Chapter Text
Yeonjun knocked once, twice, on the wooden door. The jar of honey in his arms almost slipped off while he briefly detached his fingers from it to announce his arrival. It would have been a mess—almost thirty kilograms of honey, wasted right at the entrance, after his titanic effort of carrying the huge vessel for 20 minutes to the destination. How do you even clean a puddle of honey? Actually, there was a more puzzling matter—what would one need so much honey in one go for?
Maybe he decided to ask about it, but then the door opened and the thought flew away when he had to take a few steps back to protect the enormous jar. Doors shouldn't ever open outwards.
"Delivery for... Sir Peppermint?"
The boy at the door sighed. "That's my father. And you know it."
"I do?"
"Told you the last time we met. And the first. And you forget every single time. But, well. I don't mind. I like the sound of it—Sir."
Yeonjun's proverbial light-bulb lit up. "You're Taehyun, right?"
Taehyun smiled politely. "Yes, thank you. Come on in."
"I shouldn't, really—"
"Come on in. For a few minutes. Let me help you."
The jar of honey was inside now and it was even taller than the tables scattered throughout the room. They were unoccupied, save for two animals sipping at their cups of tea. A pleasant smell dominated the air, aromatic herbs blended with the specific wood odour from the large tree which provided the hollow for Taehyun's teahouse.
Yeonjun was sitting on a barstool while Taehyun was brewing his tea. Lavender and mint—not something Yeonjun had ever tried before, but he decided to accept a recommendation from Taehyun for once. He was pretty sure he had been single-handedly depleting Taehyun's thyme supply, Yeonjun's favourite.
"Slow business today?"
"Not necessarily. Well, many animals used to come for strawberries but now it's past their time. They only visit when they truly need something, anyway." Taehyun sprinkled something Yeonjun didn't recognise over the plants in the boiling water. Secret ingredient, he supposed. "They make do with very little, unlike us."
Yeonjun nodded and took a decorative basil leaf between his fingers. "But you still find ways to keep yourself busy, right?"
"I do. Just like you. Speaking of which, how many deliveries have you made today?"
Yeonjun narrowed his eyes in thought. "This must be the fourth one. Two early in the morning, one around noon, and now your honey. I've only got one left." He readjusted his position in the seat. "What's the deal with that, anyway?"
"You're asking about the honey?" Yeonjun confirmed, and Taehyun continued: "Well, I thought I should try out some cookie recipes and see what the animals like. I know for a fact that Mr Badger loves sweets, and he is the very picky type. Figured that if he is into something, then most animals might be."
After the infusion was prepared, Taehyun invited Yeonjun to sit with him at a table, right next to Mrs Sheep.
"Okay, so," Taehyun started, "thanks a lot for carrying the honey jar to me."
"So many bees suffered for that honey, Taehyun."
"Don't pity the bees, Yeonjun. It’s what they're born to do. Plus, Mr Honey Bear takes good care of them."
"He does," Yeonjun reckoned, taking a sip of tea.
"Right. So, um..." Taehyun averted his eyes for a moment. "I really shouldn't, and I feel bad for it, but I've got one more thing to ask you to do."
Yeonjun smiled. "Why feel bad? That's my job. Side job, I suppose, but I did sign up for it. Ask away."
Taehyun seemed to loosen up a little. "Alright, then. Well... Mrs Sheep here—"
"Amazing tea, by the way."
"Thank you," Taehyun said, the tiniest hint of red colouring his cheeks, "so, Mrs Sheep." He gently stroked her wool while she was drinking her own tea—chamomile, by the looks of it. "She has to jump over the moon tonight, and I still haven't found anyone who can help her with it."
Yeonjun stopped mid-sip. "She has to what?"
"Jump over the moon," Taehyun repeated, as if he was reading to a kindergartner. "She does this once a season, at night, so that she'll start appearing behind recently-born children's eyes once they close them and they'll be able to fall asleep more easily. As children age, they see Mrs Sheep jumping more times, once for each season they've been alive in, thus learning how to count. Didn't your mother ever tell you this when you were a kid?"
