell. The young man had given you a sort of glare that seemed to tell you to get in the car when Hoseok had disappeared from the crossroad, and for some reason you’d just followed along. He’s lonely, you figure; desperate for interaction after the loss of his friend. 

“There’s no use in obsessing over it now,” you tell him, for lack of a more comforting thing to say. Joshua hums, as if that’s just what he expected you to say. His hands grip a bit tighter around the wheel, but his face remains unchanged. “It’s fixed now anyways, isn’t it? You corrected whatever mistake you think you made.” 

Joshua hesitates, looks like he wants to argue, but ultimately he settles on chewing on his bottom lip and muttering a sort of quiet and demure ‘thank you’, and the rest of the ride passes in silence.

You’ve never seen anyone awaken from the dead before, though you have heard the horror stories. Most of the time, they involve vampires, and their semi-barbaric ritual of making their ‘newborns’ claw themselves out of their graves as sort of a test to see if they’re strong enough to be accepted into the coven. 

The graveyard is quiet, bathed in a soft, orange light that illuminates on top of shimmering gravestones. Birds hum in the distance and despite your inability to feel cold, goosebumps erupt along your forearms. Then again, maybe that’s just the tension from what’s about to happen.

‘Hansol Vernon Chwe’ the gravestone reads; elegant, golden letters against smooth, grey stone. The sound of dirt being shoveled distracts you from being too caught up in the solemn mood of the place, and when you level your eyes squarely on the growing hole in front of you, you see that Joshua seems to have finally hit the casket. 

“Fancy funeral for a hunter,” you remark, forget to even take into consideration that humans tend to be a lot touchier about death than demons are. Joshua stops digging, gazes up at you from his deep hole. It’s actually a bit impressive, how competent of a grave robber the pretty boy would’ve been, had he not had such a spotless moral compass. He squints up at you, and you grimace. “Sorry. Graveyards make me uncomfortable.”

“His parents didn’t know,” he supplies, kneeling down to dust dirt and pebbles off of the surface of the casket. You take a step closer to the edge of the hole to look down. Even the wood of the casket looks expensive, you muse. “They think it was some freak accident.” 

You wonder if that’s really true, or if it’s just another case of humans pretending to believe things because it’s more convenient. Whatever the case, you choose not to voice that suspicion, deciding to instead address an equally important question. “What’re you gonna tell ‘em now, then?”

Joshua exhales through his nose. It’s a long and exhausted sound, the kind of elongated sigh that sounds like it strains the lungs. When he looks up at you, a thin layer of sweat covers his forehead. “Well, you’re called the memory stealer, aren’t you?”

A muscle in your jaw twitches, and you have to fight back the urge to bite your own tongue just to keep yourself from coming with a scathing remark. You hate that name, hate the implications of it, hate that someone as soft and careful as Joshua Hong knows about it. Most of all, you hate that you can’t deny it. You don’t respond. It seems he doesn’t need you to. He pushes back up into a standing position, massages his own neck with a dirty hand and glances at the watch strapped around his wrist. It looks almost like he’s regained some gusto you didn’t know he possessed, his movements more energized, more confident. 

Humans tend to need some sort of purpose, you suppose, some goal to work towards. No wonder he’s been so obsessive in his quest to revive this ‘Hansol’. 

“I need you to help me open up the casket.”

~~

A lot of things seem to happen at once. You take hold of the roof of the casket, feel the wood resist against your pull. The clock is ticking, and by the time you get the top of the casket off, the wood creaking in pain at the forceful handling, twenty-four hours have passed. 

The boy emerges from the soft, plush inside of his not-so-final resting bed like an abused animal from a cage that’s just been opened. He flings himself over you with a force you’d be impressed with had you not been so caught surprised by it. He brings his fingers – bony and stiff with inactivity – around your neck, knocks his long, skinny body against you and makes you fall over against the walls of the hole. Dirt and grime drizzles down your face, your body, and once you’ve got your head straight again, you raise your hand to blast him back. 

“Vernon,” Joshua half-whispers, half-yells from somewhere in front of you, his voice coated in something that sounds like a bizarre mix of relief and panic. You spot the man as he puts his hands on your attacker’s shoulders, his knuckles whitening with the forcefulness of his grip. “Stop, you’re safe. You’re back.”

His grip loosens, like he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing, fingertips still digging into the base of your neck. That, at least, is a good sign; that he at least still have some semblance of sanity left. He stares you down, breathes so rapidly and loudly that it sounds like it must hurt his throat. Recognition flashes in his eyes. His hair falls down his forehead, pale brown and greasy against his skin. 

“I know you,” he says, and his voice feels like being hit in the face; too low for his pretty face and too raspy for his smooth features. He lets his arms fall from your neck to hang stiffly at his sides. Joshua shoots you a suspicious glare. “You were there.” 

He doesn’t even call it by name, doesn’t need to. The mere mention is enough to send shivers down your spine. It runs through your body, makes you feel the flames lick at your skin and the screams of pain echo in your head. At least he doesn’t look as ragged as he had done down there. You wonder if that sense of victory that blooms in the pit of your stomach is anything like whatever possesses Joshua to keep doing what he does. 

“What the fuck is going on, Josh?” Vernon twists his head and upper body to face his friend, the detached, almost angry tone of his voice making the other man frown. There’s a stiffness to his body that you don’t think comes from having been dead, and you think back to the stories you’ve been told about people being brought back to life. About the man who lost his daughter, who sold his soul to get her back, only to discover it had been to late, that her sanity had been broken months ago and all that was left was a body. Not even a demon, or a ‘zombie’. Just a rabid, scared little girl. 

Hansol – or Vernon, as Joshua had called him – doesn’t seem to be quite there, but he does seem to have lost something, still. There’s a lack of an inflection when he speaks, a robotic sort of tenseness to his movements, small as they are. You wonder if, if you strip him of his black blazer and his neat, white shirt, you can still make out the wounds and scars from the razor sharp, metallic whip that the demons of the underworld seem to favor. 

“I’ll explain everything,” Joshua promises, puts his hand securely around Vernon’s upper arm. “But not here. Not right now.” His voice is hard, echoes with authority. You’re starting to realize that Joshua’s reputation as a soft, peace loving pacifist might not be completely accurate. 

He did, after all, just disobey one of the most basic laws of nature. 

Joshua clumsily helps Vernon out of the hole, both of their outfits getting smeared in filth in the process. The sun is starting to rise dangerously, and the time until they’re undoubtedly caught digging up graves is closing in on you all. Usually, you’d take this risk as your cue to leave, but somehow the blank, disinterested look on Vernon’s face and the low, terrified tones of Joshua’s voice has you hesitating. 

“Go back to the car,” you tell them both, cracking the muscles in your fingers as if to warm yourself up. The art of manipulating time and space is not an easy thing, never a pleasant experience even for you, who has all the practice in the world at it. “I’ll take care of this mess.”

It seems to dawn on Joshua, then, that he had not thought things completely through, that he didn’t really have a plan for covering up this particular mess. You try not to roll your eyes, settle instead for a raised brow and a knowing look. Cleaning up after humans seems to be a byproduct of dealing with the species. Joshua nods, and you turn back to look at the mess. You inhale. And then you work.

Getting the dirt and the soil back in it’s original place is no task at all, truly. Just a matter of some levitation and a bit of willpower; even the newest, less experienced demons with an ambition in time and memory work could do something as simple, something that basically comes down to gardening. The fact that the grave was new, fresh to begin with works to your advantage, no need for grass to sprout on top of the soil once it’s put back in it’s spot. 

Changing the inscriptions on the tombstone is a bit harder, makes the back of your eyes prickle as if someone’s poking you with needles. You replace the name with the first name that comes to mind, a name that never got a proper tombstone or a proper burial. You pretend to convince yourself that the sting in your chest comes from exhaustion. 

The last part of the spell – as people has called it – the part that fills your mouth with a coppery taste and that has blood dripping out of your mouth, is the lingering, long lasting field of manipulation around the grave. You can’t completely erase Vernon’s existence, nor the actuality of his death, but you can confuse people coming to his grave enough to distract from it.

“Neat trick,” you hear from behind you, the voice so unexpected it makes you jump. You’re faced, unsurprisingly, with Vernon’s distinct features and tired eyes, his gaze not focused on you but on the tombstone behind you. “So do I just not exist anymore or what?” 

You frown, twist your hands around to loosen the tension in your wrists. “Don’t be silly,” you tell him, more than a little bit uncomfortable with being alone with the dead boy walking. “For that I’d have to eat the heart of a newborn.”

Vernon blinks, but his face remains otherwise blank. For a moment you’re not even sure that he’s caught on to the fact that you were joking, and you suppose that’s on you for trying to crack jokes over the grave of a boy who’s been alive again for a whopping ten minutes. “Funny,” he supplies at last, but his voice is devoid of emotion. He shifts on his feet in clunky steps, looks back as if to make sure no one’s listening in on your conversation. 

“Are you going to do that to my family as well?” He asks, and normally you’d be able to gauge what response someone was looking for by the way they asked the question. Having lived as long as you have, human behavior becomes sort of predictable, after all, but Vernon doesn’t move, doesn’t raise his voice, and all you really manage to do is nod. “Good,” he mutters, and that’s that. You wonder if he’ll have the same opinion on the matter once his emotions return – if they ever do. 

