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"Who are you?" was the first question Jaebum croaked out when he blinked open his eyes to see an ethereal, dewdrop-shape-eyed boy haloed by pristine, blinding white light.
"Jinyoung," had been the serene reply in a hypnotically deep voice.
"Where am I?" Jaebum had groggily demanded next, looking around him in a bewildered daze as he took in a room whose walls seemed to be entirely constructed of clouds.
"Dead," came the equally calm answer.
It had taken hours for the horrified shrieking to make his voice go hoarse, then disappear; days for the unstoppable keening from his agonized lips to subside. The details were boring, typical. He acted just like any other human being would act in the situation -- unable to accept, to believe that he was dead.
In the end, like everyone else -- like Jinyoung himself -- he had had no choice.
He was lucky, he knew, in some twisted way, that he had Jinyoung there when he opened his eyes like a newborn chick; in those first terrifying and nightmarish days when he had had no idea how he had gotten to this impossible place; how he had died.
Jinyoung had been alone when he went through it, and though he didn't say anything about his experience Jaebum could tell from the way he shuddered that it hadn't been pretty.
Still, there were some things neither of them knew yet.
Like how he had died, for example. His mind was a frustrating, painful blank when he tried to rack his brains for his final moments on earth.
And where they were.
And what they were doing there; how long they would be there; or what they had to do.
He was just relieved when he opened his eyes daily, his held breath only resuming when he saw Jinyoung slumbering peacefully on a fluffy cloud mattress next to him, his sweet face naturally angelic in repose.
Jinyoung who had walked him through the steps, talked him soothingly and kindly back into a semblance of sanity for those first few nerve-wracking days. Who had, with his trademark unshakable simplicity, placed his hands on Jaebum's shaking shoulders and asked him to stop wailing and look into his eyes, for a moment.
Jaebum had obeyed, falling silent, opening his eyes wide and gazing straight into Jinyoung's crystalline, honest eyes. They were like transparent mirrors, like the surface of a clear, ripple-less lake, and in them Jaebum saw himself. He gasped to see himself completely different from how he had remembered his appearance, transformed almost unrecognizably into a vision of pure white like Jinyoung.
Needless to say, he looked far, far more angelic than he felt.
Slowly and patiently, Jinyoung had taught him everything he knew about this place and their existence, imparting all his knowledge to Jaebum without holding back. He had nurtured Jaebum like his own hyung, even though Jaebum was older and felt a fierce protective urge for fragile, susceptible Jinyoung.
It was only fitting that Jinyoung's mortal was as wispy, as unearthly beautiful as him, Jaebum thought. The concept of mortals had been introduced to him by Jinyoung in his second week in this -- cloud-castle.
He had instructed Jaebum to peer through an opening he hadn't noticed on the floor of the cloud, which they were able to stand on (it felt like walking on eiderdown, weightless and untethered), prising the small hole further apart with his bare hands to allow Jaebum a clearer view.
Jaebum had watched in hushed, spellbound silence -- although he didn't need to be quiet, because humans couldn't hear them -- the boy who Jinyoung told him softly was his mortal.
His name was Mark, and he was Taiwanese-American. Jinyoung reluctantly admitted that even after his months (a guesstimate, they had no real way of keeping track of the passage of time) in this simulacrum of heaven, he had no idea why Mark had been assigned to him as his mortal. He had merely found the hole at the bottom of the cloud one day by chance, and started spending more and more time as if by an invisible magnetic attraction watching the young man named Mark and the events and going-ons of his banal, human life on earth. Simply because he had nothing else to do.
The rest, he had deduced. Jaebum was starting to learn that Jinyoung was extraordinarily intelligent, and grudgingly admitted to himself that he was lucky to be trapped with him here, in this cell high up in the sky, where only blue and white stretched out as far as the eye could see.
Jinyoung had shared with him, eyes glinting with an almost human excitement that most people got when they acquired an amazing ability, or a marvellous secret, that he could control some of the things that happened to Mark.
To be more precise, he could shield Mark from some things, protect him when he sensed danger approaching. Many times, he bragged to Jaebum with a proud smile, he had saved Mark's life, like a knight in shining armour.
A pity, he murmured in a smaller voice, his expressive face promptly falling, that Mark would probably never know who he was, or that he existed in this world.
After all, he didn't exist in Mark's world anymore. Neither of them did.
