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Mark would’ve never guessed, that in his fifteen years of existence he would find himself hating the holidays season. To be fair, ‘hate’ might be a strong word to describe this dreadful mixture of boredom and lethargy. Maybe ’apathetic’ is a better adjective in this situation.
His problem stemmed from parents who legitimately forgot about him when they were making their holiday plans, and completely overlooked the need to buy their sole offspring a ticket to go with them to a nice winter getaway. Mark was suspicious though. Maybe they did it deliberately. Because how could parents completely forget about the existence of their own son? This is real life, not ‘Home Alone’.
“Just stay there in Hogwarts,” they said, “remember how you used to tell us that you want to spend Christmas holiday in Hogwarts? This is your chance to do so before graduating!”
Well… he did say that so Mark didn’t really have any firm footing to base his argument against his parents’. And if it was any other year, Mark probably wouldn’t have mind all that much. But after spending almost a whole year getting ready for his O.W.L tests, he really needed that break. That escape from long, bleak, brownish corridors and long, bleak, dreary wooden bench and long, bleak, tiring hours of nothing much to do but reading books from the library or penning something on a scrap parchment paper.
Besides, most if not all of his fellow fifth year friends had went home for the holidays because they knew they needed it. They needed it dearly to keep their sanity. His parents didn’t listen to that angle of his argument though. In fact, Mark suspected they never really listened to any of his points at all. They called not because they were asking for his permission and would’ve cancelled their trip if Mark objected. The trip was booked. They called just to tell him they were going.
It felt like they were getting rid of a pest. A sad and lonely pest.
And so, that’s that. The end of his struggle. Left behind: Hogwarts edition.
His first few days were wasted eating bowls of way-too-sugary soggy weetbix with a side of whatever leftover soda found inside the Ravenclaw tower’s communal kitchen, sleeping till past noon, laying around his room, reading whatever unread books he could find lying around the common room, and eating dinner on Jeno’s bed because as it wasn’t his, Mark didn’t have the guilt of leaving it in a messy, unmade state.
Mark wasted almost a week doing nothing much aside from moping around like a sad erumpent until he came across a poorly made (well, maybe not poorly made. More like, modestly made) flyer on the corner of the Great Hall, after he’d finished piling up the Sunday roast on his tupperware for him to eat while he read, for the fifth time that week, C.S Lewis’ ‘the Horse and His Boy’ in his bedroom.
Written in beautifully flourished cursive, the flyer said,
Left behind by your family and friends?
Don’t know what to do with your free time?
THEN MAYBE IT IS TIME TO SHOW THEM YOU’RE NOT BOTHERED BY SENDING THEM SOME HOMEMADE CHRISTMAS CARDS!
(Or a spiteful card filled with curses, we won’t judge)
Monday, 7 pm @ Hufflepuff common room
*for those who don’t know the passcode, wait in front of the kitchen entrance at 6:55 and someone will pick you up.
Seeing the word ‘curse’ caused Mark’s attention to suddenly perk up. Oh, imagine all the nuisance he could bring to the doorstep of whatever Alpine ski lodge his parents managed to nab. Itchy powder, sneezing flume, all the mischief that his bored mind could muster up.
But in the end, Mark found himself sitting at the back of Hufflepuff’s common room. The bright, though not too bright common room, with lights flickering from all the fat candles resting on carved nooks on the wall. And fluffy, with all the self-knitted black and yellow throw blankets. And warmth coming from a half-circle gigantic hearth at the center of the circular room. He sat there, staring down at a modestly made Christmas card addressed to his parents. To: Mr. and Mrs. Lee, whatever Alpine ski lodge you managed to nab before they were all booked out.
No curses, no jinxes. Just a normal, unsuspecting Christmas card.
“Hey, Mark? How’s it? Are you done?” The sound of a fluffy slipper rubbing against the carpeted floor brought him out of his bitter rumination and into present time. To his spot in the insanely cozy, nearly deserted common room while the familiar voice, whose owner had just exited the round door that leads to the dormitories, came closer and closer to the nook where Mark has nested himself comfortably for the last three hours.