“Did you tell Joshua? About Hell, I mean,” He goes on, surprisingly talkative for someone so dull and rough around the edges. There’s a raspy quality to his voice that you doubt is supposed to be there, and when you tell him that no, you haven’t talked to Joshua about Hell at all, Vernon looks the most relieved that he’s done since coming back to life. “Don’t. He doesn’t need to know.”

You don’t tell Vernon that you hadn’t intended to anyways, that you’d rather not talk or think about the underworld ever again. That’s not their business, just like Vernon’s decision is not yours. Vernon turns back to retreat towards Joshua’s car, and after one lingering glance back at the masked tombstone, you follow. You swipe your hand at the drying blood right above your lip, and you brace yourself for phase two.

(The mind is a fragile thing, vulnerable to impressions and attacks in all forms. This is true for all sentient beings, even those who dabble in memory curses and manipulation. For as easy it is to shape the mind as you want with your skills, it’s dangerous, not to mention draining, taking much more energy out of you than connecting made up memories to a place or an object. It’s a risk every time you do it, and you suppose that is how it has to be. 

Which is why you tell Joshua to join you as you stop the car in front of Vernon’s parents’ house, why reluctance bites at your skin as you get out of the car. When you turn to look back, Vernon himself is staring unblinkingly at you from his seat. 

His family is just what you’d expect from someone with such a bright and warm home, from someone who cared enough to put so much money into their son’s funeral. They greet Joshua like he’s one of their own, gentle hands and tight hugs making the both of you uncomfortable. They do not ask questions, do not put you on the spot, and for the first time in many years, you feel a pang of genuine guilt at what you’re about to do. 

Stealing memories from a person feels sort of like sucking all of the air out of the room and into your own mouth. There’s a taste to it, in a way, a flavor of longing and love and pain tickling the roof of your mouth with each emotion, each thought that fills your body and occupies the space in your head. You can’t remove Vernon’s existence completely, not when there are so many objects that tell of his presence in his family’s life, but you can remove the hurt, the death and the funeral. That doesn’t make it un-happen, doesn’t make the pain erased from the world, only moves it somewhere else.

Your heart is heavy with each thought, with the memories of black clothes and high pitches crying that forces itself into your mind, and though you do not know the boy more than you know of his presence in the car right outside, you mourn his passing as if you’ve known him since birth. You want to cry, you want to yell and throw things around, and distantly you feel a sort of self-loathing for things unsaid, words that aren’t even your own but that feels undeniably true in your heart.

The last thing you recall before the spell is complete and you fade into unconsciousness is a strong, overwhelming thought of ‘why couldn’t it have been me instead’. And then everything goes black.)

~~

When you wake up, you’re in an unfamiliar room, lying in an unfamiliar bed. The remnants of emotions and memories that aren’t yours linger in the back of your mind, makes the hair at the back of your neck stand. Your vision is foggy, your body hot and cold all at once.

”You’re awake,” comes the easily recognizable, raspy sound of Vernon’s voice from next to you, and when you twist your body around to follow the sound, you’re met with red cheeks and plump lips, pale brown curls that look a lot less lifeless after – you assume – a thorough shower. He looks down at you, looks considerable more alive than he did when you first un-buried him, but his gaze is still, for the most part, blank. That much is to be expected, but somehow, with the new surge of memories connected to the boy, it hurts to look at him. 

”Joshua’s grocery shopping,” he explains, rolls his shoulders almost as if he’s uncomfortable. You hum, let your gaze follow the lines of his face and the arch of his neck before you sit up and stretch. Outside, the sun is high on the sky; you must have been out for at least a few hours. “We’re at a motel. He said you needed rest.” 

”So you’ve just been creepily staring at me while I was sleeping, then?” you mutter, fingers clutching at your tense shoulder, nails digging into skin. Vernon exhales through his nose, drags a hand through his hair. He leans back in his chair, head slightly tilted as he watches your movements. 

”Joshua’s acting like I’m gonna burst into flames any moment,” Vernon says without really looking at you, seems to fall further into the plush of his chair. “It’s driving me crazy.” Somehow, you’re not sure if he really understands how unsettling that sentence is, considering. “Besides,” he continues, leaning a fraction closer to your spot on the bed. You feel strangely exposed, put on the spot by the sudden closeness. “I feel less dead when you’re here. Why is that?”

The confession, blunt and careless as it is, sends a shiver through your body, makes you feel off-kilter in a way that’s both completely too familiar and strange all at once. It makes you mourn for him, in a sense, to know that he still feels dead after being resurrected. It’s one of the prices you have to pay, you suppose, when you play around with something as important as life and death. It’s unfair, really, that he had to pay it, as little as he had to do with the resurrection itself. 

”I don’t know,” you tell him, leaning back on your arms for support. Your shoulders feel heavy, weighed down by the intensity of Vernon’s glare. It’s apparent that the boy’s not as easily swayed and endeared to dark creatures as his companion is. “I’m sure it’ll pass.” 

Vernon hums, a surprisingly soft sound that vibrates through his closed lips as he turns his gaze to the open window at the end of the tiny bedroom. “Isn’t it kind of funny? You’re the demon, but I’m the one who seems less human.” 

He doesn’t sound like he finds it funny at all. The inexplicable need to ease up the lines of tension in the lines of his face makes your fingers itch. 

”If it makes you feel any better,” you start with uncertainty coating your tongue and making it feel awkward in your mouth. You’ve never really been good at comfort, never been put in a position where you’ve felt like you have to consider your words and mind your tones. Vernon looks fierce, looks strong; his jawline sharp and his features more defined with the hours he’s spent back above the earth, but somehow his presence feels fragile, like a string pulled too thin. “I ripped open a casket and defiled a tombstone. As far as humanity goes, I think you’re still in the lead.”

Vernon’s lip twitches, tells in low whispers of a secret sort of smile that almost breaks out on his face. It’s a start, if nothing else. “It doesn’t,” he murmurs, with a distant sort of warmth to his low tones. “But thank you for trying.” 

The floorboards creak in the hallway, and when you snap your gaze in the direction of the barely open door, you see the flash of a figure disappearing from the opening. 

It’s hard to care about the fact that Joshua’s been eavesdropping when Vernon’s eyes shine as bright as you’ve seen them.

(The third night of your stay at the motel, you hear a garbled sort of scream coming from one of the connecting rooms. You jolt up in your own bed, sit up with your hands clutching at the sheets and your eyes squinted in an attempt at looking around the room. Your first thought is that someone’s found you, someone who does not approve of Joshua’s attempts at playing God. 

The aforementioned man himself appears in the doorway to your room, hair sticking out in every direction and face coated in a mixture of sleep and panic. 

“He’s having a nightmare,” he explains, and the organ in your chest relaxes a fraction; at least that means no demons or monsters are knocking down your doors yet. “I can’t–” he cuts himself off, a layer of shame taking over his expression. “I can’t wake him up.” 

There’s a tinge of resentment there, but underneath it you can hear the underlying tint of a question he’s reluctant to ask. You inhale, drag yourself out of the bed. Inexplicably, embarrassment burns at the back of your throat as you follow Joshua out into the hallway, the screams increasing in volume, it seems, with every step you take. Joshua pushes open the door to what you assume to be Vernon’s bedroom. 

The boy lies in his bed, knuckles as white as the sheets his fists are clutching to, and his skin shimmers brightly with a thin layer of sweat. You shoot Joshua an uncertain look, only moving into the bedroom when the man nods, presses a gentle hand to your shoulder blade. You chew on your bottom lip, approach the screaming boy and put your hands on his face. His skin feels like fire. 

“Vernon,” you murmur, realizing only after the fact that it’s the first time you’ve said his name out loud. He tries to wrestle his face out of your grip, but even in his sleeping panic, he’s got nothing on your inhuman strength. You dig your fingernails into his cheeks, force his face in your direction. You repeat his name, louder this time, more authoritative and with the barest tint of persuasive power slipping through your lips. “Wake up,” you tell him, more a command than anything else. 

When he obeys, it’s with a sharp intake of breath and a jolt as if he’s been struck by lightning. He stares at you as if he doesn’t quite recognize you, and for a moment you worry he’s about to start hyperventilating; his chest rising and falling a tad too rapidly. When at last he murmurs your name, it’s with a softness that makes you feel off-kilter and strange; not entirely an unpleasant feeling. You hear the door close behind you, and then it’s just the two of you in the darkness. 

“It was just a nightmare,” you tell him. A presumptuous statement, considering you know first hand how real dreams can turn out to be. Vernon grimaces, and when you make a move to remove your hands from his face, he moves quickly, hand coming up to grip at your wrist, keep your hand there.

“Was it, though?” He asks, eyes hooded. You feel the vibrations of his voice against your palm, and it almost makes your breath hitch. 

An affinity for humans, Hoseok had said. You thought you’d ridden yourself of that quality ages ago. The warmth that spreads through your body as Vernon sleepily leans against your palm tells another story. 

“You should sleep more,” you tell him, opting to ignore his question. He lets the hand that’s holding onto you fall, but does not loosen his grip, making your own arm fall against the mattress with it. “It’s still dark outside.” You hope he doesn’t notice the uneven quality of your voice. He falls back against his pillow. When you try to push yourself back up from your kneeling position next to the bed, his grasp around your wrist tightens, nails digging crescents into your skin. 