Yeonjun thought for a moment. "No, actually. Mommy used to read me bedtime stories. That's how I used to fall asleep."
"That… works too, I guess."
Yeonjun's brow creased, the weight of the task slowly dawning upon him. "What you're saying is, you want me to go... to the moon?!"
"It's not that hard to reach, let me explain." Taehyun kept petting Mrs Sheep, who had closed her eyes at some point, dozing off. "There's this guy I know, an inventor who lives in the Golden Meadow. He built a rocket a while ago and he was supposed to carry Mrs Sheep himself, but he's feeling quite sick at the moment."
"Is it something serious?" Yeonjun asked, concerned.
"No, no, don't worry, but it's bad enough for him not to be able to do this anymore. I'll send you to him with some medicinal tea I've been working at, you'll tell him about Mrs Sheep, and he'll lend you the rocket right away. I heard it's not difficult to pilot."
That didn't make things a lot easier for Yeonjun.
"Is that okay? I mean, again, I don't want to burden you with another task but I've got no one to turn to right now and—"
"Yeah, sure," Yeonjun said, after not a great amount of careful deliberation. "I'll manage. For the children."
Taehyun seemed immensely relieved. "Thank you, thank you."
Mrs Sheep let out a small "baa", which Yeonjun thought was just her snoring, but Taehyun informed him that she thanked him too. Quite often lately, Yeonjun regretted not being able to understand animals.
"When exactly should I go with her? Is there a set moment, like midnight?"
"Not really. As long as it's before daybreak, I think it should be fine. It's not me who invented the moon-jumping, though." He paused. "You could go right before sprinkling dew."
Yeonjun took a big gulp of his tea to empty the cup and placed it on its plate with a loud clink. There was a secret ingredient, and it made the tea one hundred times better than he had expected.
"Sounds like a plan."
"Perfect," Taehyun said. "I'll make you thyme tea every morning for this."
"Nah. Just send me a batch of cookies once you figure out a recipe."
***
Like many times before that day, Yeonjun found himself in front of a door, not as a guest, but on duty. He could've spent all day taking in the vista: the Golden Meadow was a paradise for summer flowers of all colours, a shallow valley which must have had a wide river coursing through hundreds of thousands of years ago, but slowly exchanged water for air and greenery. There were some old oaks which were perfect for sleeping in, or serving as lookout spots. Yeonjun knew very well, for he often visited the place early in the morning to coat the vegetation in his dew drops.
He knocked. Only once, because the piano that was being played inside stopped instantly and steps could be heard on the creaking floor. The owner fiddled with the lock for a few moments, then opened the door (on the inside, this time) to reveal himself: a boy, slightly taller than Yeonjun, who, true to description, looked very pale and weakened.
"Hi. My name is Yeonjun. Sir Pe—Taehyun sent me to you with some tea and a request."
"Taehyun?" He eyed Yeonjun's bag. "Sure, come in. But I don't want to keep you here for too long. You could do without my viruses."
His name was Kai and his house in the middle of the meadow was a tiny mess of countless machines and structures and drafts. At the centre of it all, there was the piano from earlier.
"Sometimes I play myself a few lullabies before going to sleep," Kai explained. "I can rest easier this way."
Yeonjun regarded the piano appreciatively. "So you don't count sheep for this?"
Kai laughed. A raspy, cold-thickened laugh. "I used to, up until I was... twelve?" He pulled Yeonjun a chair. "But there's a point in your life when you stop seeing Mrs Sheep, and when your dreams stop being colourful and vivid. That might be the point when your childhood ends."
"Does it?" Yeonjun mused and sat down. "I think it lasts as long as you want it to."
"It does," Kai said. "But you can't keep all of it in your heart as you age. Some fragments fall off and you don't come back for them." He opened a drawer and picked up a wrench.
"This also applies to the stuff you build, right?"
