Archive of Our Own ^beta

His mother told him about the forest for the first time when he was seven years old.

Please listen carefully, Hoseok, she’d said, crouching down so she was level with him, the forest is pretty and it’s nice to play in. But just like Mommy’s rules for the house, there are rules in the forest, too.

Like washing hands before dinner? Hoseok had asked.

Exactly, his mother had replied, smoothing her hands through his hair. And you have to listen to them, just like you listen to Mommy. Or you’ll get hurt, and that’s not something I ever want to happen to you.

He can remember her face, unusually serious.

Do you remember the rules?

He’d been eager to please—it had been just him and his mom at the time, and even at age five, Hoseok loved her more than anything else in the whole world—so he’d rattled off the rules he’d been taught since he could speak:

Don’t go into the forest at night.

Make lots of noise so they know you’re coming.

Never—never ever—cross the river.

And then his mother had told him why.

There are things in the woods, Hoseokkie, she’d explained. Bad things. Mean things. But they won’t hurt you if you follow the rules. That’s why you make noise when you go alone—so they can recognize you.

What kind of things? Hoseok had said, and his mother’s face had gotten sad.

Never mind what kind, she’d answered, and had stood, ruffling his hair and asking if he wanted ice cream for dessert. They won’t hurt you.

At the time, Hoseok had assumed that she’d be safe too, safe from the reaching fingers of the shadows and the too-wide smiles of the things that lurked between trees.

He’d been wrong. So very, very wrong. At eleven, when his mother had disappeared, Hoseok learned the hard way that she’d said they won’t hurt you.

She’d said nothing about herself.

Ten years later, twenty-one-year-old Jung Hoseok returns to his childhood home.  

He takes the train south from his grandmother’s house, who’d raised him after his mother had vanished. He’d been quiet when he’d first gotten to her, withdrawn and unaccustomed to more than just two people in a house, but then there’d been three other cousins his age and his aunt and uncle and Hoseok didn’t stay quiet for long. His grandmother often told him that he had a “natural charisma” (whatever that meant) and that if it weren’t for her, he never would’ve grown into it.

Eventually, the memories of his mother and the house on the edge of the forest faded, nostalgic but no longer vibrant.

Familiarity tugs at him when he gets off the train, suitcase in one hand and backpack over his shoulder. The town hasn’t changed much from what he can see—it’s still nestled in between the mountains and the forest, a collection of little houses and two-story buildings. Something in his stomach flutters nervously as he starts down the road.

He’d left rather abruptly, his aunt and grandmother swooping in and taking him with them before anyone could ask what had happened to Jung Misook.

It’s a ten-minute walk to the town plaza, where people mill about, sitting on restaurant patios or on benches with coffees. Kids stick their fingers into the fountain, giggling. A woman on her phone walks past, boots clicking on the stone.

He’s assaulted by smell and sight and sound, and an unexpected wave of memories come crashing down over him. He can remember walking into that bakery there and begging his mom for walnut pie, standing at that busy intersection, where he’d grip onto his mother’s hand nervously, watching cars zoom past when the light turned green. He even remembers that that bench by the fountain, where they’d stop on their way to Hoseok’s school to tie his shoelaces.

His heart aches, nostalgia blurring his eyes. He can’t really remember what his mother’s face looks like anymore, but he can smell the echo of her fragrance, like laundry and the cherry trees in their backyard. He can remember the sound of her voice, and how her smile felt and how she’d cup his face with a hand and promise that it’d be okay.

Hoseok swallows hard. He had a hard time convincing his grandmother to let him come back; she’d been afraid that his childhood home would dredge up painful memories, but Hoseok had insisted. He’d gotten good grades, had done everything to prove to her that this is something he needed to do, and as soon as his university ended for summer break, he’d taken the first train from Seoul. But it hadn’t been to reconnect with his childhood, or to go back and visit memory lane—it had been because of the dream.

The dream first came to him a little over two months ago. It had started out with Hoseok walking through the forest from his childhood—only, he wasn’t a kid anymore, and when he’d tripped, the ground had given way to darkness, where he’d heard his mother’s voice, clear as day.

Hoseok, she’d whispered, broken and miserable. Come save me. Come find me. You know where to look.

He shakes off the cold feeling that crawls down his spine as he recalls it. Yes, it was only a dream, but there was something…off. Something definitely not right.

Hoseok is going to find out what.

There’s a light tap on his shoulder and he startles out of his thoughts, remembering where he is. He turns, and is greeted by a tall man with an oddly familiar face.

“Are you lost?” The man asks politely. “I can help you find your way.”

“I actually lived here for a little while,” Hoseok says, grinning. “I’m back to visit.” He pushes his sunglasses into his hair, and the man’s mouth falls open.

“Holy shit,” he exclaims, eyes wide. “Jung Hoseok? Is that really you?”

A piece clicks in Hoseok’s mind as his name falls from the man’s mouth. Vague, hazy memories of elementary school: a kid with too-big eyes and a know-it-all brain, and words that were kind even at age eight—

“Kim Namjoon?” Hoseok responds, grin stretching even wider. Before Namjoon can react, he jumps on the older, pulling him into a hug. Namjoon lets out a disbelieving laugh before he’s hugging Hoseok back. “Wow, I can't believe you recognized me!”

When they step apart, Namjoon’s smile is warm as he laughs. “What’s it been—eight, nine years?”

“Ten,” Hoseok says, chuckling. He takes another look at Namjoon, who is exactly the same and totally different from the last memory Hoseok has of him, back when they were eleven. He’s got the same dimples and the same look in his eyes, like he knows everything and doesn’t mind, but there’s newfound confidence in his posture and his shoulders have filled out and his hair—his goddamn hair is an odd mix between brown and purple. “You look good.”

Namjoon laughs again, a little embarrassed at the point-blank comment. “Thanks, you too. You live in Seoul now, right?”

“With my grandma,” Hoseok tells him. “And a billion cousins and my aunt. They’re the only family that would take me after my mom…”  

He trails off here, watching Namjoon’s face closely for any kind of reaction, but Namjoon nods understandingly. “That case is technically still open,” he says cautiously. “The police haven’t touched it in a couple years, but…they still have hope.”

Something in Hoseok’s chest lightens at those words.  

“If you don’t mind me asking,” Namjoon says, “why now? It’s been a decade, Hoseok-ah. Why’d you return this year, out of all the years?”

Hoseok thinks briefly of the dream, but his smile doesn’t waver. “I finally convinced my grandma to let me come. I have too many good memories of here to stay away for any longer.”

“Are you heading over to your house right now?” Namjoon asks as Hoseok pulls the handle of his suitcase up and readjusts his backpack.

“Yeah,” Hoseok says. “Wanna come?”

Namjoon’s answering smile is still a little surprised, like he still can’t believe that Hoseok’s here, all grown up, but it’s a confirmation nonetheless, and they start towards the forest, falling into natural conversation. Namjoon tells Hoseok about the rest of his school life and how he’s going to the college here because he wants to teach. He’s dating a guy—something that he clearly doesn’t expect Hoseok to accept right off the bat—named Kim Seokjin, who’s got a vet clinic a block east of the plaza.

Sidewalk eventually fades to gravel and buildings give way to trees. As the house comes into view, Hoseok is hit with a wave of nostalgia so strong he nearly buckles. It looks the same, even after all these years—the red door, the windchimes on the overhang, the hand-painted fence around the backyard—and Hoseok can’t decide if that makes him incredibly sad or a little satisfied. Maybe a mix of both.

Hoseok pulls his backpack around and fumbles around in the pockets, looking for the set of keys his grandmother had reluctantly given him.

“I know there’s been a housekeeper through recently,” Hoseok says as he sticks the key in the lock. “But everything’s packed away, for the most part.”

“I see people go down every now and then,” Namjoon tells him as the door swings open, “to mow the lawn and make sure it’s up-to-date with repairs.”

The inside of the house, unlike the outside, is completely different. All of the furniture is covered with white sheets, cold and impersonal. All of the blinds are tightly shut, and any pictures of Hoseok or his mother have been removed, probably by his grandmother.

He drops his bags in the entryway. It smells like floor polish and disuse, and he leaves the door open as he starts opening all the blinds and the windows. Fresh air and light start flooding into the living room and kitchen, and together, he and Namjoon uncover the table, the sofas, and chairs. Within a couple hours, it starts to feel less creepy. Not quite like home—but it’s a start. He’s starving, too, having eaten all the food in his backpack, and of course there’s nothing in the fridge. And there’s still a lot more to do—Hoseok hasn’t even gone upstairs yet, where the bedrooms are, but the water has been reconnected and the lights work. Hoseok is able to plug in his phone and send his aunt a text letting her know that he’s alright, that he’s met Namjoon, and that the house is in perfect condition, and he’s in the middle of cleaning it up. Then he stands, brushing his hands off on his pants.

Namjoon gives him a smile—and god, that’s going to take some getting used to, how it’s new and familiar all at once—and jerks his chin at the window. “The sun is setting,” he says. “Did you want to come get dinner in town with my friends and I?”

Hoseok’s stomach rumbles and his mouth starts to water at the thought of food. “Hell yes, I’d like to get dinner,” he says, clapping Namjoon on the back. “I wanna meet your friends, too! It's been so long since I've been here." Because they didn't let me, he doesn't say. Namjoon hears it anyway—he, too, must remember the chaos the town was thrown into, the desperation and the whispering, the side-eyed glances that people cast Hoseok's way before his grandmother swept him away to the city. 

Namjoon smiles, genuine, and the tension fades. “You'll like them, Hoseok-ah,” he says. "This restaurant is really good, too." 

“Dinner and I have a long, loving relationship,” Hoseok says as they begin their walk back into town. The trees are dark, shadows softening as the sun sets. Wind filters lazily through the branches. “It’s the best meal of the day. It’s when school’s over, and you get to see your friends, and it’s socially acceptable to drink a little too much—”

“You’re not getting drunk on your first night—”

“I didn’t say drunk, Joon-ah, come on,” Hoseok ribs back, but he’s smiling. “I just said a little too much.”

Namjoon gives him a look. “Your humor hasn’t changed much. It’s just gotten older.”

“Is that a good thing?”

“You were getting into trouble before I even knew what that meant,” Namjoon reminds him, amused. “Like when you decided it was a good idea to try to recruit the thirteen-year-olds to your dodgeball team and came out with a split lip.”

“Ah,” Hoseok says, remembering. “Yeah, they weren’t very nice. And they told me dodgeball was for babies.” He laughs, and Namjoon joins in. It feels good, Hoseok thinks. Namjoon is easy to be around, that much hasn't changed. Good people like him usually don't.

Namjoon shakes his head, still smiling. “I can’t believe that was ten years ago. Jesus. Where does the time go?”

They’re back in the plaza now. The streetlights are on and the restaurants have brought out their patio heaters to combat the wind, which has picked up and now carries a slight chill. Namjoon leads Hoseok down a street of trendy boutiques, most of which Hoseok doesn’t recognize. The barbecue place Namjoon stops in front of is unfamiliar as well, but the tantalizing smell wafting from it is enough to make his stomach grumble again.

“I texted them to let you know you’re coming with me,” Namjoon says, a hand on the door. “There might be a familiar face—do you remember Jeon Jeongguk? He was the son of the soccer coach? A couple years younger than us?”

“The soccer prodigy?” Hoseok asks, frowning.

“That’d be him. But don’t say that he’s a prodigy, or you'll embarrass him.”

Hoseok laughs. “I’ll try my best.” Something in his chest perks up at the prospect of meeting new people. Out of all the things in the world, making friends is something Hoseok prides himself in. It’s a combination of being a good listener and easy conversation, he thinks. There’s always been something about people—about their different stories and backgrounds and tiny little habits and funny stories—that has always fascinated him. His cousin Goeun, who’s almost painfully shy, has asked numerous times about how he does it. Hoseok's always prided himself on it, a little. In a world where he was average at just about everything else, he'd taken the extrovert label and stuck it to his chest with a certain amount of satisfaction. 

Jeon Jeongguk does indeed recognize him, eyes going wide with reverence as he recalls the time Hoseok pushed Nam Sunghoon off the slide when he’d called Jeongguk a freak. He spends the rest of the night serving Hoseok first and calling him hyung, which is really adorable.

Kim Seokjin, on the other hand, gets a narrow-eyed look on his face when Hoseok first introduces himself. It feels kind of like he’s been x-rayed, or dissected. Hoseok doesn’t know what Seokjin finds in his face, but the older eventually relaxes. Hoseok is then able to appreciate how good-looking he is (when he’s not surveying Hoseok like he’s looking for bad news) and gradually warms to him. Seokjin unearths an incredible sense of humor a couple drinks in, cracking jokes and deadpanning comments that have Hoseok snorting soju up his nose as he laughs.

By the end of the meal, he’s feeling warm and content and a little more at home—at least, more than he’d thought. Namjoon even offers to walk him back, but with the way Seokjin’s stumbling and how Jeongguk’s eyelids droop lower with every passing second, Hoseok declines him. They exchange numbers, and Namjoon promises to come by tomorrow morning to help him finish unpacking the rest of the house.

Hoseok says goodnight and they part ways, Namjoon dragging his boyfriend and Jeongguk back to Seokjin’s car, and Hoseok backtracking the way he came, passing through the plaza, patios filled with diners and ice cream parlors teeming with kids. It quiets down as soon as he can see the forest again, and then it’s just him, the trees, and the wind in the branches. It’s simultaneously eerie and peaceful.

Either way, Hoseok is glad to see the lights of the house, casting pools of yellow on the ground and rendering dark, shapeless things harmless. He doesn’t feel like going upstairs yet, either—he’ll be honest, he’s pretty spooked—so he rummages around in the linen closet and finds the old futon they’d roll out for guests. He sets it up right by the window, where the moon turns the floor white, and brushes his teeth at the kitchen sink, struggling into his pajamas using the combined light from the porch and the stars.  

Hoseok pulls the blanket up to his chin, going through his phone for a couple minutes and sending a quick goodnight text to his cousins and aunt. The wind picks up outside and the whole house creaks, ear-splitting in the silence. Hoseok shivers. He’s easily frightened, much to his embarrassment—his cousins still jump out from behind doors to scare him because they think it’s funny. He used to crawl into his mother’s bed when the wind was too loud or the lightning struck a little too close. The background noise of Seoul had been a great comfort to him when he’d moved, cars and people and the distant sound of the river lulling him to sleep.

But now he’s by himself, on the edge of the woods, with nothing but a futon and a puddle of moonlight to comfort him. There’s no traffic and no mother.

Hoseok is alone.

I can do this, he thinks to himself as the windows rattle. There’s something here. I just have to find it.

He holds this thought in his mind, squeezing his eyes shut against the creaking house and the violent wind, and falls asleep.

Namjoon shows up at noon with Jeongguk and Seokjin as Hoseok’s unloading groceries into the fridge and pantry. Seokjin is holding a massive box of what looks like cleaning supplies and Jeongguk has brought sushi for lunch. They all sit down at the table and Hoseok brings out a couple of beers he’d just bought— and soda for Jeongguk, because he’s not about to give alcohol to a teenager—and goes over what still needs to be done.

“It’s a bit of a mess in here,” Seokjin observes. “Dusty. And the windows are a little grimy, too. At least we can make Jeongguk clean up the yard.”

“Hyung, that’s child labor,” Jeongguk complains, slumping forward. “What if I want to help Hoseok-hyung upstairs?”

“Seokjin only offered because he knows you’ll do the best job,” Namjoon says, reasonable. Jeongguk’s spine immediately straightens, and Hoseok presses his lips together. Seokjin said nothing of the sort, but the false praise works wonders of Jeongguk, who eagerly grabs the rake and the trash bags and practically leaps out of the house.

“I’ll start on the windows,” Seokjin says, picking up a spray bottle and a roll of paper towels. “And when Jeongguk’s done, we’ll come upstairs and help you vacuum.”

Hoseok and Namjoon go upstairs and start uncovering dressers and nightstands and bare mattresses. They move Hoseok’s stuff upstairs to his room, and Hoseok finds a set of clean sheets in the same linen closet. His window creaks a little bit as he opens it, but the day is warm and sunny and Hoseok is grateful for the clean air that filters through the room.

They don’t touch his mother’s room. That door remains closed, and Hoseok is glad when Namjoon doesn’t ask any questions. It’s not something he wants to face yet, doesn’t know if he can stand the emptiness that he knows lies beyond.  

It’s late afternoon when Hoseok makes it outside, wiping the dust off the windchimes and dragging a couple of chairs out of storage to put on the porch. The forest casts whimsical shadows across the lawn, the first of the trees only mere feet from the house.

He’s pulling up weeds around the porch when he hears the cat. It’s somewhere off to his left, and when he first lifts his head, he can’t see anything.

“Did you hear that?” He asks Namjoon, who’s just inside the doorway, replacing dead lightbulbs.

“Hear what?” Namjoon responds, arms above his head.

“The cat,” Hoseok responds, just as the cat meows again. “There, did you hear it now?”

“Are you sure you’re not just imagining things?” Namjoon asks, but Hoseok isn’t paying attention anymore, because he can finally see the cat. It’s white, almost blindingly so, and sleek, so clearly it’s not a stray. It’s also bigger than a normal house cat, so maybe…it’s some kind of forest cat?

“Seokjin, are there cats in this forest?” Hoseok asks Seokjin, who's in the kitchen cleaning the sink. 

Seokjin snorts. “Don’t think so, Hoseok-ah. Are you okay? Do you need to take a break?”

Hoseok finally turns to look at Namjoon. “You really don’t see that cat? It’s giant and white, how can you miss it—”

It’s gone when he glances back over his shoulder. The meowing’s stopped, too.

“Wait, where’d it go?” Hoseok mutters, and he’s about to stand and go look for it—it was a giant fucking cat, how could he not—but Jeongguk comes running over, a large bag of weeds and fallen leaves in his hand. His thoughts scatter, and the cat doesn’t cross his mind until later.

At least, not until that night.

He’s nearly asleep in his old bedroom when he hears the cat again.

And again.

And again.

By maybe the tenth meow, Hoseok is restless, throwing off his blanket and grabbing his phone off his bedside table. A quick look out the window confirms that yes, it is indeed the white cat, strange in its size and in its luminescence, fur glinting in the nearly-full moon.

Its face lifts to Hoseok’s window and a little tremor runs through him, and Hoseok swears their eyes meet. It stares at him for a long moment before slinking away towards the front of the house.

Hoseok’s curiosity scratches at him, energy coiling in his legs and his thoughts already ricocheting around his head at a million miles an hour.

There’s no way he’s going back to sleep, not with that white cat. He’s got to go and see it, at least, to prove to himself that he's not going totally crazy. So, he slips out of his bedroom, pulling a hoodie over his head and socks onto his feet. By the time he gets to the living room, he can see the cat, sitting right outside the front porch—almost like it’s waiting for him.

Hoseok cautiously slides on his shoes and opens the door quietly, trying not to spook the cat. It looks up as Hoseok steps outside, gripping his phone tightly. Fear flutters in his stomach, and he swallows it down.

It gives him a look—if cats could even give looks, by the way—like took you long enough. Then it starts towards the edge of the forest, stopping when it realizes Hoseok still hasn’t budged.

“No fucking way,” Hoseok mutters, looking between the cat and the forest. “Okay, what the hell is going on?”

He’s seen enough movies and read enough books to know following things into the forest is never a good idea. Someone always dies, or gets trapped, or gets enticed by something equally beautiful and dangerous and never leaves again. Following cats seems like a particularly terrible idea. He watched The Cat Returns. He knows that cats—especially ones that are most definitely not normal—will never lead anyone anywhere good. 

Said cat meows insistently at him, flicking its tail with something that can only be described as annoyance.

“Goddammit,” Hoseok sighs, and he steps off the porch. He's here for a reason, he reminds himself. There's something...more here, and he needs to be brave enough to go after it. “But if I start turning into a cat,” he adds,“I’m bailing.”

The cat gives him another flat-eyed look and yep, that’s definitely creepy.

He turns his flashlight on as the lights from the house fade, gravel giving way to worn-down dirt. He can remember running down this path many times—only, it was daytime and he wasn’t following a giant white cat.

The trees close behind him after a few more steps and he’s fully in the forest. Luckily, there’s no wind tonight, but the forest is far from silent; in fact, it’s come alive with noise. Distantly, he can hear frogs croaking in time to the rushing of the river. Somewhere to his right, birds whistle sweetly; he even sees a deer or two dart out of sight.

It’s utterly and absolutely breathtaking, magical in a way that he still can’t describe, even grown-up.

The cat leads him for a couple minutes longer, waiting impatiently when Hoseok has to navigate through a snarl of roots or stop to tie his shoe. They’ve stayed on the path, though Hoseok has no idea where the cat is taking him. The sound of the river grows louder and louder with each passing minute and finally they reach a bridge, the boundary of Hoseok’s childhood play zone. He can remember this bridge: sturdy and wooden, and high enough above the water so it doesn’t mold. It, just like the house, has not changed.

The cat steps delicately onto it, clearly expecting Hoseok to keep following it. But Hoseok’s feet have stalled and his mother’s rules have come into his mind again, still clear: don’t go into the forest at night. Make lots of noise so they know you’re coming. And never, ever, ever cross the river.

“I can’t cross the river,” Hoseok tells the cat, not sure if it will understand him. “I have to go back. I can’t go any further.”

The cat turns to face Hoseok, its face serious. Slowly, it stretches out a paw to the dirt and begins to write—fucking write.

“Okay, yeah, that’s definitely, uh, not right,” Hoseok says, panic rising in his chest. He starts to back away. “Nope, nope, that’s enough for today, I’m going home and pretending like this didn’t happen—goddammit,” he scoffs, whacking himself on the forehead, “I’m an idiot, why’d I have to follow that stupid thing?”

He’s got one foot back on the way he just came when the cat meows loudly. Slowly, Hoseok turns back around to find the cat’s written something—just one word:

엄마

“Mom?” Hoseok asks, breath catching in his throat. He looks up at the cat. “D’you…you mean my mom’s in there somewhere?”

The cat nods.

Hoseok inhales sharply, emotions warring. There’s a significant part of him that wants to run back home and dive under the covers, but another part wants to follow that cat. It’s got to know something— how else could it of written that?

And if there’s a chance—even a small one—that he could find his mother…

Well, he’s going to take it. No matter what. Too many things have fallen into place, now, for this to be a strange dream.

Hoseok summons every ounce of courage he has, setting his shoulders. “Okay,” he tells the cat. “Okay. I’ll follow you.”

The cat gives him another nod, and continues its way across the bridge.

Hoseok walks across carefully, achingly aware of the fact that he’s broken every single rule his mother had set for him. He’d come in at night, walked in silence, and was crossing the river.

It’s to find her, he tells himself firmly. She’s in there somewhere. I know it.

As soon as his foot touches the ground on the other side, there’s a shift in the air. A tangible one. For a second, he thinks it’s an earthquake before realizing the earth hasn’t moved—but the air is somehow richer, the smell of nature and of greenery headier; the moon is extra bright and silver where it comes down through the trees.

The cat doesn’t give him any time to stop and ponder, tail flicking as it picks up speed, leading him deeper and deeper through the trees. The path is nearly gone now—Hoseok is simply following the cat, unfamiliar with this side of the woods. Gradually, he starts to hear music. Lively, bright, sweeping music.

God, every second gets stranger than the last.

The music grows louder as it becomes apparent that the cat is actually leading him to it, weaving through the trunks like it’s taken this path a thousand times before.

And then come the lights. Hundreds of them, tiny and floating, like fallen stars suspended in time.

Hoseok’s breath catches again, though it’s from wonder this time, not fear.

“How?” He whispers, stopping short. The cat has no answer for him, only a knowing look as it slows when Hoseok reaches out a hand to try to touch one. It winks out as soon as his fingers get close, only to reappear a couple inches away. His gut reflex is to follow, but some part of his mind snaps the rest of him out of it. He blinks before he can take another step, withdrawing guiltily when he sees that the cat is swishing its tail in irritation again.

“Sorry,” he says, scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t know what I was thinking. I feel like it’s a bad idea to try to touch anything. And follow it. Though I guess I can’t talk—I followed you, didn’t I?”

The cat narrows its eyes briefly before resuming, checking often to make sure Hoseok hasn’t wandered off.

The music swells to a crescendo and Hoseok turns off his flashlight when they get to a clearing that dazzles so brightly Hoseok has to squint for a couple moments. He stumbles towards the edge of the light, keeping close to a tree as he peers around it.

It’s a party. A massive, golden, sparkling party.

Immediately Hoseok can see that it’s not like any party he’s ever been to. Not just because the source of the light is a massive hovering globe, but also because every guest is dressed like they’ve stepped out of a fantasy novel, all lace and gossamer and floaty sleeves. Even the music is unreal—it’s too bright, too rich, too sensory. It almost hurts to listen to.

The guests look human, but something inside of Hoseok knows they’re very far from it—they’re something infinitely more beautiful, more thrilling, more primordial and glittering than any regular person could ever be.

The cat has disappeared from sight as Hoseok steps a little closer, keeping close to the trees. It’s obvious he has been brought to watch, not join.

He spends a solid amount of time scanning the party, looking for his mother’s face. She’s not among the dancers, who spin and twirl gracefully, or by the food, chatting. If he strains his ears, Hoseok can catch snippets of conversation—which is a little strange, because Hoseok didn’t expect forest-dwelling creatures to speak modern-day Korean—but it doesn’t help his search, only serving to confuse him more.

“—the Prince is here tonight,” one woman in pink says as she and her friend walk past. “He hasn’t attended night one in forever.”

“I think it’s because the summer harvest is supposed to be good,” her friend replies, before they move out of earshot.

Hoseok’s head spins a little. Prince? Night one? Summer harvest? Well, okay, the last part is pretty obvious. It’s June. But a prince?

Just what has he stumbled upon?

Hoseok shifts on his sore feet, watching a man shove a fruit tart into his mouth. “This is the best part of the year,” he tells his partner after he swallows. “The food is always so good.”

His partner shrugs. “I can’t wait for night five. The Prince always brings out the best catches.”

And suddenly, it’s too much. Hoseok stumbles away from the edge of clearing before he can hear anymore. His heart pounds wildly in his chest and his legs don’t really work, frozen in disbelief and awe. His nerves tingle, short-circuited from the sensory overload, and he turns his back on the music, on the too-bright light and the whimsical guests. He’s aware of his breath, short and sharp and a little shaky.

His ears are still ringing even as the sound of the music eventually falls away, but his head starts to clear as the river comes back into sight.

What, Hoseok thinks numbly, feet finding a path. What was that?

He takes a couple unsteady steps forward.

A party, he answers, then shakes his head. No, he modifies. Definitely not a party.

There was nothing about what he just saw that was normal, or even human— as he’d suspected before. Everything was too colorful, too unbound, too fantastical to be from this world. There’d even been something off about the guests, something about their faces. They’d been too…perfect. If that was even possible. He doesn’t even know. He’s having a hard time simply processing what he just saw.

The walk back seems infinitely shorter than when he was following the cat (it’s a miracle he doesn’t get lost, either) and before he knows it he’s recrossing the river and the air returns to normal, softer and a little less sweet.

Hoseok types out a half-coherent text to Namjoon, telling him what had just happened and what he’d just seen. If there’s anyone that would believe him—or help him, at the very least—it’d be Namjoon.

The house is a sight for sore eyes, especially since exhaustion has hit Hoseok like a pound of bricks to the stomach. The time on his phone says 12:45.