Mark only shrugged at the barrage of questions before he tried to hide his handiwork inside his book bag, too shy to show it to any other human being, yet alone him.
Him.
The Huang boy.
Renjun, who looked certifiably adorable wearing his matching fleece pajama, who had in his hands two perpetually warm mugs of hot chocolate with marshmallows piling on top of it like a cartoonish depiction of a snowy mountain, who then sat beside him and demanded Mark to hand him the card he’d worked on, or else. “Or else I won’t give you your hot cocoa.”
Seeing that Mark was still looking pretty much adamant about handing him his card, Renjun tilted his head and stared him down with THE inevitable. The undisputable. The un-refuse-able puppy eyes of the century and beyond, and he said, with a pout, “please?”
“Of course.” Seeing that he had no other choice, Mark breathed out his defeat, reaching into his book bag and handing Renjun his card in exchange for the legendary cup of Hufflepuff’s hot cocoa. ‘State secret,’ was Renjun’s answer when earlier Mark asked him ‘what’s in it?’
When he saw Renjun’s surprised smile after he carefully looked the decorations of his card, Mark just had to thank the lords up in the heavens for blessing him with a thick skin that doesn’t easily blush. When Renjun praised him and told him, “this is not all that bad!” he could only hide his proud grin with a deep sip of his warm drink. Heck, he’d been thanking the heavens ever since he walked into the hobbit hole-esque common room and found that Renjun was one of the left-behinds.
Mark thought, this Christmas season, he only had to deal with the emotion that came in the same package as the treacherous actions that his parents did. Because that’s easy.
He never knew he also had to deal with his secret crush situation. Now that’s something else entirely.
_ _ _ _ _
Honestly speaking, when Mark first saw Renjun sitting on one of the beanbags peppered around the glowing hearth of Hufflepuff’s common room, he wanted to turn around and speed-walked his way back to his bedroom. Because he was not ready for that. He was not ready for a confrontation that happened so unceremoniously like that. What should he say? What should he ask? Would they even be able to talk, now that they were so far removed from the predictable environment that they usually found themselves crammed into?
But before he could execute his actions, Renjun took notice of him. And gone were his chances to run away because how rude would that be? Besides, Renjun was waving at him a friendly wave that was accompanied with a painful dose of embarrassment, and Mark just didn’t have the heart to leave him hanging like that. Like getting caught red-handed with one’s hand deep inside a cookie jar at midnight. Although, at that moment, it wasn’t Renjun’s hand that was red, it was his whole face.
At that moment, it seemed that there was a gigantic crimson bauble hanging on the low ceiling of Hufflepuff’s common room.
_
After they got past their initial awkwardness with some plain pleasantries, Mark decided to ignore that slight nauseating pressure at the base of his stomach (due to feeling a little bit over-excited that he was going to spend the next few hours hanging out with his crush ) and stuck himself to Renjun’s side because he didn’t know a single person that joined the activity night. Most of them were first or second year students, still entirely filled with the joy and wonderment that came from spending their Christmas and New Years on an ancient magical castle. There were some of their seniors, Hufflepuff students in their sixth or seventh year who were too busy trying to handle the toddlers to care for the two kids who deliberately tried to distance themselves from the festivities of it all. They picked a nicely hidden spot right beside a wooden bookcase, crooked into the shape of a half circle to accomodate the peculiar making of Hufflepuff's concave dormitory walls, and decided that it was a good enough location to spend the remaining of their night.
“I want to try and see what it’s like spending my holiday here in Hogwarts,” Renjun answered after Mark asked him, ‘why are you still here?’ And from the warm smile that was perching on his lips as he nudged his chin towards the general collective presence of his house’s common room, it was clear that unlike Mark, Renjun was enjoying his time of being one of the left-behinds. Well, if one lived on what could be argued as the most-coziest place on earth, they wouldn’t have that much bones to pick, would they?
Compared to Ravenclaw tower’s practicality and stoicness, the Hufflepuff’s subterranean hobbit hole felt like home.
“My little brother just started his first year as a full time student in Mahoutokoro. So my parents decided to accompany him and my older brother there for the full duration of their break.”