He doesn’t speak, doesn’t say anything, but somehow his eyes tell you everything you need to know; fear and shame battling for domination in his expression. You sit back down against the cold floor, lean your back against the side of the bed, and only then does he let go of your wrist.

You spend the rest of the night listening to the discordant song of your heart beating in your chest, almost, sort of in tune with Vernon’s breath as it evens out and he falls back asleep.)

~~

A long time ago, when you had a companion of your own, you were often told of how you carried yourself as if you were a cold, cynic being of the underworld, but that underneath you hid a myriad of too strong emotions. You used to vehemently deny this accusation, scrunch up your nose and make some sort of scathing remark.

But now, weeks into your new companionship with a makeshift doctor for demons and humans alike and a recently dead boy, you can’t really find it in you to deny it anymore. 

Vernon is starting to act more like a human being again, chuckles at your throwaway jokes and chides Joshua for his hovering with true emotion coated in his voice. He still has nightmares, still clutches at your skin after every one of them. You’ve started renting only two bedrooms at the motels you stay at. Joshua looks at you with suspicion in his otherwise gentle face, but he says nothing.

“Sometimes I still feel the lashes across my back,” Vernon whispers, his breaths hitting your face with each syllable. Joshua might keep quiet, might keep his emotions masked and his true thoughts unheard, but Vernon– Vernon talks like he’ll cease to exist if he doesn’t. He tells you about his nightmares, about how he can’t be sure whether they’re just that– dreams, or if they’re suppressed memories from his time in the underworld. You want to assure him that they’re the former, want to reach out and smooth out the wrinkles of stress on his face, but somehow the sight of him steals away your ability to move and all you can do is listen. 

You’re not sure if he even notices how touchy he becomes once he’s grown used to your presence next to him; his fingers running absentminded lines and shapes over your exposed skin, pressing into your flesh when he recalls something especially uncomfortable. It’s a strange shift, when he goes from that unintentionally restrained nonchalance that drifts over him sometimes during the day, emotions seemingly not the default setting in his brain, to that wide open, vulnerable and genuine being he is when the sun disappears behind the trees. 

You think Joshua might be jealous that Vernon somehow feels more comfortable opening up to you than he feels towards his oldest friend. You want to tell him it’s just because he wants to spare him of the gruesome details. It’s easy to think, with just one glance, that Joshua is the protective one out of the two; the truth is that the boys seem to share a bond that’s so genuine and so fiercely loyal that nothing even comes close, least of all you, the newcomer. 

So maybe, then, you’re the jealous one. 

“I want to try something,” Vernon says quietly, voice barely above a whisper and almost not loud enough to pull you out of your train of thought. When you focus your gaze back up at his face, there’s open hesitation visible in the soft lines of his face. His fingers stop at the edge of your shoulder, plays with the hem of your t-shirt. You can’t be sure if the way his gaze drops for a moment, seemingly lingering at the bottom of your face, is a trick of the light or an actual thing. Whatever the case, it makes you heart do a weird sort of jump in your chest. “If that’s okay with you.” 

“Sure,” you whisper, try to keep your voice steady. The exhale that leaves Vernon’s mouth if nothing if not relieved. And then he’s shifting on the bed, his hands coming up to rest against your cheekbones in a scene at almost perfectly mirrors the one that had started your shared living situation in the first place. At first you think that might be all he wants to do, to press his fingertips into the flesh of your cheeks and rub his fingers along the edges of your lips, but then he’s leaning closer, his eyes falling shut, and you forget how to breathe.

You’ve been kissed before, of course; by multiple people and in multiple circumstances. Some of them were slow and meaningful, others just a means to seal a deal. None of them felt quite like this. Vernon clutches at your face as if his own actions terrifies him, as if he’s not wholly sure that he should be doing what he’s doing. He breathes through his nose, sharp huffs of air against your skin, and for a moment all there is to it is a press of lips against lips. It’s nothing, all things considered, but somehow it feels like it’s everything. His pulse feels like a drum against your skin.

Somewhere between the tenth and the fifteenth beat of your heart, he seems to gain confidence, pulling at your face as if he wants to consume you, lips moving just enough to make your own hands grasp at the front of his shirt. Every inch of your body feels like it’s on fire; the feeling too much, too overwhelming, too pleasant for you even to consider what that means. When Vernon pulls his face away from yours, something that sounds partly like an exhale and partly like a giggle escapes his mouth, and your heart literally soars.

“Did you figure it out?” you ask breathlessly, head swimming and skin itching. Your lips feel cold, wet without his own pressed against them, and an impulse you barely manage to fight back urges you to lean after him. Vernon swallows thickly, his hands not leaving your face.

“I’m not sure,” he says with a sort of wonder coating the tones of his voice. He sounds more like himself, like the image of him that you stole from his parents, than he has ever done before. His gaze falls back down to your lips and he murmurs, “I think I should try again.” 

You put your fingers gingerly at the back of his ears and you pull. You let him try again. And again. And again and again until you can’t even remember what the purpose of it all was in the first place.

~~

More weeks pass, and somehow you fall into a routine. The routine consists of you telling yourself to withdraw yourself from the previous duo of two human boys, to leave before things get messy, followed by doing the exact opposite. You let Vernon tangle his fingers with your own in quiet, unnoticed moments, let him trail kisses along your jawline and press his fingernails into your hips, and you pretend that you’re not getting completely swallowed up by a boy who’s still learning how to feel again.

(Joshua, on the other hand, does not pretend not to notice, though that would’ve been the – in your opinion – more polite, less annoying thing to do.)

When two weeks pass without incident, without nightmares, you tell yourself you’re going to stop sleeping in the same bed as him. Joshua squints, glares intensely at you when you interrupt him at the counter of the next motel and tell the manager that you’ll need three bedrooms rather than two. Vernon almost doesn’t look nonchalant. 

He comes into your room later that night, whispered words of apologies and worries eager to tumble out of his mouth. Has he done something wrong, he wonders. Has he made you uncomfortable, forced his intimacy on you without caring about your wishes? He’s careful not to speak of feelings, but there’s a distinct undercurrent of the thing, nonetheless. 

(”Listen,” Joshua says, pulling you out of your clouded mind and troubled thoughts. When you look up to meet his gaze, there’s a sort of hardness to his expression that makes you feel oddly put in place, even before he’s opened his mouth. “We need to talk about you and Vernon.”)

“No,” you tell him, truthfully, with a heart that hammers too hard, feels to exposed. “I just thought, you haven’t had any nightmares lately. Figured you’d want to try sleeping on your own again.” You’re careful not to talk about your own wants, or your own wishes, scared of something you’re not ready to voice slipping through your gritted teeth. 

“And if I don’t?” He asks, as if it’s a challenge, as if he’s revealing his cards just by virtue of the question. “Will you keep sleeping with me, then?” The phrasing catches you off guard, makes your skin feel hot and your palms sweaty. His own eyes widen, his face clearly reddened even in the darkness. He mutters, almost reluctantly, “You know what I mean.” 

(”What about me and Vernon?” You ask, as if the notion of the two of you put together in a sentence is absolutely ludicrous. Joshua’s gaze sharpens, and somehow you think you’ve said the wrong thing. Unfortunately for you both, you’re not known for folding against a challenge. You put your chin in the palm of your hand, stare back at him with venom that mirrors his own harsh expression.

“Vernon’s still learning how to be alive again, he doesn’t need you confusing him,” Joshua says, and at least you can give him credit for putting it bluntly and not beating around the bush. The accusation stings, more than you expected it to, and for a moment you can’t muster up any sort of response. “I don’t mind having you here, but if you’re just playing games, you should leave.”

There’s finality in his tone, and for a second you entertain the idea. He’s right, of course, in that you should leave. Hanging around humans clearly isn’t good for your mental health, and certainly not for your reputation. But the sight of Vernon’s smile, still awkward and kind of uncertain, drifts to the forefront of your mind, and makes your breath come out as a shudder.

“You have to stop babying him, Joshua,” you murmur, attempt to make your voice as soft and smooth as possible. “Vernon’s more resilient than you think.”)

The smart thing to do, you think, is to tell Vernon to go back to his room, to get used to sleeping alone. There’s no need, really, for the two of you to share quarters anymore, and you’re sure that the reason he’s so reluctant to do so is that he’s gotten used to the shared warmth of two bodies in one bed. You tell yourself this, force yourself to believe it, because any other line of thinking undoubtedly only leads to heartbreak. But the mind; the mind is such a treacherous thing, and the thing that comes out of your mouth instead is: 

“Of course.”

You move over, make space from him on the mattress, and when Vernon climbs in with something that sounds too much like a relieved sigh, lies down and pulls you against his chest, you can’t do anything but chastise yourself for letting yourself so wrapped up in the boy that refusing him seems like such an impossibility. His arm feels heavy over your waist, his feet cold as they tangle up in your own, but somehow, sleep has never come more easily.

~~

The first time you sleep with Vernon, it’s an accident. Sort of.

You’re both more than a little buzzed, empty cans of beer littered over the floor and air hot with tension. Joshua has disappeared off to god knows where – something, you notice, he seems to do a lot these days – and the two of you are, more than ever, alone.

Vernon’s eyes are hooded, but his gaze is full of intent as he stares in you direction on the other side of the table. You try not to feel scrutinized, busy yourself with finishing off your beer. He reaches for your free hand where it lies with fingers spread over the brown wood of the table, intertwines his digits with your own and pulls. “Come here,” he murmurs, voice laced with the uneven notes of someone who’s had a tad too much to drink to be completely sharp in their pronunciations. 