"Pretty much. A machine only needs what is necessary for it to function. Give it too many components and it'll be harder to make it operate the way you want it to. But humans aren't machines, are they?" He sniffed and let out a cough. "Man, all this talking isn't good for my throat."
He entered an adjacent chamber and came back a few minutes later, pushing a tiny rocket on a cart. It was tiny compared to Yeonjun's mental image, at least, but it occupied about the same space in the living room as Kai's grand piano.
"I'll open the big door and we'll take this outside. I'll show you how to manoeuvre it."
Yeonjun was soon seated in the rocket, which was reclining on a wooden ramp, slightly tilted, its shiny red tip pointing towards the sky. He was gripping the steering wheel, toying with it.
"First of all, there's enough fuel for three two-way trips to the moon, so all you have to do is keep the engine running."
"Yep."
"You pull the steering wheel and it will go up, and then—achoo!" Kai wiped his nose with a sleeve. "Sorry."
"No problem."
"And then you can go in any direction, except backwards. You'll have to turn left all the way or right all the way for that. If you want to descend, there's that lever over there, to your right, do you see it?"
"Yes. This one?" He tapped a tiny lever above his right knee.
"That one. There's a safety mechanism attached to it so you won't plunge down."
"Good."
"And these are the safety belts," Kai said, gesturing at Yeonjun's seat and the one next to it, "for you and for Mrs Sheep. Do keep them fastened, especially you."
"Why especially me?"
"Mrs Sheep has some anti-gravity powers, I don't know the details, but she wouldn't be able to jump over the moon without them. It's obvious."
"Of course." Yeonjun felt slightly more out of it with each new piece of information.
"And at your feet you've got some pedals. They only work for horizontal travelling, so they won't help you climb or descend faster."
Yeonjun nodded and reassessed the controls. Not that difficult to manoeuvre, just like Taehyun had mentioned.
"This is impressive," he told Kai. "I still can't believe something like this exists. You built it all by yourself?"
Kai rubbed the side of the rocket, as if to scrub off some imaginary dirt. "Well, it took me about a year, planning included. Months of prototypes, re-constructions, and failed take-offs, but I'm glad it all worked out in the end. Thank you."
Yeonjun smiled at him, and Kai tried to replicate it, but he was both too ill and too self-conscious to do it properly.
"I gotta thank you for your help with Mrs Sheep, too. I bet Taehyun felt like the weight of the world fell off his shoulders."
"He seems very attached to Mrs Sheep," Yeonjun said, testing out the pedals.
"Oh, definitely. He's very attached to all animals." The next second, Kai climbed inside the rocket, bad health momentarily ignored. "Okay, let's do a test flight. Don't be too nervous, I'm right here. I'll help in an instant."
Yeonjun fastened his seatbelt and grabbed the steering wheel with determination. "Oh, buddy. I feel like I've been waiting for this my whole life."
***
Yeonjun met up with Mrs Sheep deep in the night in the Golden Meadow, at a considerable distance from Kai's house so as to not disturb his sleep. The night air was warm, the sky clear. Nothing to impede their journey.
He helped Mrs Sheep climb into the passenger seat, then claimed his own spot in front of the steering wheel.
"The safety belts," he remembered, and proceeded to plug both of them in.
When he was certain nothing was omitted, Yeonjun turned the vehicle on just as Kai had taught him and rose from the ground, the grass blades gently swayed by the movement. After they passed the tallest trees around by a good few meters, he pressed the accelerator pedal while pulling the wheel and the rocket shot towards the distant sky. Mrs Sheep baaed loudly, but Yeonjun couldn't figure if it was out of excitement or fear. He could only hope she wasn't feeling too uncomfortable. As for himself, he was laughing heartily, the air sweeping past the rocket making his eyes water.
The earth below eventually slipped out of sight, the dark horizon submerging into a murky mass of deep blue. There was only the sky, and there were stars beaconing shyly from the vast unknown. Among them, the pole of familiarity, and Yeonjun started noticing, with more clarity than ever, small indentations as well as variously-shaped craters in its milky white surface. The moon.