He stumbles up the stairs, removing his shoes and not bothering to lock the door. His hoodie comes off as he’s still walking and then he’s collapsing into bed, all of his senses still buzzing from overstimulation.

Everything has already taken on a dream-like quality, though something in Hoseok’s gut reminds him that it was real, every single second of it.

Holy shit, he thinks vaguely, and then he’s fast asleep.

When he wakes up, it’s Monday morning and Namjoon has texted him from work.

Hi Hoseok, the text reads. Not sure if you were lucid when you sent this; but it sounds like a pretty crazy dream. Have you read any shakespeare recently? Kinda reminds me of a midsummer night’s dream.

Hoseok groans and lets his head fall back on his pillow. God, he wished it had been a dream. He still has no clue what to think, and there’s approximately a billion unanswered questions spinning around his head.  

He rereads Namjoon’s text again, an idea forming in his head. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, huh? Well, Hoseok can’t say that he’s read Shakespeare recently (or ever, now that he thinks about it) but maybe—just maybe—he could find answers. As ridiculous as it sounds, he doesn’t really know what else to do, and besides, research always works for people in movies.

He packs up his computer and heads towards the town, carefully not looking at the forest. He stops at the first cafe that promises free wi-fi, ordering a latte so he doesn’t feel as bad for sucking up all of their broadband, and then opens up a new window on his computer to start searching.

He opens up a new window on his computer and starts searching. It’s a little hard at first, especially when most of the results come up in English, but he finds a decent Korean translation and starts picking through it. He searches up a couple plot summaries, too, because there’s no way in hell he’s going to read the whole thing, much less understand it; Shakespeare, in his opinion, is convoluted and complicated to the point where it makes his head hurt. It sounds exactly like the kinda thing Namjoon would enjoy.

He reads a little bit about themes: love’s difficulty, magic and dreams are all recurring throughout. But more importantly, he finds stuff about the setting and the nature of the characters. There are the humans, and then there are the fae, who play mischievous, wicked tricks on them (and on each other). Titania, the queen, is beautiful as she is deadly, and Oberon, the king, is powerful and commanding. And then there’s Puck, whose description seems to perfectly summarize what Hoseok had felt last night, standing at the edge of the trees.

Enchanting, whimsical, and mischievous, Puck’s antics are responsible for many of the complications that propel the plots of the other characters.

Complications. Yeah, that sounds about right.  

Faeries. Real live, fully magical, mythical beings in the forest right outside of his house. That he found via huge white cat.

Complications.

Hoseok sighs and drops his head into his hands. At this point, there’s no getting around the fact that the party in the woods was something otherworldly. And those guests…the guests were faeries. Faeries on night one of a many-day revelry, celebrating the summer harvest. Or something equally as outrageous.

His head throbs, and the sky has glazed over with grey clouds that threaten rain. He gets another coffee to fight the oncoming headache off and packs up his stuff. If he reads one more thine or nay he’s going to throw his computer out of the window.

Hoseok dumps his backpack at the house and changes into his running clothes, hoping to burn off some of the stress before it rains. It’s nearly time for dinner anyway (he’d killed most of the day by sleeping in until one, and then spent nearly three more hours at the cafe) and he’s feeling a little restless.  

The rain starts to fall when Hoseok hits mile three. By mile four, it’s pouring so violently he can barely see five feet in front of him and his feet make squelching noises in his shoes, and he makes the executive decision to go home.

He spends a couple minutes shivering on the doorstep as he fumbles for his keys, glad he left his phone inside. He does not have enough money to pay for a new one if it had broken. He peels off his wet clothes right there, which leaves him trembling in soaking boxers as he sprints for the shower. As soon as the water is hot, he steps in, muscles relaxing gradually as they warm. His back aches a little bit from shivering, and his fingers are white.

He uses two towels and all of the hot water, a luxury for someone who spent half his childhood in a house with six other people. Nobody nags him about using headphones either when he picks out an anime to watch, either, and he eats all of the mochi ice cream without complaint. While the house is a little too big for one person, and a little too quiet, it’s pretty nice to have a space to himself.

As the night wears on, Hoseok finds his thoughts drifting back to the white cat. Would it come again tonight and lead Hoseok back to the party? Would he peer through the trees again and find his mother?

He’s so distracted he almost misses his grandmother’s call, which pops up on his screen with a couple emoji hearts.

“Hi, Grandma,” he answers, forcefully redirecting his thoughts. “How are you doing?”

“Not as good as I should be, since someone didn’t call me when they got off the train,” his grandmother snaps, sniffing.

Hoseok sighs. “I forgot after I ran into an old friend.”

“A girl?” His grandmother asks excitedly.  

“No,” Hoseok tells her, exasperated. “Grandma, you know I don’t swing that way—”

“You never know unless you’ve tried,” she persists. “I want grandchildren one day.”

“I’m not getting into this with you,” Hoseok says tiredly. “For what’s probably the ten thousandth time.”

“I’m just giving you a hard time,” she reminds him. “You know I love you no matter what. I want you to be happy. Have you eaten dinner yet?”

“I just ate,” he replies dutifully. 

“Good boy. Is it hard, being back there?”

Hoseok hums, thoughtful. “Not really. I’ve caught up with a couple friends and unpacked the house. I also went for a run.”

His grandmother lets out a long-suffering sigh. “Come home soon, please. Your aunt is driving me crazy and Hyeri is due to have the baby in a month so everyone is being absurd. Do you know how many women have given birth and lived?”

Hoseok laughs. “I’m kinda glad I’m away from it all.”

There’s a shout in the background. “Oh, for goodness’ sake,” his grandmother huffs. “That would be your aunt. Nobody can do anything by themselves these days. I have to go, Hoseok, but be good, okay? Don’t forget to eat dinner.”

“I won’t, Grandma. I love you.”

“I love you too.” With a small click, the line goes dead and Hoseok tosses his phone onto the pillow next to him, leaning over and pressing play on his TV show. He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but he jerks awake to meowing.

Sure enough, the white cat is back, looking expectantly at him and swishing its tail.

“Oh, fuck,” Hoseok says, but he’s already making his way out of his room, grabbing his raincoat where it’s hanging by the door, as it’s still drizzling.

“You again,” he tells the cat crossly as it meets him by the porch. “Don’t you think one night was enough?”

The cat gives him an exasperated look before setting off across the grass. Hoseok, still putting his other shoe on, hops after it and then has to jog to catch up. There’s no waiting or careful strolling this time—the cat means business, and Hoseok is sweating a little bit by the time they reach the river.

He expects the shift in the air, but it still catches him off-guard, everything so much richer than he’s used to. He also doesn’t let the lights get the better of him this time, which he considers a win, feet firmly on the path.

The music somehow is livelier than last night, the notes so tangible Hoseok can nearly see them floating through the air. Just like before, the cat disappears as soon as Hoseok takes his spot behind the trees and starts to scan the crowd for any sign of his mother. He keeps his ears open, too; he’s right by the food table where guests are more prone to conversation.

It’s not long before the music starts to pull him under its spell and he stops looking for familiar faces, lost in the shimmer of dresses and the glint of buttons, and it’s not long after that before he starts to enjoy it, swaying along with each crescendo. It’s quite a scene: beautiful faces and beautiful clothes and beautiful music.

There’s one man in particular that draws Hoseok’s eye—the same man that the white cat walked up to last night. His hair is grey-turned-silver in the moonlight and Hoseok is sure he’s stunning, even though he’s never come close enough for Hoseok to see his face. He moves with a fluid sort of grace and everyone seems to recognize him—maybe it’s his party? Tonight he’s in dressed in light blue, his shirt gossamer-thin and nearly transparent, half-tucked into pants that ripple whenever he takes a step.

Just looking at him is pulling the air from Hoseok's lungs. It’s exhaustion that forces him to turn away—each step more reluctant than the last—and he forces himself to keep his eyes set on the path, ignoring the pull of the music, of the light, and of the beautiful boy with the silver hair.

While he’s able to walk away from it all, there’s nothing he can do about the dreams, which come in unbidden, in bright flashes of colors and mixed-up faces that leave him breathless.

He’s in way over his head.

And he can’t do anything about it.

Hoseok is restless all through the next day. He runs some more and hangs out with Jeongguk for a little while, but doesn’t stop checking his phone, practically counting down the hours until night. He eats the rest of the rice and some vegetables for dinner and then tries and fails to pay attention to whatever drama he picks on his computer. He’s acutely aware of every single second that ticks down on the clock, leg jiggling. He looks out the window twice every minute to check if the white cat is there.

As the clock gets closer to midnight, Hoseok’s anticipation spikes tenfold. He feels like he’s pulling apart at the seams a little, like his veins are filled with a kind of electricity he knows isn’t good for him but can’t fight anymore. He wants to hear the music again. He wants to listen to the lilt of fae voices and the glittering swirl of fabrics, wants to see the boy with the silver hair up close.

What’s even worse is that he knows it’s a dangerous line he treads—he’s not head-over-heels, blindly trusting or in love with a place and people who could swallow him in an instant, because in all the glitter and the gold and between each note of music lies a wicked, dark kind of menace, always present and always ready. He saw it in the eyes of some of the fae, in the way they watched hungrily, or laughed too sharply.  

No, Hoseok knows he shouldn’t cross the bridge, shouldn’t stand and watch a party not meant for human eyes, but when the cat shows up at midnight, he follows it anyway. The cat gives him a nod of approval when he doesn’t hesitate to step off the porch this time.

“This is the last night,” he tells the cat warningly. “This isn’t good for me. It’s driving me insane, I think. It’s taking all my energy. I have a life to live outside of this.”

The cat has an understanding look on its face. Patience, it seems to say. Just wait.

The moon is nearly full tonight, and the sky is so clear Hoseok doesn’t even need his phone to guide him.

It’s night three, according to Hoseok’s calculations, but he doesn’t know if he can take much more. The music, grander each night, fills him this time to the point of pain, almost too much to bear. The table of food seems to groan under the weight of gem-like fruits, decadent tarts and tiny cakes that make Hoseok’s mouth water and his stomach hurt.

He watches for a little bit, taking up his usual spot. The cat slinks off and Hoseok’s left alone on the fringe of the party, half-entranced and half-wary.

“It’s like Alice and Wonderland meets Shakespeare meets The Crucible, ” Hoseok mutters to himself. “Or something.”

“I’d go with ‘or something’,” a voice answers amusedly, and Hoseok nearly jumps out of his skin. He stumbles backwards, bracing for a fall, when a cool, firm hand wraps around his wrist and steadies him. 

“Jesus Christ,” Hoseok wheezes when he’s stable, bracing his his hands on his knees. Then he realizes that it’s an actual real-live faerie that’s standing in front of him, that has caught him red-handed, lurking on the edge of a golden bubble where he doesn’t belong.

Hoseok is torn between throwing himself on the ground for forgiveness and running away. He’s always been a fast runner, and he’s got good stamina. If he can just make it to the bridge, he gets the feeling he’ll be alright—

“You can look up,” the same voice says lightly, and yep, they’re definitely amused. Hoseok, however, keeps his eyes firmly on the faerie’s pants, which are made out of some kind of material that looks like liquid honey. “I’m not going to hurt you. You’re not in trouble.”  

Hoseok clenches his fists at his sides and slowly—very, very slowly—lifts his head.

Every thought is consequently blasted from his mind, because fuck, it’s the silver-haired man, up-close and in the flesh and he’s devastatingly, absolutely heartrendingly beautiful. Beyond life, dream and imagination. All Hoseok can think is that there’s nothing on earth—no poem, no painting, no photograph, no song—that can capture the radiance of this face.

Said man with said face is wearing an expectant expression, so Hoseok, with great effort, pulls the remains of his shredded dignity back together and gives the faerie a little smile, embarrassed.

“I know I’m not supposed to be here,” he says quietly, edging away from the clearing just in case. “I’m not stupid. Only an idiot follows a giant white cat to a magical party.”

The faerie hums, looking impressed. “Well, you’re not wrong. The last human that walked into one of these unprotected…well, it didn’t go very well for them. But you seem to have a rather impressive sense of reason about you.”

“I don’t want to die,” Hoseok informs the faerie, who looks surprised at the bluntness for a moment before his face softens and he laughs. “It’s just…it’s fun to watch.” He turns to look at the dancers for a moment, whirling and weaving amongst each other.

“It is,” the faerie agrees, face softening. “It’s been a hard winter. They deserve this.”

Hoseok snorts, and the moment is broken.

“What’s so amusing?”

“It’s just…” Hoseok starts, but his laughter only worsens, fueled by a combination of relief (he’s been found, yes, but he’s not going to die) and shock (because holy shit holy shit this is a faerie, an actual magical being that’s standing next to him and talking to him like they’re discussing the weather), which is generally not a good combination.

The faerie laughs a little bit as well, though it’s clear he’s not sure what’s so funny.

“Sorry, sorry,” Hoseok says after a minute, chest heaving and eyes running. “It’s just. This doesn't feel like it should be happening.” 

The faerie gives him a wry look. “I suppose, yes, that’s quite funny.”

“I’m also kind of in shock,” Hoseok admits brightly, holding up his hands. “Look, my hands are shaking!”

The faerie takes a half-step forward, looking far more concerned than he should be. The wild, self-preserving part of him forces him backwards before the faerie can touch him—somehow, deep down, he knows that is a very, very bad idea. 

Hoseok takes a deep, shuddering breath. “It’s good. I’m good. I’m not dead, you’re incredibly beautiful—I mean, the party’s beautiful, life’s great.”

He sneaks a look at the faerie, who’s only watching him with the same level of amusement as before. He’s making a massive fool of himself, he knows, but it’s part of his charm. His cousin calls it his secret technique; it’s worked wonders on even the prickliest of strangers, and now it’s working on a faerie. Go figure.

“I’m Hoseok,” Hoseok says, bowing a little because he feels it’s appropriate. And who knows, maybe faeries are sensitive about manners. He’s not gonna risk it.

“Yoongi,” the faerie offers, which is kind of weird because he was not expecting a Korean name, much less a relatively modern-sounding one.

His surprise must show on his face because the faerie—Yoongi—explains.

“I had a different name once,” he says, gesturing vaguely. “But then we moved to Korea, and I don’t know. I guess it seemed appropriate.”

“It’s a lot easier to pronounce than some Shakespeare name,” Hoseok tells him. “So I’m not complaining.”

Yoongi taps a finger against his lip. “Shakespeare,” he says thoughtfully. “I think I’ve heard of him. Maybe even met him.”

Hoseok’s eyes go wide. “You met him?”

“I said maybe,” Yoongi reassures him. “It was a while ago, and I was still young.”

“But that was like, a thousand years ago,” Hoseok murmurs, and he sees Yoongi in a whole new light of a sudden: not just beautiful, but ancient as well, strong and tall with a kind of power that’s been running through his veins for a long, long time.

He resists the urge to flee again, despite every rational part of him screaming to get out. 

“Shouldn’t you, um, be getting back to your party?” Hoseok asks. “I can leave, if I’m bothering you.”

Yoongi gives him a small smile, and Hoseok feels something deep within his very being shake. It isn't even anything special, just a quirk of the lips—but something within Hoseok moves anyway. The rational parts of him quiet, overwhelmed by the silver-lined smile on Yoongi's mouth. 

“Believe it or not, I’m not much for revelries,” Yoongi says, moving back a couple paces and sitting down on a rock, the fluid grace of his movements once again belying his true nature. “They’re exhausting. Not to mention, almost impossible to plan.”

“So why do you host them?” Hoseok asks, approaching Yoongi slowly, unsure.

“Still not going to kill you,” Yoongi reminds him dryly, nodding at the space on the ground. “You can sit.”

Hoseok sits, unable to say no, but says, “you could be lying.”

“I could be,” Yoongi agrees, “but since I’m a faerie, I can’t.”

Hoseok blinks, taking a moment to digest that. “You…can’t lie?”

Yoongi’s mouth curls at the corner again and Hoseok’s heart nearly stops for the second time. “I am incapable of it. So will you sit now?”

“So, um,” Hoseok says awkwardly, unsure (for the first time in his life) where to start. “How...how are you?”

Yoongi stares at Hoseok for a second, amazed, before he bursts into laughter. The sound explodes from his body, silvering in the air like moonlight and bouncing off the trees. It’s one of the loveliest things Hoseok has ever heard, and he can’t help but join in a little.

“Out of all the things I was expecting you to say,” Yoongi says when he catches his breath, “I didn’t think you’d chose that. ”

“What else was I supposed to say?” Hoseok asks helplessly, a silly smile on his face. “’How’s the rager?’ Or was I supposed to ask about the weather or the summer crops?”

“No, no,” Yoongi assures him. “Normally...well, there's never much conversation between your kind and mine. Humans tend to...lose themselves at parties like these.”

It's not quite a threat so much as a warning. Hoseok takes another look at the party, feels its siren-call tugging on his body, and gets what Yoongi's alluding to. 

“Yeah, I get that,” Hoseok says, casting a side-eyed look at Yoongi. It does takes a conscious amount of effort to maintain his composure around that face.

Yoongi glances at him, curious. “But you’re not as affected. I wonder why.” Their eyes meet, and Hoseok only lasts a half-second beneath those eyes before he's forced to look away. He thinks about his mother, about the dream, and wonders if Yoongi has his answers. He decides against asking, though—Yoongi is breathtaking, but there's a sharp look to it, like the curve to his lips and the glittering look in his eyes could fall away in a second to reveal something infinitely more dangerous. 

They’re silent for another second, but Hoseok’s curiosity is so intense it’s cloying, choking him, begging to be let out.

“Is this a dream?” He blurts, unable to help it. “Like, did that cat drug me? And now I’m here, hallucinating all of this?”

Yoongi regards him, humor on his face. “A three-night hallucination seems a little unlikely, don’t you think? And there are no brains I know that could dream something like that up,” he says, gesturing at the party. Hoseok sees what Yoongi means: the dazzling, glittering clothes, the rich music…all of it is past dream or imagination.”

“Then how is it possible? How are you possible?”

Yoongi sighs. “I forgot how overwhelming this can be.”

“I thought you were going to punish me,” Hoseok continues. “When you first came over here.”

“There’s no rule saying humans can’t dance among faeries. It’s just not recommended,” Yoongi tells him. “And as for the possibility of this situation…you know the river you crossed? It’s a boundary—it divides us from you, keeps you safe from our magic.”

“Why would we need to be kept safe?” Hoseok asks, and Yoongi stiffens, just a little.

“You’re not going to get hurt,” Yoongi replies, not really answering the question. “You’re safe with me.”

“That wasn’t the question I asked,” Hoseok says, but Yoongi doesn’t say anything else. Hoseok lets the topic drop, afraid to push any further.

“You could join in tomorrow, if you’d like.”

The subject change is so startling it knocks the wind out Hoseok. “I could what?”

“Come on, you’ve got to have dancing in your world,” Yoongi says, clearly enjoying himself.

“I know what dancing is,” Hoseok says, still reeling. “But won’t I, like, die?”

“That’s why you’d be with me,” Yoongi explains. “I’d pull you out before you could collapse. It’s only really a problem for the stupid ones, you know?”

“The stupid ones, right,” Hoseok echoes, then shakes his head. “So you’re asking me to go with you to the fourth night of some magical forest revelry?”

“Yes,” Yoongi says, voice even. There’s even a hint of a smile.

“Where I could die?”

“Yes,” Yoongi repeats, exasperated, “but you won’t.”

Hoseok takes another look at the party. Couples whirl, reduced to nothing but the colors of their clothes. Clear, enchanting laughter rings out over the sound of the music.

It’s so, so tempting. To stand in that clearing—to hear that music up close, to be a part of all of that, just for one night—

“How can I trust you?” Hoseok asks before he can say please, yes, oh my god.

Yoongi laughs again, the sound sending electricity down Hoseok’s spine. “It’s never a good idea to trust a faerie,” Yoongi tells him, and while his tone is light, there’s definitely a warning there. “But we’re magic- and honor-bound to our promises. And I swear on my life, Hoseok—if you come tomorrow night, no harm will come to you.”

Something in the fragrant air shifts, crackling at the words that fall from Yoongi’s mouth. His promise settles between them, tangible and heavy.

“There,” Yoongi says, grinning. “You feel that? You have my word.”

Hoseok looks uneasily between the party and Yoongi. Both are beautiful, unearthly, and alluring in a million different ways Hoseok cannot even begin to describe, but there’s also a bitter feeling in his gut, and he knows that if he gets close enough and peers through the gossamer and lace, he’ll see something far, far darker. 

Yoongi is waiting, eyes on Hoseok’s face, lips parted. The air grows heavy with expectation, and Hoseok can almost feel the nudge of Yoongi's question. Won't you come and dance?

Hoseok tries to find logic, reason—but how can he, when that face is turned towards him?

“Alright,” he says, giving in. “Okay, I’ll join you.”

“You’ll have fun,” Yoongi says, and it’s just enough to convince Hoseok. “Follow the white cat tomorrow, and I’ll be here. Don’t worry about clothing, either—I’ll have Taehyung pick something out for you.”

“More Korean names?” Hoseok asks.

Yoongi stands, brushing his pants off. He offers a hand to Hoseok. “We adapt to where we live,” Yoongi says. “We’re everywhere in your world—in fiction, in song, in habits and strange superstitions—so why shouldn’t you be everywhere in ours? ”

That, Hoseok finds, is something he can’t disagree with, so he takes Yoongi’s hand and lets the faerie pull him to his feet. They stand there, cast in moonlight, for a minute longer, before Hoseok breaks away, heart thundering in his chest and breath coming too fast.

“It was nice to meet you, Hoseok,” Yoongi says, and it must be the light or something because his face looks far softer than Hoseok was expecting. Then, something even more unexpected happens—Yoongi reaches up and brushes a hesitant hand over Hoseok's hair, questioning, cautious.

"You had some pine needles," Yoongi says, and Hoseok sways on his feet, unsteady. There's a second where Yoongi just looks at him, like he's waiting for something else. Tension shifts between them, and Hoseok can still feel the heat coming from Yoongi's hand, which is lingering by his face, a little too close.

"Right," Hoseok says, delayed. The spot that Yoongi's touched is warm and tingling a little bit, like it's on the verge of bursting into flames. Hoseok wouldn't be surprised if he did, given the magic that's swirling in the air, in his lungs. 

Yoongi drops his hand and steps away. "I think I've been gone a little too long," he admits. "My absence will be noticed soon, so I must go. Get some rest, Hoseok, and I'll see you tomorrow. The fourth night is always my favorite night."

"Wait," Hoseok calls before Yoongi can turn. "What's so important about the fourth night?"

The grin that curls at Yoongi's mouth is different than the first—it's less gummy, with fewer teeth. No, this smile is quiet and mysterious and (if Hoseok's being honest) a little dangerous. Looking at it sends a chill down Hoseok's spine.

"You'll see," is all Yoongi offers, before he's slipping back between the trees and is folded up by the revelry like he never parted from it in the first place.

Hoseok walks home in a daze, head spinning and skin burning from all the places Yoongi had touched. His head is bursting; his brain can't quite believe that what he just saw was real—after all, how can someone be that beautiful—but his eyes and his heart are telling him that wasn't a dream, that wasn't in your head, it happened, you met a faerie.

A faerie. An actual faerie. It's like he's stepped out of his world and into the pages of a storybook, like the ones his mother used to check out from the library and read to him when he got sick.

His head gradually starts to clear as the air starts to return to normal, and by the time he crosses the bridge, he's able to wrap his mind around what just happened.

There's a small part of him that knew something was in those woods. He can't explain how, or why—but his eyes have always been drawn to it, wondering what secrets the ancient trees hid.

Magic. They hid magic.

Magic that he's uncovered, that he's met in the flesh, that he's going to take part in—!

It hits Hoseok, then, that he’s going to a party, and not just any party—he's going to a faerie revelry.

The thought makes him laugh out loud. God, it sounds ridiculous. It is ridiculous. Yoongi had looked at him and had somehow seen something (what, Hoseok isn't sure; he's just Hoseok, human and definitely non-magical) that had prompted him to invite Hoseok to night four.

He doesn't realize how exhausted he is until he gets back into his bedroom. His brain is spent and his feet are tired from walking. His knees creak in protest when he crawls under the covers, and he can smell the forest in his hair and clothes when he lies down.

Hoseok doesn't have much time to go through things again—at this point, he's definitely overthinking, which isn't him—before he's drifting off, dreams filled with moonlight and the vibrant dance of colors.

The cat, as promised, comes early, interrupting Hoseok’s TV show. He wasn’t even really watching it—how could he, when he’s filled with a nauseating mix of nerves and restlessness. The latter eases as soon as he gets up and follows the cat down the now-familiar route to the clearing, but the former only worsens, especially as the sound of the river gets louder. The moon, full tonight, seems brighter when they cross the bridge—he’s stumbling now due to sheer anxiety, which is making his hands cold and sweaty and twisting his stomach into a knot.

“This is fine,” he tells himself firmly. “I’ve been to a billion parties before, I’ve had to stand up in front of two hundred people and speak and I’ve danced before twice that number for as long as I can remember. This is nothing. This is easy.”

Well, it’s easy if he ignores the fact that it’s a faerie party he’s going to.

“I don’t think I can do this,” he tells the cat as they pass through the floating lights.  

The cat, of course, doesn’t say anything.

Hoseok takes several deep breaths in through his nose.

Yoongi is waiting for him by the stump, holding a bundle of midnight-blue cloth. Today, he’s wearing a shirt somewhere between silver and grey—it seems to hold the moonlight and reflect it back, so Yoongi looks like he’s glowing, other-worldly and so beautiful Hoseok’s eyes sting with tears.

When he catches sight of Hoseok, his whole face lights up. “You came,” he says.  

“I told you I would,” Hoseok reminds him, sounding far more confident than he feels.

“I was curious if you’d actually keep your word. What you’re about to see isn’t for the faint-hearted—but based on the look on your face, I think you know that already.”

Hoseok stares at the faerie. “Am I really that transparent?”

”Not at all,” Yoong laughs. “But my position requires me to be very good at reading faces.“

Hoseok raised his eyebrows. “A party host needs to read faces?”

“Among other things,” Yoongi hums, not giving anything away. His eyes are carefully neutral—but there, at the corner of his mouth, a tiny hint of playfulness.

“Here are your clothes,” Yoongi says, and Hoseok rolls his eyes in exasperation. Faeries can’t lie, sure, but they’re masters at changing the subject. “Nobody will look twice at you if you come dressed like us.”

Hoseok takes the pile of clothing and walks a little into the trees so he can change. The shirt is cool and silky, unlike anything he’s ever felt before. It slips through his fingers like water, inky-blue and shimmering, as he pulls it on over his head. It’s a little big, with the neckline dipping past his collarbones and the edges of the sleeves covering the tops of his hands. Upon closer inspection, he can see it’s not just blue—somehow, subtle silver thread has been woven in as well, making him glitter a little bit whenever light touches him. It’s a little ridiculous, wearing an over-the-top shiny shirt, but there’s a tiny part of him that can’t help but feel a little thrilled.

Pants and boots come next, and a thin silver chain that he assumes goes through the belt loops. He hopes he's done it right. 

The reaction he gets when he walks back over is not what he expects.

The faerie’s lips part, breath near-silent as he stares at Hoseok like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Hoseok quickly makes sure that his hair is alright and that he’s got nothing in his teeth—maybe he out the shirt on backwards, too—but Yoongi stops him with a hand to his wrist.

“You look incredible,” Yoongi tells him, voice sure. “That fits you perfectly.”