You comply, pushing yourself to your feet and walking around the small table to stand in front of his own seated form. He stares up at you with a sort of twinkle you can’t be sure if comes from the dim lights in the roof of the room or from something else entirely. He snakes an arm around your waist and pulls, wraps his legs around yours and presses the side of his face to your stomach. 

It’s somehow both an oddly innocent and intimate action all at once, his fingertips slipping past the hem of your shirt to lightly skim over the skin of your back. He exhales, the sound stutter-y. When he speaks, the words vibrate against your stomach and you place your hands at his shoulders, if only because you think your feet might give out if you don’t. 

“I somehow imagined a demon to have cold skin,” he tells you, affection blatantly present in his voice as he presses his fingertips along your spine. He twists his head, his nose poking against your ribcage. The feeling makes you squirm, but it’s not wholly unpleasant. “You’re warm,” he whispers, voice muffled by the fabric of your shirt. “You have a heartbeat, too.”

You clutch at his sweater, try to stop yourself from shivering as you look down into his mess of curls. You could tell yourself it’s the alcohol that makes your heart rate speed up, that makes you want to press your thumb against the pulse in his neck and lean down to hide your face in his hair. But in this; in this honest and semi-drunken moment of intimacy, you allow yourself to be candid, if only to yourself. 

You really are falling for this silly, strange human.

“It’s just the benefits of a human host,” you murmur, not without humor, tangle your fingers into his hair, massaging his scalp in a show of affection you’ll probably berate yourself for later. Vernon hums, and you feel the upwards curve of his lips against your stomach even with the layer of fabric between your skin and his mouth. You wonder how it looks, feels a bizarre need to see how each and every sort of smile paints his face. “There’s still a scary, dark creature hiding underneath my skin.”

“Interesting,” he muses. Then he’s staring up at you, chin pressing into your stomach. His fingers inches upwards along your back, scrunching up your shirt as he goes. 

“Sometimes I feel like I’m taking advantage of you,” he confesses, cheeks red with more than just alcohol. The moment feels heavy, life-changing, somehow. His fingers inch higher, plays with the strap of your bra. “Like you’re just indulging me because of the whole… being dead thing.” 

You feel like if you were ever going to admit that you often feel the same way, that you fear that you’re abusing the soothing effect your presence seems to have on him, it would be now. That if you were going to confess that your heart seems to skip a beat every time he as much as looked your way, this would be the opportune moment.

But you never were the most courageous of demons, so instead you tell him; 

“As if a weak human boy could take advantage of a powerful demon like me.” 

Vernon laughs at that; a true laugh, a laugh that starts in his stomach and erupts out of his mouth as if it can’t help itself. It makes his mouth spread in a smile that is too wide, that makes his upper lip nothing but a thin line and that shows off a beautiful row of white teeth. That makes your heart do a strange wallop and that makes unbidden words curl your tongue in your mouth. 

Vernon stands up, his face light with humor and your shirt inch even further up your body. He takes a few steps, his face tilting slightly to angle itself against yours. “Is this okay?” He asks, pulls at your shirt as if to emphasize. You take hold of the bottom of your own shirt, pull it off in one swift movement, and once the garment is discarded, you wrap your arms around his neck and pull him into perhaps the first kiss between the two of you that you’ve initiated. 

He exhales through his nose, digs his fingers into your skin and blindly guides you in the general direction of the bed in the other end of the room. You both fall down on the hard mattress, the air knocked out of you for more reasons than the impact, and when Vernon situates himself between your legs, grounds his pelvis against yours in such a forceful, needy motion that it makes your breath catch, you can’t even muster up the will to feel bad about your choices.

(The pendant you always wear around your neck – a gift from a friend from a long, long time ago – is nowhere to be seen when you wake up to an empty bed the next day. It reappears, though, around Vernon’s neck when you find him outside chatting with Joshua. He looks at you like you’ve hung the bright, yellow sun in the sky and you can’t make yourself ask for the piece of jewelry back.)

~~

“I want to apologize to you,” Joshua says, seemingly out of nowhere, while the two of you raid the dairy aisle at the local 24 hours mart near the newest motel. The sincerity in his voice makes you pause, squinting in his direction as if you could decipher what he’s talking about if only you stared hard enough. 

“What for?” you relent at last, unable to summon up some sort of mind reader abilities out of nowhere. Joshua shrugs, grabs a carton of milk from the nearest shelf, looks around as if he’s  about to reveal some big secret. 

“For what I said about your thing with Vernon,” he tells you, and the mere mention of your… ‘thing with Vernon’ makes your face heat up. Suddenly, the laces on your shoes become intensely interesting, and you can’t quite look up from the floor. 

“Yes,” you reply, dragging out the vowel and making your tone carefully blank. You take care not to play into the confession you can tell he’s trying to drag out of you, responding instead with your natural instinct; to make a joke out of it. “I was sort of offended that you doubted my nanny-ing abilities.” Even to your own ears, the quip falls flat, and you grimace, grateful that you can’t see the look on the man’s face. Joshua hums, as he so often does whenever you’ve said something he finds interesting or telling for some reason.

“If that’s what you want to call it,” he allows, a sort of playful edge to his voice letting you know that he does not fall for your attempts at dodging the subject. He clears his throat, shuffles on his feet, and you can tell, without even looking at him, that he’s about to spout some typical human sincerities at you. “I see how the two of you look at each other. I’m sorry for misjudging you, that’s all.”

You’re about to reply, to follow up with another obviously dodgy joke, when Vernon appears from somewhere behind you, carrying a basket full of beer and snacks. He stops just a step too close for comfort following the conversation you’ve just had with Joshua, and when he presses a hand to the small of your back your neck tingles almost uncomfortably. “What’re you guys talking about?”

Joshua, to his credit, seems to catch quite quickly that you’re not wholly inclined to indulge more into the subject and lifts up the carton of milk instead, shaking it lightly with a pleasant smile on his face. “Milk,” he says, his tone so ridiculously bright that it must be the most obvious lie in the world. 

“Riveting,” Vernon replies, his thumb traveling along your spine in a slow, almost tantalizing line. Joshua rolls his eyes, strides past the both of you with a knowing look sent in your direction.

“Let’s get back to the motel,” he says, and then he’s walking towards the cashier as if he can’t get out of the store quickly enough. Once he’s out of sight, Vernon stares you down for a moment, before pressing a quick, casual kiss to your lips. It’s the sort of kiss you imagine couples must share; an afterthought more than a statement, but meaningful nonetheless. It makes you think about Vernon’s worries about taking advantage, about your own thoughts in that direction. 

You’ve dawdled too long, you conclude, watching the two men’s backs as you all retreat out of the store and back to the car. You barely even feel sick when you ride it anymore. Unease grips at your bones as you make a decision. 

It’s time to go back to your job as the memory stealer. Somehow you didn’t imagine you’d ever be your own client.

~~

You find Vernon at the top of a hill a few days later, head tilted back and with a beer in his hand. Once you step closer, you see stars reflected in his wide open eyes, his expression relaxed and neutral as he taps absentmindedly against the metal of the beer can. Your heart feels heavy, head buzzing with exhaustion and pulling at the frayed edges of reality; it’s already hard to distinguish what is real and what isn’t.

“I need to tell you something,” you say by way of greeting, stopping right next to him and making yourself comfortable on the grass. The vibrant, green strands tickle against your skin, but somehow the feeling just makes you heavier. Vernon turns his head to the side, looks at you with worry in the creases between his brows. 

“Something wrong?” he asks, and not for the first time you’re impressed with how far he’s come in terms of reading the mood. It’s easy to forget that just a mere two months ago, he barely even knew what a joke was, could not sleep without being overwhelmed by night terrors. You shrug. 

“There was a boy once,” you start, deciding to just jump right into it. You try remembering when you told this story last, when you muttered the name that now resides on a gravestone that used to read ‘Hansol Vernon Chwe’, but you come up empty. “His name was Jihoon. He was a human, too.” 

Vernon watches, his mouth pulled into a tight, carefully blank line. He does not speak. 

“We were kinda like you and Joshua, I guess; companions on the road. He hated me at first,” there’s some nostalgia there, some fondness hidden beneath all the hurt. It had been an unfortunate – not to mention ridiculous – curse that had brought you together at first, that had forced you and the temperamental, small human to travel together. By the time you found the cause of it, a bond had already formed. You tell Vernon this, explain your whole history in short, stunted sentences.

Your words start cracking once you get to the part with the vampires, with Jihoon begging you to let him die, to make sure he didn’t turn. To the part where you disregarded your friend’s – because you do not call Jihoon your lover, even if that might have been the more accurate term – wishes out of your own selfishness. “I haven’t seen him since.” 

“Sounds like you cared about him a lot,” Vernon says, his voice somewhere between understanding and something far less pleasant. He brushes his fingers along your knuckles, seems to hesitate with really touching you. “Where’s this going?” You frown, take a deep breath. No point in stalling the inevitable, you suppose. 

“I’m a curse,” you tell him, fingers grasping for strands of grass as if you need something to keep you grounded. Vernon makes a joke about being surprised that demons are superstitious, and had the mood not been so somber, you might have been proud that he seems to have adopted your penchant for cracking jokes when things get too serious. You take hold of his face, make sure to keep eye contact. “I’ll just get to the point. I’ve made Joshua forget about me.”