Renjun was probably used to seeing people looking utterly puzzled when told of his family’s peculiar education arrangement. Because when Mark raised the coloured pencil in his hand in a 'I want to ask a question' gesture, Renjun only nodded understandingly to it and replied with a simple, "I know. It's a long story."
"Well... I'm all ears."
Over the course of them trying to make their own stationery, aka card bases and envelopes, Renjun told him the never-before-heard story about his family. He's the son of muggle diplomats blessed with the most severe bout of 'a high tendency of producing magical offsprings'. Three sons, all wizards, two parents, all baffled when they found out the world isn’t as small as they thought it was. Renjun was the ‘odd middle child’ who was left stranded alone in a country that’s not his own just because he was born there out of coincidence and had his name written by the Quill of Acceptance without anybody having much control (if any) over it, even though his family spends most of their time living in a country located almost halfway across the globe.
Mark wanted to say 'that is so cool.' But he didn't know if Renjun found his situation 'cool', or if he found it to be a curse, of some sort. And thus, he carefully asked, "couldn't you have asked them to transfer you over there?"
But Renjun looked at him as if his nose had suddenly turned into duck bills in a faulty transfiguration experiment and Mark knew that the kid shared his sentiment. “Who wouldn’t want to go to Hogwarts?
"Besides," Renjun continued as he threw the last of his card base to the supply basket nesting between them, as he’s finished making five of them in less time than it took for Mark to make one, "I've spent my last Christmas holiday there. I don’t want a repeat, you get me?"
He then asked Mark if he needed any help with his card-making. And when Mark refused, Renjun quickly steered his question and asked, "what about you? Why are you still here?"
Mark didn't really want to tell his story again and further ruminate on his situation, so he just summarised everything with one shrug and a long unbroken sentence, "parents wanted to have a private winter break without their gremlin ruining all of their romantic plans so yeah. I'm left behind."
The painfully annoying sound of nails sliding against thick card stock as he used them to finalise a fold punctuated the fact that Mark did not want to continue their conversation talking about his sad condition, "enough about that. Tell me what you did in Japan last year. That sounds like a cool Christmas holiday."
"There was a winter ball..."
"You went to Mahoutokoro's winter ball."
"It's not that big of a deal, no?"
"Dude. It is.”
Mahoutokoro’s winter ball, aka their letter of jealousy for not being allowed to join the Triwizard tournament (because Quadwizard tournament just doesn’t have that much of a catchy ring to it). Only rivalled by the… I don’t know, Buckingham Palace’s winter charity dinner?
It is an event so notoriously extravagant that it left the Yule Ball weeping in a snowbank after it got kicked out of its rival’s three doors limousine.
“What happened? What did you do? How was the food? I seriously can’t believe you were there.” Because Mark’s always thought that the closest he could get to experiencing the winter ball was through the attendees’ illegal posts in instagram that would’ve gotten deleted by Japan's equivalent of the Ministry of Magic by the next morning.
Renjun only shrugged at the barrage of question, some sort of a shy smile that can only be produced when someone is reminiscing on a sweet memory painted daintily on his lips. He picked up a coloured marker and began to draw a filigree design on one of his card, “it won’t be something you’ve never heard before.”
“It will be something I’ll hear with my own ears.” Seeing that Renjun was doing everything in a speed double from his, Mark’s competitive side was seemingly awoken. Goal for now: finish making this darned envelope. Goal for not now: making sure everything is tidy and symmetrical. Sure enough, his last envelope ended up looking slightly wonky. That’s okay. He’ll just give that to his dad. “Come on. Tell me. What did you do? Did you dance?”
“Yes.”
‘One worded answer won’t be enough,’ Mark thought. He wanted to hear more. Of the winter ball’s tale, and also of Renjun’s voice. His is a voice that sounded the closest to how a cinnamon powder might’ve sound if they evolved to become anthropomorphic. Smooth. Homey. Warm. And so, to encourage Renjun to say more words, Mark nudged his elbow onto his arm, not thinking that it might’ve jeopardised all of Renjun’s artsy hard work. And it did indeed kind of ruined the section that Renjun had been working for the last minute or so, with a rogue line shooting through the cross section of a reindeer.
