Chapter Text
Hyungwon brushes his fingers lightly over the sprig of pink heather in the breastpocket of his shirt and wonders if he’s not been — isn’t being — completely naive and foolish about this. About accepting Minhyuk’s hand and the glitter of wander in his cocoa eyes, unquestionably going wherever the other boy goes. Hyungwon could take it back, could change his mind and not do this, but he has nothing to lose. Not like there may be something to gain, even if it is only the luster in Minhyuk’s gaze or the chime of his laugh.
“Hyungwon.”
An elbow in his waist and the sound of a chimney smoke voice in his ear breaks the unknown prince out of his mind, and he hums as he blinks and lets his eyes refocus on his surroundings. Minhyuk regards him with soft eyes as he lifts a hand to card his fingers gently through Hyungwon’s hair. Around them, the bus station is rather lonely with just a few other travelers to keep them company within the yellowing walls of the building, as the standoffish attendants at the ticketing counter do not seem the type to do so.
“Are you okay?”
Leaning into the touch, Hyungwon gives a small nod. It’s not a lie; as much as his mind tends to run away from him, he hasn’t spun himself into the sticky trap of worry and doesn’t think he will. “Are ya?”
Minhyuk nods in turn. “I’m great,” he says.
Hyungwon wonders if the persistent bounce of his knee is excitement or nerves. Minhyuk never did give him a reason for suddenly wanting to get away, just presented Hyungwon with the option to come. Perhaps he trusted that Hyungwon would instinctively know, thought that their bond pulled so strong that words of explanation would be unnecessary.
Hyungwon isn’t sure if it does.
When he agreed and ran back into his home to shove clothes and a few extra necessities into a bag behind the backs of the Yoos, all he could think about was Minhyuk: what was troubling him, being there for him... And underneath all of that was a tiredness that weighed down on Hyungwon’s bones just like the summer heat did, a desire for a break from everything — from planning out the rest of his life, from his mother, from the mystery of Minhyuk’s identity, from the hidden secret of his own.
Maybe Minhyuk needed to free himself the same way. Maybe he needs more than that. Hyungwon truly doesn’t know.
And he doesn’t like that, doesn’t like not knowing what’s on Minhyuk’s mind, doesn’t like not knowing how to make it better if even only temporarily.
“They should be letting us board the bus soon,” Minhyuk says, glancing over at the simple, round clock on the wall. He slides his hand out of Hyungwon’s hair to rest on the back of his neck like a wool blanket.
The touchiness is as foreign as the destination on the ticket tucked in the folds of Hyungwon’s wallet. It raises alarms in Hyungwon’s nerves, blaring red ones that warn he’s floating too close to the sun — that he doesn’t have the equipment to survive against such brilliance, such a strong pull; that, if he’s not careful, he’ll go hurtling straight towards it with no means of stopping.
He ignores all of them, craving the warmth like no winter flower ever has before.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” he says, staring forward at the doors leading to the bus lot.
He sees Minhyuk look over at him from the corner of his eye but doesn’t turn to face him. Those warm fingers spread over his neck, thumb a little more insistent in its press. Hyungwon exhales slow through his nose and lifts a hand to nudge Minhyuk’s away from his neck.
His skin runs hot and cold, missing the blanket of Minhyuk’s touch but warming up enough on its own as if Minhyuk transferred the spirit of summer into him.
“I have a point to prove by not telling anyone I’m leaving, but you don’t have to keep it a secret from your family.” Minhyuk folds his hands in his lap. “I’m sure they’ll worry about you suddenly disappearing.”
Hyungwon doesn’t even want to imagine the number of messages filling his phone already; there’s no way that Kihyun hasn’t noticed his absence. And while Hyungwon leaving without prompt isn’t necessarily a rare occurrence, he usually checks in after Kihyun leaves enough messages to get on his nerves. But now, Hyungwon’s phone is turned off in his bag and he can’t hear the way his phone would ring and ring and it’s exciting and uncomfortable and powerful and scary.
He’ll tell Kihyun, but he hasn’t yet felt the rush of escape — is still coming to terms with the fact that in a few minutes he’ll be on a bus to Aex — and telling him now will snatch the feeling right from Hyungwon’s fingertips.