And dangling from it like an earring, a dark, elongated silhouette, something impossible to notice from afar but hard to miss when you're so close to the moon you can almost breathe in its dust.
Yeonjun stopped the rocket right in its vicinity, at what he hoped was the right distance for Mrs Sheep to make her jump. She had been awfully quiet the whole journey, but he supposed sheep are meek and silent like that.
He undid her seat belt, and Mrs Sheep carefully climbed onto the head of the rocket. That was when Yeonjun got a better glimpse of the object hanging from the moon disk—or rather, the person. What were they even doing there?
"Sorry. Am I in your way?"
Yeonjun craned his neck to get a full view of the source of that deep voice. It was a young man, tall and lean and hair full of moon dust, hands grabbing the edge of the celestial body.
"No, I think," Yeonjun answered. "Are we in your way? Do you need help?"
"Probably not. But I don't know what you've come all the way here for. And I'm good, thanks."
"Mrs Sheep right here has to jump over the moon," Yeonjun said, pointing a finger to her. He wasn't sure if it was worth explaining further. Taehyun had made it sound like the entire world except Yeonjun knew about Mrs Sheep's duty.
"Oh?" The boy turned his head to look at him, then at Mrs Sheep. He didn't seem to pay attention to the rocket, even though it was evidently the most unnatural object between the five present. "Er, of course! Don't mind me."
Yeonjun put his hands back on the steering wheel and waited for Mrs Sheep to make her move. She wiggled her bottom a few times, like cats do before they pounce, and jumped with the agility of a horse. Yeonjun drove the rocket the instant her feet left its surface, bringing it on the other side of the moon, closer to the hanging boy. He waited for her to land.
But Mrs Sheep was floating through space at a laughably small speed, following the circumference of the moon like the minute hand on a clock dial. Was it the lack of gravity? Magic? Some physics laws that get distorted in space? Yeonjun resolved not to give it too much thought and stay put. She was going to finish the jump right where she started it; not too soon, but safely.
After a minute or two of contemplation, he shifted his attention to the boy beside him, still clinging with stubbornness to the very moon Mrs Sheep was flying above. What if he fell? Yeonjun would have dived after him immediately, of course. But Kai had pointed out that the spaceship couldn't go down too fast, so he could've tried anything in his power to save him and still end up failing. What would his safety net have been if Yeonjun hadn't, by an outstanding luck, happened to pass by?
What was he doing there all by himself?
Yeonjun decided the last part was okay to verbalise.
"I'm trying to get the moon down from here."
Predictably, that left Yeonjun completely in the dark. The boy elaborated.
"Well... my task is to hang up the stars in the sky when it gets dark and sweep them away when the sun rises. Stars are tiny and easy to detach and reattach. But I've never managed to peel off the moon. It just... It's stuck up here. It won't budge. So I've spent all night hanging from it and waiting for gravity to do its job."
Yeonjun hummed, chin propped on the heel of his hand. It made perfect sense and no sense whatsoever at the same time. But he admired the guy's moxie.
"Isn't the moon supposed to stay up here?" Yeonjun asked. "I often see it in broad daylight."
"That's exactly because I can't take it off the sky," the boy said, visibly disappointed by his shortcomings. "The sun shines so bright you often can't see it, but it's always here. Even though it's not supposed to be. The moon belongs to the night, just like the sun belongs to the day. Oh! I just felt something." His voice gained a newfound excitement. "I think it started coming off. Do you see it?"
Yeonjun bent over a few degrees, then more, trusting his safety belt, and examined the edge of the disk. He squinted, angled his head, but he couldn't see any irregularity.
"Oh. I guess I'm starting to imagine things now," the boy said, with an empty laugh.
He had no reason to, but Yeonjun began feeling guilty. He searched his mind for something to move the conversation forward with.
"Is it also you who puts the sun on the sky? That one's a star too, I mean." Right? Yeonjun didn't want to seem too clueless in front of someone who was astronomy itself.