Vernon’s already large eyes widen almost comically. He tries to wrestle his face out from between your hands. It’s a futile attempt, of course, but you applaud him for his effort. “What the fuck?” He sputters, his fingernails digging into your wrists forcefully enough to hurt. You wince. 

“You don’t need me anymore,” you tell him, and suddenly you wish you had some sort of pre-rehearsed speech ready. The absolutely horrified look on Vernon’s face makes you feel sick, makes you want to disappear. “And I wasn’t supposed to stick around this long in the first place.” 

It’s a lie, of course; nothing but a shallow, selfish excuse. The truth is that you’re scared. That you haven’t felt something as strong as whatever it is you’re feeling for Vernon since Jihoon, decades and decades ago. And at this point, you’re not sure if it would be worse if he reciprocated those feelings, or if he didn’t.

“What the fuck does need matter?” Vernon hisses, his voice almost poisonous in his growing anger. He tries, once again, to force your hands away from their steel grip on his face. “I want you here. Joshua wanted you here. You have no right to fuck with our memories.” Your eyes feel wet, and you ponder at how long it has been since you last cried. This part, you prepared for; this part you have a response to, cruel as it might be.

“Just like I had no right to fuck with your parents’ memories?” you bite back, every word feeling like a dagger to your own chest. The scandalized look on Vernon’s face does little to help the situation. But still, you keep going. “There’s no moral high ground in these matters. This is my job.” There’s heartbreak open and visible in the lines of Vernon’s face, so genuine and so real that you almost believe in it. 

“I’m so stupidly, irrationally in love with you,” you tell him, press a dry, simple but undoubtedly meaningful kiss to his down-turned lips. You feel a strip of something wet run down your cheeks, feel the taste of salt at your bottom lip. “And I can’t stand it. I have to go.”

Vernon’s eyes turn blank, and you know that the continuous force of energy you’ve forced upon him has finally taken effect. You give him simple instructions, enough to make him get back to Joshua and the motel, but not enough to make his brain go haywire. 

And then you leave, disappearing in a cloud of smoke. For the first time in decades, you feel the taste of ashes on your tongue.

(The necklace Jihoon gave you used to be that one thing that anchored you, that made you feel real when memories tried to overtake you. The only thing you feel now when you put your hand up towards your neck is the bone at your collar and the distinct feel of loss. I love you I love you I love you echoes in your head, forceful as a punch to the face. 

It doesn’t echo in your own tone of voice.)

~~

Six months later, you get your first customer since your prolonged leave of absence.

At least, you assume it’s a customer, because only someone who comes to your new house with the right code in the form of four precise presses of the doorbell knows who you really are; The Memory Stealer. 

You’re sleepy, dizzy as you push yourself off of the couch and take the mandatory steps towards the front door. Your back complains in the form of a stinging pain with the less than ideal position you’ve been sleeping in these past few months; somehow you can’t quite get yourself to sleep in a bed.

All of that is completely forgotten when you open up the door, a familiar face greeting you on the porch. There’s something more human about his features than you’ve ever seen before, something more innocent and questioning, but the person standing in front of you is undoubtedly, heartbreakingly none other than Vernon Hansol Chwe. 

“Hiya,” he says, his voice light and airy and unlike anything you’ve ever heard before. He smiles in that way you’ve preferred to remember him; his lips stretched too thin and his teeth almost blinding. For a moment, you falter, stuck in your own lingering emotions. But then he says; “You’re the one they call the memory stealer, right?” and the bile in your throat seems to soothe, the pain in your chest lingering, but not overwhelming. ‘Right’ you murmur in response, and then he’s pushing past you, entering your home with all the gusto of someone who doesn’t know what fear feels like. It’s as heartwarming as it it frustrating.

Vernon twists his head from side to side, takes in the empty walls and the non-decorated home you live in. He turns back to look at you, tilts his head in a way that reminds you of precise kisses and whispered words.

“You sure took a long way to track down,” he tells you, fiddling with the hem of his own jacket. You try not to lean into the pleasant tones of his voice, try not to remember how much you’ve missed Vernon and his soft, plump mouth. 

“Is that so?” you reply, the question detached and not really a question. “What did you come for?”

Vernon stares at you, sizes you up and down as if he wants to fight. Then he’s grasping at a thread around his neck, and a pendant you recognize all to well appears from underneath the neck of his sweater. “Do your recognize this?” he asks, and all at once your body seems to shut down; your legs wobbling and your breath hitching so loudly and so quickly it rasps against the walls of your throat. 

“I’m so mad at you,” he says, taking a few measured steps to end up right in front of you, staring you down. He cups your face, and only then do you realize that your cheeks are wet. Vernon’s thumbs rub against the innermost parts of your cheekbones, and you feel so holy, so heavenly that you fear you might actually burst into flames.

You’re lying in your tent, and you find it hard to close your eyes. Whenever you do, the images of Soonyoung getting ripped apart right in front of you replay in your head, his screams echoing; bouncing between the walls of your brain and making you choke on air. Not much was said when the three of you had at last found a spot that seemed at least somewhat safe, nor when you had put up your tents. Chan had told you to sleep first, that he and Jeonghan would take the first watch. You had expected Jeonghan to object to that, distant memories of a man who loves to sleep caressing the forefront of your mind. 

Jeonghan had not said a thing. For some reason, that’s what chilled you the most.

---

Tensions are high the following days. There’s a constant fear of death luring at the top of your brains, all of you seemingly too scared and too fragile to even say much of anything to each other. Chan tries, bless him, to be a comforting figure; tries to hold your hand when it trembles and murmur reassurances into your hair. You want nothing more than to repay the favor, or to push him away, or to disappear completely. 

Instead, you only nod. Jeonghan stays silent. 

---

When Jeonghan finally does speak, it’s been three days. Three days of awkward silences and the sound of Chan quietly weeping over the death of a boy he’s seen as a brother figure his entire life. Three days of minimal food and even less of an appetite, of a grief that threatens to overcome you every time you allow yourself to soak in the feeling. 

So, Jeonghan finally opens his mouth, while you’re struggling with making a fire, fingers trembling with the cold and your breaths coming out as visible puffs of air into the morning. He opens his mouth, and you wish he’d rather keep it shut. 

“Can you fucking get on with it?” He snaps, and his voice is laced with a distaste that makes you shiver in a completely different way than with the cold that bites at your skin. You turn to look at him, taking in the annoyed downwards turn of his lips and the furrow of his eyes. You reel in the anger that bubbles in the pit of your stomach, try to focus on Chan sleeping in the tent instead. 

“I haven’t done this in years,” you mutter instead, without as much as a trace of apology on your tongue. You don’t tell him that if you’re doing such a bad job, he’s free to get up from his seated position and do the damn thing himself. You don’t tell him that the way he looks at you makes his skin crawl. 

“I can tell,” he says, almost mockingly. You turn back to the pile of wood with a roll of your eyes, jaw clenched so tightly it hurts. “Soonyoung would’ve-

He stops. Silence seeps in with the morning fog, your fingers unmoving and not even the sound of breathing reaching your ears. He knows whatever he was about to say was the wrong thing to say. Without even turning, you know that the look on his face would tell you he wants to take it back, not only the beginning of the sentence, but the thought itself. The branch in your hand snaps. 

“He would’ve what?” You hiss, swirling around to look back at him. His body is stiff, eyes wide as he takes in your appearance. Your heart is beating too loud, too hard against your ribcage, rage simmering in your veins. “He would’ve been faster? Stronger? Smarter?” You throw the remainders of wood to the ground, get up from your seat by the impromptu fireplace. Jeonghan looks as if he wants to melt into the ground. “I know!” You tell him, and you can’t quite help the uneven tones of your voice, the pitch high and nasal to your own ears. 

“It’s unfair,” you continue, your voice sounding so much like a whiny child that it might have embarrassed you had you not been so angry. You take a heavy step towards the long haired man, vision darkened by anger and head clouded. “He shouldn’t have died, I should’ve-” 

Your voice breaks, and you stop. Suddenly, the only distinct emotion you can feel is a heavy, crushing sort of pain. Jeonghan shifts uncomfortably, his voice low and apologetic as he murmurs your name, moves to get up. The logical part of your brain tells you to let it drop, to slink back to the wood and get back to working on the fire. That Jeonghan is as burdened by grief as you are, that his words were empty. You shut that part off, let your feet carry you past the boy and towards the dark woods instead. 

“Fuck you, Jeonghan,” you yell after him.

---

To your credit, you realize quite quickly that running off in a display of childish petulance isn’t really– dignified. Barely even an okay thing to do at all once you hit your late teens, an absolutely shit decision once zombies start traversing the earth. Even as you’re stomping over wet mud and grass, you think that you should turn back, return the way you came from before it’s too late.

You don’t. You can’t; can’t stand Chan’s weeping or Jeonghan’s harsh words, can’t stand the building ball of grief that lies at the pit of your stomach, and when you finally realize that your speed has quickened, that your feet are running, nothing looks familiar anymore. 

You stop, then, hands gripping onto your own kneecaps as you bend over and exhale; the sound loud and the breaths raspy as they exit your mouth. It’s not quite hyperventilation, not entirely panic, but it’s close; playing with the edges of the emotion that’s been lingering in the forefront of your brain for days. You want to cry, to scream or throw a tantrum, but somehow it’s all stuck in your throat.