When Jaebum enquired politely and respectfully if Jinyoung had ever met Mark in his human life, Jinyoung frowned in a way that made it obvious he had pondered this exact question for long hours himself.
"No," he said quietly, with a melancholy shake of his head. "At least, I don't remember. But I feel like if I had, I would."
"Don't you think so?" he raised his head and met Jaebum's eyes, hopefully.
Jaebum nodded earnestly. It wasn't so much that Mark was the kind of gorgeous that most people would find hard to forget. It was something deeper, more mysterious, a kind of bond that he could sense between Mark and Jinyoung, even though Jinyoung never verbally expressed or alluded to it. It was so strong and transcendant, he could physically feel it from the quiet fondness and affection with which Jinyoung gazed at Mark, never growing bored or impatient even for hours on end; the way his eyes grew starry and clouded with sadness as he longingly watched Mark do stupid and very human things and Jaebum could see how much he wished he was back in the mortal world, doing them with him.
Thus, it was an insolveable mystery why Jinyoung had been "assigned" Mark (and by who, for that matter). And what Jinyoung was supposed to do for him, for how long. But all Jaebum knew with crystal clarity was that if Jinyoung had never passed away, he would never have met Mark or knew of his existence. They lived in two different countries; their paths never destined to cross.
And he found his eyes blurring when Jinyoung confided in him, voice broken like glass shards, that sometimes, just sometimes, he even felt happy he had died -- simply because it had led him to meet Mark. That meeting Mark made it all worth it.
It was crazy, senseless. But love was. And Jinyoung loved Mark with everything he had in him.
Sometime along the way, as the weeks slipped past in a hazy blur, then months, Jaebum had started feeling jealous.
He envied the incandescent glow of Jinyoung's eyes, singlehandedly illuminating the night sky like little tea lights as he sighed contentedly watching Mark smile in his sleep, lying awake late into their own night. He was indescribably and absurdly jealous of how unbelievably, miraculously, Jinyoung had managed to find happiness in this ivory tower in the sky they were both trapped in, without any rhyme or reason or purpose.
Jinyoung had found his purpose. And Jaebum was growing more and more impatient to find his own.
They didn't have jobs or school here, high up in the sky, above the airplanes and stars and even the sun. All he had was Jinyoung's company, which was pitiably meager since he spent most of his time gazing out of his cloud window, till his back ached and his joints protested but he still didn't budge. All they had was time, vast expanses and measures of it, abundant beyond measure.
They didn't have anything to amuse themselves with, no computers or TVs or music or books. Only the sound of each other's voices, and the cacophony of their thoughts, seeking direction and enlightenment.
It was enough boredom to drive one to distraction. So naturally, Jaebum spent a big part of his day crawling around the floor of their immsense cloud raft, searching tirelessly for his own hole in the ground. The texture of the cloud was so fluffy that he sank down to his elbow and thigh-level every time he inched forward on his hands and knees, but he never gave up.
Even if he was unable to remember the reason for his death, he was determined to search for the reason for his afterlife.
Mark grew a year older, then two. Jinyoung remained nineteen. Eternally nineteen.
And Jaebum stayed twenty-one.
When Mark was the same age as him, Jaebum finally found his mortal.
He had stumbled across the slight spiderweb crack in the cloud floor, unnoticeable by eyes any less sharper and more desperate than Jaebum's. His heart missed a lurching beat initially, then sank in disappointment. At first, he thought he had found his window. But then, when he saw Mark entering the scene from the right, he realised that it was probably another glimpse of Jinyoung's mortal's world.
Jinyoung hadn't mentioned to him more than one window, and had spent the last two years glued to the only one Jaebum knew of, but he must have forgotten to bring up this information.
Jaebum slumped down in defeat, lying down with his face pressed to the hole like a child against a shop window, when his heart stopped the second time.
Because Mark was still in the scene, which he had realised looked like an empty lecture hall in a university, students filtering out after class. It was the university Mark had entered at the beginning of the year, and Jaebum had heard Jinyoung wax lyrical with maternal pride countless times.
But this time, Jaebum's eyes were irresistibly drawn by a boy sitting next to him -- a boy Jaebum couldn't remember ever seeing before in his mortal life but who looked hauntingly, heart-stoppingly familiar.
"Jinyoung." His voice came out as a harsh cry, jagged and breathless.
