Chapter Text
Jimin has magic in his fingertips. It‘s unlike the magic that his childhood friend Taehyung possesses, who can paint the most beautiful pictures and make it look as easy as breathing. It‘s unlike his friend Jungkook‘s magic, who happens to be talented in every sport he tries, but remains indecisive on which one he would actually like to settle on.
No, Jimin’s magic is different from theirs, because contrary to Jungkook’s and Taehyung’s, Jimin’s magic is real.
As far as Jimin knows, it’s always been within him, the tingly feeling in his fingertips, the occasional sparks when he touches things he’s not supposed to touch, the surge of energy rushing through his veins like ocean waves crashing against a rock, splashing in all directions without control. He only noticed that something within him was different, was wrong, at the age of five, when his mother started to make him wear gloves in public. “He has allergies,” she had explained to his teachers before school trips, “please make sure he keeps his gloves on and doesn’t come in contact with plants.”
Until he was nine, Jimin’s knowledge on what an allergy was had been warped. For him, it meant blades of grass dying under his palms when he carelessly stumbled and fell to the ground, hands out front to soften the blow. It meant leaves falling off branches when accidentally brushing past them, and petals withering under his touch when curiosity got the better of him and he reached out to find out if they felt as silky as they looked.
When Taehyung told him one fateful afternoon in May that the doctor had said that he’s allergic to cats but it won’t stop him from petting them in the future regardless, Jimin had burst into tears, all red-faced and snotty, declaring their friendship to be over because he could not stand being friends with a cat murderer. It was on that day that his mother had to sit him down and explain to him that there were other types of allergies and that Taehyung’s touch would not harm any cats. Jimin had apologized to Taehyung the following day, and within an hour they were playing again with each other as if nothing had ever happened.
At twenty-four, Jimin knows that it’s not an allergy. Whatever it is that courses through his veins, it’s unnatural. He calls it magic, because that’s what his mother calls it as well, but she doesn’t have an explanation for what exactly it is either.
“It must be from your father’s side,” she used to say, but Jimin’s dad is a stranger that he had never met, a one-night stand at a conference in Seoul with grave consequences. Jimin was that grave consequence, an unplanned child to a single mother, who tried her best to both raise him and stay successful in her job. He would never admit it out loud, but secretly Jimin often thinks that he had been left behind on her road to success, being raised by Taehyung’s parents more than by her. She has always loved him though and never treated him as anything less than precious, and Jimin loves her for that. But he can’t help but wish that he had a father in his life too, someone to explain why whatever plant he comes in contact with inexplicably dies.
As a law of nature, just like any other human being, Jimin is drawn to what he can’t have like a moth to light. He loves plants: tiny ones, big ones, the ones with thorns and the ones that sting just as much as the blooming beauties. He likes to smell them, loves to watch bees collect nectar and pollen, has several succulents in his dorm room that he tends to with utmost gentleness and his collection keeps exponentially growing to his roommate Namjoon’s dismay, because the windowsill is so full of them that he can only tilt the window unless he bothers to move the pots.
Jimin never touches his succulents without gloves. Namjoon doesn’t quite believe him when he says that he’s allergic to all plants which is why he can’t touch them, but he chalks it up as an odd quirk and doesn't question Jimin any further. Jimin, to return the favor, keeps quiet about Namjoon’s strange obsession with supposedly occult objects that he keeps accumulating.
The only one who knows about Jimin’s curse is Taehyung. To him it’s nothing strange and he doesn’t question it, but he does urge Jimin to talk to Namjoon about it as his roommate is weirdly fascinated with all things supernatural – a quite unusual interest for a science major. “He’s going to think I’m insane and request a new roommate,” Jimin had argued with Taehyung one night over their third beer at a seedy student bar, “and I actually like him as my roommate so I’d rather not lose him.”
“The dude collects effigies on his shelf. It’s not like he should be one to judge,” Taehyung had huffed out, and that had been the end of that conversation.
___
Jimin wakes up to the chirping of birds and shivers, blindly grabbing for his sweater and pulling it over his head. It’s an early October morning and cold air seeps in through the seams of the tent he shares with Taehyung and Jungkook, the sun too weak this late into the year to make mornings feel cozy and warm. He runs a hand through his dark hair that sticks into all directions and looks over to see the other two still sound asleep. His phone says that it’s just after seven, and both Jungkook and Taehyung are heavy sleepers, so Jimin doesn’t expect them to get up anytime soon.