Hyungwon might not know what Minhyuk needs, but Hyungwon himself needs distance. He needs to know if being away from Maua, from the flowers that remind him of who he is and who he’ll never be, will give him any clarity of what he’s supposed to do with himself, with his mother, with Minhyuk.
“Surely,” Hyungwon says, fingers lingering over the flower in his pocket. “But that’s the cost of this, isn’t it?”
“The five-twenty bus to Eyti will now start boarding from gate three. Please have your tickets and identification ready to show the driver.”
Minhyuk places a wide palm on Hyungwon’s thigh and squeezes. “That’s us.” He stands up and turns to look down at Hyungwon still seated. “This is your last chance. Will you run away with me?”
He holds out a hand and Hyungwon stares at it hard enough to make out the way it trembles, each finger a tree branch in an early spring wind.
Glancing up, he takes his time counting the flavors of coffee that make up Minhyuk’s eyes and memorizing the angle of the corners of his lips when he smiles. He thinks of Kihyun sending message after message, thinks of the Queen’s reaction when she realizes Minhyuk is gone.
He thinks of the winter in his blood, of the summer standing in front of his face, of the spring in his gut, of the fall his heart has done.
Minhyuk’s hand is still the sun; his laugh when Hyungwon twines their fingers, the sound of every star in the sky bursting.
Hyungwon thinks his palms might be sweating when Minhyuk urges him to stand, whether from nerves over their spontaneous trip or the warmth of the man before him. When he tugs at their conjoined hands, Minhyuk squeezes before he lets go and somehow Hyungwon feels the gentle grip like a snake around his heart.
He sighs breathlessly, like it’s the last one he’ll ever take, and follows Minhyuk to where a line has formed of people on their way to Aex’s capital.
As they shuffle to where the driver is standing by the open bus door, checking boarding tickets, something occurs to Hyungwon.
“Where are we going to stay?”
“Don’t worry about it.” Minhyuk says, angling his phone to take a picture of his ticket.
Hyungwon frowns. “How can I not worry?”
They’re leaving the kingdom without even a days notice or time to prepare the appropriate accommodations they’ll need. Currency can be easily exchanged once they reach the capital, but they will be left to wander looking for a hotel with open rooms.
Pocketing his phone, Minhyuk looks up at Hyungwon. He smiles lightly. “Trust me.”
“I do,” responds Hyungwon, almost instantaneously. “But—“
“But...at the moment, you’re not.” Minhyuk curls a hand of comfort around Hyungwon’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t be doing this without some sort of plan, okay? I’m unreliable but I’m not so irresponsible.” He laughs, truly taking himself as a fool.
The worried crease of Hyungwon’s brow turns to offense.
“Stop talking about yourself like that. You’ve let that family warp your sense of self worth when they’ve never given you a chance to prove how great you can be, how great you are,” Hyungwon says, dropping his dialect to make sure his point gets across.
Minhyuk pauses in his shuffle to the door of the bus and Hyungwon slips a hand around his arm to keep him going.
“You know they’re not good people. Don’t do that to yourself, Minhyuk, please. Absolutely nothing makes me angrier than to know those people have hurt you like that.”
Hyungwon might grip Minhyuk’s arm a little tighter, but Minhyuk doesn’t say anything. Out of the corner of his eye, he notices the Nadirian boy peek at him. He chooses not to point it out, just holds Minhyuk’s arm until they’re standing in front of the driver.
He urges Minhyuk forward and once he’s behind the other boy, takes out his ticket and stares at it until he’s it’s copied to the backs of his eyelids. As he sees Minhyuk shift to board the bus, he looks up and meets eyes with the bus driver, a stout man with a brow like a rock ledge and a beard like wild winter grass.
Swallow the nerves tickling his throat, Hyungwon hands over his ticket.
“Identification.”
“Ah...”Hyungwon shoves his hand into his back pocket and pulls out his ID card. It always makes him nervous to show it, like they’ll see it and somehow figure out his true identity.
It always embarasses him to feel nervous because he changed his last name when he grew old enough to realize there’s no good in being a ‘Son’ and there’s no way anyone could make such a connection.
“Sorry,” he mumbles as he shows the card to the driver who scans over it and then motions for him to get on the bus.
