#korest

“Oof! Gah! Eouh! Tss!”

He was out of breath by the time he landed on the frost-sprinkled forest floor. He was dazed, soaking in what just happened. The leaves and snow softened the blow of the fall, but his shoulder still stung. It didn’t help that a bit of his blood was trickling out in the snow. His head throbbed dully. He propped himself up with his arms and his glasses fell off his face. 

Now the world was a blur, including the glasses themselves. He narrowed his eyes and brought the glasses up closer to his face. They were broken along the bridge, split into two halves. He brought the right lens closer. The glass had a crooked vertical gash running through it, ending with a broken rim. He picked them off the snowy ground and placed the pieces into his pocket. Slowly, gingerly, he stood up. He hobbled over to a tree and leaned against it. 

“Hello?” a voice asked in the distance. Eduard blinked, trying to keep his eyes open. He shifted his head to look toward the sound, but all he saw was a blurry forest and a faint glow far away. 

The last thing he remembered was the world turning to black.

---

Eduard drowsily opened his eyes to see a small room. He was in a bed with a thick comforter. It was dark, the windows showed a navy blue night outside. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a stranger walking over with a lit light source, eerily warm for being so small. That’s all Eduard could tell without his glasses. He touched his pocket, relief pouring in when he felt his eyewear. But he still felt tense. One thing was certain: this was an unfamiliar place, he had to get out of here. He tried to muster the energy to teleport, but his body stayed firmly in bed. His magic still wasn’t working it seemed.

“You’re awake.” The man noted, walking over to him.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

“I’m Yong Soo.” The other man said. Eduard narrowed his eyes, trying to make out Yong Soo’s facial features. But it was still too blurry. “I found you passed out on the forest floor and thought to bring you home. But first, no weapons please. Empty your pockets.”

Yong Soo respected him enough not to ruffle through his things. Not that Eduard had anything to defend himself with anyways. Reluctantly, he decided to take out his broken glasses. The man took them and examined the pieces.

“You better not take my glasses for long.” The threat sounded empty, even to Eduard himself, but it felt better than nothing. Being in an unfamiliar place with his blurry vision was putting him on edge.

“Don’t worry about them,” Yong Soo flippantly responded. “Now, my turn: how did you end up in this forest in the middle of nowhere?”

That question stilled him. Eduard wondered how to logically explain falling out of the sky without the use of magic.

“I… don’t know. I didn’t mean to land here. And you still haven’t told me where I am.” 

Yong Soo gently placed his lantern on a nearby table. “We are kind of a new country. I do not know if you know about us, Mr. Sorcerer.”

“Sorcerer?”

“Magic user.” Yong Soo recited an incomprehensible (at least to Eduard) verse and waved his hand. The lantern slowly got brighter.

Eduard sucked in a gasp: that move was powerful. All he knew was transportation spells.

“I’m pretty sure it’s my fault you ended up here.” Yong Soo gestured with his hands, trying to describe his thoughts. “A sprinkle of magic and a bit of boredom, and… poof you’re here now. The spell I used attracts other ‘magic users’ like you and me. I was trying to get my brother, but looks like I can’t get to him for some reason” He sighed, as if he had something more to say but didn’t have the words. “Anyways, I am sorry for barging into your life. Hope that this somewhat makes up for your fall.”

Yong Soo grabbed ahold of Eduard’s hand. Lightly, he nudged Eduard’s fingers so that the palm of his hand would face up. With a flick of the wrist, he produced fully fixed glasses and laid them between Eduard’s thumb and pointer finger. 

“Woah...” Eduard whispered in disbelief, examining Yong Soo’s work. There were spells of all kinds, but he never saw one that ever smoothly put objects back together like this. He put his glasses on and looked at Yong Soo. His blurry vision became sharp. 

The clothes Yong Soo was wearing were so different from the stuff back home. Eduard didn’t have the vocabulary to describe them. He wore something akin to a dress, and the waistline was high, right under the chest. The top of the outfit had long sleeves that were wide, hanging down instead of staying tight around the wrist. He also held a thick book in one hand, part of it hidden under the sleeves.