In an instant, Jinyoung was by his side, his body pressing without human temperature or heat against Jaebum's side, his face glued to the small hole Jaebum had prised open with shaking but careful hands till it was almost the size of Jinyoung's.
"Oh my god," Jinyoung breathed. He never swore casually, because they were in too precarious a position to take God's name in vain, but Jaebum could tell he was truly shocked and excited for him.
"Is that him?" Jinyoung whispered, echoing the thoughts racing through his mind he was unable to vocalize, in case this would all shatter like bubbles of sea foam, like a mirage in the desert or vapour trails in the sky.
But Jinyoung pointed with a steady and overjoyed finger out of the hole, his arm immediately turning the silvery translucent any part of their body did if they tried sticking it out of the hole. It was an effect eerie enough to prevent them from venturing further or trying to throw themselves off the edges of the cloud in the past two years. Besides, now that they had each other, as Jinyoung said grimly, they weren't going anywhere till they found out what was going on.
Jaebum didn't realise tears were running down his cheeks till Jinyoung turned to him, eyes softening instantly, and reached out a gentle thumb to wipe them away gently. He hadn't even known he was still able to cry, but the reason he hadn't felt them flowing down his cheeks was that he no longer had any sensations, whether of dampness or warmth.
But apparently, he still had the ability to feel sadness.
Honestly, sometimes it felt like the only sensation he was still able to feel in this cut-off, detached otherworldly world.
"Hyung," Jinyoung sobbed with emotion, hugging him. "Congratulations."
He was lucky, Jaebum thought with a lump in his throat as he continued peering through the hole like an addict all night, and all of the next day too, his hands growing numb from stretching it as far as it could go but his lifeless heart steadily seeming to expand and grow infinitesimally warmer -- so lucky that he had Jinyoung by his side in this lonely fortress, reminding Jaebum of what it had felt like so very long ago now, to be human.
It didn't take Jaebum long to satisfy his avid and ravenous curiosity. The boy's -- his mortal's -- name was Jackson. Jackson Wang Ka-yee, from Hong Kong, one of Mark's new classmates in his major at university.
Jackson was perfect. He was everything Jaebum had ever dreamed of in a mortal, and more.
It seemed like such an ironic twist of fate that Jinyoung and Jaebum's mortals had ended up meeting each other, but neither of them felt genuinely surprised. It felt like happenstance, like serendipity, that somehow their invisible but strong bond up above had led their mortals, as if by the red string of fate, to meet and befriend each other, providing each other the strength Jaebum and Jinyoung couldn't provide them visibly and physically.
Jaebum knew that Jinyoung wished as fervently and heartily as himself that Mark and Jackson would grow as close as the two of them were, and watched their blossoming friendship like proud parents surveying their children forging best friendships at preschool.
But most of the time, Jaebum still found himself spending most of his time privately, just whiling away the hours watching Jackson working at some mundane task like using the internet or taking the subway too and from school, slacking off in class and goofing off after. Eating, sleeping and jerking off. Dreaming and smiling and laughing -- and sometimes, very rarely (thankfully because these always felt like daggers piercing Jaebum's ribs) crying, alone or feeling tired.
At these times, all Jaebum wished was to magically transform himself into a wave of energy that could sweep over Jackson, bringing him back to life, to his usual hyperactive and lively self that was Jaebum's only source of laughter up here. But no matter how many ways he could turn himself into energy for fleeting instants to inspire Jackson, this was something he was frustratingly unable to do. All he wanted was to let Jackson know that no matter how alone he felt, he was never alone. Ever. Because Jaebum was always watching him up from above, all-seeing, all-forgiving and all-encompassing.
It sounded creepy, being watched like that, but Jaebum had the inexplicable feeling that Jackson wouldn't mind. He let his mind wonder occasionally, to the what-ifs and maybes, fantasies and illusions. What if he had met Jackson in the mortal world, before he passed on? Would Jackson have liked him, as much as Jaebum liked him? Would they have become friends?
Would he have found Jaebum as loveable as Jaebum found him?
It was tricky, because it was only when Jaebum found Jackson that he realised that their kind of love -- Jinyoung's and Jaebum's -- was slightly different from romantic love. It was something that was beyond definition, that rarely existed in the mortal world. It was immortal love, something he only found himself capable of in this afterlife.