He almost wants to ask if he can keep the ticket but he bites his tongue and climbs the steps of the bus. Minhyuk has taken a seat by the window in the center of the bus and Hyungwon is only a little startled to meet his gaze as soon as he finds his head above the seats.
Neither look away from each other as Hyungwon shuffles down the aisle to where he will sit beside Minhyuk for the next five and a half hours. Up close, the stare is too much, makes Hyungwon bashful. He drops his eyes to the empty seat as he slides his bag off his back so he can store it in the overhead storage space.
“Hyungwon,” Minhyuk calls in a voice that sounds like winter. It settles on Hyungwon’s bare arms, makes the hairs on them rise.
Picking up his bag, Hyungwon hums as he lifts it into the storage.
Minhyuk holds his tongue until Hyungwon is sitting. “What fuels your hatred for the royal family?” he asks to Hyungwon’s surprise.
There are so many answers to that question, so many things Hyungwon can’t say to Minhyuk, so many things he’s already alluded to but Minhyuk will never figure out on his own so long as he wholeheartedly believes he’s a biological member of the House.
Pressing his back into the seat and tilting his head back to look at the air conditioning vents overhead, Hyungwon considers everything and realizes it all comes back to one thing. His feelings about his mother, his heritage, the kingdom itself...about Minhyuk.
“Love,” he answers, turning his head to face the other boy with a fleeting smile.
Minhyuk’s brows knit like a cream, wool blanket, straighten out, and then tangle themselves together all over again. “I don’t understand.”
Hyungwon hums a sound with no meaning. “Have you ever had your heart broken and tried to piece it back together? The pieces never quite fit back the same. When it happens too many times, there’s no patching up the cracks that don’t align. I love so much that I can only feel hate.”
Hyungwon is aware he’s just made more questions for Minhyuk, but there’s no other way he can explain.
When Minhyuk first barged into his life, Hyungwon wanted so badly to hate him, to push the responsibility of the Queen’s negligence onto the only person in the House he had contact with. He wanted to hate Minhyuk for getting to know the brother Hyungwon could have always had instead of being lucky enough to have Kihyun enter his life.
The orphanage was not a horrible place by any means, but it isn’t easy to find a family in kids who get whisked off to proper homes. It isn’t easy to feel like you deserve love when you spend a majority of your childhood watching other kids be adopted and thinking there’s something wrong with you before you’re given letters from your mother and discern you’re the prince of the kingdom while still being absolutely nobody special at all.
But Minhyuk wasn’t in the wrong and Hyungwon has always known this. He could never think of Minhyuk as anything other than the strange city boy going through an identity crisis like Hyungwon, with a heart so big and broken it was like looking in the mirror at a reflection of shattered glass.
A crackle fills the air and then the voice of the bus driver talking through the intercom sounds through the bus.
“This is the Amaryllis bus to the capital of Aex, Eyti. Our total drive time is an estimated five hours and forty-five minutes. In a few moments we’ll depart from the station so please enjoy the ride.”
When he’s finished, Minhyuk lets out a rush of air. “This is it," he says.
Looking ahead at the building of the bus station through the front window of the bus, Hyungwon nods.
“This is it.”
Fiddling with the worn fabric of his wallet, Hyungwon stares up at the menu of an eatery in the pit stop just on the inside of the Mauan border.
Once the bus departs again, it’ll take them no more than half and hour to cross into the kingdom of Aex, and another almost four hours to reach their destination, the capital. So lose to the border, Hyungwon feels hyperaware of the flora in his veins. He wonders how far Ga-in’s gift extends, if the flowers in Aex will love him the same as the ones in Maua or if he’ll feel a little reprieve of that too. He doesn’t know much of the specifics of his gift; he’s wondered many times if he’d still be connected to Maua even with oceans behind him.
A hand brushing against the small of his back makes Hyungwon jump.The touch is fleeting, and soon Minhyuk is by his side, also looking up at the menu with wide eyes.
“I exchanged our money.” He glances over at Hyungwon who still feels the ghost of his hand on his back.
Blinking, Hyungwon tries to convince his blood not to rush as if such a thing is possible. “...Okay.”
Minhyuk hums. “We could probably afford to stay a little longer if we don’t want to leave when the time comes.”