Hoseok’s pulse skitters sideways, mind going temporarily blank. “Um,” he says eloquently. “Thank you?”

Yoongi gives him a smile. “By the end of the night, the whole party will have said that to you.”

Hoseok takes a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves. This is happening. This is really happening.

“A couple rules,” Yoongi tells him, face pinching. “I hate having to do this, but I really don’t want you to get hurt.”

Hoseok nods, and as Yoongi starts, he remembers a time like this one, except he was crouched in the kitchen and it was his mother asking him to be safe, not a beautiful faerie.

His mother. God, he’s been so wrapped up in whatever this is that he’d nearly forgotten about the original reason he’d followed the cat. Well, now is the perfect opportunity to ask around, to listen in on conversations. Someone has to know something. Maybe, if everything went well, Hoseok could even ask Yoongi.

“—and while I’d enjoy that, I don’t think you will,” Yoongi is saying. “Oh, and don’t eat the food or accept any drinks offered to you. You’ll lose your mind and never be able to leave.”

Hoseok’s eyes go wide, and Yoongi smiles, patting him comfortingly around the shoulder. “Anything from me, you can eat. I’ll salt it for you—helps nullify the magic.”

“Okay,” Hoseok says unsurely. He probably should’ve been paying attention to the other things Yoongi had said, but it’s too late now. Yoongi puts Hoseok’s hand in the crook of his arm, turning to face him as he does so.

“I promised, remember?” Yoongi says quietly. “You’re going to be fine. Relax and enjoy yourself. I think you’ll like it.”

Yoongi’s words are like a balm, soothing Hoseok’s frayed nerves and slowing his heart. The music and lights in the clearing beyond seem to beckon him, calling him closer.

“Are you ready?” Yoongi asks.

”Yes,” Hoseok says, and together, they step into the light.

He doesn’t remember much after that. His memory is reduced to nothing but vague, blurry snippets of color, of music, and of too-perfect smiles. He had danced; oh, had he danced. Yoongi had put a hand on his waist at one point, he can remember fingers, feather-light, brushing over his jaw. Someone had offered a drink—and he’d almost accepted it, had Yoongi not jumped in and pulled Hoseok back into the music. Hoseok can see why Yoongi likes the fourth night the best—the music is at its brightest, and every single guest dances, the whole area turned into a dizzying mix of gem-toned clothing.

Everything else may have been lost to feverish exhaustion, but Yoongi is there in the center, the eye of the storm, the magnet that Hoseok returned to time after time for the whole night.

That, and the memory of him sprinting across the border as the sun kissed the horizon, is what he can recall in the morning, when he wakes up outside.

He’s disoriented for a moment before he looks up and sees his house—he’s in his front lawn, still in Yoongi’s clothes, which glitter gold in the afternoon sun. Hoseok sits up, head spinning. He smells like earth and something sickly sweet, distinctly inhuman. 

“Oh, god,” he groans, squinting against the light. “I didn’t even drink and I’m hungover.”

“Hoseok?” A voice calls, and Hoseok’s just able to make Namjoon out, silhouetted against the sun. “Whoa, what are you wearing?”

Hoseok doesn’t answer, just lies back down, an arm thrown over his face. His memories are so fractured, so kaleidoscopic, that thinking too hard makes his hangover worse. 

It takes a lot of effort to get him inside, and Hoseok’s glad that Namjoon holds off on the questions until Hoseok’s settled on the couch, nursing a bottle of water.

“You can ask now,” Hoseok mumbles, taking a sip. “But I don’t remember much.”

“Okay, the clothes?” Namjoon immediately starts. “Do you even have the money to afford them?”

“They were a gift,” Hoseok answers, glad he can give Namjoon the truth—even if it’s a sliver of the whole story.

“I don’t really believe that, but okay. So why do you smell like flowers, then? Where the hell did you go?”

“An magical party in the forest,” Hoseok says, and when Namjoon bursts into laughter, he adds on, “I’m serious.”

“Wow,” Namjoon says, getting up and patting Hoseok on the back. “I have seen a lot of hangovers, but not one so bad it fucks with your memory. Are you sure you didn’t accept any open drinks from strangers? Or accidentally take LSD? Shrooms, maybe?”

Hoseok glares at Namjoon, wincing when his head starts to pound again. “There were no shrooms, Joon-ah. I didn’t even drink.”

Namjoon snorts again. “Sure, if you say so. I’ve gotta go to work now, but I’ll swing by with some hangover soup later, okay?”

Hoseok nods, and Namjoon leaves. He finishes his water in relative quiet before he topples over, head still spinning.

“What the fuck happened?” Hoseok asks, lifting an arm and watching the threads of the shirt catch the light.  

He doesn’t have an answer for that—though when he sleeps, his dreams are soaked in vibrant, tilting colors and the sound of feet touching the earth. He dreams of hands on his skin and eyes on his face, pulling him in, drawing him towards the trees and the magic on the other side of the river.

He dreams of Yoongi, ethereal and glowing and heartbreakingly beautiful.

Hoseok wakes with a pot of soup on his counter and a note from Namjoon:

Hey Hoseok--

You looked like you needed some sleep, so I tried not to wake you. Seokjin and I made this for you, so eat well.

We’re going to see a movie tonight if you want to join us, by the way. Jeongguk might be tagging along. I’ll give you a call, alright?

-Namjoon

A movie sounds great, Hoseok thinks—or it would, if not for the song in his ear, pulling every molecule in his body towards the forest. Every illogical part of him (and even a few logical parts, too) yearns to go back, to dance amongst the fairies for one more night.

One more night. Is that too much to ask?

No, that’s not the right question. It’s more like:

Will one more night be enough?

Pain shivers up his legs when he stands, feet bruised and calves aching. Even the muscles in his back protest when he stretches.

Some of it eases when he steps into the shower, silky clothing pooling on the ground. He washes the flowery scent off of his body, washes the moonlight from his hair and the shimmer from where Yoongi’s fingers had brushed his fingers over Hoseok’s face.

The sun sets, taking the last remnants of daylight with it and letting inky blue wash its way across the sky.

Hoseok starts to get restless again, and he misses his mouth a couple times as he eats the soup Namjoon brought, his eyes trained on the clock. Seokjin calls him, but it goes to voicemail. He’ll call Hoseok again, and another time after that, all the way until the clock strikes ten—and then he’ll think that Hoseok has gone to bed, or is watching TV and forgot to plug his phone in.

But that’s only because he wasn’t there to watch Hoseok get off the couch and follow the white cat into the shadows of the trees.

Hoseok’s blood is thrumming with a strange kind of anticipatory excitement as he comes close to the edge of the clearing again. He can see Yoongi through the trees and his heart immediately speeds, humming with warmth when the faerie catches sight of him and beams so widely the world tilts a little bit.

“You came back,” Yoongi says, delighted. “How are you holding up?”

“Tired,” Hoseok admits. “And my feet sort of hurt.”

Yoongi laughs. “They would. You danced a lot last night.”

“I don’t remember much,” Hoseok asks, raising an eyebrow at Yoongi. “I didn’t screw anything up, did I?”

Yoongi’s eyes glint and his smile turns mischievous for a second. “If you can’t remember, then there’s no regret.”

Hoseok feels his face heat. “I’m going to take that as a yes.”

“Take it however you may,” Yoongi says, shrugging. “It is how it must be.”

“Not helpful,” Hoseok informs him.

“I don’t recall ever saying I’d be helpful,” Yoongi teases, and Hoseok scoffs, rolling his eyes. He’s not quite able to tamp down the smile that tugs at his lips.

Yoongi suddenly goes quiet, though his expression is still tender. Cautiously, he reaches out and brushes his fingers over Hoseok’s jaw. Sparks jump on Hoseok's skin. 

“Are you ready for night five, Hoseok?” Yoongi asks quietly, and Hoseok has to wait until the faerie steps away before he can find words again. Everything turns to honey and dust when Yoongi touches him, looks at him like that. It’s hard to speak when Hoseok’s brain is sliding sideways in his head.

Yoongi picks up another bundle of cloth. This time it’s a cream-colored shirt and velvety pants the color of wine. Just like last night, the clothes fit him perfectly and he wears them with more confidence, not shying away as he walks back over to Yoongi.

“Amazing,” Yoongi says, smoothing his hands across the collar of Hoseok’s shirt, his thumbs catching skin and making Hoseok shiver. “You look amazing.”

Hoseok swallows, simultaneously feeling self-conscious and proud. “Red was my mom’s favorite color,” he tells Yoongi to ease some of the tension from the air. “She had a whole section of garden out back devoted to red flowers. All the frosting on the cakes she’d make would have to be red too.”

Yoongi smiles softly, his fingers still pressed against the skin of Hoseok’s collarbones. “She sounds incredible.”

“She was—is,” Hoseok corrects himself quickly. At Yoongi’s curious look, he takes a breath. Now’s better than never, he thinks to himself, and briefly ponders the best way to broach the subject of his mother’s kidnapping. “She disappeared when I was twelve.”

Yoongi reads the rest of the story on his face. “And you think she’s here.”

Hoseok flicks his eyes up to Yoongi’s, testing his reaction, but the faerie’s face remains carefully neutral. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

He doesn’t like the way this conversation is going, so he chooses not to tell Yoongi about the dream—not yet, at least, because Hoseok’s determined to get answers—and instead switches the topic. “But that’s not why I’m here, right?”

The coolness on Yoongi’s face immediately vanishes and he grins. It's the same knife-edge expression as last night, and Hoseok can't help the little thrill of danger that runs up his spine. “That’s right.” He holds his hand out to Hoseok’s, and it feels like he's promising something, teetering on the edge of something he'll never quite come back from. “Shall we dance?”

This time around, Hoseok remembers more, extra determined not to let the music and the colors wipe his memory clean. He dances with Yoongi for a little while, and the other guests cheer as he lets years of practice loosen his limbs, muscle memory guiding him to the beat. Yoongi puts a hand on his waist and sways along, a faint echo of however Hoseok moves.

It’s intoxicating. Yoongi’s palm burns through the fabric of his shirt and every time they make eye contact Hoseok shifts closer, pushing at a line he’s not sure he’s allowed to cross—but god, he wants to. Yoongi’s face gets brighter as the moon rises but his eyes darken, inky blue-brown, and his thumbs dig into the skin above Hoseok’s hipbones slightly, proprietary, tempting. 

Then, the faerie steps away, and the tension eases. Hoseok comes back to himself—he’s not embarrassed, because he knows Yoongi’s interested too, could feel it in the way his breath hitched, saw it in the way his lips parted.  

“Someone’s calling,” Yoongi says apologetically. “It won’t take long, I promise.”

Hoseok’s disappointment is quelled before it can even take shape. It’s not him. He just had to make sure. “Okay. I’ll be waiting here.” He grins. “Don’t take too long.”

It only takes three seconds of Yoongi’s absence before a gorgeous woman sidles up to him, two crystal goblets in her hands.

“You dance extremely well for a human,” she says, and Hoseok isn’t sure if it’s a compliment or an insult. The way these people talk—like every word is chosen carefully, and means a dozen different things. Everything they say is weighted. Since they can’t tell lies, Hoseok supposes, it’s gotta be.

“Thanks,” Hoseok says anyway. “You guys are great hosts. I’m having fun.”

“That’s good,” the female faerie says, smiling. She offers him one of the goblets. “Would you like a drink?”

“No, thank you,” Hoseok declines politely, remembering Yoongi’s warning not to eat or drink anything.

“It’s not our food,” the faerie assures him, reading the worry written on his face. “Or our drink. It’s just some water from the top of the waterfall. On nights like these, it becomes infused with moonlight. It’s quite delicious, if you ask me. And it’ll help replenish your energy.”

Hoseok tentatively accepts the goblet, peering at the contents. It really does just look like ordinary water, save for the silvery glitter to it, and she’s not bluffing…but it’s still better safe than sorry, especially when it comes to magical moonlight drinks.

“I’m really okay,” Hoseok says, though an energy boost sounds pretty good right about now.

“Don’t be rude,” the faerie whines petulantly. “I brought it over here just for you.”

“I don’t think Yoongi—” Hoseok tries, but the faerie scowls.

“Don’t mind him,” she scoffs. “He’s the host, yes, but he always holds back. Don’t let him stop your fun.”

Hoseok shifts uncomfortably. His manners are screaming at him and his parched tongue is equally as desperate. Maybe a tiny drink won’t hurt. Faeries can’t lie—if she says it’s safe, it’s safe.

He lifts the goblet to his lips and sips. It’s surprisingly sweet and settles lightly on his tongue, making his throat tingle. He’d only taken a small mouthful, but his whole body is flooded with coolness, and his sore, tired muscles unwind, refreshed.

“Myunghee!” Yoongi calls, reappearing on the edge of the party before Hoseok can take another sip. “Stop trying to force moon water on people. It’s not funny.”

“It’s terribly funny,” Myunghee responds, cackling. “You’ll see.”

Yoongi frowns when he sees the cup in Hoseok’s hand, striding forward and pulling it from his grasp. The brush of his fingers sparks something unusual in Hoseok’s belly, the cool rush of the water quickly fading, replaced with a quietly-growing smolder. “You didn’t drink any, did you?”

Hoseok opens his mouth to admit that yes, he did, but there’s a violent surge of heat when he meets Yoongi’s eyes and the words wither on his tongue.

What the hell is going on? He thinks, a little dazed. Either way, he can’t tear his eyes off of Yoongi, who’s ten times more beautiful than he was five seconds ago. Every part of Hoseok begins to ache with the need to be closer, to touch, to taste—

Yoongi turns to Myunghee. “Did he drink?”

“You’re the first one he touched,” Myunghee tells him, snickering and not answering the question. “Have fun, Yoongi. Take good care of him, and remember it’ll wear off faster if you give in.” She gives Yoongi a knowing look before skipping off, hair fluttering.

“I don’t know why I still invite her,” Yoongi mutters, just as the music starts up again. It’s slower this time, fuller, the sound more sensual in Hoseok’s ears.

There’s another spike of arousal in his stomach, and all rational thought is drowned out by an unnatural rushing in his ears, like water over rocks.

“What’s happening?” He hears himself ask, and Yoongi’s head snaps to meet his eyes.

“Moon water,” Yoongi says, sighing. “The water of the night. Of the lovers. It’ll fade in a little bit.”

“Hmm?” Hoseok says, not really hearing a word, too busy tracing the shape of Yoongi’s mouth with his eyes.

“Exactly,” Yoongi replies. “Here, let’s dance. It’ll help with the foggy head.”

So they start to dance again, only this time it’s Hoseok’s hands that drift up Yoongi’s arms, dipping down to his waist where they graze warm skin beneath the hemline of the faerie’s shirt.

“Hoseok,” Yoongi says, a warning. But his eyes are darkening with each brush of Hoseok's hands, like he can sense whatever is calling Hoseok to him.

Hoseok bites the inside of his cheek as hard as he can but it does little to pull him out of the haze that’s wrapping around him, pulling him further into himself until he’s nothing but the hot blood in his veins and the wanting, the yearning that is eating his very bones away. He wants to touch, to kiss—something other than stand here.

The music turns bronze, and Hoseok twists his hips and steps forward. Yoongi takes a sharp breath but doesn’t do anything, just watches.

Hoseok shuts his mind off and lets the music pull them together, each swaying step nearer than the last until they’re so close that Hoseok can see the slivers of gold in Yoongi’s eyes.

“You,” Yoongi hums, breath ghosting over Hoseok’s lips, “do not belong here for a reason. You’re too much.”

Hoseok grins, just a little bit. “That’s a bad thing?”

“Well,” Yoongi says, but doesn’t get to finish because Hoseok grabs his face and kisses him with all of the might he can muster.

The moon water’s spell roars victoriously, and the fogged-over part of him melts. He’s kissed a few boys in his lifetime, but none of them were like this—moonlight and flowers, the summer and the breeze and something endlessly tempting, calling Hoseok even when he’s out of the forest and it’s daytime. None of them were like this because Yoongi isn’t a boy, he’s a faerie, and he’s got tongue against Hoseok’s lips and Hoseok’s world is ending.

Hoseok shivers, full-bodied, and melts a little in Yoongi’s arms as the faerie pulls him closer, his hands burning through Hoseok’s shirt.

They break apart for a moment and Hoseok’s knees go weak at the look on Yoongi’s face, dark and hungry and not at all like the delicate hands that had cupped his face under the moonlight. This is…a completely different person. And that is when Hoseok remembers that Yoongi is not a person at all, and that the filtered, silvery beauty hides something entirely inhuman. 

“Do you have somewhere more private?” Hoseok suggests, and Yoongi raises an eyebrow. Confidence—borrowed from the moon water—fills him to the brim, and the itching urge to keep touching pushes at the seams of his skin.

“I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” Yoongi says, pressing a thumb to Hoseok’s bottom lip and smirking a little bit.

“Even better,” Hoseok replies, leaning forward and kissing Yoongi again, their mouths slotting together with ease. He’s aware of the eyes on him, can feel the curious, burning gazes on the back of his neck but the part of him that cares is temporarily caged, trapped in an impenetrable fog that has engulfed every rational part of him.

“Okay,” Yoongi says when they part, his breath ragged in his chest. “Okay. Yes. Follow me.”

He grabs Hoseok’s hand and leads him through the edge of the crowd—most of which had been staring at them, mocking, amused smiles on their faces.

“Humans under a moon spell always make me laugh,” one man stage-whispers. “They can’t even help themselves. How pathetic.”

Yoongi, apparently, hears the faerie too. Before Hoseok can get irritated, he fixes the whisperer with a look so icy and authoritative that the faerie shrinks away, looking apologetic.

Not just a party host, a muffled voice says. He’s more. They respect him, they listen to him—

“Don’t mind,” Yoongi tells Hoseok quietly as they move away from the party and towards a big red tent a few meters out. “It has been years since human revelers have been looked down on. But there are still some—the older fae—that remember, and hold onto their prejudice.”

Hoseok fights his way through the clouds, trying to hold on to Yoongi’s words.

“Very wise,” he manages, and Yoongi gives him a small smile.

“You’re actually surprisingly yourself,” Yoongi notes wryly, nodding at Hoseok. “Part of the reason why I’m indulging in this.”

“If I didn’t drink it,” Hoseok asks as Yoongi pushes back the curtain to the tent, “would you still have kissed me?”

Yoongi’s face loses any remaining quietness or softness, and he lets the curtain fall shut behind them. The tent has a desk, and an odd-looking couch in the corner—it’s also lit by floating orbs of light that Hoseok is very tempted to stick his hand into.

“Whether or not I would have is unimportant,” Yoongi replies, smoothly dodging the question. “It’s a different question now, Hoseok.”

“Oh yeah?”

Yoongi slowly chases Hoseok backwards until his legs hit the couch and he sits, liking where this is going.

“Mmm,” Yoongi hums, stopping in front of Hoseok and looking down at him, lips quirked. “You should be asking if I’m going to kiss you again.”

“And are you?” Hoseok asks, a shiver rolling slowly down his spine when Yoongi shifts forward.

“Yes,” the faerie replies, and before Hoseok can think up a clever response, Yoongi’s lips are on his again and his brain short-circuits, his whole body lighting up with the electricity that sears through him. In the same movement, Yoongi slides into Hoseok’s lap with so much grace Hoseok is reminded once again that he’s the faerie realm, that he’s lost his mind thanks to magic water and the hands that are stroking across the skin of his ribs belong to a being far older and far stranger than everything he knows.

Hoseok doesn’t know how long they stay there. They don’t go any further than kissing, and Hoseok’s glad for it—he doesn’t know if he’s emotionally prepared (or physically capable) to do anything but kiss Yoongi. But he lets Yoongi nose at his neck and across his collarbone, lets his blood boil beneath his skin and loses track of time.

The noise outside gradually dies down and the music softens with the conversation. The gaps in the tent start to lighten as the moon goes down. With it goes the spell that has fogged over Hoseok’s mind, leaving his suddenly-clear head spinning. His lips are numb, his throat tingles in the spots where Yoongi’s mouth had been, and his shirt is bunched up around his ribs.

Yoongi seems to notice the change and pulls back, hair a rumpled mess. Hoseok grabs his waist as Yoongi reaches over him, parting a section of the tent to let in some of the early-morning glow.

“Nautical dawn,” Yoongi murmurs, settling back down and cupping Hoseok’s face briefly. “We’ve spent too long here. It’s time for you to go.”

He slides off of Hoseok’s lap, the sudden absence making something inside of Hoseok ache.

“What happens if I stay longer?”

Yoongi’s face darkens. “You’d need the Queen’s permission to leave. And she’s not someone you ever want to face.”

Hoseok gets up off the couch, rubbing his mouth a little. Yoongi crosses to the front of the tent and lifts the flap. Most of the guests are gone—those that remain are fast asleep, piled on tables and decorative couches in various states of undress.

The horizon is glowing through the trees and the last of the stars are fading, bright gemstones in the sky. Yoongi takes Hoseok by the hand and leads him through the quiet clearing.  

The forest is a different kind of beautiful in the morning, Hoseok realizes. Everything is sleepier, a little less intense—the colors hurt his eyes less and the air, instead of being heady with magic, is fresher, cutting through the cobwebs in his mouth and the lingering haze of the moon water. He fills his lungs with it, closing his eyes and letting the distant sound of the birds and the stream wash over him.

When he opens his eyes, Yoongi is staring at him, a look on his face that Hoseok hasn’t seen before.

“What?” Hoseok asks, grinning. “Do I have something on my face?”

“Never mind me,” the faerie replies, but he squeezes Hoseok’s hand. “I’m very glad I met you, Hoseok.”

The sun starts to break over the horizon, and each step gets harder to take, like the forest is physically holding him back. Hoseok understands what Yoongi meant by him not being able to leave—this place is doing its best to stop him.

They reach the stream and the little bridge. Yoongi comes to a halt. “This is as far as I can go.”

“Will I see you again?” Hoseok asks desperately, and Yoongi gives him a sad smile.

“Perhaps,” Yoongi says. “In another time, in another place. When I am not so unlucky and the day is not so cruel.”

“What does that mean?” Something inside of him tears a little bit at the heartbreaking softness in Yoongi’s words. What does he mean, unlucky?

Yoongi doesn’t answer, instead stepping closer to press a gentle kiss to Hoseok’s lips. “Go, Hoseok. Don’t try to look for me, alright? Stay on this side of the stream, and forget me.”

“You changed everything,” Hoseok murmurs, holding fast to Yoongi’s wrist when the faerie tries to leave. “The music, the dancing— you.”

“Two worlds,” Yoongi reminds him, and Hoseok struggles to keep his composure, even though his eyes burn when he blinks. “Our paths crossed and I’m eternally grateful they did, but—even the moon sets.”

Hoseok swallows. “So this is goodbye?”

“It was just two nights.”

Two nights that changed everything, Hoseok thinks, but doesn’t say it aloud. Yoongi reads it on his face anyway, and his face is sad when he gently tugs his wrist out of Hoseok’s grip.

“Thank you,” Hoseok whispers. Yoongi nods silently and steps back. Hoseok waits until the space between them is cold, and then finally crosses the bridge. As he does so, the air turns flavorless and the colors fade. The magic releases its grip and he can walk normally again. Everything reverts back to normal, and when Hoseok turns around, Yoongi, too, is gone.

It’s like he was never even there in the first place.

This thought is what brings the tears—hot, burning, and soaking his cheeks and the sleeves of his shirt where he tries to wipe his face. Exhaustion hits him like a goddamn brick and he staggers, his house emerging as he stumbles out of the forest. The sun is just starting to rise, a burning sphere of yellow, casting warmth and making the dew on the grass glitter.

Hoseok sees none of it. His front door, miraculously, is unlocked, and he makes it to the couch before his legs get out, whole body sore and aching. He can’t stop his tears, either, so he curls up against the empty space in his chest and tries to hold on, tries to keep his head above the crippling disappointment.

It doesn’t work, and he cries himself to sleep.

The cream-colored shirt and the red pants join the previous night’s outfit, neatly hung in his closet like vestiges of a dream.

Five days pass in bland listlessness. Hoseok doesn’t do much besides sleep; on occasion he’ll get up and wander around town, staying far away from the forest despite its call. Yoongi’s words play over and over again in his head: it was just two nights, it was just two nights, it was just two nights.

So why does he feel like he left a part of himself behind? If it was just two nights, why has everything suddenly changed?

He craves the full sound of the music, yearns for the heady fill of the air in his lungs. He wakes up mid-dream, sweating, remembering how it felt to kiss Yoongi under the stars.

His friends notice. He tells them he’s got the flu—it’s the only way he can explain the lack of appetite and his pale face—but none of them believe him. They try to draw him in, make space for him in the real world, where he belongs, but Hoseok can’t muster up the energy to join them.  

He’s no closer to finding his mother, either. Maybe it really was just a dream—false hope, cooked up by the part of Hoseok that still cries for her when he gets lonely.

He’s been in town for almost two weeks now, and the weather gets nicer by the day. The public pool opens up and so does the small amusement park half an hour’s drive from here. Seokjin invites him to come on Friday night, trying to tempt Hoseok out of the house with promises of cheap prices and dinner beforehand, come on, I’ll even pay.

“I’m tired, hyung,” Hoseok answers, but he sounds so unconvincing that there’s no way Seokjin’s buying that.

“I don’t believe you for a second,” Seokjin immediately fires back. “Hoseok, what’s wrong? Are you homesick? Did something happen?”

“It’s nothing.” There was a faerie, and a party like you’ve never seen, and it was just two nights but I think I left a very important part of me with him, I know, it's silly— “I promise, I’m just tired.”

“Talk to me, Hoseok,” Seokjin pleads, and Hoseok feels a little bad about the desperation in his friend’s voice. “Talk to someone.”

“Have fun, hyung.”

“Hoseok-ah, wait—”

Hoseok hangs up, tosses his phone to the side, then shifts on his bed, turning his head to watch the moon come up through the window. Its light is pale and watery compared to the silvery splendor of the forest.

This kind of bleakness is so unlike him. Sure, he gets stressed. He’s gotten his heart broken and spent months wallowing in sadness. But listlessness? That is the last word he’d ever use in relation to himself.

He doesn’t know when he falls asleep, but he knows he’s dreaming because he sees Yoongi’s face, the sad look in his eyes as he let go of Hoseok’s hand and told him to forget.

I can’t forget, Hoseok tries to say, but his tongue is too heavy to move.

The scene gradually loses color and he’s falling, disoriented, until he can see a woman wearing a white robe. Her hair is grey at the temples and she cowers on the ground, curling away from some threat that Hoseok can’t see.

Instinctively, Hoseok knows it’s his mother. Every part of him is desperate to go to her, to call her name and gather her into his arms and promise he’ll never lose her again. But he’s frozen in place, forced to be a silent observer. His heart aches to see her like this, trapped, frail, her eyes dull and glassy. 

“It wasn’t me,” his mother says, and despite her position, her voice is strong. “I know nothing about it. I haven’t spoken to him in years. You know that.”

She’s talking about me, Hoseok realizes, and he struggles to move again, to reassure her.

“If you let me go,” his mother begins, cautious, persuasive, “I can take him out of here. I can make sure he doesn’t meddle anymore. He’s always been curious—”

His mother stops short and flinches violently, sliding backwards on her knees. She presses her forehead to the ground. “Okay. I’m very sorry. Please forget I ever said anything.”

A pause, and his mother waits before letting out a sigh of relief, her shoulders dropping. She looks exhausted, but her hands are steady. Whatever she faces, it has not broken her resolve. Not yet. 