"No, it's not me." The boy used a hand to brush away some hair strands that started stinging his eyelids. He was hanging off the moon with one arm just as effortlessly as with two. "I don't know if there's someone who does it or if the sun simply moves out of its own will. I can only walk the sky at night."
Yeonjun nodded in understanding. "Sounds familiar," he said. "I can only fly early in the morning, and not too far from the plants I have to sprinkle dew on." A pause. "And definitely not in a rocket. This one is borrowed."
The boy blinked, much like a curious infant. "So you're the one who carries dew? That's cute."
Yeonjun wasn't sure whether he was genuinely being nice or meant it in the You sprinkle dew? That's cute. I can walk on the sky and glue stars on it and also hang off the moon as if it were a tree branch way. He accepted the compliment nevertheless.
"Does that mean you've got nothing left to do the rest of the day?"
"I could ask the same about you," Yeonjun remarked.
"True, but I said it first."
"Well. Most of the time I do deliveries for people and animals nearby." Yeonjun tried looking the boy in the eyes while talking, but since he was facing the moon and his outstretched arms were barricading his profile, it was hard to see much. He continued. "Food. Utensils. Decorations. Even had to bring two cubs from the kindergarten once."
"You sound very reliable."
"I sure hope I am."
"You gotta be. You've been trusted with both Mrs Sheep and an actual rocket."
Yeonjun thought it over for a bit. The boy might have had a point, and it made his heart swell.
"I don't do much in comparison," the boy said eventually. "I've got a vegetable garden behind my house, but I find it hard to take care of it in the sweltering heat we've been having." He sounded truly upset about it.
"I know," Yeonjun said, and he really did. There had been more and more days when the temperature didn't drop low enough for him to be able to sprinkle the dew drops. "But at least it's nice and cool up here. What I wouldn't do to let out steam every night among the st—WOAH."
Mrs Sheep's hooves hit the metal of the rocket with a solid clunk. Yeonjun was relieved to see her back in one piece, but also startled by her lightning strike appearance.
"Mission complete!" the boy observed. "Congrats. Children will sleep well."
"Keep that for after we make it back on the ground." Yeonjun stared into space for one second. "If we happen to meet again, that is."
"Even if we don't," the boy said, head thrown back so he could make eye contact with Yeonjun, "thanks for keeping me company."
"Yeah, right back at you." Yeonjun felt a surge of warmth all of a sudden, for an indiscernible reason. Possibly the approaching of dawn. "Are you sure you'll be okay out here?"
"Don't worry about me."
Frankly, Yeonjun wasn't going to, but it wasn't often that he saw a guy hanging from the moon like a fish on a hook, waiting for it to peel off. He couldn't help being a little concerned.
"Whatever you say." He fastened Mrs Sheep's seat belt, fingers fumbling with it for a few long moments due to her large cloak of wool, and gripped the descending lever. "Good luck. Have a nice day!"
The boy wished him the same, and then Yeonjun was gone, as quickly as the stars in the morning light. The moon was shrinking behind them, hiding its craters and indentations in the obscurity of distance.
"We didn't even introduce ourselves," Yeonjun said, half to himself, half to Mrs Sheep, who wasn't going to talk anyway. "How could I meet the man who decorates the night sky and not even ask him his name?"
***
With Mrs Sheep back home, the rocket in Kai's front yard, unscathed, and the first rays of sunlight emerging like a new-born's cooing, Yeonjun grabbed his basket of dew and set out to finish his job in the blink of an eye.
Not in the metaphorical sense. He always managed to complete the task faster than the eye can see.
He dipped his hand in the water, raised it over leaves, buds, petals, and stems, and released countless droplets of pure liquid by opening and closing his fist at a blinding speed, all sticking to the greenery like tiny beads of crystal. He immediately skipped to the next patch, and then to the other, covering entire meadows and glades without being noticed by a soul. When he finished, he hung the basket by a twig in his favourite oak and lay down on a hefty branch to take a quick nap.
That day, he felt it sharper than he had since summer started. It tickled his nostrils shortly after he closed his eyes. The telling dry breeze that preceded a heatwave.