Hyungwon ignores that because he told Minhyuk he trusts him and he doesn’t want to bring up how there currently is nowhere that they have to stay again. But past that, it is a nice thought, not because he thinks he’ll fall in love with Aex over the course of a week, but because he likes this, he and Minhyuk being reckless in the only way they can be.
“Are ya hungry?” he asks, slipping his finger under the clasp keeping his wallet closed and glancing over at Minhyuk who clicks his tongue.
“Not really. We could share a sandwich or something? Unless you’re starving?”
Hyungwon shakes his head. “I’m fine with that. Are ya okay with jasmine tea?”
“What about lemongrass?”
“If I wanted lemongrass tea, I would have brought it up,” Hyungwon says plainly.
Minhyuk elbows hm in the side and Hyungwon looks over with a faux glare that quickly flips with mirth as he fails to hold back a giggle. He goes up to the counter to order, Minhyuk following behind and radiating warmth against his back.
“Do you know how to swim?” Minhyuk suddenly questions, looking at something on his phone.
Glancing at the device in the other boy’s hands, Hyungwon nods. On the screen looks to be a list of things to do in Aex and, unsurprisingly, a majority of the list is related to water.
“But I didn’t bring anything to swim in.”
“S’okay. Neither did I.” Hyungwon makes a noise of confusion in the back of his throat and Minhyuk looks up at him with a wide, handsome grin. “We can just buy something there.”
The man working the eatery returns with Hyungwon’s tea and the unknown prince takes it with a tiny smile. Dragging the tip of his finger over the opening of the straw, Hyungwon imagines them in the store, filtering through swimming shorts with ugly patterns on them — imagines them at one of Aex’s many lakes or at the beach, with nothing to weigh them down but the water clinging to their skin.
He angles the straw toward his mouth and is surprised, dragged out of his thoughts, when his drink is ripped out of his grasp.
Minhyuk is still looking down at his phone when Hyungwon faces him, but theres enough of a smirk on his face to disprove his innocence.
Hyungwon watches him take a long sip and makes sure to school his expression into annoyance when Minhyuk passes the cup back with a grin.
This is what he’s wanted. For that strange boy with too many questions who intruded into his garden to return. Minhyuk has always been plagued by demons, but it was only recently that he began to shutter himself off like he was preparing for a storm. Maybe backlash from the House, maybe from the hurricane that he is himself.
They may be ill prepared for this trip, but even if they end up sleeping outside, Hyungwon thinks he wouldn’t mind much if Minhyuk was enjoying himself under the stars.
“I still think you should have gotten the lemongrass tea.”
Rolling his eyes, Hyungwon takes his cup back. He takes the bag with their dinner in it when it’s passed over the counter as well and together they walk back to the bus.
They continue on, riding through the suburbs to the far north of the kingdom. Hyungwon has never been so far north, and it’s with a curious frown that he leans into Minhyuk to gaze out the window, thinking of how much of his kingdom he's never seen and how much he doesn't know.
“It's nice up here." Like his home in the south, but with well kept infrastructure. That grinds at his nerves a bit, that the area he calls home continues to be neglected while the rest of the country is well taken care of, but it also sounds in character of the royal family.
Minhyuk makes a noise around the drink straw in his mouth. “Seems like it's a good place to settle down.” He takes a sip of the tea but it's more air than liquid now. Shaking the cup and hearing nothing, he shoves it into the bag holding the trash from their sandwich in between their feet.
Hyungwon gazes at distant neighborhoods of pastel, two-story homes with lush yards and the odd farm. "It does," he agrees, leaning in further still and resting his chin on Minhyuk's arm. "We should visit some time."
Minhyuk thinks about it for a moment before he nods. "We should."
A scratch against Hyungwon’s scalp draws a whine from his throat and he squirms in his too small seat, not quite sure if he’s moving closer to the touch or away from it. There’s a strange weight around his shoulders, a heat against his side, and a bone in his cheek. He whines again, lifts a hand to brush at the ticklish feeling in his hair and freezes when he hits something big and solid and definitely not the insect he thought it may be.
Eyes popping open, Hyungwon first gets a glimpse of cloudy, midnight jeans, a spot on the thigh beginning to thin and turn to grey. He lets his arm fall to his lap.