“Be strong, baby,” she says, speaking to him now. “Everything depends on you now. The fate of everything you love—and everything you’ll come to love—rests on your shoulders.”

“Mom—”

“I love you,” she says—whether or not she can hear him, Hoseok doesn’t know. “I’m so sorry.”

Hoseok wakes up.

Seokjin comes by just as Hoseok’s locking up his house. He looks genuinely surprised to see Hoseok actually out and moving.

“The color’s back in your face,” Seokjin says, amazed. “Did you sleep extra well, or something?”

Hoseok pockets his keys and turns to face Seokjin, determined. “There’s something I have to do.”

Seokjin’s eyebrows go up. “There is? Are you going for a hike, or something?” He asks, nodding at the backpack Hoseok’s got on.

“Sort of,” Hoseok says, not sure how to explain—if he can explain. He’d woken up this morning feeling more like himself than he has for the last week, purpose burning hot in his chest. He’s going back into that forest and shaking answers out of someone. He’s going to find his mother—who he’s sure is in there, trapped and terrified out of her mind—and he’s going to bring her back, no matter what it takes.

A significant part of him keeps asking, are you sure this isn’t just to see Yoongi again? And while he can’t deny that there’s a pull (whatever had happened that night had irrevocably changed something, had created whatever is tugging him back into the forest) his main goal is his mother. How can it not be, after the dream he’d just had?

“Hoseok?” Seokjin asks, tapping his shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“I might not be back for a couple days,” Hoseok says brightly, like he’s going for a quick trip and not crossing over into a magical realm that could—and would—eat him alive. “But don’t worry about it, okay?”

Seokjin’s forehead wrinkles. “Generally when you tell someone not to worry, it’s because there’s cause for worry, Hoseok.”

“Hyung,” Hoseok whines, kicking the sunniness up a notch and latching onto Seokjin’s arm, “c’mon. It’s just the forest. There isn’t anything bigger than a fox in there. The worst thing that could happen is a sunburn.”

“Fine,” Seokjin relents, shaking Hoseok free. “Three days, and then I’m coming back to check on you.”

“Five.”

“Hoseok, Jesus, what are you going to do in there?”

“Dunno,” Hoseok says, and it’s mostly true. “But I have something important to do. It’s the reason why I came here.”

Seokjin catches the change in Hoseok’s voice, eyeing him carefully.

“If you’re sure,” Seokjin says slowly.

“I’m absolutely positive,” Hoseok replies firmly. “Tell Namjoon and Jeongguk, okay?”

“I will,” Seokjin says, and suddenly grabs Hoseok into a hug. “Be careful, alright?”

Hoseok nods, squeezing Seokjin once before letting go. “I’ll do my best.”

“See you in five days,” Seokjin says, and he and Hoseok part ways, the former heading back to his car while the latter starts into the forest.

The day is nice, the air cool from passing rain. Hoseok whistles as loud as he can, the bells on his backpack tinkling. Rule number two: always make noise so they know you’re coming.

Hoseok wonders if Yoongi can hear him, is being pulled in the same way he is—slowly, inevitably, irrevocably. 

Rushing water soon drowns out the animal sounds as Hoseok comes upon the bridge, small and insignificant but separating two worlds that are never supposed to touch.

Until now—until Jung Hoseok, seemingly unnoticeable—proceeds to reenter the faerie world, this time with something in his chest, something that burns so brightly and so vibrantly that it attracts the attention of every single faerie in the area.

Not so unimportant now. Now he’s suddenly very interesting.

Min Yoongi’s warning, his plea for Hoseok to stay home, to forget, hadn’t been for nothing.

Most of the low fae sneak forward and sniff at his ankles, recoiling when they find him stamped with that magic, his magic. They hate his magic because it belongs to the Queen, who holds the life of the forest in her cupped hands and also controls it, vicious and unforgiving. They hate her iron fist and blood-stained wrath more than they hate the metallic stench of higher fae magic, even his—the Prince’s—magic.

Hoseok’s eyes adjust to the new jewel tones of everything, senses a little numb from the rich air and the tangible way the sunlight brushes his cheeks. The sound of his whistling is more complex, too, a hundred different notes he didn’t notice before.

There’s a rustle in the underbrush; Hoseok passes it off casually, spirits high. He’s starting to feel like himself again, and he lets his feet lead him, following the insistent tug in his chest. 

Most of the low fae leave him be. Some do not.

So when someone—something—charges out of the underbrush, Hoseok is thoroughly unprepared. He hits the ground hard, the breath crumpling from his lungs and his head smacking against a tree root. Something in his chest cracks unpleasantly—he’s hoping it’s not a rib—and his vision yellows, blurring. He blinks, trying to see what had attacked him. It’s the size of a small child but much stronger than that, as it easily holds his wrists and stops him from wriggling.  

“Who—what—get off me,” Hoseok shouts, thrashing. “Hey, if you’ve got a problem, we can talk this out. You don’t have to sit—”

“Nasty nasty nasty,” the thing chides, its voice rough and gravelly. “Humans are better when they don’t speak. Even this one. Special human, glowy and bright, good for Jingling, very good.”

Hoseok’s vision finally clears, and he recoils at the sight of the creature. Its face is mossy and smashed in, and so ugly Hoseok can’t make out any distinguishing features besides a pair of berry-red eyes, peering greedily at his face.

He tries to pull his wrists free, but the thing weighs a billion pounds, and it's unrelenting and unsympathetic to Hoseok's struggle.

“I don’t know what you want with me,” Hoseok says, trying to keep his voice even, “but I’m not special, I promise. I’m just trying to see—”

“Don’t care,” the creature replies flippantly, sticking its mashed-up face close to Hoseok's. “You’ve got something. Very special, yes, you’re very special. Jingling wants to tie you up, good idea. Keep you for the shiny thing. Very useful. Everyone will listen if I use the shiny thing. Nobody will laugh, not anymore, not if I’ve got that.”

“What are you even talking about? What shiny thing?”

The creature—Jingling, maybe—taps its chest. “Right here. You can see it when I pull it out.”

My heart? Hoseok thinks, confused for a moment. Then he processes the second half of the creature’s statement and starts panicking again.

“Uh, please don’t pull anything out me,” he says, trying to keep still so he doesn’t piss it off. “I kind of need all my inside parts…inside.”

“Not this one,” Jingling decides, and raises its hand, equally as mossy and gross as its face. “Won’t hurt. Silly human.”

“Okay, let’s not do that,” Hoseok stutters, panicking and kicking his legs uselessly. “Please don’t, please don’t, you’re wrong, I’m not special—”

“Jingling, that’s enough,” a new voice says, and the creature stops, slowly turning its head to see who owns the voice. From his angle, Hoseok can’t see anything but two sets of feet, one bare and the other in green sandals. The owner of the voice must be someone pretty powerful, though, because Jingling immediately scrambles off of Hoseok, eyes cast down.

“Didn’t mean to,” it says remorsefully, slinking backwards. “Was a mistake, please forgive, didn’t hurt him.”

Hoseok takes a deep breath, his chest aching from the pressure. He sits up slowly, head throbbing, and rubs his eyes. Two faeries—they’re too pretty to be anything else, so Hoseok has to assume—step through the gaps of the trees. The barefoot one is dark-haired, and wearing what looks like a fur sweater and shorts. The other is blonde and shorter, and would be totally non-threatening if not for the blood-freezing expression on his face.

“Didn’t you sense the fingerprints?” The blonde one asks. “He’s not yours.”

“I’m not anybody’s,” Hoseok points out, but the two faeries ignore him.

“Please forgive,” Jingling repeats, head bowed.  

“We should punish you,” the blonde faerie says casually, looking back at Fur Sweater Guy. “What do you think, Taehyung?”

Another Korean name, Hoseok thinks, surprised, and then, Yoongi mentioned a Taehyung. I wonder if it’s the same guy?  

“You know me,” Taehyung says, coming to join the blonde and looking down at Jingling distastefully, “I hate kobolds.”

Jingling shrieks, and throws itself face-first into the dirt. “No, no punishment, very sorry, please, no, no, not the Prince, anything but—”

“Stop groveling,” Taehyung says, kicking dirt at it. “You’re not even supposed to be here. You’ve been banned from the dawn strip for a reason.”

Something in Hoseok’s heart tugs at the sight of the little creature, sobbing face-down in the dirt. Even though it had tried to pull his heart out, there’s a more forgiving part of Hoseok that disagrees with how this conversation is going.

“Okay, okay,” Hoseok says, cutting in. Both faeries turn to look at him, curious. “Let’s just let it go, how about. I’m fine, nobody got hurt. Leave it be.”

Taehyung narrows his eyes. “That’s not your choice to make.”

“It kind of is,” the blond says quietly, lips pursed like he hates to say it.

“Jimin—” Taehyung protests, but Jimin (finally named) cups a hand to Taehyung’s neck. “He’s got the fingerprints to prove it,” he says.  

Hoseok looks down at his hands. What’s so special about his fingerprints?

“Not yours,” Jimin says, rolling his eyes. “The Prince’s.”

At Hoseok’s continued blank look, he sighs. “Yoongi. He’s all over you. You are Hoseok, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Hoseok says, still confused. The sound of Yoongi’s name, however, makes a balloon of hot air expand in Hoseok’s chest. “You know him?” He asks, daring to hope for the first time in a week. “And what do you mean, he’s a prince?”

“Just that,” Jimin states. “He watches over a section of the forest, and protects all of the people that live on it.”

Now that Hoseok thinks about it, it kind of makes sense—the clothes, the fancy party, how all of the guests treated Yoongi with a kind of reverence. He'd just been too caught-up in it all—the music, the dancing, the cut of Yoongi's cheekbones in the moonlight—to notice. 

“He’s our prince,” Taehyung continues. “We’re part of his court. And so is this thing,” he adds, curling his lip at Jingling.

“Who you’re going to let go,” Hoseok reminds him.

Taehyung and Jimin look at him, partly-irritated and partly-curious. “Human hearts,” Jimin says slowly. “I’ve never seen one at work before.”

“I don’t know how you do it,” Taehyung continues. “How can you find mercy?”

“It’s the right thing to do,” Hoseok says firmly, and squats down so he’s eye-level with Jingling. It blinks up at him, eyes misty. “Go,” he tells it. “Don’t make any more trouble, alright?”

“Jingling is…forgiven?” It asks slowly, shock coming over its face. “Can go?”

“Yes,” Hoseok says, and Jingling doesn’t have to ask again, scrambling to its feet and hurrying off.

“Many thanks,” it calls over its shoulder. “Won’t forget, right? Jingling owes the human a debt.”

And then it’s gone, tiny figure swallowed up by the ancient trees.

With that taken care of, Jimin and Taehyung turn their attention to Hoseok, who shifts uneasily under their gazes.

“You do know you’re not supposed to be here, right?” Jimin says, breaching the silence. “Fingerprints or not. You’re lucky that was only a kobold, and that we were close by.”

“Yeah, I know,” Hoseok says, scratching the back of his neck and fighting off his embarrassment. “Thank you, by the way.”

Taehyung looks a little shocked. “Don’t give away thanks so easily. You’ll run out.”

Jimin nudges Taehyung. “He’s a human. He can thank anyone as much as he’d like.”

“Oh,” Taehyung says, looking a little envious. “Is it true that you can lie, too? And make a promise and break it? And kiss someone and not leave a trace?”

“Uh, I guess?” Hoseok says, blinking at the sudden onslaught of questions. “I don’t know about the kissing thing—”

“Just ignore him,” Jimin jumps in, and Taehyung pouts. “He’s excited. We heard about you from Yoongi but didn’t think you’d actually come back.”

“It’s all good,” Hoseok says, and swallows against the nervousness that suddenly rises in his throat. “So, uh…you know where Yoongi is?”

“Of course,” Jimin replies, then hesitates, eyes narrowing. He takes a half-step closer to Hoseok, looking him up and down like he's trying to figure something out. “Why did you come back? Two more days and the fingerprints would’ve faded, and you would’ve forgotten.”

“Well, I’m here now,” Hoseok says, crossing his arms and fighting back and self-consciousness. Two more days or not, he gets the feeling that nothing would’ve changed. “I’m looking for someone.”

“And who would that be?” Jimin asks, raising an eyebrow. “Don’t you think they would’ve gotten lost on the other side?”

“It’s my mother,” Hoseok says nervously, watching the faeries’ faces for a reaction. “And I know she’s here. I just want to ask Yoongi some questions.”

“Hmm,” Jimin muses carefully, and runs a finger along a blue ribbon tied around his throat. “So you’re not here just to see him again?”

“I’m not lying,” Hoseok insists. “My mother really is missing.”

“I believe you,” Jimin says, lightly. “But she’s not the only reason you’re here.”

Hoseok bristles a little bit, but pastes a smile on his face anyways. “I promise,” he says, “that it’s not about Yoongi.”

Not completely, he thinks, and watches as the faeries swallow the lie whole.  

“Alright,” Jimin finally says, hands dropping from his throat. “We’ll take you to him. Not that it really matters—you’d find him eventually. We’re just speeding up the process.”

Jimin turns on his heel and starts back through the trees. Taehyung skips up to Hoseok’s side, white fur of his sweater stirring as he does so. The color looks familiar, for some reason, and Hoseok nods at it. “That sweater,” he starts. “Why—”

“The cat,” Taehyung interrupts, tentative. “That was me.”

“You’re that cat? ” Hoseok exclaims, voice a little loud. “Whoa, actually?”

Taehyung, who’d flinched at the sudden rise in Hoseok’s voice, nods tentatively.

“That's pretty awesome,” Hoseok tells him, mildly envious. This forest and its folk, filled to the brim with magic. Hoseok tries not to feel out-of-place. 

“You think so?” Taehyung asks, looking a little surprised. 

“Uh, yeah?” Hoseok replies, grinning broadly. “Why would that not be cool?”

“Most are disgusted,” Taehyung tells him, lips tugging down. “What kind of prince would let a nekomata into fae court? They say it disrupts power, poisons the magic. They look down on me because I’m not them, and they think they’re better for it.”

His voice is so bitter and his expression to downturned that Hoseok instinctively brightens his smile, trying to lift Taehyung’s mood. “Well, I’m not most,” he declares, and Taehyung swivels to look at him, eyes wide. “You lead me here, didn't you?” You led me to Yoongi, he doesn't say, but suspects Taehyung hears it anyway. The smile he gets in return is considerably warmer, and honest enough that it surprises Hoseok. What kind of world do they live in where Taehyung is surprised by things like thank you? 

“We’re here,” Jimin announces, coming to an unexpected halt. Hoseok looks around for a minute, expecting a castle or a manor, maybe. Something old-looking, like from the movies. Like a pagoda house. “Hey, Tae, will you go and ask Hyuna and Hyojung to open the gates for us?”

Taehyung nods, and heads off into what looks like more forest. Then Hoseok blinks, and he’s gone.

“You can’t get in unless the gates are open,” Jimin explains, redundant. Hoseok nods, kicking at a pine cone. 

A beat of silence.

“It was really nice, what you did for Taehyung. And the kobold, though it certainly didn’t deserve it.”

“It was nothing,” Hoseok says, a little embarrassed. “Honestly, I have no idea what I’m doing. I don’t know if there’s some customary thing or different expectations but back home—on the other side of the forest, I guess, I don’t know—that’s the right thing to do.”

Jimin digests this, nodding slowly. “Be careful with that human heart of yours, Hoseok,” the faerie says quietly, fingers going back to the ribbon at his throat. “Protect it well. You never know who might try to take it from you.”

Taehyung pops back into view and Jimin’s face warms again, the tension of the moment gone. “Hyojung says he’ll let Hoseok in.”

Hoseok turns to look at Jimin. “Just like that?”

Jimin smirks. “Perks of having those fingerprints. You’re like a beacon. Anyone can tell you’re his from a mile away.”

“I’m not—” Hoseok starts to protest, but Jimin lets out a bright peal of laughter.

“I’d forgotten about humans and their silly sense of independence,” Jimin says, still chortling. “It’s not like that. It’s like—you know what, I’ll let Yoongi explain it. It’s about you two, anyways.”

There’s a low groan, accompanied by a rumble that shakes the earth. Then, like magic, the forest starts to peel away and Hoseok sees something entirely different: a great silvery gate, opening slowly, and behind it, the most breathtaking house Hoseok has ever seen, smooth wood and green ivy, windows open to catch the breeze that stirs the leaves on the trees.

Taehyung taps Hoseok’s shoulder. “Wait until you see the inside,” he says, smiling. He nudges Hoseok forward a little bit, who stumbles forward like he’s in a daze. As they walk past the gate and get closer to the house, he can see more detail. There’s the cherry tree in the backyard, shading a pond, and the flowers that preen in the front lawn, wild and vibrant. The house itself isn’t massive like Hoseok was expecting—it’s two, maybe three floors—but he likes it even more because of that. It reminds him of his own home.

“Holy shit,” Hoseok mumbles. He’s been saying that a lot recently—this place is awfully good at taking all other words out of his mouth.

Two faeries watch him curiously. When Hoseok catches them staring, they don’t turn aside.

“Hyojung,” Jimin says, pointing at the man. “And Hyuna,” he continues, naming the woman. “Hui is around here somewhere. They watch the gate.”

“He’s human,” Hyuna states, still staring. “Are you saying the Prince is marked by him?”

Hoseok eyes the two of them, too pretty in the way fae are, wearing armor in a way that’s almost fashionable. Armor. Like, full-on knight getup. “What’s wrong with humans?”

“Nothing,” Hyojung says. “You’re all just…a little silly, is all. And it’s been a decade since one last set foot in our realm.”

Hyojung’s words send a shiver through Hoseok. Ten years. The exact same amount of time since his mother went missing.

“Okay, off we go,” Jimin says, like he can sense that Hoseok's about to start asking questions he shouldn't. 

“Be careful you don't mess up,” Hyuna says, smiling beatifically. “Or we'll be seeing you very soon.”

Hoseok can hear the threat in that, darkness lurking at the edge of her smile, razor-sharp. He'd almost forgotten about the double-meaning in every word, carefully picked and delivered with an elegance that almost hides the danger. Almost. 

Fear shivers down Hoseok's spine, and he fights it back. Instead, he opts for a grin. Hyojung and Hyuna blink, clearly not expecting that reaction. “Promise I won’t,” Hoseok shoots back, and maybe it’s a lie and a promise he can’t keep, but either way, they’re unlikely to find out.

“Come on, Hoseok,” Jimin says, ushering Hoseok away from the guards, who still stare at him like they can’t decide between irritation and confusion.

The door is polished and oaken, its great brass handle glinting invitingly. The whole house is calling to him, beckoning—or maybe that’s the string around his heart, tugging insistently like it knows who’s inside.

Jimin opens the door, ushering them all in. “He’s probably still doing tasks,” Jimin mutters, looking around. “I’ll go out and see if I can find him.” He turns to Taehyung. “Will you show Hoseok around?”

Taehyung nods, and Jimin vanishes out the door again.

“Yoongi’s never liked big houses,” Taehyung says, bringing Hoseok farther into the house. There’s no foyer—they’re already in the living room, which is filled to the brim with couches and bookshelves overflowing with books. Maps and pictures hang haphazardly on the wall, and the curtains by the windows are tied back, the sunlight illuminating the whole place.

“But he’s a prince, isn’t he?” Hoseok asks, trailing after Taehyung as they make their way through a dining room, the table and chairs simple and battered. The kitchen’s a bit of a mess, but Hoseok likes it. It feels lived-in, well-loved, and warm. It’s a home, Hoseok knows—from the dishes in the sink to the notes stuck to the cabinets, their doors ajar, all the way to the half-empty cup of tea on the counter and, bizarrely, the sword next to a tall plant.

“He’s a prince, yes,” Taehyung is saying as they wind through the kitchen and make their way back towards the stairs, “but he wasn’t, once. Upstairs isn’t that interesting. Just bedrooms.”  

“Someone made him a prince?” Hoseok asks, brow furrowing.

“I don’t know the whole history,” Taehyung answers, stopping at the foot of the stairs. “I didn’t know him until he became a prince and started building his court. But it’s...not a happy story. Jimin’s part of it,” Taehyung answers, reading the question on Hoseok’s face. “It’s how he got his ribbon.”

“Oh, yeah—what’s that ribbon for?”

“So his head won’t roll off,” Taehyung says lightly, but with what Hoseok’s seen thus far, he genuinely doesn’t know if it’s a joke or not.

He doesn’t have time to ask, either, because Jimin bursts back inside. Taehyung startles, the fur on his sweater bristling (which looks kind of funny, if Hoseok’s being honest) but relaxes when he sees it’s just Jimin.

“Yoongi’s back,” Jimin tells Hoseok. “And he wants to see you, Hoseok.”

There’s a fancy glass pavilion farther back on the property, which is much larger than Hoseok had originally thought.

“It’s his receiving room,” Jimin explains as they make their way towards it. “He hates it, but it’s either that or have visitors in his house. And Yoongi hates that more.”

Excitement, trepidation and determination all build in Hoseok’s stomach with each step they take. He has no idea how Yoongi will react—the faerie had been pretty clear when he’d told Hoseok to go home and stay there—but at the same time it feels like there’s the string around his heart, pulling him closer. He can’t be the only one that feels it, the yearning, the exhaustion from having to fight it.

He doesn’t know anything, but he hopes. He hopes with everything he has.

There are already people in the pavilion when they get there—all expensive-looking faeries, their faces careful masks of pretend boredom hiding what Hoseok thinks is annoyance. And then there’s Yoongi, lounging on a simple wooden chair, its back tall and straight. He also looks bored—actually bored, like the faeries in front of him simply aren’t worth his time. It’s a funny expression, given the situation, and Hoseok has to bite back a laugh as they approach the steps.

“Your Highness,” Jimin announces, and everyone swivels to face him. “Your guest is here.”

“Right,” Yoongi says, turning to the other fae. “Clear out. We’re done with this conversation,” he tells them, stony. It’s the same authority that he’d shown to the faerie from the party, the one that had mocked Hoseok for drinking the water.

“Your Highness,” one of the faeries say, “you’re not making a rational choice, here. What belongs to you belongs to you belongs to the Queen.”

“You can tell the Queen,” Yoongi says, scowling, “that she can shove it up her ass.”

The same faerie sighs. Clearly, this is something she has to deal with often. “I wish I could tell her that. But we both know how she gets, and I can only buy you so much time before she comes here herself and demands that you hand over—”

“I said,” Yoongi cuts in, everything about him hostile and freezing cold, “we’re done.”

The female faerie’s face crumples, a combination of hurt and resignation. The rest all exchange a look, and quietly filter out of the pavilion, brushing past Hoseok without glancing at him, like he’s unimportant. He’s not sure if he wants to be important, however. Not to those fae.

Yoongi watches them go, pinching the bridge of his nose and exhaling sharply. “Jimin, can you tell Hyuna to warn me if one of the Queen’s people comes through the gate?” Yoongi asks, dropping his hands and looking up. “Because I hate—”

His voice dies in his throat as Hoseok steps out from behind Taehyung, offering Yoongi a tentative smile.

“Hi,” Hoseok says, voice a little loud in the sudden hush that has fallen over the four of them.

Yoongi just stares, his eyes wide. After a second, Hoseok starts to wonder if he’s made a mistake. Yoongi had told him to go home—

But how could I? Hoseok thinks, setting his shoulders and tilting his chin up. How could I stay when my mother’s here? When I left a part of me with him?

“Hoseok,” Yoongi finally breathes, and Hoseok’s name has never sounded sweeter.

“I, uh, came back,” Hoseok replies lamely, gesturing to himself. “As you can see.”

Jimin snorts, and Taehyung whacks him on the back of the head.

Yoongi shakes his head a little, snapping out of whatever had frozen him in place. “I can’t believe you walked here by yourself. It’s not that much safer in the morning,” he reprimands, but there’s no bite. There’s a small, knowing smile that tugs at the corner of his mouth, though, and his eyes gleam.

Hoseok grins, all his apprehension and anxiety melting, easing off his shoulders at that look. “You knew I’d come back.”

“I did,” Yoongi relents. “I heard you were attacked.”

“By a kobold,” Taehyung chimes in. “Those stupid creatures—”

“—he spared its life,” Jimin announces over Jimin, and Yoongi turns to him, eyebrows going up.

“You spared it?” He asks Hoseok.

“Yeah,” Hoseok says tentatively, confused. “Why is that such a big deal?”

“Mercy is not the way this place functions,” Yoongi explains, eyes trained on Hoseok. “There is no place for it here. There is an order, there is a way the Queen likes things to be done—and sparing someone’s life—”

“—it just made a mistake, and I wasn’t hurt too badly,” Hoseok explains quickly, still not sure if he’s done anything wrong.

“You misunderstand me,” Yoongi says gently, crossing the pavilion floor and starting down the steps to where Hoseok stands. “You did something none of the rest of us have the ability to do. And that in itself is incredibly powerful.”

They’re close enough to touch, so Hoseok does. The thing in his chest finally stops pulling—the end of the string is finally in front of him.

Hoseok brushes his fingertips across Yoongi’s cheek, the skin warm and smooth. Behind them, Jimin rolls his eyes while Taehyung swoons a little.

“It’s strange,” Yoongi murmurs softly, gaze flitting over Hoseok’s face, drinking in every detail. “I didn’t think one night could tie me so tightly to you.”

“They said something about fingerprints,” Hoseok says, and Yoongi goes a little red.

“Yes,” the faerie says reluctantly. “Those. Whenever a faerie kisses someone, those get...left behind. It’s just residue magic. I normally…don’t. Leave fingerprints, that is. But with you, I kind of lost control.”

“I get that a lot,” Hoseok teases and Yoongi turns redder, grumbling under his breath. Hoseok grins at him for a second longer before sobering, remembering the reason why he’d started this whole journey in the first place.

Yoongi picks up on the abrupt mood shift and lifts his head, stepping back. “Are you alright?”

“I’m not just here for you, Yoongi,” Hoseok tells him, a new sort of apprehension building in his stomach. “My mother went missing ten years ago.”

Yoongi is silent, his face carefully neutral in a way that’s already becoming familiar to Hoseok. He pushes forward anyway.

“Until recently,” Hoseok continues, willing himself to not lose courage. “I had a dream. And the forest, too…it’s been calling me, Yoongi. And I think my mother is here, with you.”

Yoongi sighs. “I suppose it was just a matter of time.”

Hoseok’s heart jumps. “She’s here?”

Yoongi nods, and a hundred different emotions boil over all at once, closing Hoseok’s throat.

“Oh, gods,” Taehyung exclaims suddenly, “you’re telling me he’s the son of the Queen’s Prize?”

Yoongi glares at Taehyung, who realizes he’s said too much and claps a hand over his mouth. But Hoseok’s heard him, and he whirls around.

“What’s he talking about?” He asks, dread, hope and anger all swimming through his veins. “What’s the Queen’s Prize?”

“Taehyung,” Yoongi grouses, and the nekomata pastes an apologetic smile onto his face while he curls into Jimin’s side, cowering behind the faerie.

“Yoongi,” Hoseok prompts. Yoongi turns to Hoseok, running his fingers through Hoseok’s hair. His hand comes to rest on the nape of Hoseok’s neck, and he gives Hoseok a look that’s part-pain, part-apology.

“I suppose I owe you the whole story,” Yoongi says quietly, searching Hoseok’s face for any kind of upset. “If you’ll listen.”

Hoseok’s hand comes up to cover Yoongi’s where it rests on his neck. “I want to hear it.”

“Then,” Yoongi says, looking resigned, “I suppose there’s no time to waste.”