The light from his lantern lit him up so that his pale beige skin contrasted with the darkness of the room. Dark brown eyes and ink black hair, a flyaway curl sticking out the side. An Eastern Asian man. There was a happy smirk on his face, one that triumphantly proclaimed that he succeeded in fixing the glasses.

“Just a simple little time reversal spell” He tapped on the edge of the frames for emphasis, and Eduard pushed his glasses back up with a huff. “Keep those safe, they’re expensive.”

“Now could you please tell me where on Earth I am? I know I’m not at home.”

“Korea. A bit ago we were Joseon. Now, what’s your name traveler?”

“Eduard.” he paused, trying to grasp everything that was happening. First things first: “How long has it been since I got knocked out?” 

“A few days.”

“Shoot.” Eduard sat up and got out from the covers, ignoring the sting from his right shoulder. “I’ve got to go. Back. You know. Before I got transported to this place.” He tried to muster up the energy to teleport out, but, ever frustratingly, his body still didn’t budge.

“Well. How do you even begin doing that?”

“If I could just…” Eduard concentrated, envisioning his home, and pulling himself mentally closer. But nothing happened. Eduard inwardly groaned.

“Okay there?”

“You don’t understand.” Eduard grumbled, trying to avoid worsening his wounds as he shuffled back under the covers. “Before I teleported, I was writing up this article. I’m part of a team attempting to get an Estonian newspaper off the ground. And well, it’s important to me for my article through… that sounds odd but let me put it this way. Though it may sound simple, it could propel us to become our sovereign nation! Independence, that’s something that has been a rarity. And with all the Russification going on, it’s been rough going.”

<Above probably needs development, I don’t know much about this topic and did minimal research> 

Eduard paused. “Wait a second, how the hell are you speaking Estonian?”

“When I saw that you were European,” Yong Soo showcased the thick book he was holding, “I used up my resources. I searched up a spell that would break a language barrier. Unfortunately, due to my own lack of language skills, I wasn’t able to understand that deciphers written words unfortunately. Then it would be easier to read this damn thing”

Eduard looked toward Yong Soo’s spell book. He recognized the Latin letters, but not the language of the script. “Now where’d you get this from?”

“I got it from a... ” He hesitated, “An acquaintance. From out East, Japan. And he got it from a British guy. My acquaintance is not on good terms with magic, even if he was once enthralled by it, and so I bought it from him.” 

Eduard heard rumors of a strong British sorcery. The spell should be pretty good.

Yong Soo kept going. “It was a good choice too. I have translated some spells in here and they are the only things keeping me from going bonkers. I isolated myself in the middle-of-no-where after all. Turns out it’s good to have a companion, even if that companion is a book.”

Eduard looked at the spell book, intrigued. “Since I can’t go back home anyways, should I test to see how well your spell holds up?

“Aren’t you already doing so? With, um, Estonian, right?”

“Well, if I *speak Russian you’ll understand me?*”

Yong Soo nodded. “Your accent changed a bit though.” 

“And, *if I stretch it… do you understand some broken German?*”

“I do.”

“How about-”

“Hold on. How do you know so many languages?”

Eduard frowned a bit, pausing to understand what Yong Soo was asking. “I’m a polyglot.”

“Yeah, I just so happen to be a polyglot too. But I learned about other languages out of necessity. I used to have a life of splendor, politics, and drama.” He pointed out the window. “I took a break from that by moving to a place with more trees instead of people. Right here. Now, what… ‘normal’ man would be that talented? There has got to be a driving factor.” 

Would it hurt to tell this Korean man about his life? If Eduard teleported out of here as soon as he could, it couldn’t do damage. “I told you earlier, I work for a newspaper. Using language, even other languages too, are my thing. At the same time, polyglots aren’t rare back home. I guess that’s what I get for being born into a place that got bulldozed over by neighboring powers continuously. The place gets pretty bi and multilingual. Other languages get impressed onto us.”

“By… ‘Us?’ You mean, ‘Estonians?’ Of a country that doesn’t exist?” 

“Yes.” Eduard said it with finality.