Once a year the three of them like to go on a short camping trip. It’s been a tradition of theirs since they were young, Taehyung and Jimin being best friends and starting out camping in Taehyung’s garden at the age of seven, and Jungkook having been the neighbour’s kid that moved next to Jimin when he was twelve. His mum had always forced Jimin to take Jungkook along when playing, until an honest friendship had developed between the three of them. Their camping trip is an annual thing, and as they grew older it was upgraded from Taehyung’s garden into the wilderness.
This year, they’re camping in the mountains near Seoul for three nights in October, because none of their busy schedules had allowed them come together any sooner with Jimin and Taehyung studying in Seoul while Jungkook had stayed behind in Busan, working in a convenience store and investing all his free time into all kinds of different sports.
Jimin crawls out of the tent as quietly as possible, the early morning dew moistening his hands and leaving behind wet patches on the fabric of his trousers. He puts on his shoes, closes the zip again and stretches. There’s a popping sound coming from his back and he groans. Only then does he realize that the sweater he had put on is in fact Taehyung’s green one and not his own, but he can’t be bothered to crawl back into the tent to change. It’s not like Taehyung will mind, although Jimin’s sweater is a bit too small for his upper body while Taehyung’s sweater on Jimin looks a bit like he’s drowning in it, sleeves going all the way down to his fingertips.
He finishes his morning routine and drinks a canned coffee – disgusting, but better than nothing – before contemplating on what to do next. Taehyung and Jungkook surely aren’t going to wake up for another two hours, and he doesn’t want to sit around the small clearing in the woods and twiddle his thumbs aimlessly. The reception on his phone is subpar, so he only checks kakaotalk briefly.
Looking longingly over to the trees, Jimin ponders if he should go for a walk. With Jungkook around, he has to stay on guard and wear his gloves, but lately he’s been itching to feel nature under the tips of his fingers again. He knows the danger of going into the woods by himself, especially if there’s no path, but the colorful autumn leaves look so enticing that he can almost imagine them calling out to him, beckoning him in. Besides, it’s not like he’s going to go far into the woods. He knows how to take care of himself in the wilderness. He’ll be fine. He has his phone with him should anything happen, and he’s not going to go deep into them anyway.
After throwing the empty can into the trash bag they had brought along, Jimin makes his way past the treeline. It takes only a few steps for the leaves to filter out the sunlight, and Jimin embraces the eerie stillness of the woods. Beneath his shoes, branches crack and foliage rustles, and he can hear the remaining leaves on the trees rustle in the wind. He spots a few mushrooms along the way, scattered flowers, scrambles over a fallen tree trunk and soaks in the atmosphere.
Although he knows that he shouldn’t because it’s going to kill them, Jimin reaches out for some of the plants along the way. When he touches a stinging nettle, the discomfort on his skin only lasts for seconds before the plant withers away – at first the place of contact between his finger and the leave, before it quickly spreads out. Jimin watches sadly and then he continues his walk. When his fingers accidentally brush against a tree trunk, he doesn’t dare turn back around and watch it slowly lose life, all coloured leaves soaring to the ground, never to be replaced by new ones again.
He stumbles over a blackberry bush that only has few berries left on its brittle branches and looks at them in contemplation. He knows that picking only one of them will kill the entire plant, but he hasn’t had breakfast except for the canned coffee and he loves blackberries. Going to work quickly, Jimin picks the four berries visible to him as fast as possible and eats them before they have a chance to rot, watching the shrub decay as he swallows them.
Something's very wrong about these parts of the woods. Jimin realizes that after a few more steps, as he suddenly sees a bluebottle shimmering amongst the earthy tones of wilted leaves on the ground. It’s not unusual per se to see a bluebottle in the beginnings of October, but it is rare to find them in the middle of the woods were only little sunlight can nurse it to bloom.