Yoongi leads them all back to the house, where they all take a second to get comfortable. Taehyung fills up glasses of water for them, and when Hoseok takes a sip, it helps ease the nervous knot in his chest, as well as the throbbing in his ribcage from where Jingling had jumped on him.  

“One hundred years ago,” Yoongi begins haltingly, choosing his words carefully, “there wasn’t a need for a Queen’s Prince.”

“That’s you,” Hoseok says, recognizing the term. “What’s it mean? That you’re working with the Queen?”

Yoongi grimaces, and Jimin lets out a derisive noise. “I don’t work with her. My tie to her is not by choice,” Yoongi says, and Hoseok can tell just by his voice that he hates the Queen, the bitterness going further than Hoseok can see. 

It’s silent for a moment, and Hoseok can’t help but lean forward as Yoongi collects his thoughts.

“She’s callous, cruel, and selfish,” Yoongi finally explains, eyes dark. “And she’s got me in a debt I’ll never repay. I have to do whatever she says, whenever she wills it.” Grief flickers over Yoongi’s face, and Hoseok’s heart squeezes. “I’ve done some terrible things because of her. I’ve ruined myself, all because of her bloodthirsty whims.”

Oh, Hoseok thinks, taken aback by the intensity of Yoongi’s dislike. That’s why. This isn't just a grudge, or a disagreement. This is years and years of hatred and pain, layered on top of each other, that cuts Yoongi fast and deep. 

“She should’ve given the throne to her daughter years ago,” Yoongi says. “Instead, she’s chained us both up. My chains just happen to be eternal servitude rather than magical ones.”

“She was back in that group,” Taehyung tacks on, curling up next to Jimin on the couch, nuzzling his face into the faerie’s neck. “The lavender-haired one. The one that spoke.”

“Princess Hana,” Jimin adds. “She’s nice. Not at all like her mother.”

“It’s the Queen, Hoseok,” Yoongi continues, eyes fixed firmly on Hoseok’s, “that has your mother.”

Hoseok stiffens. Anger, shock, determination—all of these starts a low fire in his gut, burning away at any hesitation he had.

“Why?” He asks through gritted teeth, and Yoongi reaches for his hand, running a soothing thumb over Hoseok’s palm.

“A long time ago, the Queen didn’t need me because she had you,” Yoongi says, interlacing their fingers. It helps a little. “Or, she had your family. A mouthpiece, if you will, for the forest. If the Queen needed something, she could call for it. She had a messenger and a task-runner all in one. And for a while, it worked. The land prospered, and the fae stayed out of the human word.”

Yoongi takes a breath. “And then she went too far. She always does.“ Another breath. “She wanted a human baby for a sacrifice.”

At this, Yoongi’s eyes flicker to Jimin briefly before he continues. The faerie’s face has gone stiff, and Taehyung presses in closer, mouth against Jimin’s jaw and a hand on his chest.

“Your great-grandfather gave her one, but in return, he asked to sever the connection between them and the forest.”

“He gave her a baby?” Hoseok asks, mouth agape. “An innocent baby?”

“Yes,” Yoongi replies, and just as Hoseok’s about to get upset—it’s his great-grandfather, his own family, that sacrificed a child to some awful forest queen, the same one who hurts Yoongi now—he reaches out and puts a hand on Hoseok’s shoulder. “But I saved him. My service for the baby’s life.”

Jimin’s hands are shaking when he clears his throat. “It’s me. I was the baby.” He touches his throat, right on the ribbon. “And I’ve stayed ever since,” he finishes, voice a little bitter. “By the time I had enough power to cross the stream, all my family had died.”

“Jimin, I—” Hoseok starts, stunned. 

“It was a long time ago,” the faerie cuts him off, self-deprecating. “It’s fine.”

It’s clearly not fine, but Hoseok doesn’t push it. He's not even sure what he'd say. 

“Go back to your story, Yoongi,” Jimin says, leaning into Taehyung, who combs his fingers through Jimin’s hair, a pained expression on his face. So this is what he meant when he said Jimin was part of Yoongi’s history. Intertwined, tied together by something permanent and terrible, united under a creature that had them both in chains. 

“The Queen waited a hundred years,” Yoongi continues. “She waited until the Jungs forgot, watched as they moved away from here, no longer tied down by the pull of the forest. I think she knew that there’d be someone, though. Someone with the strength to bear her influence, to be her puppet again.”

“My mom?” Hoseok asks, and when Yoongi shakes his head, he frowns. “Then…”

Yoongi looks very pointedly at Hoseok. A hundred different pieces suddenly click together: the reason he returned, the dreams, even the coincidence that lead him to Yoongi—it’s all because he was...destined to come back. 

“I have that power. She wanted me,” Hoseok whispers, and Yoongi squeezes his hand tight, keeping him grounded. “And my mom…”

“She knew that,” Yoongi says gently. “She begged the Queen to take her instead of you.”

“So the Queen’s Prize…?” Hoseok says, head swimming and his stupid bruised ribs throbbing. Every part of him begs for this to be another too-vivid dream, wants him to wake up in the front yard again, confused but safe, safe from this world and its inexplicable network of lies.

“Your mother,” Yoongi confirms, and something in Hoseok's heart breaks, just a little.

He sits for a moment, trying to sort everything out. When that doesn’t work, he rockets to his feet, startling Taehyung. His ribs protest angrily, but he doesn’t pay attention to them, letting anger push the pain away. Tosses his doubt, his shock, everything aside. He thinks of his mother's face in the dream, and knows that no matter how much he doesn't understand, or how much this could hurt, he's got to carry through. 

“I’m going to go get her,” Hoseok announces. “And nobody is going to stop me.” He’s getting his mother back, no matter what.

His ribs scream at him again, and he ignores them until he starts to black out again, tipping forward.

Yoongi shoots to his feet and catches him before he can knock himself out. “Okay, how about we take care of your injuries first? And then we can think this through.”

“My mom,” Hoseok wheezes.

Yoongi presses a kiss to Hoseok’s temple. “We’ll get there, I swear. You’ll get her back.”

And just like that, Yoongi’s promise settles between them, magic tangible on Hoseok’s tongue.

Yoongi’s bedroom is at the very end of the hallway, and this is where he takes Hoseok.

“Whoa,” Hoseok gasps when Yoongi kicks the double doors open, shifting his hold on Hoseok. “Holy shit. You sleep here?”

Yoongi gives Hoseok a wry look. “Does it look like storage?”

Hoseok laughs, and then winces when his ribs twinge unhappily.

The room really is beautiful—a huge window curves outward, letting in the sight of the forest, green and wild and untamed, glowing in the mid-afternoon sun. There’s a couch pressed up against the glass, a book lying face-down on the cushions. A bed takes up a good chunk of the room, creamy white curtains hanging from intricate wooden posts, carved to look like intertwined branches. There’s a rug, and a bookshelf next to a couple of chairs, and an open wardrobe in the corner, filled with the same kind of clothes that Yoongi had given Hoseok all those nights ago.

Yoongi helps Hoseok to the bed. “Don’t move,” the faerie commands him, and Hoseok contents himself to watch Yoongi wander around the room.

“You’re not mad that I came back, right?” Hoseok asks while Yoongi rifles through his vanity, picking up various bottles and examining them.

“I knew you would,” Yoongi replies after a minute. “It’s not just fingerprints.”

“I know.”

Yoongi grabs a vial and looks up. His face softens when he sees Hoseok, who feels something in his heart shift at the tenderness in the faerie’s eyes. “You feel it too?”

“Bigger than me,” Hoseok breathes. “Bigger than the both of us.”

Yoongi presses a hand to his chest. “Right here.”

“Do you know what it is?”

“It’s powerful,” Yoongi says, crossing back over to where Hoseok sits. “Irreversible. And loud enough to change everything.”

“I had to follow it,” Hoseok explains as Yoongi uncorks the vial. “It felt like I was missing a part of me. And that’s stupid to say, I know, and too soon, anyways, but that’s what it was like—I just had to go, I had to see you again—”

Yoongi presses a finger to Hoseok’s lips, stopping the fervent outpour of words.

“Me too,” Yoongi says simply, and the light fractures into a billion colors, warm and silky-smooth. Hoseok has never felt anything this intense, this overwhelming, this right—and it’s simple, really. He’s meant to be here, right now, with one hand on Yoongi’s hip, their breath mingling in the electric space between them, their eyes locked like nobody else in the world matters. And in this moment, nobody does.

“Let me put this on your ribs,” Yoongi says, and Hoseok drops his backpack on the ground near the bed. Yoongi sits next to him, gingerly lifting Hoseok’s shirt and grimacing at the black-and-blue bruises that mottle the skin. Whatever’s in the vial is cold and minty, stinging Hoseok’s rib cage and his nose.

“It’ll speed up the healing,” Yoongi tells him, “though you shouldn’t move too quickly—”

He barely gets the last part of his sentence out before Hoseok tackles him into the bed, kissing him enthusiastically on the mouth.

“Like that, for example,” Yoongi says, muffled, but he kisses Hoseok again anyways, busted ribs be damned.

They stay like that for a little bit, just kissing, before Hoseok pulls back. Yoongi’s got a gummy smile pasted on his face, teeth white.

“I’ve been wanting to do that since before I left,” Hoseok admits, and Yoongi’s eyes crinkle when he laughs and Hoseok wants to drown in that sound, wants to wrap it around him and stay like that forever. Hoseok tilts his chin down for another kiss; Yoongi complies, gripping onto Hoseok’s biceps and pulling him close.

A low simmer starts in Hoseok’s stomach, building with every languid movement of Yoongi’s mouth and the way that his knee is wedged between Hoseok’s legs. Everything about Yoongi is undeniably attractive, a physical tug in Hoseok’s solar plexus, calling him, telling him to stay.

“Tell me if you want to stop,” Yoongi says as he eases Hoseok’s shirt over his head.

Hoseok doesn’t hesitate. “I don’t want to stop.”

“Okay,” Yoongi says, breathless, sounding as dizzy as Hoseok feels.

They spend the next few hours drinking each other in, palm-to-palm, heart-to-heart, like they'll never be parted again. Hoseok kisses Yoongi until he can taste him on his tongue, until he's unable to differentiate between real and imagination, not sure where his body ends and Yoongi’s starts. They connect so deeply that Hoseok can hold Yoongi’s heartbeat in his palms, can feel every muscle move like it’s his own.

Later, they lie together under blue sheets. Hoseok traces patterns into the skin below Yoongi’s collarbone, marveling at how the silver in his veins shimmers in the low light of the sunset.

Probably faerie magic, Hoseok thinks, giddy and breathless. The previous events of the day—Jingling, the whole talk about destiny and fate—feels very far away, like it happened in another time to a different person.

“So, about your mother,” Yoongi breaches carefully. “There’s a way we can get her back, but we have to be cautious.”

“I'm not just going to burst in and demand her back,” Hoseok says, even though he doesn't have any better plans. “What if we sneak her out and make a run for it?” He jokes, laughing to himself.

“No,” Yoongi says gravely. “She’ll kill you. And I’m not losing you to her. Not like that.”

“It was a joke,” Hoseok points out. “Sarcasm.”

“Oh,” Yoongi mutters, ears pinking. “Right.”

Hoseok laughs so hard his ribs start to hurt again. “I forgot that’s not really a thing for you guys.”

“We can’t lie,” Yoongi reminds him, exasperated. But he's smiling, and Hoseok's heart leaps in his chest. He leans up to kiss Yoongi again, and then maybe a few more times after that, just because of how he looks in this light, silver and languid. 

Yoongi breaks away eventually, mouth pink again. He runs a hand through Hoseok's hair, and there's a moment of silence. “But that won’t stop the Queen from twisting her words,” Yoongi continues.“You’ll be trapped before you can take a breath.”

“Is that why you’re under her control?” Hoseok asks gently, and Yoongi nods.

“I just wanted Jimin to live again,” he says, voice a little broken. “I wasn’t clear enough. I let myself get ahead of myself, and as a result, Jimin never got to go home.”

“Yoongi,” Hoseok comforts, and Yoongi tightens his grip around Hoseok’s shoulders.

“I haven’t talked to anyone about this,” Yoongi admits. “I’ve done such horrible things, I’ve hurt so many people—”

“C’mon, it can’t be that bad—”

“It is,” Yoongi insists. “The freak accidents. The kidnappings that never get solved. The hospital fire last month. The tree through the nursing home that caused three deaths. The electrical outage. That’s all me, Hoseok.”

Yoongi pauses, clearly struggling. Hoseok grips Yoongi tighter, giving him the time he needs to recollect himself. Hoseok, too, takes a minute to digest all of this, letting every word he’s hearing register. It makes him sick to his stomach to think about Yoongi, doing all of this, trailing pain and destruction on behalf of a crazed queen, but he stays present, anchored by Yoongi’s pain.

“Every time she summons me,” Yoongi says, shuddering, “she’s got another task and someone always pays with their life, in some way or another. And I have to do it. For Jimin. For my people. Or she’ll take them from me, too.”

Yoongi pauses; Hoseok waits.

“Today I flipped a bus full of children. All because she didn’t want them coming near the forest—Hoseok, four of them were hurt. Four.”

Yoongi’s chest shakes and Hoseok realizes all of a sudden that he’s crying.

Hoseok panics a little bit, pushing through his own shock and horror, brought back into the moment by the wet sound of Yoongi’s sobs.

“No, oh no, baby,” Hoseok soothes, not even knowing what he’s saying, only trying to ease the pain, trying to make it better, trying to stop the hurt. “It’s not your fault. We’ll fix this, I’ll help you, there must be something that we can do.” He pulls Yoongi upright and into a tight hug, letting the him dig his fingers into Hoseok’s back.

“It’s too much,” Yoongi whispers, voice like a hundred shards of glass. “My hands are too red and I’ll never forgive myself.”

Hoseok’s heart breaks at these words, and he grips Yoongi tighter, like he can keep the pain from spilling out of him.

“The ribbon keeps Jimin’s head on,” Yoongi confesses in a tearful rush, “because I didn’t specify enough, and she thought it’d be funny if someone could just untie his head from his neck.”

Hoseok shudders. “You’re kidding.”

“She’s the cruelest thing this world knows.” Yoongi pulls back, hastily wiping his eyes. He looks up at Hoseok, almost sheepish. “I’m sorry you had to see that.”

“I’m glad I did,” Hoseok tells him with as much honesty as he can. “It meant a lot. Thank you for trusting me.”

“There is a part of me that inherently knows that you’re safe,” Yoongi says. “I’m glad for it.”

“We’re going to get you out of this,” Hoseok promises with newfound determination, and Yoongi cracks a tiny smile at the mock-serious expression on Hoseok’s face. “Didn’t you mention a princess? Ha-eun?”

“Hana.”

“Right. Her. We’re gonna put her on the throne.” At Yoongi's shocked, utterly disbelieving look, Hoseok continues, insistent.“Isn’t she better than her mother?”

“Well, yes,” Yoongi starts, brow wrinkling. 

“So then what's the problem?” Hoseok asks. 

Yoongi shakes his head, thinking hard. “I mean, theoretically, it could work. I just—how do you plan to do it?”

“Well,” Hoseok admits, “I haven’t gotten that far yet. When’s the best chance for me to see my mom?”

Yoongi shifts, unsure. “I still don’t think going to see her is a good idea.”

“What, you think we can stealthily slide in and take my mom back? And overthrow her while we’re at it?” Hoseok raises an eyebrow. “Do you have ninjas?”

“Ninjas?” Yoongi asks, thrown-off again. 

“Yeah, gonna guess that we’re a little short on those. So face-to-face is our best bet.” He turns back to Yoongi, narrowing his eyes. “There’s a way to see her. You’re just not telling me.”

“There,” Yoongi starts, but can’t seem to get the rest of the words out. He clenches his jaw, frustrated. “I’m not saying anything.”

Hoseok inches a little closer, tipping his face up to Yoongi’s. “Please?”

“No.”

“Aw, hyung, I know you want to,” Hoseok sings, the honorific slipping out accidentally.

Yoongi’s resolve breaks under the force of Hoseok’s smile. “The summer solstice,” he says regretfully, like he can’t believe he’s actually saying this. “There’s a festival at the Queen’s palace. There’s a competition—and the winner gets one wish. You can free your mother with that.”

“What about the princess?”

Yoongi grimaces. “Your mother is what’s important.”

“There has to be a way,” Hoseok urges.

“You’ll need Hana on your side if you want to get into that festival and win the Queen’s favor,” Yoongi tells Hoseok, not answering the question and effectively sidetracking him completely.

“I’ll talk to her,” Hoseok says, flopping backwards. Yoongi looks down at him, an amused smile on his face.

“She’ll be hard to convince,” Yoongi warns him, reaching out and stroking Hoseok’s face. “She’s all but given up.”

Hoseok grins. “I was voted Most Charismatic in high school for a reason,” he points out.

“She’ll be here again,” Yoongi confirms, his face darkening. “The Queen will call me out again, and soon. She knows I’m keeping something from her, and it’s making her restless.”

“Me,” Hoseok says quietly, and Yoongi doesn’t have to nod—the tightness in his jaw says it all.

“I’m not going to let her near you,” Yoongi promises vehemently.

“I know,” Hoseok replies, and pulls Yoongi down so he can kiss him again, slowly, reveling in the perfect fit of their mouths and the press of Yoongi’s tongue against his lower lip. “I know you won’t.”

“I’ve just found you,” Yoongi whispers, vulnerable. “I’m not going to lose you so soon.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Hoseok murmurs, intertwining their fingers. His ribs ache a little when Yoongi shifts so he can kiss Hoseok more fully, but the pain fades quickly, replaced by the electric hum of Yoongi’s skin on his.

The sun is just starting to rise when they finally both collapse, exhausted, onto the mattress. “I really did mean what I said earlier,” Hoseok slurs, half-asleep.

“Mm,” Yoongi hums, shifting so his knee isn’t digging into Hoseok’s thigh anymore. “I believe you.”

“We’ll figure this out, okay?” He asks. He lifts his head just enough so he can see Yoongi, cast beautifully in the new golden light that spills over the horizon, turning the clouds pink and purple. Hoseok’s breath catches in his throat, and he suddenly feels like crying.

He doesn’t—but it’s close. His eyes are burning pretty intensely, and the quiet, satisfied smile that Yoongi gives him really doesn’t help. At all.

“Okay,” Yoongi says, and then they’re both asleep, painted in the colors of the dawn.

When Hoseok wakes that afternoon, the spot of the bed where Yoongi was lying is empty. He sits up, body aching, and his stomach rumbles unhappily—he can’t remember the last time he’d eaten.

He searches the bedroom in an attempt to find his clothes, but Yoongi or someone else must’ve cleaned up while he was asleep. His backpack’s been moved to the foot of the vanity, and his clothes are nowhere to be found, so he rifles around in Yoongi’s closet, brushing fingers over fabric that feels like water or something equally as unreal. He pulls a white shirt and a pair of pants out—thankfully he had the foresight to put his boxers back on—and puts them on, marveling at the otherworldly feeling of the fabric.

The smell of good cooking makes his stomach growl again as he opens the door, heading for the stairs. In the kitchen, Jimin’s making porridge, humming a little as he stirs the pot. Taehyung, once again a cat, is napping in a patch of sunlight.

“Oh, you’re up,” Jimin says when Hoseok comes around the corner, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “Are your ribs feeling better?”

“Still bruised, but at least I can breathe without feeling like I’m about to break in half,” Hoseok replies. “Where’s Yoongi?”

Taehyung lifts his head from his paws at that, watching Jimin intently.

“He’s,” Jimin starts awkwardly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well.”

“It’s the Queen, isn’t it?” Hoseok asks, picking up on the weird mood shift almost immediately.

Jimin nods, and then realizes he shouldn’t have. “I didn’t mean—Yoongi’s not—”

His words stop there. He’s physically unable to tell Hoseok a lie.

Hoseok grins, and Jimin glowers at him before turning back to the stove. “You’re going to stay here, Hoseok. Yoongi told me you shouldn’t go outside, not when she’s so close—”

Hoseok’s not really paying attention, because there’s a commotion at the front gate.

“—so sit down, I made porridge—wait, where did he go?” Jimin yelps when he turns back around, only to see blank space where Hoseok had been standing a minute ago. He turns to glare at the cat on the couch, who gives Jimin a lazy look, like I couldn’t have stopped him even if I wanted to.

“Taehyung,” Jimin scolds. “He’s not supposed to see.”

Through the window, the two can spot Hoseok making his way towards the gate, hands in his pockets.

Jimin turns back to Taehyung, who’s back in his faerie skin, skin warmed from the sun. “He needs to see,” the nekomata says, stretching forward and nuzzling his face into Jimin’s neck. “It won’t be real unless he does.”

Jimin sighs, deflating under Taehyung’s touch. “Why are you always right?”

“Because it was the same for me,” Taehyung replies gently, running careful fingers over the ribbon around Jimin’s neck. “Don’t worry. Yoongi won’t let anything happen to him.”

Outside, Hoseok skirts around the edge of the trees until he’s close enough to the gate, where he can see the two gatekeepers, Hyojung and Hyuna, along with another man—Hui, Hoseok thinks his name is. They’re ushering in a whole line of people, some battered and bruised, others in silver, bloodstained armor. Hoseok can make out Princess Hana’s purple hair in the crowd. Her expression is pained, and she’s got a tight grip on a man with ridged, green skin.

Yoongi is at the back of the crowd, and Hoseok does a double-take when he sees him. He’s dressed in the same fine clothing Hoseok’s wearing now, only it’s all splashed bright red.

Blood, Hoseok thinks dizzily. Human blood.

A part of him immediately rejects this thought. It could be fae. Who’s to say that they don’t have red blood also?

Yoongi passes him, face empty and hands dripping with what he’d done.

He looks awful, Hoseok registers through his shock. He’s miserable.

Yoongi’s hands are curling and uncurling, fingers shaking. He stops, breaking away from the rest of them, face pale and stiff. Hoseok ducks behind a tree before Yoongi can see him, though every fiber of him is screaming at him to go out there and comfort Yoongi, rub warmth back into his arms and color back into his cheeks.

Instead, he watches as Yoongi wipes his hands on his pants, taking three deep, steadying breaths. Hoseok remembers Yoongi’s face last night as he’d talked—the horror, the pain, the deep-reaching grief—it’s all here, making Hoseok angry and hurt at the same time.

I’ve got to stop this, he thinks, shaking himself out of it. I’m going to make sure he never comes back like this ever again.

Yoongi makes his way towards the pavilion and Hoseok follows him, vaguely wondering why Jimin and Taehyung haven’t dragged him back inside yet. This is clearly something he’s not meant to see.

But.

But.

There’s a part of him that wants to see it, wants to confirm the horrors Yoongi had described, wants to act on his hunch that this place—magical, vivid and beautiful as it is—hides a deep rot, a darkness that slowly eats away at the soul of the forest and its people. Yoongi ’s people. Maybe Jimin and Taehyung knew that, and wanted Hoseok to see it for himself. Either way, there’s nobody stopping him as he creeps forward, dogging Yoongi’s footsteps.

In the pavilion, the fae have formed a loose circle, the green-skinned man in the center. He’s on his knees, though his hands aren’t tied—the power that these people probably wield is enough to keep him in place without a rope.

Yoongi joins them and Hana’s head snaps up. She’s not as good at hiding her emotions as Yoongi, whose face has smoothed over to a carefully neutral expression, and Hoseok can see how much this hurts her.

“What is the crime?” Yoongi asks, and though his hands still shake in his pockets, his voice is steady.

“Interference with a Queen’s task,” a gruff-looking faerie reports. “He tried to spirit away two human children.”

“The children weren’t part of the task,” Yoongi reminds him cooly. “Therefore, I see no issue—“

“He was there , though,” another faerie whines petulantly. “Can’t we just kill him anyway?”

“He committed no crime,” Yoongi says through gritted teeth. “There’s no need.”

The whiny faerie scoffs. “ Please. You’re just saying that because you’re a coward—“

“Refusing to kill an innocent dryad does not mean cowardice,” Princess Hana cuts in, her voice raw with fury. “I say we let him go.”

The dryad in the center sobs. “Please, I didn’t mean to get in the way, I only wanted to protect the children—what kind of spirit wants to let a child see their mother die—“

“Silence,” the gruff faerie grumbles, and kicks the dryad in the side. The princess winces. “And you, Princess. Nobody asked for your input.”

Hana’s face turns red, but before she can say another word, the gruff faerie holds up his hand. There’s a flash of light, and whatever the princess was going to say comes out silent.

Yoongi’s face twitches angrily, but does not move. “I don’t think that was necessary.”

“She’s got the chains for a reason,” the whiny faerie says, smirking tauntingly at the princess. “Might as well use them.”

Hoseok has to stop himself from running up there. Every inch of him itches to get up there and tell everyone off, to diffuse the tension, to force everyone to leave so Yoongi can finally have peace.

He takes a deep breath through his nose and keeps watching.

“This dryad’s not guilty,” Yoongi tries again. “Let him go, and we can all just go on with our days.”

“Ah, I don’t think so,” an airy voice says out of nowhere, and Hoseok’s insides freeze. The hair on the back of his neck stands straight up and something—the part that ties him to Yoongi—burns icy hot, telling him not to get a step closer if we wants to keep his head.  

A faerie of otherworldly beauty steps into the gazebo, and a hypnotized, half-reverent half-fearful hush falls across the whole forest like a heavy curtain.

This is, without a doubt, the Queen.

Her hair, dark like ink, ripples with every step she takes, stark against the white of her shining, gem-encrusted dress. The angles of her face are so sharp they’re cruel, her mouth a red slash under high cheekbones and slanted, glinting eyes the same color as her hair.

Every faerie immediately drops to their knees and the dryad shuts up, his sobs cut short as he presses his forehead to the ground, clearly terrified. Only Yoongi and Hana remain standing, something the Queen clearly expects because she waves her hand at them without looking and they go down hard, both wincing as they’re forced to their knees.

Hoseok is rooted in place, torn between kneeling as well or sprinting as far as he possibly can—preferably home, where he can hide under the blankets in his bed until the creeping feeling of wrongness finally leaves.

What had Yoongi said? That the Queen had been ruling for too long? Well, Hoseok can definitely feel it—the smell of decaying plants is so strong it’s cloying, and despite her beauty, Hoseok can see that she’s rotting. She’s the source of the poison, the reason the forest is dying.  

“Oh, my Prince,” the Queen purrs, running a hand over the top of Yoongi’s head, who shudders and glares with her. “Still holding onto your heart?”

“Don’t touch me,” Yoongi growls.

“Hmm,” she sighs, hair floating about her as she does so. “After so long, one would think you’d like me more.”

“You are a disease,” Yoongi tells her, lips twisted.

“We need to work on your socialization skills,” the Queen answers, everything Yoongi is saying bouncing right off her unbothered exterior. “It would be so much easier if you just gave your heart to me, my Prince.”

“Never,” Yoongi hisses, every muscle locked tight. Hoseok digs his fingernails into his palms. Even though he wants to go up there and punch somebody—everybody, actually—he’s not sure what he actually could do. He’s just human, destiny and magical fingerprints be damned, and the second he stands up, he’s dead. Not exactly a situation a nice smile and a couple of well-placed compliments can get him out of.

“Don’t get testy with me,” the Queen reminds Yoongi. “You’re still my Prince. You might think those pretty fingerprints all over you say differently, but you are mine. ”

Yoongi swallows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The Queen’s face wrinkles—even then, she’s beautiful. “You think I can’t sense him? Can’t see him all over you? You’ve tied yourself up with a human, my Prince. And as disgusting as that may be, there’s power there.” She leans close to him, hair falling like silk over her shoulder. “Power I intend to find and keep.”