The Korean man seemed to be mulling over the words, unease spreading over his expression. “I wonder...” Yong Soo stopped abruptly. He walked over to a makeshift kitchen area. “I wonder if you like pickled, spicy food.” He beckoned Eduard to come over too.

“Pickled, yes. Spicy, no. Plus, I told you I have to go back home somehow, even if it is too late.”

Yong Soo looked at Eduard with a knowing glint in his eye. “If you could teleport back now, you would have already.”

“You’re not wrong.” Eduard gestured towards Yong Soo’s hands. “But, you also have a spellbook in your hands. If you really wanted to help, you would have given me a magic boost. I would have been on the way.”

Yong Soo frowned. “I don’t even think there’s a spell for a magic boost. I could be wrong though. I got this book very recently and only a few spells have been translated.”

“That means?”

“Considering the fact that you being here is the combination of both my magic power and yours, it seems like the way back is if I incorporate my magic with yours once more. Unless you can teleport for long distances, you’ll have to stay here with me.”

Eduard felt his heart plunge. They were quiet after that statement. 

<AN: Eduard has a hard time dealing with this new reality that he has to stay in an unfamiliar place. I didn’t give enough breathing room to write his experience with that.>

Yong Soo pointed toward a dish on the table. “I’ve got some cabbage-based kimchi. I have been living on this stuff for months here in the middle of nowhere.”

Eduard walked over to the table, looking over the unfamiliar food. “What are... these?” He tapped on a small porcelain bowl filled with cooked white grains. Then he gestured to two evenly shaped straight sticks, each about the size of a rectangular-ish, thinner, flatter pen.

“A bowl of rice and chopsticks. Of course.” 

Eduard searched around. “You don’t have forks?”

Yong Soo looked up at Eduard and a tangible pause lingered in the air. “Ah. You don’t know how to use chopsticks, do you?”

Eduard crossed his arms. “Look, I appreciate this, but I can’t even eat the food you’re offering me.”

“Well,” Yong Soo took the chopsticks for himself, showcasing how they were used. “I could teach you.”

Eduard’s stomach growled, as if on cue. He sighed, grabbed the chopsticks, and looked up at Yong Soo. “Well then. I guess I’ll have to learn.”

“First of all, you're holding it wrong.” Yong Soo picked up his own pair and let Eduard see his hand. “You raise and lower the top chopstick. And then you can do this.” He grabbed a piece of the cabbage kimchi and lifted it over to his bowl of rice. 

Eduard fidgeted with his hand. He tried to ignore the feeling of embarrassment while trying to get a semblance of the position.

Yong Soo let go of his chopsticks and leaned forward. He guided Eduard’s hand to the right position. He backed up after he was satisfied. “Now try it. Move the chopstick above up and down.”

Eduard tried to focus on his shaky hands. He slowly nudged the chopstick up, but then the lower one clattered onto the table. Yong Soo smothered a giggle.

“Hey, hey now. I’m a beginner.”

“I know, I know.” Yong Soo smiled at Eduard and handed him the fallen chopstick. “Try again.”

Eduard eventually got the hang of the chopsticks. He tasted a bit of the food, gritting his teeth at the unfamiliar taste of kimchi.  

<AN: Yong Soo insisted it was a very common Korean staple, and concluded that Eduard just had a low spice tolerance for the red chili pepper.>

---

“You know what? I think I’ve rested for a couple of days, I should try a simple transportation trick. Transporting objects and people are my inherent abilities.”

“I say go for it.”

Eduard laid his chopsticks on the table and shook out his arms. Then, he closed his eyes and concentrated on the chopsticks, making sure to stay a bit away from them. “Come to me now…” 

The chopsticks vanished in a shower of sparkles. Eduard looked toward his hand expectantly. They didn’t appear. 

“Oof!”

A disgruntled Yong Soo pulled the chopsticks out of his hair. He handed them to Eduard. “They tumbled from the ceiling and ran into me.”

“Are you okay?” 

Yong Soo rubbed his head and then cracked up in laughter, “I don’t know about you, but I think you need to rest a bit more.” He tapped on the thick spellbook, “Maybe we can look through this together in the meantime.”

“Sounds fine by me.”