You don’t pick up on the footsteps, don’t hear the low rumbling of deteriorating vocal chords, until it’s far too late. 

They must be getting smarter, you think as the crowd of dead bodies stumble out from behind bushes and trees. There’s a sort of chaotic order in their movements, a bizarre sense of cooperation in the way they surround you. You can’t bring yourself to look at their faces, too afraid that you’ll catch the features of someone you used to know.

It’s strangely cathartic, really. Something tugs at your nerves; not quite fear, rather an unnameable, undefinable emotion that calms your errant breaths and makes your limbs stop aching. You watch with a detached sort of interest as the horde of zombies close in on you, only distantly aware of the fact that you’re about to die. Maybe it’s just as well, you think; Jeonghan’s restrained insult is still echoing in your head. Chan would’ve told you not to waste Soonyoung’s sacrifice, would’ve yelled and furrowed his brow and thrown careless words in your face.

But Chan’s not here, is arguably not even present inside his own shell of a body, and the only comfort you can find is the possibility of rest; of peace.

It doesn’t come. You wait for the sting of a bite, of the pain of your limbs being ripped from your body in the frenzy of the once-living, brainless people crowding you, but before you’re even made aware of your own eyes closing, they shoot back open with the eardrum-shattering sound of weapons being fired. It feels as if your heart has stopped, as if you’ve just been brought back to life; the organ hammering violently against your ribcage and making electricity coursing through your body.

A zombie lies at your feet, guts and dirty-red blood at your feet. For a moment you almost think its head has exploded by its own volition, your brain lagging and your senses dulled with the pang of nausea that pushes at your throat. Time seems to have slowed down, and it takes a few steadying breaths to make you twist your head in the direction of the loud sound that the zombies have started pacing. 

Two boys stand at the top of the hill you must have tumbled down in your fit of rage; when you squint in their direction you notice, with a fair amount of dread creeping down your spine, that the boy aiming a slightly pathetic-looking pistol in the direction of the horde of zombies creeping in their direction is missing an arm. The other one, larger in frame and with dark curls the only visible feature you can spot, is brandishing a distinctly larger weapon that you recognize as a rifle, body jerking slightly every time he fires his gun. 

”Do you have a fucking death wish?” the pistol wielding boy yells, voice almost undetectable under the groans of zombies and the echoes of gunshots. “Get over here!”

Time speeds back up; a violent ache in your head coming with the sudden jolt of time happening all around you. You inhale, as if you’ve been holding your breath, as if you’ve been submerged forcefully under water, and before you can even consider the fact that these strangers are both dubious-looking and wielding weapons, you run. 

Death, it seems, will just have to wait.

---

The sun is all but gone when you finally return to camp; the boy with the missing arm and the pretty shooter in tow. The first boy, you’ve learned, is named Minghao. He speaks with an accent that suggests having moved fairly recently; stumbles over sentences and confuses tenses in a tone too melodious to consider the stumbling a frustration. You don’t ask about his arm. He doesn’t provide an answer. 

The second boy – Jun – is quieter, his voice lower but somehow softer. He’s strange to look at, somehow; too clean and pristine to fit in with the mud on his face and the tangles in his caramel hair. His accent isn’t quite as strong, but the camaraderie between the two, coupled with the hushed conversations in a tongue you do not understand, speaks of a bond that can only come with two outsiders finding their way together. 

You remember when you were ten. You think about a notebook tucked secretly beneath your pillow, filled with nonsense letters and garbled words; a language you had created with Soonyoung in order to keep your secrets away from prying eyes. Something seems to crack in your ribcage. 

Chan’s head snaps up from staring intently into the bonfire crackling in the middle of the campsite. He’s on his feet so quickly it makes your head spin just to look at, sprints towards you in long, stomping steps. A string of curses fall out of his mouth; so wholly uncharacteristic of the boy who likes to play up his innocence that it would’ve been funny in any other situation, and his hands are rough as his fingernails dig into the flesh of your arms. You don’t miss the slight tremors of his palms. 

“Where the fuck did you go?” His voice borders on hysteria, the lines of his face deep with worry, and your heart clenches with guilt at the complete lack of regard you’d shown in leaving the camp in the first place. You don’t look at Jeonghan, completely ignoring the way he rises to his feet to watch the scene carefully. Chan inhales through his nose, brows furrowing so tightly it looks like it must hurt his temple. You make a snap decision never to let him know about your dark, self-destructive thoughts, instead clearing your throat in an attempt to keep your voice even as you open your mouth. 

“Needed to clear my head,” you tell him; a weak excuse. The way the edges of Chan’s lips dip makes it clear he thinks so as well, but you gesture towards the boys at your side before he can open his mouth to inquire further. The younger boy jumps slightly, as if he just noticed the two newcomers. “This is Minghao and Jun. They, uh–” you falter for a moment, struggle to find a neutral way to word yourself. “Found me, I guess.”

There’s defensiveness in Chan’s stance, and protectiveness in Jeonghan’s as he comes up behind the shorter male. They both size up the two strangers, both stopping to stare unabashedly at Minghao’s missing limb. The tension is thick over the quiet campsite, ten different – but equally heavy – things left unsaid at once. The fire crackles and pops, creates an almost eerie echo through the thickness of the woods. 

It’s Jun who breaks the silence, at last, pushes past Minghao’s broad stance to come up right next to you, a disarming smile painting his pretty features. 

“We come bearing alcohol,” he proclaims, and that, it seems, is a language all four boys can understand. 

---

Heat blooms and blossoms at your cheekbones, your blood hot and sizzling against reddened skin as you sip as conservatively as you manage from the bottle of rum being handed to you. You wonder, distractedly, when you last felt the woozy, tingly itch of alcohol in your system, how much time has passed since that last moment of peace at Soonyoung’s ‘end of the world’ party. 

Chan laughs, an unrestrained and beautiful sound; no matter how put together they boy has always been, his laughs were always the realest sound to exit his mouth. He laughs as if the sound forces itself out of his mouth, muted only by a hand against his lips, seemingly impossibly enthused by whatever it is Minghao had just said. 

You can’t help the way your stomach knots, can’t stop yourself from letting your arms wind around your knees as you push your thighs tightly against your chest in an attempt to comfort yourself. A beautiful sound, Chan’s laugh might be, but you find that the sound has never been more tragic and painful bouncing against the walls of your skull. 

You learn a lot of things with the rush of alcohol coursing through veins and bodies; questions growing bolder and answers uninhibited. The new pair of boys were foreign exchange students, they tell you; Jun fresh out of school and Minghao in the middle of his studies to become a photographer. You wonder if Minghao is one of those artistic types, if he sees photo opportunities even in the face of death and cruelty. 

You learn that it’s possible to stop the virus – whatever it is making people into thoughtless killing machines – from spreading; the evidence of it clear and blatant in your new, gangly companion. You don’t know if it’s the dread at the mental image of a desperate and panicked Jun sawing off his best friend’s arm that’s worse, or if it’s the guilt of the what-if’s and the echo of Soonyoung’s scream that really breaks you. 

It’s only when Jeonghan’s gaze drifts over to yours, contemplation visible in the shadowy lines of his face as he gets up on unsteady feet and walks over to wordlessly sit down next to you that you notice you’re crying. You haven’t spoken a word to each other yet, haven’t acknowledged any of the stiffness or the awkwardness that hangs between you, but the long haired man pulls at your shoulder, sneaks his arm around your back, and the quiet comfort, the significance of it makes you crumble. 

There’s a big chance one of, if not all of you, will be dead in the not so distant future. What point is there, really, in clinging to old feelings or grudges? You let yourself be embraced, let your head fall against Jeonghan’s shoulder, and you cry. With a hand pressed tightly against your lips, careful not to alert Chan – the younger boy finally smiling as if the world was not ending, laughing as if he doesn’t have a worry in the world – and you cry. You’re not sure what you’re crying over, what you’re not crying over; it all blurs together until the only distinct feeling is Jeonghan’s hand pressed against your shoulder, the only sound you can make out are his even, steady breaths. 

He doesn’t offer any words of comfort, no calming sounds or reassurances. For that, you’re thankful. He remains wordless and solid against your side, fingers occasionally pressing into your skin as if to ease out knots and soothe stress. His free hand lies fisted in his lap and his sight is intently staring ahead, observing the three other boys partake in a bizarre, made up drinking game.

You exhale; the sound sharp and the huff of air making the strands of Jeonghan’s hair tickle against your face. Suddenly you feel absolutely empty; you wonder if it’s possible to literally cry out emotion.

“You should cut your hair,” you murmur into the air, your mouth feeling like it’s full of something sticky and gooey that makes it difficult to produce coherent sentences. You feel Jeonghan’s head move in your direction, feel his chin against your forehead. It’s a strange sort of deja-vu that might have felt electrifying had you not been so emotionally tired. “It’s too easy to grab.” 

As if to accentuate your point, you tug at the ends of his hair. Jeonghan’s fingers dig into the rounded edge of your shoulder, and your whole upper body moves with his deep inhale. You feel his heartbeat vibrate through your body. 

“Okay,” he replies in a rush of an exhale. Somehow you feel like you haven’t heard his voice in years. His voice sounds like something new, something foreign. “Okay,” he repeats, rubs absentmindedly at your arm. “You cut it then.”