“You better not dare,” Yoongi whispers, face deadly calm. “If you touch him, I swear I’ll tear your head from your shoulders, spill your blood across your godless palace and burn every single thing you know. I’ll do it. I swear.”

The Queen goes still, regarding him deeply for a moment. Then she stands, all pretense gone. “You speak out of turn,” she tells him cooly. “You forget who holds the power here. It is not you, and it is not your human lover, whom I will find and kill in front of you, just to prove that I am all you will ever have.”

The Queen turns to the rest of the fae gathered, and Hoseok instinctively ducks lower behind the shrubbery, not wanting to pass under that rotten, magic-swollen gaze. “I have declared this thing guilty,” she announces, kicking the dryad hard in the ribs. “For interference with the Queen’s work.”

“Mother,” Princess Hana gasps, the sound meek. The Queen snaps her fingers at the princess, not even sparing a glance in her direction. Hoseok has to bite back a gasp of her own as frost—literal ice —spreads from the center of Hana’s chest, covering her until she is nothing but cold crystal, steaming in the humid summer air.

Yoongi’s jaw clenches. Hoseok wants to cry. Everything here is worse, so much worse than he ever could’ve imagined and he wants to go home, wants to bury himself in his bed and forget out how this fairytale had festered, twisting until he saw it for the nightmare it really is.

“Since my daughter is unavailable,” the Queen starts, eyes glinting with cruel humor, “Prince Yoongi will do the honors.”

Behind the ice, Princess Hana’s eyes are wide with shock.

“Kill the dryad, my Prince,” the Queen purrs.

Yoongi swallows resolutely. “No.”

“I said,” the Queen retaliates, not missing a beat, “ kill him. Or else your people start forfeiting their lives. And we don’t want that, do we?”

Yoongi glares at her, hatred to potent it boils the air between them. The Queen only raises her fingers like she’s going to snap them—a warning, a threat.

The dryad looks up at Yoongi, eyes full of tears. “It’s—it’s okay,” he gasps, hands shaking. “Do it. Save my sisters.”

Yoongi rises unsteadily to his feet, looking incredibly torn.

“Clock’s ticking,” the Queen reminds him, her teeth glinting as she smirks.

“Save us,” the dryad mumbles, gazing up at Yoongi. “Find a way. Save us. Please.”

“I’m sorry,” Yoongi whispers brokenly, and brings his thumb and forefinger to the dryad’s head.

There’s a moment of shattering silence, and then the dryad splits in half, his body turning to wood as he falls to the floor of the pavilion with a thunk.

Hoseok drops to his hands and knees, on the verge of hyperventilation. Oh god. She just…she made him do it, just like that.

What kind of sick, twisted power does she wield to make Yoongi submit like that?

Fury chases out Hoseok’s shock, numbness quickly replaced by determination. If he didn’t have a reason to free Yoongi before, he has one now.

Hoseok’s not an angry person. It’s not in his nature—he finds anger tiring and a waste of time. Why be upset when he can just pass it off with a smile?

But this— this warrants anger. Nobody, especially not Yoongi, deserves this kind of life.

People are starting to disperse, and the gruff-looking faerie gathers up the dryad’s wooden body, following about half of the faeries out with the Queen, who gives Yoongi one last smirk before sweeping out of the pavilion. The remaining faeries hover around Yoongi worriedly, the latter still standing, staring at the spot where the dryad had fallen.

“Sehun, Sooyoung, move Hana to the gardens so she can defrost,” he says quietly, and a tall man and a red-haired woman lift the frosted-over princess and walk her down the steps. “The rest of you, go.”

Everyone disperses, and Yoongi sighs, shoulders tight. “You can come out now, Hoseok,” he says.

Hoseok isn’t as surprised as he’d thought he’d be—somehow he knew that Yoongi could sense him, crouched in the bushes with wide eyes. He’s plenty guilty, though, and has to fight the heat rising in his cheeks as he makes his way towards the pavilion.

“So,” Yoongi says tonelessly when Hoseok stops in front of him, expectant. “You saw that. I’m sorry.” A beat passes; Yoongi appears to visibly collect himself, like he’s preparing something. “You don’t have to stay, now that you know who— what —I am. I’ll walk you back to the stream, give you some root water so you forget—”

“No,” Hoseok cuts in, and Yoongi stops abruptly, stunned by the intensity in Hoseok’s voice. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“You—what?” Yoongi stutters, clearly not understanding. “But didn’t you see—?”

“You had to protect them,” Hoseok says, getting more and more worked up with every passing second. “She made you choose between lives, Yoongi. That’s not a choice anyone should ever have to make—but you made it anyway. And it doesn’t,” Hoseok adds before Yoongi can say something awful and self-deprecating and wrong, “make you a murderer.”

Yoongi blinks at Hoseok, eyes a little wet. He swallows a couple times, looking down at his feet for a second. “How do you do that?” He croaks. “How can you just… look past it? How can you forgive?”

Hoseok steps closer, grabbing Yoongi’s cleanest hand and intertwining their fingers.

“Because,” Hoseok murmurs, softening. “I just can. You make it easy.”

“How can you stay, even after you’ve seen all of that? All of me?”

“You make it easy,” Hoseok repeats, making sure Yoongi’s hearing him, word-for-word. “I’m going to get you out of this, hyung. I’m gonna make sure she never makes you do that ever again.”

Yoongi looks like he wants to believe Hoseok. Hoseok wants Yoongi to believe in him—it just might make the impossible achievable.

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of a reach. It might make the impossible a tiny bit less impossible. Maybe only 95% impossible.

Still, Hoseok will take a minuscule chance over no chance at all.

“I want to believe you,” Yoongi says.

“I’ll give you reason to,” Hoseok promises, and Yoongi looks at him, awe, affection, and hope all crowding his face. “I might even have a plan.”

Yoongi raises an eyebrow, already looking that much more like himself. Hoseok’s been told he has that effect on people—like water, filling the gaps, soothing the pain, cooling the fire of hurt. He’s glad it’s working on Yoongi, who has finally shifted away from the spot where the dryad had lain.

“You do?”

Hoseok nods. “And it starts with defrosting a princess.”

Princess Hana is mostly melted by the time Yoongi and Hoseok get to her. Her skin is white, lips tinged blue, and her hair and clothing is wet where the ice has turned to water.

“Hello, Yoongi,” she says glumly, picking ice off of her legs. She glances up at Hoseok. “And you must be the one who put the fingerprints all over him.”

Yoongi turns red. “That’s not—”

“You can’t even finish that sentence,” Hoseok teases, “because it’s a lie.”

“Don’t look so proud,” Hana tells them both, her mouth quirking. “You’ve got him all over you too. You both stink so strongly, it’s a miracle the Queen didn’t know the human was here.”

“The human has a name,” Hoseok informs her cheerfully, bowing. “I’m Jung Hoseok.”

“Er,” Hana says, looking a little startled, “nice to meet you too. I don’t think I’m quite deserving of a bow, though. I’m not much of a princess.”

“Where I’m from,” Hoseok says, “it’s good manners.”

Hana lifts her feet from the ice, shivering a little bit. “Well, don’t worry about manners around me. The Queen has killed people for trivial things like that, and—well, I swore I’d never be like her.”

“So I can call you noona, then?” Hoseok says, dropping down on the bench next to Hana. “It’s a honorific, kinda. I’d use it because we’re casual, but I respect you.”

“Is that why you use hyung?” Yoongi wonders, sitting on Hoseok’s other side.

“Yeah,” Hoseok replies, and Hana blushes a little, turning pink.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you, Jung Hoseok. I’m sorry our world is rotten.” She turns to Yoongi. “How are you holding up, Yoongi?”

“I’ll get through it,” Yoongi replies woodenly, and Hoseok takes one of Yoongi’s hands from his lap, intertwining their fingers.

Yoongi looks at their hands for a moment, tension slowly draining out of his shoulders, and Hoseok brushes a thumb over his knuckles, aware of how closely Hana is watching thim. Love must not come easy in this place, if the awe on Hana’s face is any indication.

“Does the Queen’s Prize ring a bell?” Hoseok asks the princess, breaching the silence.

“Misook,” Hana says immediately. “Yes. She’s a dear friend of mine, as we’ve found ourselves in…similar situations.”

The sound of his mother’s name jolts him a little. Yoongi squeezes his hand. “She’s my mother,” Hoseok tells Hana. “And I’m going to get her free.”

Hana stares at him. “She’s your mother ?”

“A deal made long ago,” Yoongi fills in. “The Jung family was once the mouthpiece for the forest. The Queen intended to take Hoseok once the peacetime was up, but his mother went in his place instead.”

“Oh,” Hana says, squinting a little at Hoseok’s face. “Well, you do look like her, now that I think about it. And you said you’re going to free her? However will you accomplish that?” Hana pauses, eyes trained on the two men as she puts the pieces together. Hoseok watches realization dawn on her face. “The Summer Festival? You’re going to try to get the wish?”

Hoseok nods. “It’s the only way. I’ll bring down the Queen, put you on the throne, free my mother, and everything will be fine.”

“Hoseok, people have died trying to get that wish. The tasks the Queen assigns are designed to make it impossible,” Hana points out.

“I have to try,” Hoseok insists. “I’d be a failure of a son if I didn’t at least try. ”

Hana turns to Yoongi. “And you’re just going to let him do this?”

Yoongi holds up his hands. “I’m certainly not going to try to stop him.”

Hoseok feels a little thrill of affection run through him. “So? Are you with me?”

“Um,” Hana says, shifting, “I don’t know. I still don’t think it’ll work.”

Ouch, Hoseok thinks. They have no idea how to soften the blow, do they?

“And even if it does,” Hana continues, not noticing Hoseok’s wince. “I don’t know how to rule. I’ve been in chains my whole life.”

“Whatever you do will be better than that scary lady,” Hoseok points out.

“He’s right,” Yoongi adds.

Hana shifts, and for a brief second Hoseok can see her fear, driving her hesitation. He can read it in her whiteness of her knuckles and how she fidgets, wanting to say yes but not knowing how.

“Please, noona?” Hoseok finishes, and adds a smile just for good measure. He waits, watching as Hana begins to soften as she thinks about it, caving a little—all she needs is one final push—

“It’s a chance for you to be free,” Hoseok says softly, genuine. “Really.”

Hana bites her lip, and seems to visibly steel herself as she nods, once, the movement resolute. “Okay,” she exhales, assuring herself as much as the rest of them. “Alright. I’ll help you.”

“Yes!” Hoseok cheers, leaping to his feet, unable to contain the elation that bubbles forth in his chest. “Thanks, noona, you’re the best.”

Yoongi laughs, wrapping an arm around Hoseok’s waist when he comes to stand near them.

“So what do you need from me?” She asks, eyebrows knitting together. “You’ll already be coming as Yoongi’s guest, so…?”

“Make sure Jung Misook is there when it’s time for the tasks. If she’s in her rooms, then we won’t be able to get her out before everything erupts into chaos,” Yoongi tells Hana. “It’ll be the equinox, and the Queen will be in her best mood yet. She’ll grant you this one request.”

“I can do that,” Hana says, though she sounds hesitant

“And then just be ready to take the throne, I guess,” Hoseok finishes off. “Yoongi and I will handle the rest.”

“So I call your mother down, you miraculously pass the challenges, and then wish for what?” Hana asks. “I mean, you probably won’t get to the wish part, but it’s still good to have an idea, right?”

“Wow, thanks for the support,” Hoseok deadpans.

“Of course,” Hana replies honestly, and Hoseok mentally facepalms, remembering that faeries have no concept of sarcasm.

“He’ll wish for all of the Queen’s chains to unlock,” Yoongi answers for Hoseok.

“Shouldn’t he just wish for an open, fair bargain? He’ll be able to get much more out of that.”

Hoseok turns to Yoongi, eyes narrowing. “You didn’t tell me about that option.” He looks back over at the princess, who is withering under Yoongi’s glare. “With a bargain, I could free you too.”

Yoongi’s jaw clenches. “She’ll take something from you if you bargain. I can’t let that happen.”

“And if he doesn’t, she’ll drag you down with her, Yoongi,” Hana points out. “When I take the throne from her, you’ll both fall. I can’t do anything to stop that.”

“Bargaining is not an option,” Yoongi grits, his fingers digging a little into Hoseok’s waist. “I’m not going to ask Hoseok to do that for me. It’s not fair.”

“You guys,” Hoseok cuts in, a little amused, “it’s my choice to make.”

“Hoseok,” Yoongi sighs, and Hana smiles faintly.

“I like him,” she says. “He’s stubborn. I forgot how good human hearts can be.”

“Don’t encourage him,” Yoongi groans, reaching up and cupping Hoseok’s face in his hands so their eyes meet. “Hoseok, promise me you won’t do it. Don’t give up a part of yourself so you can save me. It’s not worth it.”

Every inch of Hoseok vehemently disagrees with that statement, but Yoongi is looking at him with a desperate expression, mouth pulled down at the corners. So Hoseok takes a breath and smiles as convincingly as he can, putting a hand over Yoongi’s.

“I promise, hyung,” he says, and feels like shit as he watches Yoongi’s face soften with relief.

“Good,” Yoongi answers. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Hoseok mumbles guiltily, and leans down to seal his lie with a kiss.

The grounds around Yoongi’s home slowly come alive within the next few days as the equinox creeps closer, bringing with it the Summer Festival.

Yoongi isn’t called out again, and he and Hoseok spend the majority of their time in his bedroom until Hoseok is so exhausted and sore he’s unable to move. When he gets to this point, well-sated and loose-limbed, they relocate outside, where Jimin and Taehyung join them for dinner as the sky pulls its infinite inky blanket of stars over the burning orange sun.

Even as he’s lying in bed next to Yoongi, blissed-out and exhausted in the best way, the task Hoseok’s been given never quite leaves his mind. He dreams of his mother every night, watching her in her tiny, dark room as the Queen tries to get information out of her.

Your son, the Queen shouts in one of these dreams, is here. Tell me his name and perhaps I’ll spare his life.

His mother always stays silent. Her lips don’t part, not even when the Queen freezes her skin over or tears the oxygen from her lungs until her fingers turn blue. Hoseok always wakes from these dreams extra determined, shaking a little with anxious energy.

When the day arrives, they wake early, the sun blasting through the window and not allowing a single moment more of sleep.

There’s a strangled yell from downstairs as Hoseok gently nudges Yoongi awake.

“Go away,” Yoongi mutters grumpily, drawing the covers over his head. “It’s too early.”

Another shout; this time, it’s Jimin screaming Taehyung’s name at the top of his lungs.

“I think your friends may be murdering each other in the kitchen,” Hoseok points out, sliding out of the bed and pulling on a pair of Yoongi’s pants. He’d found his normal clothes yesterday, tucked neatly at the bottom of Yoongi’s closet, but it had felt weird to put them on (besides changing his boxers, which he’d done with far too much relief). He’d washed his old ones, sure, but after being here for a week—

“Wait a second,” Hoseok says, a terrifying realization striking him. “I’ve been here for a week ?”

God-fucking-dammit, he’d promised Seokjin five days, not seven! His friends have probably called the police or something by now.

“Yes,” Yoongi says, finally sitting up. His hair’s all mussed and his cheeks are pink and Hoseok is overcome with the urge to kiss him back into the mattress. “Why, what’s wrong?”

Focus, he tells himself. Your friends.

“I have to go back,” Hoseok blurts, panicked. “My friends—I said I’d be gone five days, but it’s been seven and I’m probably on some missing persons list or they’re planning my funeral or some shit—and I just,” he stops, sucking in a deep breath, “I have to go back. If only for a little bit.”

Yoongi looks confused. “You want to go back…to your friends?”

Hoseok feels a little sick to his stomach as he thinks about what he’s about to do. “Just for a sec. I want…I want to say goodbye.”

Yoongi looks down at his lap. “Ah.”

“You know. Just in case.” He has no idea what he’s going to have to sacrifice, but he can’t bear the idea of his friends never seeing him again.

“I’ll be back, Yoongi,” Hoseok continues, sitting down next to Yoongi. “I only need an hour. Are you upset?”

“The Festival starts two hours before sunset,” Yoongi tells Hoseok, avoiding the question. “Be back here before then to get ready.”

Yoongi makes to stand, but Hoseok grabs the faerie’s wrist, setting his jaw when Yoongi gives him a look.

“Why are you upset?”

“I’m,” Yoongi starts, but like always, the lie won’t come out. Hoseok waits, resolutely holding on to to Yoongi.

“I’m upset,” the faerie starts again, gritting his teeth, “because I have to face the possibility that you could—and probably will—die.”

He looks down at Hoseok, eyes burning bright. “And I don’t—I don’t know what I’d do if you die. I don’t know what would be left of me.”

Hoseok blinks at Yoongi a moment, not sure what he’s feeling. Something powerful, that’s for sure, pushing at him and filling his chest with liquid warmth.

“I won’t die,” Hoseok says, surging to his feet and kissing Yoongi hard, one hand firmly on the faerie’s lower back and the other around his shoulders, not allowing a single breath of space between them.

Yoongi’s eyes are shiny and his mouth is red with Hoseok pulls away.  

“Take me to the bridge?” Hoseok asks quietly, and Yoongi nods.

They walk hand-in-hand to the stream, and Hoseok tries to figure out what he’s going to say. Hey, I have to overthrow an evil faerie queen and free this one guy I really like is too blunt. I might die is too ominous. I think I might be in love and you also might never see me again is too flowery. Also, love. Yeah. That’s a thing, he supposes. He’ll think about that later.

The sound of the water gets louder, and the bells on Hoseok’s backpack ring merrily as they approach. Yoongi stops at the foot of the bridge, looking extremely reluctant.

“One hour,” Hoseok reminds him. “And then I’ll be back.”

“And I’ll be waiting at the house,” Yoongi replies, nodding. “You know the way. And you’re so doused in my magic and in this place that nothing will touch you.”

Hoseok’s ribs throb, remembering Jingling.

Yoongi gives him one last lingering kiss, and then Hoseok’s making his way across the bridge, skin tingling as he goes from one world to another. The air turns stale in his lungs and he has to physically stop for a second and catch his breath, body recoiling at the sudden change. It’s darker on this side, too, as the sunlight is more watery, lacking the same fullness.

Despite it all, something in Hoseok slumps in relief, and he feels a weight on his shoulders shift. He knows this place, knows this sky, air, and ground. There is nothing rotten lurking here, no hidden darkness waiting to strike. Here, the trees are just trees and a blue sky means nothing more than a nice day to go to the park.

He powers on his cell phone as he nears his house. It lights up with texts immediately, dating all the way from four days ago. It stresses him out so he turns off his notifications, opting to simply call. He picks Namjoon, because he’d rather not get screamed at by Seokjin or Jeongguk.

“Jung Hoseok, what the fuck,” Namjoon spits immediately, and Hoseok winces.

“Hi, Joon-ah,” Hoseok answers timidly. “How are you?”

“Where the hell have you been?” Namjoon demands. “Hey, Jin-hyung,” he says distantly, “I have Hoseok on the other end.”

“He’s back from the dead?” Hoseok hears Seokjin shout, and there’s a violent scrabbling noise as Seokjin presumably gets closer.

“I’m putting you on speakerphone,” Namjoon says. “Because you owe us both a big explanation.”

Hoseok already knows he can’t tell them the truth, as much as it kills him. He’s here to say goodbye, not to explain what happened.

“We’re waiting,” Seokjin says testily, and Hoseok almost laughs imagining the look on his face—eyebrows drawn together, lips tight, bracing for the coming excuse.

“I went somewhere,” Hoseok says, hating how vague that sounds. “I met someone.”

He steps up onto the porch of his house, fumbling for the keys in his backpack.

“Where—what? You went somewhere?” Seokjin says, sounding incredibly confused. “I thought you were just going camping. And besides, you disappeared, Hoseok. For a week. ”

Here goes nothing, Hoseok thinks, and sucks in a breath. “Yeah, so, about that. I, uh, I’m going again. I don’t know for how long. I might, uh…I might not come back.”

Quiet on the other end of the phone. Someone curses softly.

“Are you in trouble, Hoseok?” Seokjin asks quietly.

“No,” Hoseok answers immediately, knowing what Seokjin’s getting at. “No, it’s nothing illegal. But there’s someone that need my help.”

“The same someone you met?” Seokjin prods as Hoseok flops down on the couch in the living room. The house smells musty—probably because the windows haven’t been opened in a little while.

“Yeah,” Hoseok mumbles.

“And it has to be you?”

“Yes,” Hoseok says again. “Sorry, hyung. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but I really can’t explain. I have to go—it’s something I have to do. Like, I think I was born to do this.”

“The forest,” Namjoon says suddenly, breaking his silence. “This is about the forest.”

Hoseok swallows. He’d known Namjoon would put some of the pieces together—after all, he’d been the one to find Hoseok hungover in the grass, dressed in unrecognizable clothes.

“Joonie, what?” Seokjin asks, but Namjoon ignores him.

“You said it called you,” he tells Hoseok urgently. “And this is why?”

“This is why,” Hoseok confirms. “There’s…something fucked-up in there, Namjoon-ah. And after all I’ve seen, after all I’ve done…I can’t just let it tear everything apart.”

“Seok,” Namjoon says, voice wavering. “Don’t—you don’t have to do this.”

This doesn’t mean going into the forest, Hoseok realizes with a sad jolt, heart sinking. This means saying goodbye to his friends.

“I’d regret it if I didn’t,” Hoseok replies. “Hey, hyung?”

“Yeah?” Seokjin answers, still sounding confused. “What’s going on? Why are you going? What does the forest have to do with any of this?”

“Don’t,” Hoseok starts, throat closing as the emotion of the moment finally gets to him. “Don’t, ah, come looking for me. You won’t find anything.”

“Hoseok,” Seokjin pleads, “please just tell us what’s going on. We can help—”

“Hyung,” Hoseok cuts him off gently. “It’s okay.”

Namjoon sniffs loudly. “God-fucking-dammit, Jung Hoseok.”

“I don’t understand,” Seokjin says, and he sounds so lost that Hoseok has to stop himself from blurting it all out, right then and there.

Hoseok shifts on the couch. “I’m not asking you to. I’m only here to say goodbye.”

“Oh, fuck,” Namjoon mutters, and there’s a strangled noise as he presumably chokes back a sob. “Knowing that makes it harder.”

Hoseok can’t help but agree. He knows exactly what he has to do, and he’s never faced a more difficult decision in his life.

“Can I ask you two more things?” Hoseok adds after a pause.

“Of course,” Seokjin says.

“My mom might be coming back soon. Could you, uh, wait for her? In my house? I’ll leave a key under the doormat.”

“Your mom’s coming back?” Namjoon repeats, voice pitching up with disbelief.

“She might.”

A beat of silence as his friends digest this, trying to piece together all of the foggy clues he’d given them.

“Okay,” Namjoon says finally. “Yeah, we’ll do it. We’ll make sure she gets back safe.”

“Thanks, Joon-ah. Also, please tell Jeonggukkie goodbye too. I’ll miss that kid.”

“He’ll be upset,” Seokjin tells Hoseok, and something in his chest squeezes at that.

“Yeah,” Hoseok replies, because there’s nothing he can really do about it, as much as it pains him.

Nobody says anything else after that, but neither of them hang up.

Hoseok lies there until his hour is almost out.

“Goodbye,” he says one last time, and hangs up to the tangible sound of heartbreak.

Hoseok whistles out of habit on the way back to Yoongi’s house. He’s crying a little, too—can’t help it, not after what he’d just said, after what he’d just done —he’d literally said his goodbyes to his friends because he was going to walk over that bridge and probably never cross it ever again.

He thinks about this now as he leaves the rushing stream behind him and the magic-infused air slowly replaces the thin, bland breaths of the human world.

He’d called his grandmother on the porch of the house, but he’d only gotten her voicemail, set up by him and his cousin last year. The sound of her voice ( If this is a grandkid calling, please just text me) had drained any strength left in him.

He hadn’t left a message.

Hoseok shuts his phone off buries it at the bottom of his backpack, feeling like he might collapse and cry at any second. His insides are a torn-up mess and something inside of him has gone a little numb.

As he makes his way back to Yoongi’s house, guided by some now-instinctual tug in his chest, the quiet creatures of the underbrush peer at him curiously.

Faerie, some whisper.

Human, others hiss.

He is not ours, they manage to agree, shying away at the blinding brightness of those fingerprints, at the nearly-tangible aura that surrounds him. He is part of something greater. Bigger.

The Prince, the shyest ones murmur. Not so much a Queen’s Prince, not anymore. He belongs to someone else.

A great slumbering kitsune lifts her head and sniffs the air.

Gold. Gold everywhere, enough to realign the universe.

Hoseok keeps walking.

From his perch on the top of the gate, Hui peers down at Hoseok curiously. “You’re back.”

“I’m back,” Hoseok confirms tiredly, trying to put a smile on his face and failing. “Can you let me in?”

Hui drops gracefully from the gate, not making a sound as he lands. “Did you put something on your face?”

“My face?” Hoseok asks slowly, touching his cheek. “No? I don’t think so?”

“Interesting,” Hui muses, and doesn’t say anything else on the subject. He spins smoothly on his heel—goddamn, what is it with these faeries and their stupid grace—and tilts his head up to the tower by the gate. “Hyuna, baby, open the gate for Hoseok!”

Hyojung, the other man, sticks his head out instead. “Hyuna’s on patrol.”

“Well, darling, the gate still needs to be opened,” Hui drawls, crossing his arms. “Do us the honors, won’t you?”

Hyojung ducks back into the tower, and the gates swing open a second later, letting the both of them in.

“You’ve got something on your face, Hoseok,” Hyojung calls.

“Did I get sunburned, or something?” Hoseok says irritably, but both faeries just look at him serenely, expressions cool and neutral.

“Fine, don’t answer me,” he huffs, and leaves the faeries behind, ignoring the way their gazes bore into the back of his neck.

Jimin’s in the kitchen when he pushes the door open, touching up his makeup in the reflection of a huge, polished shield. He’s wearing a wine red shirt tucked neatly into velvety black pants, and the light shimmers off his skin in a hypnotizing way.

“You’re on time,” Jimin comments, turning away from the shield. “Was your visit alright?”

Hoseok swallows, fighting the sadness that gathers in his throat. “Yes. I, uh, said goodbye.”

Jimin looks at him for a long moment, eyes somber. “You know what you have to do.”

Hoseok isn’t surprised that the faerie knows Hoseok’s plan. He’s never been particularly hard to read, and in this situation—the lives of his mother, Hana and Yoongi all hanging in balance—it’s not difficult to guess what he’s about to do.

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “But don’t tell Yoongi. He won’t let me come otherwise.”

Jimin smiles, but there’s a lingering edge of sympathy to it. “I won’t.”

“Is he—?”

“He’s upstairs,” Jimin confirms, and the moment is gone. “He’s got something picked out for you.”

Hoseok nods, anxiety starting to kick in again. He goes back to his dreams, the ones where his mother tells him the weight of everything he loves rests on his shoulders. He thinks back to Yoongi, whose promise of you’ll get her back is still tucked behind his heart, waiting to be fulfilled.

God, he’s going to be sick.

There’s so much he has to do , and such a small chance that he’ll actually get there—but he has to. This is his only chance.

Yoongi’s sorting through his closet when Hoseok walks into the room. The faerie turns, and something in Hoseok sings when they make eye contact.