---

<AN: Brief continuity error below.>

“There’s something that’s been weighing on my mind Yong Soo. I normally travel short distances. How the hell will I get back home to Estonia?”

“You could make pit stops?”

“Not everyone is as hospitable as you, Yong Soo. Who knows what situation I could end up in.” He sighed, closing his eyes, taking off his glasses, and placing his head in his hand. “I've already been gone for awhile now. If I go back, I’ll get lost and be gone for good.”

Yong Soo looked up, at least that’s what Eduard could tell from his blurry vision, and stretched out his arms. “Well I am trying to work through this spell book to help you.”

“How are you translating it? Can you read English?”

“What do you mean?”

Eduard put his glasses back on and pointed at the spellbook. “The book’s in English, right? You said it was originally from a British sorcerer. I’m wondering if you can read it.”

“I can’t, not really well. But I did get my hands on this dictionary: English to Korean.” He lifted up a second, smaller book for Eduard to see. “I wrote a few notes for myself in the margins.” He pointed toward some notes on the sides. “English… is very different from what I know. Letters versus characters. It’s hard to decipher the text.” Yong Soo gave him a tired look, “You’re lucky, you know that? This dictionary was a really hard find. Without it you’d be stuck here with me until you walk to a port on foot and find a boat headed to Europe. The process is still extraordinarily slow, and I don’t know the vast majority of spells in here at all.” He looked back down to his book.

“Thank you for all this work you’re putting in for me. As a speaker of many European languages, maybe I could help?”

Yong Soo considered it and opened the spell book and the dictionary for Eduard to see. “Why not.”

<AN: they look over the spell book and determine which spells would be useful. This is a process that is tedious but rewarding.>

---

It was an abnormally warm winter night, so the two men decided to head outside and make a campfire. After all, it was brighter than a candlelit room with small windows. Out here, they had the stars and the moon too. Yong Soo clutched his spell book and wrote in the margins while Eduard semi-deciphered the word and matched it up in the dictionary. 

<AN: they get in a fight over something which gets somewhat physical, the dictionary (I was also considering the spell book?) slips into the campfire and burns up to a crisp. Imagine like a super comical, ‘keep the book up in the air like a volleyball’ shenanigans before it falls straight into the fire>

Eduard sat down, stunned. “I’ve solidified my own fate. I’m going to be stuck here forever. Shit.”

It was quiet except for the sound of a crackling fire. The two men started as the flames ate up the last of the pages.

“Maybe… maybe… how did you get that dictionary in the first place? What if we try that pathway again.”

Yong Soo mulled over the question before answering. “No that’s impossible. I got it through farway political connections.”

Eduard raised an eyebrow. “With a friend from Japan too?”

“Not friend. Acquaintance, and no it is not from him” He sighed and looked Eduard dead in the eye. “There’s no reason to hide the truth to you about it if we live in the middle of nowhere. Royalty: emperors and all. I used to work for them. Sort of. There’s a lot of things I can do with my inherent ability… I fixed your glasses with it. Mostly I fixed things there too: both physical and politically. In my free time I would make my own little inventions, tinkering with objects, and rewinding their physical state when I really messed up. But I was also a political advisor type. That’s where I really screwed up. Sadly my time spell doesn’t fix everything: it does not work well at all with organic matter for example. I left. I usually have some control over situations, with magic and all, but yet there I felt powerless. I feel like I ran away from it all.”

<AN: I wish I got more details as to what sort of role Yong Soo would play in an Emperor's palace. But I didn’t do my research and frankly don’t know what he would do.> 

<AN: This scene, where the two stare at this fire, is supposed to be a tender, shippable moment: people at their lowest bonding. Talk about YS’s background with Korean Royalty/government. YS’s fears are shown, he’s being vulnerable and talks a bit about his worries. Like Korea being smothered by its neighbors of China (Qing Empire) and Japan, at this point in history, leaning toward the latter. Eduard comforts him, and talks about his own life experience, like how Estonia doesn’t have that sweet sweet independence but it could come (ahem foreshadowing 1918). After the tender moment, with the power of teamwork, YS uses his time-manipulation-on-objects ability and Eduard uses his transportation ability to bring back the dictionary. The logistics behind it have something to do with the fire being extinguished, the ashes being clumped together, lots of back and forth, before they legit reverse a chemical reaction. They are tired out afterwards but satisfied dammit. >

---

<AN: There’s a scene in which they learn each other's languages. It’s cute, it’s quirky, and they bond. I’m in no place to implement this because I don’t know Korean or Estonian. A few more sessions of meeting up later, or maybe even in this section, they figure out a mix of spells that can get Eduard to go home.>

---

It was time.