The hand in his hair shifts through one more time before dropping onto his shoulder.
“Awake?” Minhyuk asks, hushed.
The bus is dim, a hazy yellow barely lighting up anything. It’s quiet too, little to be heard but the steady rumbling of the bus. Since the last time opened his eyes, the orange of the sky has burned down to a bruised black.
A thumb presses soft at the skin of Hyungwon’s arm where the sleeve of his shirt ends. “Hyungwon?”
Cheeks warm (and hopefully unnoticeable), Hyungwon lifts his head from Minhyuk’s shoulder. In the horrible lighting, the other boy’s earthen eyes turn to liquid gold.
Hyungwon thinks he was always fond of Minhyuk. Before he met him, when Hyungwon was looking at blurry pictures of the Nadirian boy in tabloid magazines, maybe there was some resentment. But the boy who stumbled across Hyungwon’s cottage and followed him in the markets was so inoffensive, so lost himself, that Hyungwon couldn’t help but think him completely endearing.
Hyungwon has felt affection before, for boys in school who didn’t treat him with as much animosity as the others, but he was aware he was just reacting to much desired niceness when it felt like he had no one. With Minhyuk, there have been no conditions, no misconceptions of what he's feeling.
“Why are you staring?” whispers Minhyuk. He grabs harder at Hyungwon’s shoulder, tense under all of the attention.
Hyungwon blinks slow and passes his tongue over lips dried out by the stale air of the bus. He catches the way Minhyuk’s throat shifts and absentmindedly lifts a hand to touch the bulb of his neck.
“Hyungwon...?” Minhyuk inhales, the rise of his chest nearly brushing Hyungwon’s arm. His skin is warm.
Hyungwon trails light fingers up his throat to his jaw. Minhyuk’s chest is still raised high; he’s not breathing.
There’s something in the back of Hyungwon’s mind that’s telling him to stop and think, but the haze of sleep is just thick enough to cloud his judgement as he leans in.
It’s short, just as quick as the sun rises — a blink and it’s already over.
Minhyuk finally lets out the breath he’d been holding, a long shuddering exhale that fans over Hyungwon’s lips. And Hyungwon wants to kiss him again, wants to take in the freedom of no longer being within Maua’s border, the two of them just two boys with no connection to any convoluted politics. So, he does.
He kisses Minhyuk again, for a little longer. Not the sunrise, but like winter growing into spring: gradual, warm, life bursting from the knitted seams of their mouths.
When he spares a glance up, Minhyuk’s staring at him with eyes blown wide and cheeks pink like the flower crown Hyungwon gave him weeks ago. Hyungwon wants him to say something, anything, but he only stares at Hyungwon like he would a shooting star.
So Hyungwon lies his head on his shoulder once more, closes his eyes, and pretends to sleep as he listens to the drum of his heartbeat pounding in his ears.
Hyungwon
Yesterday was your tenth birthday. I can only imagine how big you’ve grown. I lined up candles for you in the garden. It is heartbreaking to think of how many celebrations I have missed in these years, how many moments of your life. I hope you spent the day blanketed in the warmth of those around you, and in the reminder that I love and miss you dearly.
H.S.
Hyungwon
I have yet to find happiness like I knew before I sent you away, but I know they wilt of the flowers lately is not my doing. I wish I could be there to comfort you through whatever plagues you. Ga-in’s spirit is strong within you and I hope you feel the embrace I wish you give you through her blessing.
I love you.
I’m so sorry.
H.S.
Hyungwon
Sometimes I wonder if I can remedy what has brought a plague upon my palace. The sickness runs so deep; it is difficult to distinguish who is spoiled on the inside and who is as fresh as they appear. I worry your brother will be infected by the poison that lingers in these halls as I watch him try to understand his place in the kingdom. It’s hard to do all of this with such little help. Please be patient with me. I will come for you soon.
H.S.
Hyungwon still feels it, the thrum of Ga-in’s blessing in his chest, and that’s to be expected; Aex and Maua’s lands used to be intertwined before the War of Threes. It’s different, though, not weak so much as it’s not as loud, as if still feels his, but not Aex as well.