“How was it?” Yoongi asks tentatively, and all Hoseok can do is shake his head and let Yoongi read the rest on his face.

“Oh.”

They stand for a moment before Hoseok tips forward into Yoongi’s arms, pressing his face into the silky fabric of the faerie’s shirt. Hoseok doesn’t offer anything else, and Yoongi doesn’t prod. Instead, he pulls away and presses a gentle kiss to Hoseok’s lips, feather-light.

“I picked something out for you,” Yoongi says, gesturing to the bed.

It’s similar to what Hoseok wore before, at the parties—only, the fabric is different this time, something immediately apparent as soon as he puts on the shirt. Every time he touches the gossamer-silver material, it ripples like the surface of a pond. Hoseok looks up at Yoongi, amazed.

“You’re not allowed additional armor,” Yoongi says, cheeks a little pink, “so this is the best I can give you. It’ll block most harmful magic, and any non-lethal projectiles.”

“Yoongi—” Hoseok stutters, smoothing his hands over the shirt.

“You are my light,” Yoongi says lowly, crossing to cup Hoseok’s face. “Every moment of my life has led to meeting you.”

Hoseok puts his hands over Yoongi’s. “I believe that.”

He holds the look Yoongi gives him in his mind as he pulls on the pair of simple linen pants. It warms him as Jimin and Taehyung join them in a horseless carriage, helps him fight the anxiety as the trees get older and the rot intensifies as a huge, glittering palace draws into view.

“I hate this place.” Yoongi’s lip curls, but he doesn’t look away from the window. “It makes me sick.”

“This might be the last time you’ll ever have to see it,” Taehyung comforts, patting Yoongi on the shoulder. “If everything goes well.”

They all cast nervous looks at each other, thinking the same thing. When has anything ever gone well?

The garden they pull up to is well-manicured and so violently full of plants that it makes Hoseok’s head spin. Weeping willows trail elegantly over a pond and guests mingle in the company of sweet-smelling roses and crawling ivy.

A blank-faced servant opens the carriage door, eyes glazed. “Welcome, Queen’s Prince,” he says blandly, and Yoongi flinches at the title. Jimin and Taehyung follow him, and Yoongi holds out a hand for Hoseok, linking their fingers together.

“Ignore everyone,” Yoongi advises. “You know why you’re here.”

Hoseok takes a shaky breath. “I can do this.”

Yoongi nods once, and then they’re in the party.

Immediately, a hush falls over the guests. They murmur and point, eyes burning through Hoseok’s skin.

Human, some say.

Not quite, others argue. Too much gold on his face.

Hoseok, somehow, finds the courage to keep his face neutral, though he’s sure his palms are sweating.

“We’re going to the Queen,” Yoongi whispers, “to get you entered in the tasks.”

They walk straight down the cobbled path, whispers and wind the only sound in the garden.

“Are they afraid of you?” Hoseok asks after a second as faerie after faerie averts their gaze from Yoongi’s face.

“The idea of me,” Yoongi replies, self-loathing. “They fear what I represent.”

“And what’s that?”

“The fullest extent of the Queen’s bloodstained will.”

Hoseok clenches his jaw at the deprecation in Yoongi’s tone. He’s going to stop that, too. He’s going to stop all of it, even if kills him.

(And it just might, but he’s not going to think about that).

They reach the end of the path and there she is, in all her terrible, decaying beauty, lounging in a great, glittering crystal chair like she owns every person in this room.

She probably does, honestly. The very thought makes Hoseok’s fingers curl protectively around Yoongi’s while Jimin and Taehyung drop to their knees in front of the throne.

Hana is beside her, wearing a plain white dress and looking out-of-place next to her mother, whose stupid poofy gown is encrusted with diamonds. And there, standing slightly behind them both is a woman dressed even more plainly, her hair streaked with grey. Looking at her face is like looking in a mirror.

Hoseok’s stomach swoops and he has to physically restrain himself from running up there and pulling his mother into a hug. Every inch of him yearns to do it, wants so desperately hold her again, to feel her arms secure him in place, wants to surround himself in her laundry-and-cherry scent.

God, he’s missed her so much. He’s so close—she’s right there —yet he’s also so far away. He can feel the Queen’s eyes on him; one false move now, and he’s dead before he can even start.

“This is Jung Hoseok,” Yoongi announces, and Hoseok watches as his mother’s head lifts slowly, blinking slowly, almost like she can’t believe it.

They make eye contact, and Hoseok has to bite the inside of his cheek to stop himself from smiling at her. She, however, smiles at him, unseen by the faeries she stands behind.

My son, she mouths at him, eyes shining. I always knew you’d find me.

I’m here, Hoseok wants to shout. I’m here to rescue to and free Yoongi and Hana and overthrow this lady. I love you. I miss you. I have so much to tell you.

Instead, he keeps silent. Yoongi squeezes his hand, sensing his impatience.

“The son of my Prize,” the Queen sneers. “Come to the rescue.” She turns to Hoseok’s mother. “You tried to tell me he wouldn’t, but you knew all along, didn’t you?”

Hoseok shifts angrily, toes curling in his boots. Hana gives him a warning look. Not yet.

“I suspected,” his mother admits quietly. “Like calls to like. It was only a matter of time, I thought, until he came here.”

The Queen huffs, crossing her arms. “So why not let me take him in the first place? Why did you have to be such a stubborn cow and go in his place?”

“Hey!” Hoseok shouts, unable to keep silent for a second longer. “That’s my mom you’re talking to!”

“Hoseok,” Yoongi warns, using his other arm to grab Hoseok’s elbow. “Now’s not the time. You’re only going to make her angry.”

The Queen turns on Hoseok, lightning-fast. “Oh, he speaks. How fascinating.”

Jimin and Taehyung look up at him, eyes terrified. Every hair on Taehyung’s sweater is standing on end, and Jimin’s got a hand to the dagger at his side.

“I’m here to get my mother back,” Hoseok announces, because it’s now or never. The Queen looks right at him, her gaze freezing cold.

“And how do you plan to do that, hmm?” The Queen asks, lips curling into a malicious grin. “Because as soon as you take a step forward, you’ll be dead.”

Every survival instinct Hoseok has (and there’s not many, if the situation he’s currently in signifies anything) lights up as the Queen narrows her eyes.

Though he wants to shrivel up and flee, Hoseok stands as tall as he can. “I’m here to complete your tasks,” he tells her, “and win the wish.”

Silence for another moment, and the Queen bursts into laughter. Around her, the rest of the party laughs tentatively as well.

“You’re a human, ” the Queen scoffs. “Even the most powerful faeries have lost to me. What makes you think you can possibly win?”

Hoseok shrugs, and takes a little gratification in the surprised expression that falls across the Queen’s face. “I dunno. I thought I’d at least try, you know?”

Princess Hana raises her hands to her face to hide her smile, and his mother’s shoulders shake with silent laughter. When they make eye contact again, she looks proud.

The Queen purses her lips, shock quickly smoothing over to become irritation. “Unfortunately, I must accept your request.”

All of Hoseok’s friends collectively let out a sigh of relief.

“But just like the other participants, you can receive no help from any other faerie or human. You forfeit your life if you fail to complete one of the tasks.” The Queen smiles again, cruel and untouchable. “And believe me, I will take great pleasure in killing you.”

“Well, I’ll have even more pleasure not being killed,” Hoseok quips brightly, and the Queen’s smile, if possible, gets even colder. “Thanks for the heads-up, though. I appreciate it.”

The Queen grits her teeth and glares, but Hoseok’s got adrenaline running through his veins, making him reckless and brave. He’s really doing this.

“When the sun starts its downhill course,” the Queen says, raising her voice so all can hear, “the tasks will start. When they are completed, the Harvest will be served.”

Cheers rise up through the crowd, and the silent tension gradually disperses as everyone realizes that nobody is going to die.

Not yet, at least.

Yoongi ushers Hoseok past the throne, giving Hana a meaningful look as he does so.

“That was either very stupid,” Yoongi mutters, “or very brave. I can’t decide which.”

“That was rad ,” Taehyung declares, skipping up and throwing his arms around Hoseok. “Did I use that word right?”

“Rad sound pretty good,” Hoseok agrees, grinning at Yoongi. “I totally threw the Queen off, did you notice?”

“She did look pretty ruffled,” Jimin agrees, linking hands with Taehyung as the nekomata pulls away from Hoseok. “I don’t think she was expecting that.”

Hoseok beams. “That’s what I’m good for.”

Hana comes up to them, playing with the end of her hair and looking worried. Taehyung and Jimin start to bow before she waves them off, distracted.

“You know what you’ve gotten yourself into, right?” She asks Hoseok, hands flitting about like she doesn’t know where to put them. “There are three tasks, each one harder than the last. The first is usually a test of intellect. The second’s strength, which might be an issue because you’re human, even if you have made Yoongi’s fingerprints into that gold thing—”

“Hana, slow down,” Hoseok says, putting his hands on her shoulders. “One thing at a time.”

“Right,” Hana replies, inhaling. “Sorry. I’m just extraordinarily nervous. Your mother is, as well.”

Hoseok feels the blood leave his face, but forces himself to keep smiling. “It’ll all be okay. I’ll do great.”

“You will,” Hana says, but it sounds a little bit like a question, which isn’t reassuring at all.

“Right, let me have a second with him,” Yoongi huffs, waving the rest of them away. “It’s almost the start of the sunset.”

Hana goes back to attend to the Queen. “Be safe, Jung Hoseok. More rests on your shoulders than you know.”

Hoseok gives her the most confident smile he can manage. “I’ll do my best.”

“We’ll be over here, Yoongi,” Jimin points, grabbing Taehyung’s hand and pulling him away from Hoseok, where the nekomata had been rubbing his cheek against Hoseok’s shirt. “Call us if you need anything.”

Hoseok runs a hand over Taehyung’s hair. “I’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

“I’m extraordinarily worried,” Taehyung huffs, crossing his arms. “You’re going to die.”

“Taehyung,” Yoongi reprimands, and the nekomata gives his prince a guilty look.

“Right, I’m going now,” Taehyung sighs, and slinks off to join Jimin the golden sunlight.

“As soon as these challenges start, nobody will be able to speak to you,” Yoongi begins in a rush, eyes narrowing as he focuses. He worries at his lip, clearly thinking hard. “You’ll be alone. You can’t rely on anyone but yourself—so if you can summon any of my magic, it might help—”

Hoseok sighs, pressing a finger to the crease on Yoongi’s forehead. Yoongi stops, torrent of words pausing as he looks up at Hoseok.

“I can’t do magic, hyung,” Hoseok reminds him. “I’m human, remember?”

Yoongi’s shoulders drop. “I know that. This will be more difficult as a result.”

“I also think it’s the best shot I’ve got at winning,” Hoseok says.

The faerie looks at him, totally confused. “What?”

“She’s said no faerie has ever beaten her, right?” Hoseok explains, rocking onto the balls of his feet. “I’m not a faerie.”

Yoongi’s face wrinkles. “I don’t think that’s how it works—”

“Good talk,” Hoseok says cheerfully. “Here, kiss me for good luck.”

Yoongi still looks worried, but he leans forward and complies. The touch of his lips settles a part Hoseok, and something clicks into place.

“I’ll be watching,” Yoongi murmurs, catching Hoseok’s face in his hands before the latter can pull away. “I’ll be there for the whole thing.”

Hoseok releases a breath, and a horn blows.

“That’s your cue,” Yoongi says, kissing Hoseok again. Then he steps back, expression gentle.  “You are the light for us all. Hoseok. Don’t forget that.”

And then he’s gone, sweeping Jimin and Taehyung along with him.

Hoseok shakes his limbs out a little, sucking in a breath in hopes to soothe his nerves, which are jangling loudly in his stomach. “I’ve got this,” he tells himself. “I have got this .”

With this thought in mind, Hoseok turns to face the Queen once more.

A long table has been set up, and the partygoers have formed a large circle around it, their voices hushed with anticipation and excitement. The other contestants are already seated—a male and a female, dressed impeccably and shining in the golden light of the setting sun. Hoseok tries not to feel small next to them as he pulls his chair out.

“My people,” the Queen announces, her gown glittering as she sweeps her arms out, playing the part of the welcoming ruler. “Today, upon this Summer Equinox, I have one wish to grant, a gift in honor of a good harvest and the good months yet to come. The three seated in front of you tonight are the three bravest—or most foolish—” Laughter from the crowd, gazes burning holes in Hoseok’s skin, “of us tonight.

“The first test is simple,” the Queen continues. “A test of intellect, a chance to prove that you indeed deserve my wish.” She looks down at all of them. “My first task is a riddle—easy enough for our guest to solve, no?”

More tittering. Hoseok fights back hurt and irritation, opting to ignore all of them. He searches for his mother and finds her, half-hidden in the shadow of the Queen’s enormous throne.

She nods at him. You can do it, she mouths, and smiles.

The Queen waves a careless hand at another blank-faced attendant next to her, who steps forward with a scroll. She unfurls it, reading aloud:

They try to beat me, they try in vain.

And when I win, I end the pain.

The Queen smirks at them. “You have two minutes. If you fail to answer, or answer incorrectly, your lives forfeit. Write your answer on the paper.” She waves her hand and a scrap of paper and an ink quill flutter into existence. “You may begin.”

Hoseok’s mind is spinning, trying to pick apart the words. He used to do riddles with his cousin, can remember sitting on the living room carpet with a little book of them. The answers were never concrete things, or people—they were always things like the wind, or a smile, or time.

The man is already scribbling an answer down. He stands, presenting his answer to the Queen with a nervous smile.

“My answer is,” he starts, clearing his throat, “an assassin.”

The Queen snorts. “Incorrect.”

The man’s eyes go wide, but before he can say anything else, the Queen flicks her hand at him. For a moment, everything’s fine—then the man’s expression freezes, and his head rolls off of his shoulders. There is no blood, just the head, sitting silent and stone-cold on the ground, skin pale and flaking already.

Hoseok gags, slapping a hand over his eyes and turning away before he can vomit all over the table.

Murmuring breaks out, along with a couple gasps.

“You have one minute,” the Queen states coolly, like she hadn’t just beheaded someone with a wave of her hand.

Hoseok forces his mind back to the riddle, though the image of the head is burned into the back of his eyelids, making his stomach churn every time he blinks.

Okay, he thinks. What do we fight?

Fear? Time? Pain? It has to be something vague like that.

But we try in vain. What’s that mean? That’s it’s purposeless or something?

Okay, so not pain, because that ends. And it’s not in vain. At least, Hoseok doesn’t think so.

The woman is scribbling something down on her paper, looking triumphant.

“Thirty seconds.”

“Shit,” Hoseok mutters.

Okay, so whoever we’re fighting, he continues mentally, trying to keep calm, always wins. So it’s inevitable. Which means it’s not fear—can’t be, because fear doesn’t end any pain—

Time?

Why would we try to beat time?

“Fifteen seconds,” the Queen sings, sneering at Hoseok. “I hope you have an answer, Jung Hoseok, or you’ll lose your head as well!”

What’s as inevitable as time, something we fight, and something that ends our suffering?

The answer comes to him like a bucket of cold water’s been dumped on him, and he scribbles down his answer as the Queen says stop.

The quill vanishes right out of his hand, smearing the last character of the word he’d written. But it’s there. He’d answered.

Now all he can do is hope he’s right.

“Jung Hoseok,” the Queen calls down, nodding at him. “Guests first, shall we?”

Hoseok stands nervously, hands sweating as he shakily shows her his paper.

죽음

“Death,” the Queen muses. “Interesting. That is…correct.”

She looks disappointed, but it does nothing to stop the wave of sweet relief that washes over Hoseok. His knees give out and he collapses back into his chair, trembling a little bit. He’d done it. He’d kept his head.

The woman had also gotten death as an answer, and looks a little put-out that Hoseok stole her thunder by answering correctly first.

There isn’t any time to dwell on his success because they’re quickly swept along out of the garden and into a grassy clearing, ringed by hedges on one side and trees on the other. The guests follow, looking incredibly intrigued, and among them Hoseok can make out Hana and Yoongi. Hana gives him a hopeful smile and presses her palm against her heart. Yoongi’s expression is so proud it eases some of the jitters in Hoseok’s body, turning knee-quaking anxiety and relief back into determination.

He thinks about his friends back home briefly, and his grandmother. What would they say if they saw him now, dressed like this and standing in a circle of forest-dwelling faeries in an attempt to save a rotting kingdom from an evil queen?

He barely gets a second to visualize Namjoon’s face before the Queen is speaking again. “And now for my second task,” she starts. “There’s a big, mean bakeneko in my forest,” she simpers. “Bring it to me, won’t you?”

Hoseok looks to Taehyung, asking a silent question— are you the same? Apparently not, because the nekomata’s eyes are wide, a warning. He shakes his head and gestures wildly, holding his arms out to represent something big.

The other faerie as already left the clearing, bounding into the woods with a grace Hoseok can’t replicate.

He looks over to Taehyung again, but he only points frantically at the forest.

“Oh, right,” Hoseok says, and takes off after the woman, despite having no idea where he’s going.

He keeps running until the trees swallow him whole, blocking him off from the other guests. There’s no sight or sound of the party; it’s just him, the sound of the birds, and that giant paw print in the mud.

Holy shit. Taehyung wasn’t joking when he said this thing was massive. The paw of this thing is the size of Hoseok’s head, if not bigger, a fact that does nothing to ease his nervousness.

Hoseok follows the paw prints in the mud, tracking the bakeneko deeper into the forest. After five minutes of walking, he hears it a second before he sees it.

The bakeneko is the size of a bear, and a cross between a panther and a house cat, its fur shaggy and silver-black. It’s currently scratching at a tree, which bends under its considerable mass. That’s it. It looks perfectly innocent.

He has no idea how he’s going to get it back to the Queen. He can’t kill it—no, it’s too big, and besides, it’s done nothing wrong. If it’s magical, who knows what else it can do besides tearing him apart with its claws.  

Hoseok approaches it slowly, making a decent amount of noise so he doesn’t spook it. When the bakeneko turns around, hair standing on end as it notices Hoseok, it sinks back onto its haunches, spitting violently.

“Whoa, hey,” Hoseok yelps, stopping in his tracks. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I don’t want to hurt you. I just need you to come with me.”

God, he hopes the cat knows Korean. If it’s anything like Taehyung at all, it should, right?

The cat doesn’t relax, tail swishing as it prepares to pounce.

“No, wait,” Hoseok tries again, holding up his hands. “Hey. Let’s just calm down for a second, huh? You’re scared and I’m scared, so how about I, uh, I just…”

He trails off for a moment before an old memory comes back to him, trickling through his brain like dust. His mother, arms tight around him, singing him lullabies while a thunderstorm raged around them. Then, the same song, a couple years later—only it’s his grandmother, sitting on the edge of the bed he shared with his cousin, her voice croaky and a little off-key, soothing the both of them to sleep before their first day of junior high.

Hoseok clears his throat. The cat tenses, expectant, before Hoseok starts to sing.

It’s Arirang, a song all Korean kids learn early, an unofficial anthem, a makeshift lullaby, handed down by whole generations, keeping it alive.

Hoseok’s not a good singer, not by a long shot, but the cat seems to like it, slowly sitting forward until it’s not crouching anymore. Hoseok cautiously creeps closer, bent low with one hand out, like his grandmother taught him how to approach all sad stray cats.

He finds himself a little lost in the song, and doesn’t realize how vulnerable he sounds until he notices his eyes are stinging. He’s singing to the cat like his mother and grandmother used to sing to him: to tell him it was alright, that he was safe and loved.

The cat is watching him with its amber eyes, too intelligent to be purely animal. It seems to understand what Hoseok is getting at, too, because it meets him halfway, bumping its massive head into the palm of his hand.

Hoseok finishes his song, wiping his eyes with his free hand. “See?” He says thickly, and clears his throat. “You’re safe. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The cat looks at him quizzically. You’re the first person that’s ever said that, it seems to say.

“We’re gonna walk back to the edge of the forest,” Hoseok explains to the bakeneko, “where I’m gonna tell the Queen that you’re not dangerous. I’ll pass the second task. If I complete all three, she’ll give me a wish so I can free all the people I love, and you can go back to scratching pine trees.”

The cat does not look convinced, nudging Hoseok’s hand a little more and nearly knocking him over. “Hey, don’t doubt me. I won’t let her touch you.” Hoseok pats the cat’s forehead. “Sound like a plan?”

The cat huffs. Hoseok takes that as a yes.

“Then follow me.”

He chatters happily to the bakeneko as they make their way back towards the gardens, where the crowd slowly comes into sight. When they see Hoseok, tailed by a massive silver-black cat, a collective gasp rises from the group. The female faerie has already returned, and she looks pissed.

“I have the bakeneko,” Hoseok announces to the Queen, who is so shocked she can barely hide it behind her neutral mask. “It’s not hurting anybody, though, so nobody’s going to bother it, okay?”

“A beast!” Someone in the crowd cries, but they’re quickly silenced as the Queen rises from her seat.

“I’m afraid I didn’t make myself clear,” she says, voice poison-sweet. “I didn’t want the thing alive. I don’t care if it’s innocent; I want it out.”

The bakeneko bares its teeth at the Queen, hackles rising.

“You actually didn’t specify,” Hoseok points out, feeling the truth of his words ring clearly, singing with magic. “You said to bring it to you. So here I am, with an innocent creature who’s going back to the forest when we’re done here. Nobody’s gonna touch it.”

The Queen grits her teeth, looking frustrated when whatever lie she’d wanted to say doesn’t come out. “Well, since you won’t kill it, I’ll just do it myself.”

She opens her hand, palm facing forward the bakeneko.

Hoseok doesn’t think when he throws himself in front of the ancient cat, arms spread wide. Panic, fear, and something far more potent burns through his veins. He can feel the Queen’s magic, malicious and spear-like, can hear Yoongi shouting.

Everything next happens very fast.

There’s a flash of golden light as Hoseok deflects the Queen’s magic, shattering it into a thousand harmless shards, his shirt rippling like water.

Hoseok’s chest is heaving, eyes screwed shut. He can hear whispers running through the crowd, confused.

What just happened?

The bakeneko nudges Hoseok’s back, and he slowly opens his eyes, blinking.

Jimin has an arm around Yoongi’s waist, holding him back, and the Queen still has her hand out. They’re all still, looking at Hoseok with expressions of shock and disbelief.

Hoseok looks down at himself, making sure everything’s intact. The skin over his ribs is a little warm, like he’s been out in the sun for too long, but other than that, he’s fine.

Rage spreads across the Queen’s face as she realizes what Hoseok’s done.

“See,” Hoseok announces to the stunned crowd, “I told you, nobody’s hurting it.” The bakeneko rubs its head on Hoseok’s back again, causing him to stumble a little.

The crowd turns to the Queen. Hoseok can hear whispers of didn’t she mean to kill it and why didn’t it work?

He lets a smug smile creep across his face as he watches the Queen scramble to regain her composure. He can tell he’s seriously thrown her off—he can guess that in all her time ruling, nobody’s survived her magic, much less deflected it, not like that.

“I wasn’t serious,” the Queen huffs irritably, a painful-looking smile stretched across her face. “Let that thing go back to its home, won’t you? We must get on with the third task.”

“Of course,” Hoseok replies, grinning broadly. He turns to the bakeneko, patting it gently between the ears. “Go on,” he tells it softly. “You’ve done your part. Thank you.”

The bakeneko makes a terrifying rumbling noise that Hoseok assumes is a purr. It bumps its head into Hoseok’s hand once more, eyes filled with human gratitude, and vanishes into the forest.

Hoseok watches it go for a second, feeling immensely accomplished. He has no idea how he’d managed to save the bakeneko—he’d only felt the absolute need to protect, to stop the Queen from taking another innocent life.

The female faerie is fuming. “This wasn’t the task,” she shouts, pointing an accusing finger at him. “He didn’t complete the challenge! Why does he get to go on?”

The Queen looks at her, lip curling. “Don’t whine,” she snaps, and Hoseok’s able to avert his eyes before he has to watch yet another head fall off.

“Jung Hoseok,” the Queen addresses him, and Hoseok represses a shiver at the chill in her voice. “Somehow, you’ve made it here. Congratulations.”

In the crowd, Hoseok watches Yoongi roll his eyes at the Queen’s insincerity.

“You have one task left,” the Queen says. “And it is the most difficult.”

She gets to her feet and spins, pointing off towards some of the tallest hedges Hoseok has ever seen.

“That,” she smirks, “is the Queen’s Maze.”

She’s really named everything after herself, Hoseok thinks distractedly, and misses about half of what the Queen says next.

“You have one hour,” she’s saying when he’s able to refocus. “Get to the center, light the torch, and you will get your wish. If you don’t…”

She trails off ominously here, not needing to finish her sentence.

“Well, I’ve made it this far,” he replies, sounding far braver than he feels. His friends’ faces are pale, twisted with worry, and Hana’s wringing her hands, looking incredibly distressed.

Yoongi meets Hoseok’s eyes, and once again, something inside of him calms, shifting back into place.

“Hana, escort him,” the Queen orders, and Hana moves forward to take Hoseok by the elbow and guide him towards the start of the maze.

“First off,” she mutters quietly, head tilted towards Hoseok’s ear, “don’t trust a thing you see. Watch where you step. Don’t breathe if you’re in the fog.”  

Hoseok carefully controls his reaction. Hana is breaking every single rule right now to advise him, despite the Queen making it very clear no help could be given.

“Hana, stop, you’ll be caught,” he hisses.

“It’s time for me to stand up to her,” she tells him firmly. They stop at the entrance, and Hoseok can feel the heavy weight of a hundred pairs of eyes on him.

“We’re going to do this,” Hoseok says, and Hana nods, determined. “I’m proud of you.”

He’s got a foot in the maze now, and the hedges shudder, starting to grow over behind him. Hoseok turns to Hana, panicked. She grips his hand, an urgent look on her face. “You have good heart,” she tells him quickly, even as the growing hedges force their hands to separate. “Use that.”

The hedges close, sealing Hoseok in the maze. Abruptly, everything goes dark and silent, like a blanket has been drawn over the whole area.

A cool breeze sweeps through the long corridor, ruffling the leaves.

Hoseok steels himself and starts down the path, a little spooked by the absolute quiet, treading carefully. A little while after he’s started walking, barely daring to breathe in the silence, he comes to a fork in the path. He halts, debating. The left side is filled with fog, suspended in air and twinkling innocently at him. The right side, bizarrely, has a tree in the middle of it.

Hana had definitely mentioned fog—something about not breathing it in?

Tree way it is, then.

Hoseok edges away from the fog and starts towards the tree. Just as he’s about to squeeze in between the trunk and the hedge wall, the ground rumbles and the tree moves. Roots burst from the ground, knocking Hoseok off his feet before he can react. He goes down hard, stars bursting behind his eyelids as he slams his head on the trunk.

“Sorry, sorry!” Hoseok shouts, dizzily crawling away from the tree. “I wasn’t trying to go this way—don’t mind me, I’ll leave—”

A gnarled, thick root wraps around his leg and yanks him backwards. Hoseok feels something in his ankle pop, and pain shivers upwards, pooling behind his knee.

“Ouch, fuck—hey!” Hoseok cries as the tree lifts him upside down, head spinning as all the blood rushes to it. “Whoa, okay, please put me down—”

A branch comes forward and slams into his stomach, effectively stopping his words and punching the air from his lungs.

Hoseok wheezes, dangling uselessly from the root.

Don’t trust anything you see, Hana had said.