Jimin takes a few steps towards the flower full of curiosity, when he hears a raven’s guttural croak and stops in his tracks. He looks up at the treetops, but can’t see anything. Continuing in his track to the bluebottle, Jimin halts once more when suddenly – but no, it can’t be. His eyes must be deceiving him, because a thing such as peppermint growing in the wild woods somewhere in South Korea simply does not exist. And yet, Jimin is looking at one, knows that he’s not mistaken because it looks exactly like the one Jungkook’s mother has kept on the kitchen counter when they were young, using it to sweeten their lemonade. He wishes he had brought his gloves now, so he could pluck one of the leaves and rub it between his fingers to check for the smell, just to make sure.
Maybe if he gets just close enough to get a whiff...
Crouching down in front of the plant, Jimin brings his face as close as he dares to without touching it and breathes in, but he can’t smell anything yet. He leans in a bit further and tries again, but suddenly the croak of the raven startles him and he topples forward, brings his arms out to catch himself so he doesn’t land face-first in the plant. He manages to hold himself up in time, small twigs cutting into the skin of his palms, but the tip of his nose brushes against the nearest leaf of the peppermint shrub and as Jimin pushes himself back into a stable crouching position, he watches in dismay as the plant in front of him withers, the smell of peppermint heavy in his nostrils now.
“Dude,” a voice makes Jimin jump, lose his balance once again and fall on his butt with a pained whine, “what’s your problem walking around our garden and killing all our plants?”
Jimin looks up wide-eyed, only to be met with slanted eyes that glare him down. He scrambles up from the floor and dusts off his trousers hastily while awkwardly bowing to the stranger.
“I’m so so sorry! It was an accident.”
“Just like killing my blackberry shrub? Because I’m pretty sure I saw you deliberately picking the berries,” the man presses, and Jimin can’t help but blush furiously at having been caught.
“Technically that was an accident as well,” he admits, but the doubtful look on the stranger’s face makes it obvious that he doesn’t believe him.
Now that he’s standing upright, Jimin finally gets a good look at the stranger. They’re about the same height, which makes him a little less intimidating than when he was towering over Jimin with a menacing stare just seconds ago. His hair is white as snow, as is his skin for the matter, and the eyes that first caught Jimin’s attention – undoubtedly the man’s most enticing features – make Jimin think of a cat.
The strangers snorts, looking unimpressed. He wears a white wool tunic and grey trousers, a shawl draped over one shoulder that is cinched at the waist with a leather belt. There’s a reed basket in his hand that is filled with different plants as it seems. It’s an odd look, Jimin can’t help but notice, but he doesn’t have much time to ponder as the guy clicks his tongue in dismay to get Jimin’s attention.
“An accident?”, he scoffs. “Did you sleep when your parents taught you magic 101? It took fucking forever for Seokjin-hyung to grow peppermint in the woods. He’s going to be so disappointed to see his hard work being destroyed like that, and if there’s one thing you don’t want, it’s to be at the other end of hyung’s wrath. Fix it!”
Jimin gapes at the man open-mouthed, thoughts scrambled like eggs the way Namjoon likes them best in the morning.
“Fix it?” he asks feebly and swallows harshly, taking a step back from the man. His mind is stuck between the guy being an absolute weirdo and the dread of feeling the wrath of whoever that Seokjin-hyung is he’s talking about. “But I don’t know how.”
He sees the other man roll his eyes as if he was talking to a dense teenager. He holds up his hand, and Jimin squeaks in surprise as sparks start flying from his fingertips seemingly out of nowhere.
“Obviously with your magic, you dipstick.”
Too stunned to acknowledge what he just saw or the fact that this man calls Jimin’s unfortunate ability magic as well, the student stutters. “I can’t, really.”
This makes the other man huff. “Then you’re going to tell Seokjin-hyung just why you ruined his plants.”
Before Jimin knows what’s happening, the stranger grabs him by the wrist and drags him through the forest, his fingers holding him in a surprisingly strong grip for his small frame but softened through the fabric of Taehyung’s sweater, tripping over the uneven soil with a ton of questions going through his brain at once until they come to a small hut that looks straight out of a fairytale. The door is a round bow, and the outside is natural stone, helping it blend in with its surroundings. The gable roof is covered by wood shingles, and the windows are small and square-shaped.
The white-haired stranger opens the door without knocking, and the next second he ducks and curses as a raven whooshes out of the door above this head.
“Damn it, hyung, I told you to stop letting birds inside.”