“Mark!” He screeched out his irk and annoyance, a noise that immediately undermined the comparison Mark’d made between Renjun’s voice and cinnamons because that noise resembled more of a knife grating down a washboard than anything else. But Mark didn’t mind the noise.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” he also didn’t mind when Renjun gave his shoulder a no-holds-barred punch. Because afterwards they found themselves laughing their hearts out and Mark felt the glass hedge that they’ve precariously walked on getting sledgehammered because of it (besides, seeing Renjun looking so annoyed felt sort of good because hey, that’s what he felt everytime Renjun ruined their potions practical. Revenge never felt so good).
“I did! I danced, ok?” Renjun said with a huff, reluctantly digging into the basket to find any whiteout liquid to fix the unfortunate mistake on his card, “I was really bad at it though. Like, really bad.”
He told Mark he stepped on his partner’s foot a grand total of twenty times in a six minutes ballroom dance routine. “A pretty girl called Ayumi,” Renjun told him, “she’s taller than me by a full head. It was really embarrassing.”
“So did you enjoy the night or not?” From what Renjun’d told him so far, Mark would guess that he did not. But Mark could also guess that Renjun is a type of person who would never denounce such a high-profile event with a hard no, and thus he just had to enjoy the kid’s attempt at saying that he didn’t enjoy the ball without saying the word ‘no’.
_
Over the course of the night, Mark quickly learned that talking with Renjun is not hard. Just tricky.
And patience is key. Just tiny things, here and there. Questions. Things that will make him laugh. Make him laugh, that’s an important thing to remember. Because laughter for Renjun was compared to slipping your foot into a half opened door and convincing the owner of the house that it’s okay to invite you in. ‘I’m not a scammer,’ Mark thought, ‘I’m just an ancient magical book salesman that wants to know you better, sir.’
(Mark didn’t realise that it was the opposite that happened in Renjun’s case. With him quickly learning that talking with Mark was a bit hard. And tricky.
Because everytime he asked something, Mark would answer back with a witty quip which Renjun would never know how to top and so he would just let out a laugh, a genuine one, of course, and waited until the next moment to ask a question presented itself.
Mark should be thankful that Renjun is a very resilient person. Because he tried again, and again, and again, without ever tiring, until Renjun finished crafting all of his cards and he managed to ask a question that was answered genuinely by Mark, “do you want me to top up your hot chocolate?”
“Yes please.”)
_ _ _ _ _
The cuckoo clock hanging on the wall right across from where they were sitting has just peeped its tenth and last peep and Mark couldn’t believe he could stretch a moment (i.e., drinking his mug of hot chocolate) that should’ve been finished in five minutes, into an hour long unofficial contest with Renjun to see who, between the two of them, could finish their drink the slowest.
Mark lost, obviously, because as an outsider, he still hasn’t developed a tolerance to the utter deliciousness of the beverage. He’d guzzled the content of his mug clean fifteen minute in, but Mark considered himself a great actor. Renjun wouldn’t notice that his mug was empty unless he told the kid himself.
(Renjun noticed, of course. He was just too nice to let Mark know that he noticed.)
“Aren’t you sleepy?”
“What is this, is my presence starting to annoy you?”
Ah, there it was again. The witty quip. The conversation killer, that was, if only Renjun would jolly well get himself together and admit it. But no, it was the holiday season for goodness sake, everyone should try to be good and patient. Not only that, Renjun was not ready to show his sassy side to his crush, yet. What would Mark think of him if he somehow out-sassed the sass master?
“No! Of course not,” Renjun decided to settle on something middle-of-the-ground non-offensive reply to Mark’s accusation, before he leaned back against the bookcase and stared straight into the fire dancing in the fireplace. They’ve ran out of conversational topic almost half an hour ago, after they’d agreed to meet up the next morning at the owlery to send their holiday greetings cards. And at that point, Renjun’s mind was empty. Filled only with the flickering yellowish hue of the flame that was reflected on the polished wooden floor of the hearth, the sound of the phantom violin playing some random christmas carol, and the next time he spoke, the words flew out of his mouth without going through the filters set up by his controlling brain, “I’ve been wondering... are you a good ballroom dancer?”