I’m an idiot, Hoseok thinks, matter-of-fact. Now I’ve really done it.

His consciousness swims hazily, blurred by pain and the fact that he’s upside down.

The root brings him closer to the trunk, and despite the tree not having any eyes, Hoseok still feels like he’s being examined.

Faerie, something breathes, like a voice in the wind.

Not quite, another thing answers. Look at its heart.

Either way, they both agree, it must die.

“No!” Hoseok protests weakly, swatting at the tree, abs screaming at him when he jerks upright to avoid behind whacked by the branch again. “I have to get through—”

He’s forced to curl up again when the tree takes another swing at him, clearly intending to knock him out.

He doesn’t see the second branch coming at him until too late, aimed straight at his head. Hoseok flinches, eyes closing—but the blow never comes. When he opens his eyes, the branch has halted an inch away from his face.

He doesn’t have to wonder why for very long, because a violent, squeaking battle cry erupts from all around him, and a hundred tiny, gnome-like creatures converge on the tree, hacking and punching away. The tree shudders under the attack, but not matter how many times its roots rise to knock the creatures down, they get back up and continue pummeling. And at the very front, leading the charge is—

“Jingling?” Hoseok calls out, and the kobold looks up, its tiny face splitting into a grin when it sees Hoseok.

“Jingling brought friends!” It cheers. “You helped Jingling, so Jingling helps you.” It turns back to the tree, whacking it violently. “Bad tree. Mean tree. Don’t take my friend.”

The tree groans, finally giving in to the kobolds. It lowers Hoseok, who has to lie down to stop himself from passing out. The kobolds immediately surround him, and Hoseok has a hundred, beetle-black eyes on him as he slowly sits up. They all look at him, expectant and grinning.

“Thank you,” he tells them, wheezing a little and massaging his ribs. “You saved the day.”

He prods at his ankle, which throbs painfully at the touch.

“You are trying to get the wish?” Jingling asks, and Hoseok nods. “So you can love the Prince?”

A few kobolds shirk at Yoongi’s title, but Hoseok smiles.

“I’m doing it for everyone,” he says. “Even for you guys.”

Jingling’s eyes go wide. “For Jingling, too? You wish for Jingling?”

“Yeah. I’m getting the Queen off of her throne. I’m going to free everyone. No more bloody magic.”

“Then we will help,” Jingling announces, crossing its arms. “We will guide you to the center of the maze!”

Hoseok pulls himself to his feet, wincing a little as he puts weight on his ankle. “You’ll do that for me?”

“Good hearts get rewards,” Jingling says. “Let’s go, let’s go! No time to waste!”

With Jingling and the rest of the kobold army, the maze is suddenly much easier. Scouts run every path, digging under the hedges and scuttling through the fog and back again with ease, directing Hoseok through forks and breakneck turns, ducking under branches and pushing past sleeping beasts, careful not to disturb anything.

Soon, a faint light appears in the distance, shining dimly. As Hoseok hobbles closer, he can see it’s a massive torch, the embers burning low and waiting to be stoked.

Determination tingles through Hoseok as he reaches out to touch it. His palm makes contact with the smooth wood and he’s gold again, light pouring from under his skin, hot and uncontrolled. The kobolds ooh behind him as the torch bursts into flames, shooting high into the sky.

For a moment, everything is still. The torch is warm underneath Hoseok’s hand, and something inside of him sighs, able to rest at last.

Then Hana comes bursting through the hedges, tearing them apart, her smile so wide it looks like it might split her face. The party guests come thundering after her, and the whole maze melts as they do, the silence falling away and the darkness ripped back.

“You did it!” Hana shouts, and throws her arms around Hoseok. He stumbles back a couple steps at the force of her hug, ignoring his ankle in favor of wrapping his arms around her shoulders. She pulls back after a moment, grin brighter than anything Hoseok’s seen on her before. “The Queen is furious. She’s never had to give any wishes away before—everyone always fails at the maze. How’d you do it?”

“With help from my friends—” Hoseok says, but when he turns around, Jingling and the kobold army is gone. “—oh. They left. But it was some friends I helped earlier, returning the favor.”

Hana laughs, exuberant. “Friends you helped earlier. A favor. Of course it was—it’s so perfectly human. No wonder there’s never been a fae that’s won. Nobody’s ever had your heart.” She shakes him a little, and laughs again. “Wow. You’re amazing.”

“Thanks,” Hoseok says, a little embarrassed.

Hana waves him off. “Let’s go, shall we? It’s time to make your wish!”

The princess leads him through the crowd, and faeries he doesn’t know come up to congratulate him, patting him on the back and on the arms.

He catches a sight of Yoongi, who’s smiling so widely Hoseok feels a little dizzy looking at it.

The Queen waits for him a little ways out, arms crossed. “You have completed my tasks,” she says, scowling. “What do you wish for? Wealth? Freedom? Your mother?”

Out of the corner of his eye, Hoseok can see Yoongi nod firmly at the last option.

I’m sorry, Hoseok thinks, and looks back at the Queen, making sure she can see his face.

“I wish for a fair bargain,” Hoseok says, and he can hear someone gasp—Taehyung, maybe. “No cheating, no trickery. An even deal.”

The Queen narrows her eyes. “What are you getting at? Why don’t you just take your mother and go?”

Hoseok ignores her. “Give me your word, your Highness. A fair bargain.”

“Hoseok, no,” Yoongi says, but Hoseok ignores him too.

This is for you, most of all, Hoseok thinks.

“Fine,” the Queen snaps. “I promise to strike a fair, even deal with you. No trickery and no cheating.”

Her promise settles heavily in the air between them, sealed by magic.

“Okay,” Hoseok says, taking a breath to steady his nerves. “I want my mother and I to be free, and I want you to release your hold on Yoongi and Hana.”

The Queen smiles cruelly. “Your mother still has five hundred years left to serve here. Her deal is binding. I physically cannot erase that debt.”

Hoseok’s gut sinks. He thought the Queen would say something like that.

“And as soon as I release my daughter’s magic,” the Queen informs Hoseok, “she’ll take my throne.” When Hoseok doesn’t react to this, she narrows her eyes. “You knew this already, then. That’s your plan, isn’t it? To free Hana and force me to abdicate?”

“No,” Hoseok says, even though it is. But he can lie, and he’s sure as hell not saying anything to the Queen.

“You want freedom for all,” the Queen says, “but are you willing to pay the price?”

Hoseok’s response is instant. “Yes.”

“No, Hoseok, you can’t, ” Yoongi cries, voice cracking desperately. “Just take your mother and go —we’ll be fine, just please, please —”

“Silence,” the Queen snaps, and Jimin and Taehyung drag Yoongi back before the Queen can do something to him.

Their eyes meet. Hoseok can see Yoongi’s heart breaking, can feel it acutely in his own chest.

“Let me take my mother’s debt,” Hoseok says, turning back to the Queen. “I have power you want, right? Let Hana and Yoongi go and I’ll give it to you. Let my mother go, and you’ll have me here.”

Hana’s eyes go wide. “Hoseok—”

“This needs to be done,” he tells her firmly. “And I’ve always been meant to do it.”

Behind Hana, his mother’s face is both proud and melancholy.

She knew all along, Hoseok thinks. She knew I’d always have to make this choice. She just tried to give me as much time to make it.

He glances back at Yoongi, worlds moving and time beginning and ending all in that one look.

“I love you,” Hoseok says, and though Yoongi can hear him, he must feel it, too—the click-click-click as something fundamental settles, like a missing part of the universe has finally been found.

“I love you too,” Yoongi answers, eyes glittering with tears. Even in sadness, he’s beautiful, backlit by the setting sun and wrapped in the green-gold splendor of the garden. “Please don’t do this.”

“This is the only way,” Hoseok reminds him. Yoongi might not know that now, but he will, with time.

“You want the freedom for your lover and my daughter,” the Queen continues, drawing the attention back to her. “And you wish to take the years of debt from your mother.”

Hoseok nods firmly. “Yoongi will not be your prince anymore, he will be his own. You can’t call on him anymore, either. And Hana can use her magic however she wants. You don’t get to freeze her when she’s annoying you.”

“Quite a demanding one, aren’t you?” The Queen scoffs.

“I nearly died, like, eight times,” Hoseok points out. “I wanna make sure I get what I came for.”

The Queen sighs. “Is that all?”

“Yes.”

“And in return,” she says, a smug smile pulling at her lips, “you will stay in this realm, allowing it to draw off the magic born from that ridiculous bond with my Prince, until your mother’s debt is served.”

“I agree to those terms,” Hoseok replies, and the Queen’s face gets sharper, her smile a red slash on her face.

“Your Highness,” Yoongi gasps, finally breaking free of Jimin and Taehyung and running forward. He drops to his knees in front of the Queen, every inch of him submissive, all fight gone from him. “Please, don’t accept his deal. Let him go free with his mother. Keep me. I don’t care what you do to me—just let him go.”

The Queen looks down at Yoongi, interested. “Love, indeed,” she muses. “It can bring even the most stubborn to their knees, no?”

Hoseok’s heart jumps at the word love. He said it earlier, but he’s not even sure if that’s all of it—it sort of feels like a sorry attempt to encapsulate the earth-shattering, soul-moving feelings he has for Yoongi. It’s unlike anything he’s ever experienced before, and now that he's finally here, looking down at this faerie, at this man, Hoseok realizes in a quiet rush that he’ll never be okay with the thought of letting Yoongi go.

So he’s not going to.

And this is the only way, the only sacrifice he can make that will mean something, that will mean enough.

“As much as I’m enjoying this change in attitude,” the Queen continues, “you’re not the focus here, my Prince. Your human is.” She looks up at Hoseok. “I accept your terms, Jung Hoseok. Let it be known that I have fulfilled your wish and made this bargain fairly.”

“No,” Yoongi murmurs, pained, but it’s too late.

There’s a low, mournful creaking that seems to come from the very trees themselves, and Hana suddenly straightens, her skin starting to glow with the same moonlit dewiness as the Queen’s, her magic no longer chained down by her mother.

The passing, the wind sighs. The princess finally comes to take her place.

The Queen makes a sour face at Hana. “You will never be fit to be queen,” she hisses. “Even if the forest rules it to be so.”

“It’s rotting,” Hana tells her mother, standing tall. “ You’re rotting. And I will be a better queen, I can promise that. Because I, unlike you, have learned how powerful a good heart can be.”

She looks at Hoseok, who can barely manage to lift his head and smile back, because a sudden weight—consuming, infinite, and crippling—has dropped onto his shoulders. His knees shake with the heaviness, threatening to collapse.

There’s a quiet, insistent tug behind Hoseok’s ribs, and something in him inherently knows it’s the forest, drawing on whatever makes him shimmer gold—the same thing that had let him deflect the Queen’s magic.

“Everyone,” Hana announces, drawing attention from all the guests, “now that the trials have been completed, please eat!” She spreads her fingers and the tables fill with food, the smell of roast duck and fresh fruit making Hoseok’s mouth water. Music starts up, and people drift off to eat and dance, quickly losing interest in Hoseok. While normally he’d scoff at the short attention span of faeries, this time, he’s glad for it. He’s exhausted, beat up, and he’s shouldered the weight of what he thinks is his mother’s debt.

There’s a light tap on his shoulder, and he barely has any time to look up before his mother’s arms encircle him, squeezing him tightly. Hoseok freezes, not quite believing that he’s here, hugging his mother after all this time, before he wraps his arms around her as well, burying his face into her shoulder. She smells like the fae realm, mostly, but underneath it, still present, is the familiar cherry-and-laundry scent, comforting and heartbreaking all at once.

“My son,” she whispers. “My Hoseokkie. I knew you’d come.”

“I looked for you,” he replies. “I came to free you.”

“I told Taehyung to tell Yoongi about you,” she tells him, brushing her thumb over his cheek. “I’m sorry I couldn’t give you more time. I’m sorry I couldn’t make the choice for you. I’m sorry for everything, Hoseok. I did everything a mother should never do, and yet, it was the only option I had.”

Hoseok nods. “I know. I’m not mad.”  

“Such a good boy,” she sniffs, leaning in again. “Oh, I missed you so much. You grew up without me, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

“I’m here now,” he says weakly, though they both know this is only temporary. Hoseok has taken the weight from his mother’s shoulders so she can walk free—and walk free she must. “And I’ll come see you.”

“I will always wait for you,” she promises, casting her eyes to the setting sun. “I have to go before it gets dark. One more night might just kill me. I think I’m too old for these kinds of parties.”

“I…can walk you back?” Hoseok offers, unsure. Will she want that? Is he allowed to?

“I would love that,” his mother says kindly, and Hoseok simultaneously feels like she’s only been away a second, but also like she’s a person he’s only just met.

And now she has to leave. And he must stay.

“I’m going to go say goodbye to the princess,” his mother says. “Maybe you should talk to Yoongi in the meantime.”

Hoseok looks over to where the prince is. Yoongi is still on his knees, head bowed. Color is slowly spilling back into his hair, shiny black overtaking polished white. The skin on his hands and on the back of his neck is pink, flushed with the newfound freedom bestowed on him. He is coming back to life, vibrant and blooming now that the Queen no longer has any hold on on him

Yet he looks absolutely miserable. Hoseok supposes that’s his fault.

“Yoongi?” He asks tentatively, crouching down. “Are you mad?”

The faerie shakes his head. “No. But I’m certainly not happy, either.”

Hoseok flinches at his tone of voice. “There was nothing else I could do.”

“Why didn’t you just take your mother and leave?” Yoongi breathes, voice quavering.  “Why did you have to include me, too? You’d forget, Hoseok. You could have left this place and forgotten.”

“Hey,” Hoseok snaps, grabbing Yoongi’s face in his hands, forcing the faerie to look at him. “Stop doing that. Stop talking like you don’t mean anything.”

Yoongi blinks at him, stunned.

“I love you,” Hoseok says, softening. He cards his fingers through Yoongi’s hair, and the faerie leans into him until his forehead rests on Hoseok’s shoulder. “I really hope you know that.”

“I do,” Yoongi mutters. “And I’m not surprised that you did what you did. Everyone needs you, Hoseok. All lives you touch become better, because you’re…you, I guess. You have a good heart.”

Hoseok beams at him, and Yoongi tilts his head up to kiss the corner of his smile.  

“I just wish you didn’t have to give your freedom up. You know you’ll never see your friends again, right?”

Hoseok bites the inside of his cheek against the wave of sudden sadness that sweeps over him, and he looks up to stop the tears from falling. “I know,” he says thickly. “But I have plenty of time to make peace with that.”

Yoongi kisses Hoseok again, mouth slow, sweet and sad. “Your mother is waiting for you,” he murmurs against Hoseok’s lips.

“I should probably go, then. I’ll see you soon?”

“I’ll come meet you. I have no desire to stay here any longer.”

“Okay,” Hoseok says, and stands. “By the way, I like the hair. Black makes you look less washed-out.”

Yoongi cracks a tiny smile. “Thank you.”

Hoseok goes over to take his mother’s arm, and together they slip out of the party, squeezing between dancing couples and tables laden with dessert.

The forest is so much quieter than the party, and the sudden lack of noise has Hoseok’s ears ringing for a second. He takes a deep breath of air, ignoring the way his ribs and ankle throb as he walks.

“I never could get used to this air,” his mother says conversationally. “It’s too heavy for an outsider. I suppose it makes sense that you can breathe it just fine.” Her eyes go sad. “Even from the beginning, you were always meant to stay here.”

“I can come visit,” Hoseok assures her quickly, but at the same time realizes he can’t. The forest binds him too tightly—it will be years before he can even go past the stream, much less all the way to his house. He can feel its hold on him, like he’s being tugged back by a string.

His mother reads this unsaid bit on his face, and her eyes get sadder. “I will wait until you’re able to.”

“That might be years.”

“I’ve already waited this long, haven’t I?”

Hoseok can hear the stream now.

“I love you.”

She pats his cheek, voice wavering a little bit. “I love you more, Hoseokkie. More than you could ever know. And I am so, so proud of you.”

Hoseok swallows, tears gathering in his throat as some start to fall from his eyes. “My friends are waiting for you by the house. Remember Namjoon?”

“He’s the smart one, right?”

“Yeah. He looked out for me a lot when I first came back here,” Hoseok says, wiping his face, “so he’ll take care of you, too.”

He swallows. “You’ll call Grandma, too? And my cousins?”

“Of course.”

“You’ll tell them the truth?”

His mother chuckles. “I don’t know if they’ll believe me, but I’ll try. How else am I supposed to explain a ten-year absence?”

“Will you...say goodbye to them? For me?”

“Oh, baby,” his mother says, pulling him into a hug. “Yes. Of course.”

“They’ll look for me. Especially my younger cousins,” Hoseok explains, smiling fondly. “Don’t let them fall into the stream, or get eaten by a giant cat.” His face falls. “And when Grandma...when it’s time for her to go, will you let me know?”

“Yes, Hoseokkie,” his mother says. “Of course. I’ll do everything I can.”  

They fall silent, and the stream and the little bridge come into sight. As they approach it, Hoseok can’t step onto the bridge, already feeling like he’s at the end of a rubber band, stretched tight and ready to snap back.

“I can’t go any farther,” he tells his mom, catching her wrist, voice breaking with panic, with desperation and heartbreak and everything else, all of these emotions that churn in his stomach and make him feel like he’s going to be sick. “I’m sorry, I can’t—”

“Shh,” she soothes, stepping back and drawing him into a hug. She strokes his hair as he breathes, trying to get his head around the fact that this is really happening. “It’ll be okay, baby. You’ll be okay.”

“Every Tuesday,” Hoseok says. “Come here every Tuesday so I can see you. And don’t forget about Grandma and my cousins.”

“Tuesday,” his mother repeats, cupping his cheek. “And I’ll tell them as much as I can.”

They part, and his mother starts across the bridge, the bottom of her dress getting wet with the spray. “Take care of yourself, and of that prince,” she calls back. “The light you gave us is enough to end any darkness. Remember that.”

She blows him a kiss, and then she’s crossed to the other side.

Hoseok watches her until she disappears from sight, and he breaks down at last, caving underneath the immense weight of his future.

Yoongi finds him like that, curled up at the edge of the border in the dying light, cheek pressed to the ground. He gathers Hoseok into his arms, not saying a thing, and holds him tightly, like he can keep the pain from leaking out.

The moon rises, and Hoseok cries.

Time does many things. It eases the memory of the lost, takes the edge off of grief, smooths curiosities and unanswered questions.

It is three years before Hoseok is strong enough to walk over the bridge and hug his mother, close enough to hand her notes to give to Namjoon, Seokjin and Jeongguk. He sees them sometimes, but it’s strange, because after seven years, when Hoseok can get to the edge of the forest, they’re adults in their thirties. It’s weird to see Namjoon with black hair, wearing his teacher clothes, or Seokjin, in his vet coat. They visit his mother often, which Hoseok’s glad for—he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be ready to go back into that house.

His family visits, too. His grandmother barks orders at the police, who cluelessly wander the forest, searching for a grandson they’ll never find. His cousin, new baby perched on her hip, grabs the collars of the younger kids when they stray a little too far, claiming that they can see Hoseok in the trees. Each time, before they can get any closer, he forces himself to leave, to go back into the world that is starting to become his.

Years of breathing fae air has slowly leached away at the human parts of him, carefully erasing the acne scars on his face and fixing the crooked line of his front teeth. While his mother, imprisoned against her will, hadn’t adapted, Hoseok does, body sponging up magic until he, too, shimmers faintly in the light. One morning he wakes up and, for a moment, barely recognizes the face he sees in the mirror, beautiful even next to Yoongi’s. Now, when Hoseok walks next to him, the things in the underbrush say faerie and his Prince, and the wind whispers about the golden boy with his good heart.

Seven years melt into ten. His grandmother stops coming, and his mother shows up at the bridge to tell him she’ll miss next Tuesday for the funeral in Seoul.

Hoseok says goodbye again, and again, and again. It hurts every time.

Ten years then turn into fifteen, twenty, and twenty-five. His cousin’s hair starts to grey, Namjoon and Seokjin send their kids to college, Jeongguk gets remarried, and Yoongi and Hoseok become so intertwined that the very forest itself parts in reverence whenever they join hands.

They walk like this towards the foot of the Queen’s throne, a gift tucked under Yoongi’s arm. From here, she looks regal as ever in her blue gown, crown glittering in the midday light.

“Happy Equinox,” Hoseok says, taking the gift from Yoongi and giving it to her. “It’s another book from my mother. She says hi.”

Hana smiles, and there is a wisdom, a kindness behind it that has developed over the recent years. The forest, under her compassion and steady hand, has stopped rotting and blooms brighter each year.

She and Hoseok both started a new life at the same time; as a result, they’ve become very close.

“Thank you,” Hana says, accepting the book. “How is she?”

Hoseok swallows. “Not…great. I can’t go out as often anymore—there are still people that come by that could recognize me, and there’s no way I can pass as middle-aged.”

Hana’s face falls. “I’m sorry to hear that. You’ll let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

“Of course,” Hoseok says. “There’s always a chance she could recover.”

Hoseok gets to forty years—still young, still waking up next to Yoongi with a stupid happy smile on his face—before his mother’s health takes a turn for the worse.

He and Yoongi are halfway through a quiet dinner, Hoseok’s legs in Yoongi’s lap while Yoongi reads complaints aloud (“Why do people have such a problem with the way the cherry trees smell? Does it look like I can go and ask them to smell a different way?” ) when Taehyung bursts into the room, looking winded.

“It’s your mother,” he pants, and Hoseok sits up so quickly he knocks the paper out of Yoongi’s hand.

“I have to go,” Hoseok says in a panicked rush, and makes a break for the gate.

Hoseok can’t remember what it feels like to truly run, not anymore—his muscles don’t cramp, his lungs don’t burn, and he never runs out of breath. Instead of being bitter about it, this time he’s grateful—the trip across the border only takes three minutes. Yoongi keeps pace with him, staying at Hoseok’s side even as he pushes his way through the bushes before grinding to a halt at the sight of the house.

He’s too late. Far, far, too late.

Yoongi holds his hand as they watch the black car with his mother in it drive away.

Kim Namjoon waits for Seokjin outside of the mourning room on the morning of the second day of the funeral, an umbrella open to stop the rain from getting his suit wet.

He hears a door close distantly, and turns around in time to watch a young man cross the grass towards the edge of the forest.

“Excuse me,” Namjoon calls, squinting and wishing he had his glasses on, “were you here for Jung Misook? Do you know her?”

The man halts, and slowly turns around. Namjoon still can’t make out his face, but he’s patting down his pockets, trying to remember which one he’d put his glasses in.

“Yes,” the man answers slowly, and there’s something familiar about his voice, tickling an old, dusty memory in Namjoon’s head. “I just wanted to say goodbye one last time.” A humorless laugh. “You’d think they get easier—after all, I’ve had to say so many. But I guess being immortal only makes it worse.”

Immortal? Namjoon thinks, sure he’d heard the man wrong. His hearing is not as good as it used to be—his daughter’s already pressing him to see a doctor for it, but Namjoon thinks he’s got a couple more years at the very least.

He finally finds his glasses, fumbling with them “If you want to come in again, I can light the candles for you—”

He gets his glasses on, and the man’s face is thrown into sharp relief.

“Hoseok?” Namjoon blurts, then realizes that it’s not possible—Jung Hoseok should be his age, but the man in front of him isn’t a day over twenty-four, and impossibly beautiful, airbrushed edges turning to mist in the rain. But who else could it be besides Hoseok? The one standing in front of him is perfect and preserved, like he's stepped out of Namjoon's memory.

“Joon-ah,” Hoseok replies, and gives Namjoon a sad smile, so very unlike the impossibly bright ones in Namjoon’s memory.

“You…how?”

Hoseok shrugs, the movement too fluid, too graceful to be human. “I had to.”

Namjoon’s eyes prick, filling with tears. “It’s been so long. We had a funeral for you, too. The police dropped your case when your grandma passed away, and your cousins came.”

Hoseok bites his lip. “I know. I saw it all.”

“You should’ve come back. Your letters stopped so soon—we assumed the worst—”

“I don’t blame you for anything, Namjoon,” Hoseok says gently. “I was hoping you’d catch me, actually. I wanted to thank you.”

“For what?” Namjoon asks, gripping his umbrella tighter. This is really happening, isn’t it. Jung Hoseok has really reappeared, like a ghost, no longer quite human but still very much the same.

“For taking care of my mother. You didn’t need to, but you did anyway.”

“You would have done the same thing, Seok-ah,” Namjoon points out. “I just tried to follow your example.”

Hoseok opens his mouth to respond, but then closes it, rubbing at his eyes.

“Hey, you know what,” Namjoon continues, hoping to ease some of the tension, “Seokjin will be here any second. Why don’t you stay, catch up a little bit? You don’t have to explain anything, but I’m sure he would love to see you.”

Hoseok looks over his shoulder towards the forest, where Namjoon can make out another man waiting, half-hidden in the shadows.

“I can’t,” Hoseok says. “You know I can’t.”

“I suspected,” Namjoon admits. “I thought I’d offer anyway.”

Hoseok fidgets. “I just wanted to tell you—”

“Can I ask—” Namjoon says at the same time, and Hoseok laughs.

“Go ahead,” he says, gesturing to Namjoon.

“No, you,” Namjoon argues. “Mine’s a better parting statement.”

Hoseok huffs. “I guess I just wanted to say that…if you never need anything, I’m here. Maybe you won’t see me, and maybe it won’t be obvious, but I’m looking out for you. Your kids too. And whoever comes after them.”

Namjoon offers Hoseok a genuine smile. “I have a feeling it’s more than just you,” he chuckles, nodding a the figure at the edge of the forest, who shifts impatiently.  

Hoseok laughs again. “Yeah. Him too. All of us, really. You’ve got the whole forest on your side.”

“Good to know,” Namjoon says, feeling warm. “And are you happy?”

Hoseok hesitates. “It’s definitely not a happy feeling, to watch everything you know leave while you stay,” he starts slowly. “But…I’ve found someone I can’t live without, and now I’ll never have to. I have a place over there, and there are moments that I wouldn’t trade for anything else in the world.”

Namjoon waits. With age, he’s become even better at that.

“I guess, overall,” Hoseok goes on, “yeah, I’m happy.”

“Then that’s good enough for me,” Namjoon replies, and nods at the mourning hall. “And you know it’s good enough for her, too.”

Hoseok smiles. “Thanks, Joon-ah.”

“Of course, Seok.”

There’s a moment of silence. Namjoon looks at Hoseok one more time, trying to commit his friend’s face to memory.

The sound of Seokjin’s car pulling up startles Hoseok into motion again. “It’s time for me to go.”

“Ah,” Namjoon says.

“But I stand by my word, okay?”

“Okay. Be safe, alright? And don’t worry about us too much.”

Another fleeting smile, and then Hoseok darts off. Namjoon watches him run up to the other man, and then they’re no more than a shadow in the forest, a trick of the mind’s eye or the rain.

“Who was that?” Seokjin asks, coming up behind Namjoon and linking their arms.

“Just someone,” Namjoon says distantly, and Seokjin rolls his eyes, long used to his husband’s spacier moments. “I hope he’s happy,” Namjoon continues after a minute.

“Mmm,” Seokjin says noncommittally.

Namjoon keeps his eyes on the forest for a second longer, like he can somehow see them, the beautiful prince and his healing heart, and the boy who did everything for him.

But he can’t, so he follows Seokjin inside to receive guests.

And somewhere, deep within the trees, two lovers join hands.