“Yoongi, you’re back early!” A blond man by a stove waves with a wooden spoon in hand, drops of liquid splattering on the floor. He raises an eyebrow as he spots Jimin being dragged into the small hut by the stranger – Yoongi, that must be his name – before turning back to the stove to stir the pot on it. “And you brought a friend? That’s not like you at all.”
He, too, wears clothing that makes him look as if he had come from a medieval renaissance fair, although black in colour.
“A friend?” Yoongi snorts as he finally releases Jimin’s wrist. The young man rubs it tenderly, the stranger’s grip having been a tad bit too strong for his liking. “More like an enemy. That guy,” he points accusingly at Jimin, who shrinks into himself, “has destroyed your peppermint shrub and now pretends that he doesn’t know how to fix it.”
“I really don’t,” Jimin throws in desperately, but Yoongi isn’t having any of it judging by the seething glance he throws at the younger.
Seokjin turns back around to them, the pot at the stove forgotten, and only now does Jimin realize that what he had been calling a stove all along is nothing more than an open fire below a stone platter. His eyes quickly travel through the hut. The entire inside is made out of natural wood. There’s a wooden table and some wooden stools, some makeshift shelves with all sorts of ingredients and herbs on them, a sink with a bronze faucet, a door leading into another room and a wooden spiral staircase that, considering the size of the cabin from outside, can only lead straight to an attic so small that Jimin probably won’t be able to stand upright in it.. No lightbulbs are in sight, nor power outlets. Dried lavender hangs from the ceiling in bundles and it smells as if Jimin had stepped into a store that sells spices. Everything in this small hut looks unique and handmade, and if Jimin wasn’t so intimidated by the presence of the weird strangers, he would love to explore it, the crackling of the fire beneath the stove adding a homey feeling to the room.
He looks between the two people arguing about something, but Jimin has clinked out of the conversation by now, anxiously wondering about whether he had stumbled into the den of two crazy people. Living in the middle of the woods, with no electricity as it seems? That can only mean that these two don’t want to be found by anyone, and for some reason Jimin’s brain unhelpfully provides him with the worst-case scenario it can conjure up at the moment: cannibals.
Sweat starts to gather on the back of his neck and his throat feels dry. Why did he let himself get pulled along by this guy in the first place? Jungkook had called him a pushover often enough when Jimin complied to other people’s wishes and had told him to grow a spine. He ought to have listened to Jungkook, then he probably wouldn’t be in this situation right now.
“Listen,” Jimin interrupts the bickering of the two, “I’m really sorry, but I need to go. My friends are probably searching for me already.”
He glances between them and hopes that whatever their intentions are – at the moment murder is the only thought at the front of his brain, no matter how likeable the man at the stove appears to be – will be discouraged when they hear that he’s not alone in the woods. Surely they wouldn’t want the hassle of people combing this place and finding them, if they live this isolated from the rest of the civilization of South Korea.
“What about my plants though?” Seokjin asks with a pout.
Jimin bows deeply and takes a small but hopefully unnoticeable step back towards the entrance door. He’s ready to make a fucking run for it at this point if he needs to. “I’m really sorry, it wasn’t my intention to ruin them. I’ll buy you a new peppermint shrub, I promise. But I really need to leave.”
Seokjin’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You’ll… buy me one?”
He looks over to Yoongi, who shrugs his shoulders helplessly. “I told you, hyung. He’s acting strange.”
The student wants to laugh at that remark, but he bites his tongue. He’s acting strange? Obviously this guy must have truly lost his mind, because Jimin is not the one wearing outdated clothes from the Middle Ages, and if he thinks back to it, he’s not the one who had sparks shoot out of his fingertips mere minutes ago. Although that must have been Jimin’s overactive imagination, right? Because shooting fire out of the tips of your fingers is not humanly possible, but then again neither is killing plants with a simple touch, and Jimin’s head starts to spin the more he thinks about it.
He takes another step back, but this time Seokjin notices. He cocks his head to the side and makes a gesture with his hand as if he was about to throw a door close. Not a second later, the entrance door behind Jimin bangs shut, making him jump.
“Yoongi-ah,” Seokjin says, as Jimin freezes up in his spot. Between sparks shooting from fingertips and doors closing without being touched, dread has settled in his stomach that now makes his heart race in genuine fear, “are you trying to tell me that this guy who oozes so much energy that the air in the room buzzes with it has no idea that he’s a mage?”