There’s still a lot of unsaid things between you, things you want to talk about and things you’d rather forget entirely. You haven’t talked about why you left in the first place, long before any of this horror even started, or the hurtful words he’d flung at you just earlier that day. Everything feels fragile; like you’re holding a dangerously thin thread between you, trying not to make it snap. It’s enough, for now, the attempt. You close your eyes, body heavy and head spinning. 

“Okay.”

---

You think that will be it, that your semi-conversation will just be yet another one in the long line of not-quite-sober conversations that the two of you silently agree to forget. Keeping things cordial and pleasant with Jeonghan has always been a sort of dance; with practice and not a few almost-failures you’ve become quite good at following his steps and avoiding stepping on his toes. 

Jun tells you he’ll take first watch, looks at you in a way that makes you want to swipe at your cheeks; his edges softened maybe by sympathy or maybe by the amount of alcohol he’s been drinking. Even with only three arms between the two of them and the grime and guts dried into the fabric of their clothing, it’s blatantly apparent that Jun and Minghao have not yet experienced death in such an up-close and personal way as you. Minghao lies on his side right by his companion, his face barely illuminated by the dying fire. Chan fell into his tent two hours ago. You can hear his soft snores as you pass.

For a moment you consider staying up, consider sitting in silence with Jun by the fire and listen to the others sleep. Somehow the thought of lying in the darkness of a tent that used to belong to your father makes your stomach churn, makes you want to throw up. 

But Jun looks like the kind of guy who cares too much, and that’s the thing that urges you to bid the two remaining awake boys goodnight and retreat into your tent. 

You’ve almost fallen asleep when the entrance to the tent unzips again and someone enters. You jolt up, skin itching and sizzling with the ever-present fear that tugs at your nerves. Jeonghan stares back at you, caught, the fabric of the tent clutched tightly in his balled fist. 

“Chan snores,” he offers stiffly as an explanation, but does not move to fully enter the tent. For a sleep-addled moment, you just stare, squinting against the darkness to make out his features. Jeonghan has always been a beautiful boy; full lips and defined features making him the envy of boys and girls alike. Somehow it looks like he’s become duller, his face bleaker and less refined, hair a tangled mess in a tight bun at the back of his head. 

Jeonghan waits, standing awkwardly at the entrance of the tent. You see his gaze divert to the side, in the direction of the still crackling campfire. Your mind sets back into gear and you scoot over, press yourself as far into the side of the tent as you can, wordlessly signaling for Jeonghan to come inside. 

He puts as much space as he can between you, tension thick and heavy over the two of you as you try to ignore the stinging feeling of familiarity. You try to remember the last time you slept in the same space, the last time it was just the two of you together. You find that everything before the outbreak seems blurred, far away. 

“Good night,” Jeonghan murmurs, and when you finally allow your body to relax enough for your mind to drift out of consciousness, sleep remains a black, dark and silent thing. No nightmares.

---

Even with the tangles and knots that have taken residence in Jeonghan’s long, bleach blonde hair, the strands are soft and silky between your fingers. It feels like an oddly intimate thing, pulling at his hair and staring intently at the back of his neck. Jeonghan tries not to complain when you yank too hard at a particularly difficult knot, but you can see the tense arch of his broad shoulders, hear the grunts that seem to echo into the silence of the morning. 

Minghao watches with bemused interest from his seat by the now-dead fire, an almost cat-like, barely there grin toying with his lips. The knife feels heavy in your hand, and the thought of what you’re about to do makes you queasy. It’s strange, how it can feel like such a big and monumental thing, in the midst of all the fucked up shit that’s going on. How cutting someone’s hair can feel like the most important thing, even with Minghao struggling to pack his back with his one arm, clearly in view right in front of you. 

“It’ll probably look a bit,” you cock your head to the side, let your fingers tangle into his light locks and look for a word that doesn’t sound as alarming as the ones that run through your mind. Awful, weird, strange. “Uneven,” you settle on, ignoring the way Minghao scoffs. 

“Please,” Jeonghan mutters, with a tone of voice that almost makes you tingle with how Jeonghan it sounds. “I remember how Soonyoung–” he stops, as if he catches himself almost revealing his deepest secret. Your first reaction is to close your fingers tightly around his hair, heart thudding at the mention of your friend. You think about a boy with blue tips and hair so dry it looked about ready to fall off due to excessive bleaching. The memory of his mother’s absolutely horrified expression upon seeing your sloppily done haircut on her son had been, for many years, something retold in between laughs and large gulps of alcohol stolen from liquor cabinets. “I’m sure the zombies won’t mind an uneven haircut,” Jeonghan finishes tightly. Minghao seems to be suddenly intensely interested in the laces of his shoes. 

You exhale, bite down on your bottom lip. The shittiest thing of it all is that you can’t grieve, can’t keep clamming up with the mere mention of Soonyoung or of Vernon or any of the other friends you’ve more than likely lost to this horrible outbreak. The feeling threatens to overcome you, but you know that you have to push it back. Chan already grieves enough for all of you combined, and someone needs to remain collected. It’s a tempting thought to leave that responsibility to Jeonghan. Distantly, you hope it’s a burden you can learn to carry together. 

“Right,” you murmur, bring the knife to his hair. Better to just be done with it.

---

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan murmurs three days later, drags absentminded fingers through his choppy, short hair as he watches Jun fiddle with the tent plugs. He looks, at best, suspicious. You can’t really blame him, your nails digging into the flesh of your crossed arms. It sounds too good to be true; this tale the two boys have told you about a fort, a safe haven to the east. A place with tall walls and canned food, whispers and murmurs of safety being what had spurred Minghao and Jun in that direction when they chanced upon you a mere few days ago. Evidently, Jeonghan agrees. “It sounds a bit risky.” 

Minghao awkwardly adjusts the strap of his bag, cocks his head to the side. You hear the muscles in his neck crack. “So what? You’re just gonna stay here forever? Without guns or food to last for more than a few weeks?” He’s right, of course. The nights are getting longer, colder, and for all intents and purposes it’s a miracle that the zombies haven’t already found you, haven’t heard Chan’s loud laughs or smelled the fire that roars all through the night. 

“They’re right,” Chan says, echoing the tiny voice inside your head. Perhaps it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the boy has gotten so attached to the two foreigners already, but it still stings how quick he is to take their side. He kicks at the ground. “We can’t stay here. We need to find other people. There might already be a cure for all we know.” You frown. It’s obvious that the three boys have already been talking about this. You glance over at Jeonghan, try to read his expression. 

The boy in question exhales, a sound of resignation. He tries to tuck a lock of hair behind his ear, seemingly not quite used to his new, shorter hairdo. The blond curl bounces back against his cheekbone and Jeonghan bites at his bottom lip. He makes eye contact, and something inside you seems to dislodge; there’s something familiar in his gaze, something soft and uncertain that reminds you of something simpler, something that had seemed so complicated at the time. You chew at the inside of your cheek, shrug helplessly. 

The three boys are right, because of course they are. You have become stagnant in your little camp, isolated from the rest of the world and resigned to some sort of fake sense of peace and quiet that is bound to shatter sooner rather than later. Jeonghan frowns. 

“Fine,” he mutters, bends over to tug expertly at the tent plug Jun was struggling with. “Let’s get going, I guess.”

---

Days bleed into each other; daylight spent walking and walking until your feet drag and your muscles ache, nights spent hurriedly putting up tents and sleeping in shifts. There’s a fear that tugs and pulls at the back of your mind; the lack of knowledge about what you’re seeking, where you’re going, how long you’ll have to keep going. You haven’t dared to ask, but you can’t even be sure that you’re going in the right direction, don’t know which way is which. 

Chan massages the back of your neck as you sit in front of a small, unassuming fire made of thin sticks of wood and dry moss. Jun sleeps with his head leaning against Minghao’s shoulder, Jeonghan stares up at the stars twinkling in the pitch black sky. No one really has the energy to speak. 

Jeonghan becomes a sort of permanent companion during your few hours of rest. You’re not sure when it started; if it has been that way ever since your first shared night back at your first camp or if it happened after you started traveling again, but you do know that slowly the distance is closing. 

He keeps his back to yours the first night, tucked into the soft wall of the tent as if he couldn’t stomach the chance of being touched. The second night, he’s a bit closer, his body a bit less tense and his breath evens out into light snores quicker. The fourth or the fifth time, you feel his back against yours; only barely, only slightly and seemingly not on purpose. The simple contact makes your head spin, makes it feel like all air has been sucked out of the small tent. 

You’ve lost count of the days when at last he doesn’t turn away from your body when he lies down, instead choosing to lie facing your back. The back of your neck tingles, shivers running down your spine every time one of his unhurried, careful breaths his your skin. Suddenly, the tent seems like nothing but a tiny box, too tight and too close around you. There’s something at the tips of your fingers that tells you to turn around to look at him; behind your closed lids you imagine what his face must look like, but you feel paralyzed. You wonder if he’s looking, if he’s waiting for you to react. 

You don’t. You stay locked in your position with your back turned towards him, and you can’t find the rest to fall asleep before you hear the telltale sound of his soft, even breaths. 