Plucking the heather from his pocket, Hyungwon considers its petals. A plucked flower doesn’t seek his attention for long after its left its plot, but it’ll stay fresh in his presence. In these next few days, he’ll have to see if it continues to feed off his spirit as he’s used to, or if it’ll quickly wilt.
All in all, this feeling of freedom, no matter how slight, is very nice.
“Okay...”
As Minhyuk approaches, Hyungwon chances a glance at him despite the way memories of his actions on the bus make his stomach feel like it's on a tightrope walk.
Eyti is alive despite the aging hour, the city lit up with enough blue and white lights to mimic the hidden night sky and the air smelling of the nearby ocean. In front of them is the central monorail station, a sleek avenue of traffic made of tall glass windows and white wood architecture. The bus left them on the side of the road, right in the middle of the bustle, and the reality of being somewhere outside his kingdom is in sparkling clarity in front of his face.
His gift is quiet.
His mother isn’t here and can’t reach him.
He’s no one special here and there’s no false hope about that changing.
There’s no definition of freedom that humans can make but, here and now, the abstract concept feels like something tangible.
Here he’s just a boy of nineteen winters and Minhyuk is just the boy he fell into orbit with by chance.
Hyungwon doesn’t think he’ll fall in love with Aex, but he does think he’ll fall in love with this feeling, and he has six days to prepare himself for heartbreak.
Minhyuk pauses when he looks up from his phone and finds Hyungwon looking at him. He stands there long enough for Hyungwon to note the color that spreads over his cheeks.
Hyungwon doesn’t feel like he’s made a mistake in kissing Minhyuk, although the embarrassment does make his own face flush. Sinking his teeth into his bottom lip, Hyungwon chews on it for a moment before clearing his throat.
Minhyuk jolts. “I...” He raises his phone, arm stiff and awkward. “I got the directions.”
Hyungwon blinks. “...I still don’t know where we’re going,” he says quietly. Minhyuk opens his mouth and Hyungwon shakes his head. “You don't have to say anything. I trust you.” He waves his hand in a general motion signaling for Minhyuk to lead the way.
In the bus station, he said the same thing, but for some reason, now it makes Minhyuk’s face flare. They’ll need to talk about the kiss soon, but Hyungwon doesn’t really know where to start.
How does one even begin to describe the bashfulness of a flower when a bee caresses its petals; or why an eclipsed moon flushes red when the sun glances at it from across the room; or Hyungwon’s affection for the other boy? Language doesn’t feature the proper words to explain the most delicate of things, and Hyungwon isn’t nearly eloquent enough to find the words that’ll come close.
“So...” Minhyuk jerks his head at the monorail station. “The beach where they’re doing the fireworks show is a few stops away apparently.”
Hyungwon blinks. “The beach?” He would rather they settle the question of where they’re going to be sleeping tonight than go see fireworks, but he follows Minhyuk into the station and buys a ticket for the beachside.
They don’t have a train system in Maua and, once they’re waiting on the platform, Hyungwon stares with wide eyes at the monorail taking on passengers across the tracks, soon to depart in the opposite direction. It’s interesting, how a kingdom so similar to his own is so different.
Next to him, Minhyuk is oddly restless on his feet, the backs of their hands brushing with every shift of his weight. Hyungwon doesn’t mind, but the strange air between them makes him consider putting a little space between them. He barely shuffles to the right when the back of Minhyuk’s hand presses against the back of his own again. Fingers crawl around the side of his hand and drag down the empty lot of his palm until they find a resting space between Hyungwon’s fingers.
A sharp inhale makes Hyungwon’s chest tighten against his expanding heart. He looks down at their conjoined hands — it’s a shame that isn’t the arm he wears his bracelet on — and then snaps his attention up to Minhyuk’s face.
Minhyuk sucks in a deep breath through his nose, hand trembling just the slightest bit. When he turns his head, his earthen eyes are blown wide with nerves and his lips are already a stress-bitten red, but his grip when he squeezes Hyungwon’s hand is strong.
The salt of the ocean scratches at Hyungwon’s nose as soon as they pass their tickets to the attendant and leave another monorail station nearly half an hour later.
Nearly half an hour later, his hand is still encased in Minhyuk’s. They’ll have to talk about this soon, but Hyungwon imagines Minhyuk doesn’t know where to start. It’s fine like this for now, as the awkward air has thinned into a silent comfort. From outside the station, Hyungwon can see down the hills, past the scattering of tiny wooden beach huts, to where the full-bodied sea holds the resting sky in her hands.