Yoongi looks bored by now. “That’s what I’ve said, isn’t it? He might possess magic, but as far as he knows he’s just a rude plant-killing idiot.”
Seokjin abandons the stove and comes over to them, wooden spoon still in his hand. Jimin wants to back up against the door, but at this point he’s completely frozen in his spot, unable to move.
“You know that you can kill plants?” Seokjin asks him curiously, and Jimin answers with a feeble nod. Seokjin’s eyebrows draw together in confusion. “But you don’t know why?”
Jimin shakes his head back and forth as quickly as he can, and Seokjin looks at him incredulously. He feels like a rare piece in a museum exhibition by now, being eyed as if he was a curiosity.
“So you can’t control it?” Jimin, again, frantically shakes his head and prays to all the gods he doesn’t believe in that he’ll make it out of this hut alive and unharmed, a possibility that seems more and more unlikely with every passing second because these people he ended up with are fucking insane. “And what did your parents say about that?”
“My mum has called it an allergy,” he croaks. Seokjin looks taken aback at that revelation.
Yoongi, who had been seemingly uninterested in what was being talked about up until now, chimes back into the conversation. “And your father?”
Jimin shakes his head once again. “I’ve never met him.”
Both of them share a disbelieving look with each other.
“Let me get this straight,” Yoongi says, “you’re saying that you know that you can kill plants and you do it, but you’ve never… thought to look into it?”
“I can’t kill them,” Jimin defends himself. “It’s not like I can control it. It just happens! And how the fuck am I supposed to look into that? If I tell someone, I’m going to end up as a human guinea pig.”
Yoongi inhales sharply and Seokjin’s wooden spoon clutters to the floor. A whoosh of cold air shoots through the hut although all windows are closed, and the fire under the stone platter dies out.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Yoongi breathes out and snaps his fingers, the fire under the stove flickering to life again as if it had never been blown out in the first place, “we’ve got a rogue mage on our hands.”
___
Jimin sits on one of the four wooden chairs around the small table, a steaming cup of rooibos tea in front of him. Seokjin is perched on another chair with a matching mug that looks like it’s been made in a beginners pottery class. Yoongi has taken over stove duties, sometimes stirring whatever concoction they have simmering in the pot.
His head is still spinning as he tries to wrap his mind around what’s happened in the last hour of his life. He watches Seokjin make the white candle in the middle of the table flicker with a flick of his finger, getting lost in his thoughts while staring at the flame. He’s not sure of the time, but by now he thinks that Jungkook and Taehyung must be worried about him. Maybe he should text them, but at this point he’s not even sure if he knows how to type out a word in the Korean language. His whole world is suddenly turned upside down out of nowhere, and it’s hard to process that.
“Are you okay, Jimin-ssi?” Seokjin asks eventually after accidentally blowing out the candle and whining to Yoongi to light it up again, the white-haired man stoically refusing his request. “You look kind of pale.”
“I… don’t know,” he replies truthfully, blinking to get out of his trance now that the flame has been extinguished and the smoke disappeared. “I’m confused.”
Seokjin looks at him with pity. “That’s okay. If someone had walked up to me and told me that I’m a wizard at the age of twenty-four, I also would have been confused.”
“Was that a Harry Potter reference?” Yoongi groans from the stove and turns around to look at Jimin insistently. “If he tries to tell you anything in Harry Potter is real, do not believe him. He’s just fucking with you. We’re not wizards, we’re mages.”
Seokjin pouts, twirls his finger and the fire below the stone platter goes out. Yoongi curses, clicks his fingers once to rekindle it, and then clicks them a second time, causing a fireball to appear out of thin air in front of Seokjin’s face, making the older one yelp in surprise.
The corners of Jimin’s mouth pull up into the illusion of a smile, but they drop again as quickly when his eyes fall on the wilted flower pot next to the candle, courtesy of him being made to demonstrate to Seokjin his ability. His magic. His curse, as he likes to call it most days, doomed to only ever look at nature from a distance or else he destroys what he loves.
“Interesting,” the blond man had said as he reached out to touch one of the leaves of the dead plant as if to verify that Jimin wasn’t just playing a trick on his mind and it was really wilted, “and you said that you’ve always been capable of this. No one taught you how to?”