Soulmates, Jaebum found himself thinking. It wasn't exactly accurate, mostly because Jackson didn't have a clue of his existence, but it was the closest word to describe the way Jaebum felt for him.
Even though he had never met Jackson in his life, Jaebum found him unsettlingly and comfortingly familiar at the same time, like a lullaby from his childhood he had lost and found again. He swiftly acquired a vast wealth of information about every aspect of Jackson's life and his history from his birth till the present, and devoured this knowledge as voraciously as if it were oxygen. He made it his mission to find out everything about Jackson, and found this voyage of discovery fascinating. Thus, knowing Jackson so well, it was effortless to predict his every next move, to hold him back from taking the wrong steps but also allowing him to make the mistakes he had to learn and grow.
Jaebum was surprised to find that he enjoyed being an angel. It was never a vocation he would have expected himself to find pleasure in, or even be skilful at, but he blushed with pride whenever Jinyoung warmly complimented him on what a good job he was doing with Jackson, and how Jackson was so sunny and unshadowed and full of life and love in a way very few mortals were.
(Privately, Jaebum felt that it had much more to do with Jackson's inborn and own personality than his care or guidance. In fact, occasionally he felt that he was learning more from Jackson than Jackson was from him, that he was unworthy of being the angel of a person as brilliant and dazzling as Jackson.)
Then, somehow, Jackson would stop his nonexistent heart by doing something utterly and wholly unexpected and breathtaking like closing his eyes on the last moment before he tipped into sleep at night, and saying quietly, in his head, Thank you. As if he knew that Jaebum was there, watching over him; as if he could sense Jaebum's existence, even when Jaebum didn't exist.
Just those two words made everything Jaebum painstakingly went through to pave Jackson's road totally and completely worth it.
Gradually, they developed a routine. They would spend all day -- from the moment they woke up till the moment the air around them darkened to a starless black -- watching their mortals through the portals, because that was all they wanted to do.
But when the sun set, Jinyoung and Jaebum would tear themselves away with reluctance and join each other, spending their alone time together. They were careful to devote time to nurturing their friendship and giving each other warmth and companionship as well.
If they had the desire to eat or any appetites for food, they would have had dinner together, maybe having a barbeque with good meat under the open night sky. But since they didn't, they contented themselves with talking and laughing together till they grew tired and fell asleep next to each other.
And one morning Jaebum woke up and realised that he had nothing to want for. In spite of everything, in spite of the fact that they still had no idea where this place was and what they were here for, in spite of the fact that Mark and Jackson didn't know them and would probably never know them -- Jaebum and Jinyoung were happy. In this private, secular universe with just the four of them, they had managed to find happiness in each other.
And that, Jaebum thought, was a greater miracle than the fact that he had landed in this bizarre temporum without rhyme or reason after he had departed the earthly world.
So, together, they continued watching silently over Mark and Jackson. Sometimes they switched windows, just for fun. And sometimes they got upset with their own mortals and the other had to cajole and persuade them to forgive the poor boys because they were just mere humans, with their beautiful flaws and imperfections. And sometimes they got uselessly angry and devastated at the thought that Mark and Jackson would never see them, or know how much Jaebum and Jinyoung loved them. That they would never know how worthy they were of such love.
They watched Mark and Jackson's friendship blossom tentatively, then grow into something steady and strong and lasting. They teared up, then got embarrassed, when Mark and Jackson were the pillars of support for each other they themselves could never be. With bated breaths, they watched Mark and Jackson fall in awkward and clumsy crushes with each other, then realise their mutual feelings. They watched them fall out of friendship and into love -- then out of love and back into a more fraught and hesitant friendship.
They watched them fall down and get up, fail and succeed, overcome obstacles that only made them into stronger and better people. Jaebum and Jinyoung watched Mark and Jackson grow into adults that made them so proud they were bursting with it, into people who were filled with love and the ability to share it.
The years passed. Mark and Jackson dated various girls and had a string of girlfriends, and made other close friends like Bambam and Yugyeom and Youngjae, but they never fell out of their best-friendship.
The year Mark turned twenty-seven and Jackson twenty-six, Jaebum and Jinyoung still remained twenty-one and nineteen. But despite their outward and stagnated ages, they felt like they had grown immeasurably as well, just by being beside each other and their amazing, unbelievably humane mortals.
One unremarkable, dateless morning, Jaebum woke up, as usual, and just like that, Jinyoung had grown wings.