Hyungwon squeezes Minhyuk’s hand.
“It’s bet it’s gorgeous in the morning,” comments Minhyuk, swiping his thumb over Hyungwon’s knuckles as if to say: ‘I know what you’re feeling.”
Minhyuk leads them down the hills, the two of them stopping to take off their shoes before stepping foot on the sand. Despite the rise of the moon, the grains are still a little warm under their feet and Hyungwon kicks it around and digs his toes in.
“Hyungwon,” Minhyuk calls.
Hyungwon looks up with a hum and is met with a soft smile.
Minhyuk reaches out and circles a hand around his wrist, tugging him forward. “You have time to enjoy the sand under your feet later. The show is going to start soon and there’s some place we need to go first.”
“What do ya mean? We’re already on the beach.” Hyungwon frowns as he’s pulled parallel to the shoreline where people have already gathered in clumps.
Minhyuk doesn’t offer an answer as he leads Hyungwon toward the quintet of huts built of tan and dark wood with round windows that face the ocean. They’re bigger than his cottage in the woods, Hyungwon notices, but that is no huge accomplishment to claim. More surprising is how quaint the property is, void of the kind of excessive noise and crowd that he’d expect on a beach in summer.
Minhyuk pulls him right up to one with its door left open and knocks on the frame as he pokes his head in. Hyungwon doesn’t see the person inside from where he stands to the side until she’s stopping right in front of them.
“Great fortune for the rest of your days,” she greets, words loose and relaxed as they are for those who speak this dialect of their mutual language. She has a smile as wide as the ocean and her messy hair tied up in a sand-dusted bun. “How can I help you boys?"
Minhyuk grins. “Great fortune for the rest of your days,” he returns. “I’m Minhyuk Lee. I made a reservation.”
Recognition washes over the woman's face. “The ones from Maua?" At Minhyuk's nod, her smile grows wider still. "I hope you had a nice trip."
Hyungwon watches quietly as Minhyuk and the woman, who introduces herself as Hyosung, converse. He realizes that this is why Minhyuk told him to trust in him when Minhyuk releases his arm in order to find his wallet and offer Hyosung a few gold. When she turns to go inside, asking them to wait for a moment while she gets the key to their beach house, Hyungwon pulls on Minhyuk's arm to make the older boy face him.
"When did ya arrange this?" he asks, thinking about everything they've done the entire day and not understanding how he could have missed Minhyuk making accommodation arrangements.
Minhyuk’s lips stretch into an awkward smile, the kind one makes when they've been caught in a secret. "A few days ago," he reveals. "I wasn't sure if I was going to go through with it until this morning which is why I didn't ask if you would join me before."
Hyungwon wants to ask what happened a few days ago, but then Hyosung is returning with the key and giving them a run down of the amenities in their beach house and the things they can do in the area. Hyungwon doesn't hear much of what she says, thinking of too much to care about which restaurants have the best seafood or how they can go snorkeling.
The tug at his arm pulls him back to his surroundings and Hyungwon wishes Hyosung a wonderful night before he follows Minhyuk to their accommodations.
"Why were ya so secretive about this?" Hyungwon finds himself asking suddenly once they're outside the door of Hut #3.
Minhyuk shoves the key into the lock but doesn't turn it. He faces Hyungwon with his mouth twisted into an odd shape. "I don't know. I guess I wanted it to feel as real as possible for one of us."
"Minhyuk," the boom of the first firework exploding makes Hyungwon's heart stutter, or maybe that's just what it usually does around the other boy, "we left the kingdom. Whether we had a place to stay or not, whether we went back to Maua tomorrow or never, this is as real as it'll ever be."
There's glitter of every color reflecting in Minhyuk's wide eyes like a rainbow after the passing of a storm.
Hyungwon reaches for his hands, threads their fingers of both. "Is that not enough for you?"
Minhyuk’s chest rises with a deep inhale and he squeezes Hyungwon's hands tight. "It is," he answers, voice hushed.
Hyungwon smiles soft, so impossibly fond of this boy. "And it's enough for me."