Here’s what Jimin has learned by now, although he’s not entirely sure how much of it he actually wants to believe: according to Seokjin and Yoongi, he’s a mage. A kind of being that possesses magical powers, like something straight out of a fairytale book. It fits the odd little cabin he finds himself in, with the odd men in odd clothing doing odd tricks involving fire and air that Jimin can’t quite wrap his mind around.
“I bet his affinity is earthbound”, Seokjin had said.
“No shit,” Yoongi had replied sarcastically, “how’d you guess that?”
“What does that even mean?” Jimin had asked, but his quiet question had perished in the whirlwind of Yoongi’s and Seokjin’s argument, both of them too distracted over their perplexed fascination with him to pay attention.
So Jimin’s magic is apparently real magic. Which, he’s known that all along but now it’s confirmed and he doesn’t know how to think about that, because it’s real and he’ll have to live with the fact that it’s a part of his life forever now. And apparently, he’s not the only one with real magic powers, because Yoongi can tinker with fire and Seokjin can control air and magic is real what the fuck.
Seokjin claims that if no one taught him how to use magic, he shouldn’t be able to use it in the first place. “We get taught how to use it at a young age, but if no one teaches you, it usually doesn’t manifest.” He also tells Jimin that there’s more to his abilities than just killing plants; it just seems that his subconsciousness has only tapped into that part of his magic, and because he’s never learned how to handle it, he doesn’t have the ability to stop it.
“Essentially for some reason you can control one aspect of your magic. Or more like, one of them has manifested and you have absolutely no control over it.”
To some degree he’s convinced that this is still only a dream, but he’s burned his tongue on the too hot tea, and the pain felt too realistic for him to still be asleep. And it’s not like he didn’t suspect that he possesses actual magic, having been confronted with it all his life – but what the fuck is he supposed to do now that it’s suddenly been confirmed? That he’s found others that seem to be just like him. Crazy recluses, on top of that, living in a cottage in the middle of the woods. So what does that say about him then? Namjoon would have an aneurism if he heard about this.
“We could potentially find your father,” Seokjin offers eventually, “if that’s something you would want. The magic community is very tight-knit, and the element you’re bound to runs through your family’s blood. It wouldn’t be too hard.”
Jimin shakes his head and fiddles with the cup. He’s never wanted to meet his dad, his mum having done an excellent job at raising him and Taehyung’s father being an amazing substitute to a real one, treating him as if he was his own son. He has no interest in meeting his father now, after all these years. He would only be a stranger to him, and he has no intention to get to know him closer.
“We don’t have to,” Seokjin backtracks. “but what we really should do is develop your magic. Because no offense, but the fact that some of it is constantly present freaks me out.”
“It sounds like you’re a ticking time-bomb,” Yoongi deadpans. “It could potentially explode, and no one wants to see that happening.”
Jimin lets out a sigh and crosses his arms on the table, resting his forehead on them. He’s surprised when a hand suddenly ruffles his hair.
“It’s going to be okay,” Seokjin assures him, “Yoongi-ah and I will help you!”
When Jimin stumbles back out of the woods into the clearing with guidance from Yoongi, he feels disoriented, as if he’s jumped through a portal into his old world again. As soon as Taehyung and Jungkook spot him, they come running over looking worried sick.
“Where have you been?” Taehyung asks, grabbing him by the shoulders and shaking him slightly. Jimin blinks at him dazedly, not able to provide an answer. “You’ve been gone for hours! We were ready to send out a search troop!”
“You forgot your gloves! I was scared you might have an allergic shock,” Jungkook boomed, drawing Jimin’s attention to him as he gave him a once-over. Jimin would laugh at the naivety of their younger friend, especially more so than ever, if he didn’t feel so out of it.
“I’m fine,” Jimin croaks. “Really, I’m fine. I just lost track of time and got a bit lost, but I’m back now. Everything’s fine.”
He turns back to the woods, and for a second he thinks that he still sees Yoongi’s silhouette hiding behind the trees, but then he blinks and it is gone, nothing more but a mirage. And while Jungkook and Taehyung tear him a new one for all the worries he’s put them threw, Jimin wonders if any of it had been real at all.