Just heart. All heart and no brain and later he would’ve blamed it on the high amount of sugar he just consumed (all the hot cocoa and the marshmallows and the candies and the cookies et cetera). But for now, Renjun was just trying his best not to self-implode because Mark, for the first time that night, was looking at him as if Renjun has truly, honestly catched his interest.
“I’m not all that bad, if I say so myself.” Mark, in the other hand, was pleasantly surprised to find that the usually timid looking Renjun was brave enough to steer the conversation into such a precarious spot, “your expression tells me you’re not convinced with what I just said.”
At the same time, Mark also noticed that the volume of the violin was suddenly cranked up, from just being soft enough to serve as a background music, to something loud enough that it was able to sway the atmosphere of the empty common room.
Emphasise on the word empty. Because then it was clear who tampered with the violin. It wasn’t Mark, that one he was sure, unless it was a spell spun out of his wand all caused by his strong unconscious desire to take Renjun on a quick swing. Besides, he didn’t even know the spell needed to control the movement of traditional musical instruments.
Thus, after eliminating all of the impossible, whatever’s left, however improbable, must be the truth.
Renjun’s cheeks were once again the colour of Santa’s tunic and Mark felt that low drumming of nausea starting to climb up the back of his throat. A sensation that only presented itself at moments before he decided to screw it all and do something certifiably reckless.
Mark appreciated Renjun’s courage that he hadn't expected. And it gave Mark courage to do what he did next.
He stood up, ignored the look of true, wide eyed horror on Renjun’s face, and extended his hand in an offer to make an ordinary night extraordinary. “Want me to prove it?” Mark managed to say, even if his heart felt like it’d crawled out from its supposed cage and settled comfortably in the middle of his throat.
“I don’t want to dance now, you know I can’t,-”
“Then I’ll teach you.”
“But… but there’s no song to dance to,-”
“Just listen to whatever the violin is playing.”
“I will step on your feet,-”
“I don’t mind.”
There’s a thin line separating resilience and harassment and in Mark’s case, it was bordering to the latter. But his effort worked though, once again, probably because it was a lucky day for him. as instead of telling Mark to f-off and quit bothering him, Renjun accepted Mark’s offer with a long sigh, “all right, all right. But only once.”
Mark could feel the slight tremble of Renjun’s hand as he led their way to the center of the common room. But once again, he decided to ignore it (because Mark was sure his fingers were also shaking like crazy), and decided to focus on how Renjun was huffing and puffing as they made their way to the only spot clear of the many types of sofas and ottomans and comfortable beanbags. Mark then said to him, “should I be Ayumi or should you be Ayumi.”
It didn’t take long for Renjun to decide what roles they should fall into, as he quickly placed his free hand on Mark’s shoulder and sighed, “I might fall going backwards but at least you won’t get your feet stepped on as often.”
“You know that you will still have to step forward even if you’re doing the female part right,-”
“Yes, yes of course I know that! God, let’s just do this.”
Later, Renjun might’ve regretted his decision of going through the event with a ‘to hell with it’ attitude. Later, he might’ve regretted his decision to not ground himself and enjoy the moment. To listen to the melody lulling out of the floating violin, the crackle of firewood, the scent of chocolate and cinnamon hanging thick in the air. Hints of cloves, and peppermint, and sweet milk.
Later, Renjun might regret everything, but at that moment he already considered himself lucky to not have his heart completely burst in a display of firework made out of blood-and-visceral-matter when he felt Mark’s hand placed very carefully on the thin of his waist.
Initially, moving Renjun felt like moving a dead forklift. Heavy and hard to work with. Mark had to do several nudges and forceful tug to get the boy moving the way he wanted to. And it felt like he was lugging around a stiff piece of dried up birch tree trunk in a boring box-step routine until he couldn’t take it anymore, briefly stopped, and asked Renjun to, ‘shake it off.’
“Just like the Taylor Swift song.”
To that, Renjun only wiggled his arm with a confused look on his face, “like this?”