He seemed to have sprouted them overnight, in his sleep, without any pain or memory. With tears brimming in his eyes and overflowing with desperation and fear and the exhilaration of freedom, Jinyoung had asked him, his hands running compulsively over the feathery, beating downy appendages in wonder: "What's going to happen next, hyung?"
"I don't want to leave you," Jaebum heard a frightened, childlike voice saying, cracking on the last word, and at first he thought it was Jinyoung but then Jinyoung reached out and drew him into his arms warmly and Jaebum realised with a start that it was him.
"I don't want you to leave," Jaebum was crying, like a lost abandoned child, the way he had on the first day he had woken up in this strange, twisted heaven and Jinyoung had been looming over him like he was Jaebum's personal guardian angel instead of Mark's; and in many ways, Jaebum thought that he was.
Mark hadn't known Jinyoung, so he didn't have to bear the pain of saying goodbye -- but how could anyone, in this world or the other, possibly endure the agony of bidding farewell to Jinyoung, when they had known his softness, his tenderness and gentle compassion?
Jinyoung was a true angel, Jaebum realised, in all the ways Jaebum would never be. He was everything an angel was supposed to be -- unselfish, selfless and self-sacrificing. He had saved Mark and he had saved Jaebum too, and Jaebum hadn't known how much he needed an angel till it was too late and Jinyoung was deserting him.
"Oh, Jaebum," Jinyoung whispered hoarsely, dropping the hyung for once, his voice filled with so much warmth and affection and love that Jaebum only cried harder. Jinyoung suddenly seemed so much more mature, so much older and wiser and more lofty. Did it come with the wings, Jaebum wondered? But it was clear that Jinyoung had finally found his inner peace.
"It hurts to leave you too, my favourite hyung," Jinyoung continued in that hypnotically calming voice, like molten sunshine and falling rain. "But trust me, it's only a matter of time before we'll be together again. And when that time comes, it will be forever. You just have to be patient. And did you forget that you still have Jackson? What will he do without you? We both know how hopeless he is, what a bumbling klutz..."
Jinyoung's voice had regained a bit of its old teasing note, and Jaebum snorted a half-hearted but still unbearably sad laugh.
"Why can't you stay here? With me? A little longer..." he whined, sounding more and more like Jinyoung's child.
"I don't know, Jaebum-ah," Jinyoung replied evenly, with the same placid tranquility he had calmed Jaebum down with the day he arrived above the clouds. Unconsciously, Jaebum had grown to love their cloud-home, where they spent long languid hours just observing Mark and Jackson and gossping about them and laughing about them and worrying about them and aching about them, but mostly loving them.
"But," Jinyoung continued, his eyes growing more and more distant, as if he had already left, "if we hadn't come here, we wouldn't have met Mark and Jackson and each other. We wouldn't have known this happiness."
"Were you happy? With me? Are you happy now?" Jaebum was grasping at straws, tugging at Jinyoung's clothing urgently as if he could keep him here just by sheer brute force.
Jinyoung nodded and smiled at him radiantly, a smile filled with sympathy and acceptance.
"I was so happy because of you, hyung. Before you came, I hated this place; but for the past years, I felt so lucky to be stuck here with you. Thank you for everything."
Jaebum heard a sob catch in his own throat. "What about Mark? What will that fool do without you?" Jaebum quoted a line Jinyoung often used in tender exasperation, and saw the unmistakable flicker of sadness in Jinyoung's eyes.
"I can't bear to leave either of you, Jaebummie," Jinyoung said with aching softness. "But sometimes we have no choice but to say goodbye. And I'm sure -- absolutely certain Mark will be just fine without me, on his own. Just like you."
Jaebum had nothing else to say or add. Because Jinyoung had made himself clear. He wanted to leave. And because Jaebum loved him, he had to let go.
Because if Jackson had taught Jaebum what love was, then Jinyoung was the one who taught him how to love without expecting anything in return.
An innumerable and uncountable number of dreadfully lonely nights later, Jaebum found himself dreaming, for the first time since he had ascended to this castle in the sky.
When he awoke, he didn't dare to open his eyes for a moment, feeling sure that when he did, he would find wings billowing from his back, magnificent and ready for flight to wherever Jinyoung was.
But he found something better. Much, much unimaginably better.
Because what he saw was Jackson, curled up like a miracle in bright white, sleeping peacefully next to him.