The morning was quiet. Eduard looked out the window at the woods. The landscape was dusted with snowflakes. He wore his original clothes, no use of borrowing a hanbok now that he was heading back. Yong Soo joined him next to the window. He scooted closer till their shoulders touched. Despite how cold it was, Eduard felt warm.

“I can’t believe we did it.” He said, looking over to his Korean companion. “Thank you.”

“To think-” Yong Soo shifted, and Eduard turned to look. 

Yong Soo closed his eyes and leaned forward a tad, his bangs shifting to cover his face. 

“Okay there?”

“Yeah.” He sucked in a breath and composed himself. “Before you go…” He handed Eduard a piece of paper covered with beautiful strokes of black calligraphy.

“I haven’t learned these characters yet. What does it say?”

“My name. Three characters read from top to bottom.” He pointed to the very top. “Im,” to the middle, “Yong,” to the last, “Soo. 임.용.수.”

He pulled out another piece of paper for Eduard and a calligraphy pen. “Write your name down now.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to forget you.”

He looked Yong Soo in the eye, forlorn dark brown irises glancing back. He felt a sob rise in his chest and pushed it down. 

Eduard broke eye contact, and signed his full name on the blank sheet of paper. He handed it to Yong Soo. 

“Hold my hand, will you?”

He spread his fingers across the palm of Eduard’s hand. Yong Soo’s sleeve covered up their touch, but Eduard could feel their fingers lacing together. A solid grasp, and Eduard felt fulfilled and broken all at once. When he went home, could he ever feel this intact again?

“I don’t think I could forget you if I wanted to.”

“Write to me?” Eduard smiled despite the regret that he felt, swirling in his body. “I still need to learn that Korean.”

Despite his sad expression, Yong Soo broke into a smile. “Definitely.”

“Thank you.”

“No, thank you.” Yong Soo let go of Eduard’s hand and stood back, flipping through the spell book in preparation. “In a time where I felt distant from the rest of the world, you were my solid ground.”

“I’ll miss you,” Eduard whispered. He closed his eyes.

Before teleporting away, Eduard heard a faint murmur in response. “I’ll miss you too.”

---

Footnotes:

“An acquaintance. From Japan. And he got it from a British guy. My acquaintance is not on good terms with magic, even if he was once enthralled by it, and so I bought it from him.” 

I have long strayed from the Hetalia canon, but this is influenced by those episodes where hws Japan couldn’t see the magic-spirit-types in the hot springs but hws England could.

“At the same time, polyglots aren’t rare back home.“

I have no idea if this is true, but I would think it would be. At least in modern times, it seems as if there's some sort of forced bilingualism that people from small countries that deal with. In this case, for an educated man like Eduard, I think knowledge of other languages (Russian for example) would be very helpful.

“I wonder if you like pickled, spicy food.” He beckoned Eduard to come over too./“Pickled, yes. Spicy, no.”

I was going to have this be a whole bit. About culture comparison and stuff! Turns out, as someone who is neither Estonian or Korean with very little motivation to read through a wiki page, I didn’t have enough content to implement my idea.

“But I was also a political advisor type. That’s where I really screwed up. Sadly my time spell doesn’t fix everything: it does not work well at all with organic matter for example. I left. I usually have some control over situations, with magic and all, but yet there I felt powerless.”

His mess up refers assassination of Queen Min aka Empress Myeingseong. I’m debating whether to keep this part in at all because it’s rather horrible to add things in with little research yet I keep doing it.

Thank you to @/alfredtalia for giving me insight into Yong Soo’s name. If your interested, here’s the link to the post.

There’s probably more that I could write here. I’m fine with discussing unanswered questions about this fic thru tumblr asks.