“No…” Mark said as he rubbed the bridge of his nose to stave his urge of letting out a secondhand-embarrassment-induced laughter, “you gotta enjoy it. Fun! Fun! Dancing is supposed to be fun. Not fearful, or whatever it was that you just did.”
Renjun then proceeded to do a very adorably awkward movement to loosen up his limbs. Legs stomping, arms wiggling, head shaking, which ended when he ran out of his breath and his face was buried deep in his open palm, “that was stupid.”
“That was not.” This time, it was impossible for Mark to stop himself from giggling. And so he let it out, naturally, while he took both of Renjun’s hand into his own, holding one firmly inside one hand and placing the other back on his shoulder. Mark felt Renjun slightly tensing up when he put his hand back on his waist so Mark resorted to break the glass hedge, once more, with a sharp poke on his ribs, “fun. Ok? Just enjoy it.”
Renjun nodded and as if it knew, the violin screeched to a halt and began playing a song much slower than the one it played before. ‘That’s odd,’ Mark thought, ‘how could he do that if he didn’t have his wand with him?’
But the thought and speculation that Renjun could possibly be the first instance of a wizard strong enough to command magic with only his will power should wait because dance. Gotta focus on the dance. They were dancing, finally. No longer did it feel like Mark was doing a ballroom dance with a broomstick.
“Am I doing it right?” Renjun asked, when he finally grew confident enough to stop looking at the floor and instead paid all his attention to his dance partner.
“Have you stepped on my foot?”
“I don’t think so but,-”
“Then you’re doing it right.”
After he was successful in shutting Renjun up, and mouthing at him to just ‘let it loose,’ Mark proceeded to continue on their slow dance. Ballroom dance. Wish-come-true dance. A thing that he would never do, or even request from Renjun, if they weren’t in a situation identical to what they had right then. Deserted place, nobody around, just him and his dance partner swinging around in their pajamas.
Renjun would grimace and bite his lips everytime he thought he made a mistake, and that meant he did it a lot. He would squeeze his hands and tense up a little bit everytime he missed the beat of the song, and Mark has to either pinch his side, or wiggle their linked hands to remind Renjun to let it go. It was a Christmas miracle that Mark could contain all his happiness inside a modest smile. Because if not Renjun would’ve run away so fast with Mark bearing down a really creepy, over-excited grin on him.
_
Backward-side-step. Forward-side-step. Backward-side-step. Forward-side-step. Repeat ad infinitum.
Or at least he wished it could be that way.
Because suddenly Mark felt something bumping against his head, over and over and over again until he had enough of it. But when he was about to let go of Renjun’s hand to see what the hell was bothering their perfect dance session, Mark felt a forceful tug that prevented him from doing so.
“Don’t.”
“I mean… it won’t be the end of our dance, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Mark said as his effort to free himself was prevented by Renjun’s unwillingness to let go of his hand.
“You don’t want to see what’s causing it.”
“Is it a spider’s nest- is it a spider - is it a,- WHAT IS IT RENJUN TELL ME.” If it wasn’t clear from his sudden panic, Mark is not that big of a fan of said eight legged beings. And with the thought that he was standing under one, Mark vetoed Renjun’s effort to keep him ignorant and yanked his arm away to swish the thing off his head.
The thing fell on the ground and it allowed Mark to realise how wrong he was. It wasn’t a spider, or a spiderweb,
It was a mistletoe.
Mark looked up to the spot that the twig originated from and he saw not just one, but a whole bushful of it that somehow suddenly grew (and was still growing) out of the surface of the low ceiling. When he looked back down, Renjun’s face was in the colour of ripe cranberries.
“Did you do this?” ‘All this? The cheeky conversation, the violin, the mistletoe, because holy hell I would never think of you as a master of these kind of things.’ (And Mark would also never think that he’d fall to these kind of things. But he did.)
“I would never,” Renjun replied, and when he saw Mark’s face taking an ashy hue and the kid looked like he was about to throw all of his dinner onto the nicely carpeted floor, Renjun quickly added, “I mean I would, maybe, someday, but not today, not tonight, not when,- you know what. No. It wasn’t me. I don’t even have my wand with me!”