You wake up with an arm slung around your body, with a nose pressed to the back of your neck and you toy with the idea of letting your fingers tangle with his own where they lie splayed over the fabric of your blanket, gently pressed against your stomach. Your heart is hammering violently against your ribcage. You let yourself lie there for a while, listen to the low murmurs of the boys outside the tent talking in quiet tones and low murmurs. For a single, wonderful moment, nothing really matters. Not the zombies, not the ever present possibility of death, not the distant hope of a safe destination. All that matters is the warmth that nestles against your bones, the comfortable lull of Jeonghan’s nose caressing the skin at the back of your neck.

You feel as if something’s changing. The next night you find yourself tucked next to Jeonghan inside the tent – you wonder, idly, if the boys have discussed this agreement at all, and the possibility of it makes the nerves beneath your skin buzz – he barely even hesitates with bringing his arm over your middle, tugs slightly at your body to bring you closer. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t make any sort of mention towards this new boldness, his fingers merely tightening against your skin when you slip your fingers between the spaces of his own.

Jeonghan has never struck you as a particularly timid boy. The first time you tumbled into bed with him – years, ages, lifetimes ago – it had been without any sort of hesitation or shyness on his part. This; the careful touches and the uneven breaths, the almost reluctant way he leans his head against your shoulder and inhales as if he’s been holding his breath, feels almost like an entirely different person. But then, you suppose, no one really is the person they used to be anymore. 

It’s an all too familiar sort of fear that tugs at your stomach and keeps your eyes open far longer than you intend to; closing only when they sting against the prolonged exposure to the cold air in the tent. Because you know, you recognize the warmth in your chest that seems to flare and flicker with the barest of touches from the beautiful man pressed against your back. You know all too well what it means. 

What you don’t know, of course, is what it means to him.

---

You’re not surprised when you wake up one morning to an empty campsite. The fire must have died out hours ago, not even a hint of heat left in the pile of ashes and burnt wood. From inside the tent next to yours, you hear Chan snoring, and at least that alleviates the panic that pricks at your skin. 

Truth be told, you’d been waiting for the pair of foreigners to take their leave. You’ve heard them murmur among themselves in low tones and unfamiliar words, have seen the glances and unspoken conversations the two of them seem to fall into at times. Honestly, you had expected them to flee days ago.

You stare at the small pile of weapons and rations they seem to have left behind; the rifle Jun had used to shoot the zombies that almost killed you the first time you met, a knife you’ve seen Minghao carry on his belt. A decent amount of ammo and some cans of food. It’s not– it’s not them, it’s not what you wanted, but it is a reminder that getting attached to people in the middle of what might be the end of the world isn’t a good practice. 

Chan tries not to look disappointed when you tell him Minghao and Jun has left. He doesn’t quite manage. 

---

You stumble – almost literally – over Lee Seokmin another four days into your tireless travels towards a place that might not even exist. It feels a bit more hopeless now, without Minghao and Jun to hype the place up. Chan mopes, sighs and frowns, but he seems to have found something – somewhere – to believe in, and he refuses to let himself get dragged into the cynicism you share with Jeonghan. 

In that sense, Seokmin might be exactly what your little trio needs. 

He’s a wonder, really; a tall, inhumanly beautiful boy with a smile that could truly rival the sun. And he smiles– boy, does he smile. He smiles in such a way that you almost forget your surroundings when you look at him, and he sighs in relief when he sees the three of you. He speaks in casual, high tones and rubs the back of his neck as he sits up from his position flat on his back on the ground. 

He doesn’t have a single thing on him, nothing but the clothes his wearing and his bright smile, and maybe you didn’t learn a single thing from Minghao and Jun’s disappearance at all, because the offer to travel together falls out of your mouth before you can even stop to consider. 

Seokmin’s smile widens, and that’s that, you suppose.

---

“I don’t know how he does it,” Jeonghan mutters into the silence of the tent, puffs of breaths making the hair on the back of your neck stand. You twist your body around to face him, squint in an attempt to make out the lines and contours of his face. He looks, from what you can decipher, strangely unraveled; brows tightly knit together and mouth pulled in a deep frown. “Seokmin, I mean,” he clarifies. 

You hum, unable to really open your mind. You know what he means; Seokmin’s good humor about the situation and relentless optimism is so staunch it borders on exhausting. Somehow you get the feeling that Jeonghan isn’t really looking for you to agree. He exhales, a tired and heartbreaking sound, and when he hooks his fingers around your ear, it feels as if he’s trying, desperately, to cling to you without making it an obvious thing. 

”I’m sorry,” he whispers, seemingly out of nowhere. You wonder if he’s talking about your fight right after Soonyoung died, or if he’s talking about how shitty he treated you before you left, years ago. You wonder if he means all of it, or if he’s talking about something else entirely, but you find that it doesn’t matter. That he could be talking about something as inconsequential as that one time, years ago, when he singled you out during never have I ever and you still would have felt the same sort of relief at his apology. 

When you reach out to touch his face, you can’t quite miss how wet his cheeks are. Have you ever seen Jeonghan cry before, you wonder, swipe your thumbs gently over his cheekbones. 

”Jeonghan,” you murmur, surprised to find your voice thick, uneven. He inhales, chokes on air, and the sound makes you want to cry yourself. “Please don’t cry,” you beg him, nonsense words spilling out of your mouth just for the sake of saying anything at all. You lean your forehead against his, clutch at his skin. “If you cry, I’m gonna cry, too.” 

He kisses you, then; hungrily and suddenly and with a fervency that surprises you. Not because you haven’t kissed Jeonghan before, not because you weren’t aware that he hides something fiery and explosive underneath his cold and collected exterior, but because it feels, somehow, like an admission. He presses the palms of his hands against your cheeks, presses against you and pulls you close as if he can’t really help it.

Between open-mouthed kisses, he spills confessions against your lips; whispers about how scared he is, nonsense apologies about things so far into your past you can’t even remember them anymore. 

”I missed you,” he tells you, so honestly it makes you ache. “When you left. I hated you for it.” 

And that, more than anything else, is an admission. You almost tell him you left because of him, because you thought he wouldn’t care. But then his hand comes to rest flat against your stomach, bunches up your shirt to caress your skin, and you forget how to form coherent sentences. He clutches at you as if he’s trying to consume you, and you find that you would let him.

The last time you found yourself in this position, you had found yourself fantasizing about three words. Not too big or significant on their own, but so important, so huge put together. It’s scary how easily they drift to the forefront of your mind as Jeonghan bites at your lip, swipes his tongue against your mouth.

Jeonghan starts holding your hand after that, starts hovering close and kissing your cheeks unapologetically in front of both Chan and Seokmin. Neither look surprised. You try not to think too hard about what that means. 

---

You’ll be the first to admit that you might have become a bit complacent. Too used to quiet nights and too caught up in this new – but not really – budding thing between you and Jeonghan. Maybe that’s why you expect it, when you’re awakened by the sound of a scream that makes you shoot up into a sitting position so fast it makes your head spin. 

Chan, your mind screams, heart thudding so harshly, so loudly against your ribs that it threatens to make you throw up. But no– Chan’s screams are not quite that high in octaves, and you’ll probably never truly forgive yourself for the relief that knowledge brings you. Jeonghan’s grip borders on painful as his nails dig into the flesh of your arm, a low, rumbling curse falling out of his mouth. 

(it’s a mess of cries and flesh and pounding heartbeats against ribs. chan tries to run towards seokmin where he lies on the ground surrounded by brain-dead monsters, and in an ironic change of roles, you’re the one who has to shake him back to reality. chan screams, seokmin screams even louder. jeonghan tugs at your arm, and you run: leaving everything but jun’s rifle behind.)

You must have been half-walking, half-running for at least an hour when Chan finally slows down, murmurs your name in a slow, tired tone of voice. With Jeonghan’s hand clasped tightly, clammy against yours, you come to a halt, look at the younger boy behind you. 

Your heart seems to stop. 

“Oh my god,” you exhale, voice cracking in a way that seems to vibrate through your entire body. Because right there; red and blatantly visible against Chan’s pale and pallid skin on his long and thick neck, is a bite. He breathes, short and hurried as if he knows that he doesn’t have a lot of time left. Jeonghan stiffens beside you, takes a step as if to guard you against the younger boy. Chan drops Minghao’s knife, raises his hands above his head. 

“Jeonghan,” he says, voice low, dragging and serious. He sounds as if he’s not unprepared for the conversation, as if this is a scenario they’ve prepared for. Jeonghan stiffens, his grip on Jun’s rifle tightening. “You have to kill me,” Chan says. You choke, legs not able to keep your weight up anymore.

“We can fix this,” you try, your voice shivering and shaking at every syllable. It’s nothing but empty words, of course, and the way Chan looks at you makes it blatantly obvious that he know it, too. You try to think about Minghao, about his missing arm and pleasant disposition, but even as you do it, you know it’s something entirely different than the bite burning at the base of Chan’s neck. 

Jeonghan takes aim, and your breath seems to shorten, quicken.

“Look away,” Chan orders, voice barely even detectable over the sound of your own, hurried breaths. You shake your head, pretend that you’re not about to lose your fucking mind. You owe him that, at least. 

“I love you,” you tell him, so sincerely and wholeheartedly that it makes your own heart shatter. He tells you, again, to look away. But you can’t. “I love you,” you repeat, cling to Jeonghan as if he’s the only thing left anchoring you to the world. You can’t keep your body from jerking in tune with the sound of the gunshot. Jeonghan drops the rifle, inhales so harshly that it makes you tremble.