Mark gave the room one quick sweep and saw not even a single soul was there. In fact, there hasn’t been a soul wandering around the common room since almost an hour and a half ago. So who?
“Who could it be then? It couldn’t be the castle… right?”
_
Yes, Mark was correct. There wasn’t a soul sitting inside the common room. But actually there were two, who were hiding behind the shadow of the slightly opened circular door of the dormitories’ entrance.
One of them had her wand up in the air and the other was begging to be told of what’s happening beyond the door.
“Did it work? Did it work? Heejin!! Don’t just hog the view for yourself you selfish prick!”
The girl had to use her elbow to nudge the boy’s lips to get him to shut up, because she was still too busy trying to get the mistletoe to grow bigger, as ‘it was so close! It was sooooo close!’ “ Bomin I swear to god if you don’t keep it low I will put you to sleep.”
Bomin and Heejin. First and second year students. One-two punch packet of your worst nightmare if your nightmare consisted of constant, mild mannered harassment.
After they got a good look of their senior, Renjun, sitting with a cool looking Ravenclaw, Heejin leaned to Bomin while pretending to pick up another coloured marker from the marker cup and whispered, “I ship it.”
The rest of the night was history. They pretended to retire to their rooms but in truth have been hiding behind the dormitory entrance for the duration of the two lovebirds’ courting period. Everything that happened, happened because of them. (Heejin was a student really gifted in the magical charm department, so she only shoved Bomin to the side, rolled up the sleeves of her nightgown, and said “I got this.”)
The violin, the mistletoe, even the heavy scent of Christmas was caused by them, with Bomin blowing out a Christmas themed aromatherapy out of crack of the door.
They’ve done their best, and now they were just waiting to see if their hard work would cause their plan to come to fruition.
‘Kiss… kiss… kiss… kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss, kiss,-’
“What are you two doing here?”
Behind them, seemingly coming from the essence of the darkness itself, materialised a tall, looming figure of their prefect-on-duty that meant the definitive end of their matchmaking efforts. Hands perched on his hips and the tail end of his nightcap covering half of his anger-laced face, he grumbled, “you guys are supposed to be sleeping.”
“Yes! Yes we are but we were just… we were just,-”
Bomin stopped the mad rambling of Heejin with a hand firmly plopped over her mouth and he forcefully started to drag her unwilling dead-weight of a body with him back to their respective dorms, “we were just getting some drinks before we go to sleep, we’re sorry Taeyong hyung, we’re really sorry.”
Taeyong stood there, in the darkness, watching the movement of the two mischievous mice like a hawk until he heard two distinct clicks from the dormitories’ entrances. Once they were gone, completely gone, after he used his wand to cause a strong wind to cause the doors to bang against their frames, Taeyong took a careful peek to see what the hell the two toddlers were peeping at.
He caught a glimpse of Renjun standing in front of the tunnel that would’ve lead to the exit, and he was accompanied with the Ravenclaw kid that had stayed by his side for the entirety of the night. Mark Lee, if he was not mistaken, and Taeyong decided that he would do a complete background check on that kid come first light in the morning.
Because when he saw Mark leaning in and gave Renjun’s cheek an innocent peck, his lips were pulled back into an endeared smile but his mind was telling him to get in the middle of those two kids and tell them to ‘think of what you’re doing’ because they’re just that. Kids. Children, who in his eyes, knew nothing and nothing at all, yet alone things like flirting and love and the heartbreak that would surely follow suit.
‘Ah, what can you do,’ he thought to himself as he carefully closed the heavy circular door with a resigned sigh, as to not disturb the two’s farewell, ‘just let them be.’ At least for now.
When he decided to return back to his bedroom, Taeyong didn’t forget to turn the lanterns hanging on the walls of the corridor back on because he knew hitting one’s nose on a solid stone wall would be the last thing a smitten child want to experience after spending a perfect night with the object of their desire.
Yes, the two little instigators were not able to see the fruit of their hard work. But at least someone was able to bear witness. To spread the news, maybe. The news of happiness.
That Christmas miracles still exist and how the presence of a special someone could turn an otherwise uneventful holidays season into something slightly more magical.