Work Text:
Kino’s hand trembles as it brushes against the wall, illuminating the line of tiny glass lamps one by one. He focuses on the movement, the calm of it, the easy predictability of each light as it flickers to life. Nevertheless, he only realizes that he’s biting his lip when he ends up drawing blood, tasting it on his tongue. His fingers leave the wall to apply pressure.
“You okay?” Yuto whispers. He’s right next to Kino, and recognizes the nervous habit. Kino sucks on the wound—if it even counts as that—and nods.
“Yeah,” he lies. “I’m fine. Wooseok’s farther ahead?”
“He went in first. Said he needed to clear his head.”
Kino chuckles, soft. It’s mostly to calm the ache in his own chest. “From what? This wouldn’t be his first try, or any of ours.”
“It is, at least...you know. Like this.”
The truth of it leaves both of them silent, the weight of it falling over their backs, hunching their shoulders. Yuto mutters something about it being colder in the workroom, and how he doesn’t mind all that much but he knows that Kino does (you shiver, he says), and before the latter can say anything he’s walking with Yuto’s black furred jacket draped over him. He doesn’t really need it, but Yuto’s dark eyes have a miserable sheen to them, so he slips his arms into the sleeves and crosses them over his chest.
They’re nearly around the corner, accompanied only by the sound of their echoing footsteps, when Yuto speaks again. He’s staring straight ahead.
“We’ve done this once before. It shouldn’t be that upsetting anymore.”
“Are you upset?”
“I’m…” Yuto’s gaze wavers; he looks at the ground, then back at Kino. “I don’t know. I feel...empty. Right here.” He presses his arm, now only covered with the thin sleeve of his black undershirt, into the tender skin right above his ribcage. “It’s like missing an organ I didn’t know I had. Now...the rest of me might not be enough.”
“It’ll have to be,” Kino says, trying to keep his voice steady. In reality, he wants to cry, put his head in his hands, or run back up the stairs and dive into the barrier of mist, timing be damned. He isn’t ready. All he adds, though, is a quiet, “And besides, I’ll help. We both will.”
“Do you think he thought we were ready?”
Kino stops at the last turn and glances back at Yuto, who gazes back at him with familiar desperation, probably just wanting to hear his voice. He doesn’t expect a real answer, but Kino, with his fragile soul and heart of glass, knows it. Of course he does. He definitely wouldn’t have stayed on this side of the mist if he didn’t.
“Yes. He was certain of it. That’s another reason why we have to do well.”
“But how do you know ?”
“If I tell you, you’re going to think I’m stupid.”
Yuto pleads at him with glittering, near-teary eyes.
Kino sighs and turns to the ceiling. “We weren’t late to the send-off because I slept in. There were...other reasons.”
--
Kino was running. There wasn’t much time before the send-off, and he wasn’t supposed to be out and about before their team’s numbers thinned again, but he couldn’t take it. He couldn’t. The rules didn’t give a damn for his heart, and his sentimental soul needed to see the workrooms the way they were now (the way they were supposed to be) before they changed forever.
Or for two years, but that didn’t matter. They would change, inevitably, as easily and unnoticeably as children grew up and flowers withered, and when Kino finally turned around and noticed it, then it would be too late. He couldn’t wait for that. He had to see it, to memorize it, scald it into his brain like a brand before time stole it from him again.
He’d already done the send-off once with their team’s first beyond the mist. Jinho was the oldest of the protectors, a constant that Kino had somehow never realized would be gone until he was, well, gone. Then it had hit him. The vine-like green markings that had appeared on Jinho’s hands and snaked up his arms had been beautiful at first, but as they darkened, they became a nightmare, a countdown to the last day. Kino had already felt sick then, and now it was agony knowing that Jinho didn’t have nearly as many of the markings as Hui did now. That fateful moment when all eight of them had stood around the barrier to say their goodbyes—at least it had been on time.
Hui had stayed beyond his capacity. The markings had gone past his arms, all the way up over his shoulders; a few circled his neck. They were nearly black now, instead of light green, months after he should have stepped through the mist. Jinho had still been able to muster up some energy, a little spark at his fingers here and there, simple tasks like lighting a fire or making a rainbow. Hui could no longer do any of that, and his eyes were ringed with the sort of tired purple that Kino had thought only humans could suffer. Nevertheless, he seemed mostly himself, and Kino was glad (a little guilty, but glad) that he was still able to give them directions, advice, his crinkle-eyed smiles that felt like a mother’s hug bottled.
At least, until today.
Kino’s feet pounded down the well-worn stone path and then down the slanted steps that led into the ground to the workrooms. Once it was dark enough, he pressed his fingers to the walls and the lights chased him like fireflies. He rounded all the right corners and headed down the long, familiar hallway that led to Hui’s workroom. He surged down it, adrenaline pushing him forward, and then burst into the familiar dim light of one of his favorite places in the world.
Somehow, in his mind, time slowed down. Hui looked up at him from his spot beside the concrete edge of the well, his hand emerging from the fathomless black, dripping stars. Distantly, Kino thought he could hear the children’s laughter from worlds that didn’t know him. They disappeared, though, as they fell back into the well’s depths.
“Aren’t the rest of you supposed to be getting ready?” Hui asked.
“I couldn’t. I had to be here. Today is the last chance I’ll have to see this place like this.”
“That’s a little dramatic, isn’t it?” Hui’s smile made his face even rounder. Kino already missed him so much he couldn’t put it into words. He still tried to, but his body rebelled against him and gave him tears, one dropping out of a traitorous eye, and then another, until it was just a flood. Hui’s stool clattered as it fell to the ground, and Kino looked up to let out a choked, horrified laugh as their current eldest member poked him in the forehead, sending him teetering back and forth. He tried to suck the tears back up into his nose; it didn’t work.
“I thought you cried all your tears when Jinho left.”
“Are you making fun of me?”
“Maybe,” Hui said with a grin. He stood and dragged the circular grey cap over from where he’d set it aside, grunting as he pulled it over the universe in the well’s depths. “Remember to close these. You never know what random stuff can sneak in. One time a dust mite got in and—” He shuddered. “Let’s just say I had to make a whole extra world to fix that.”
“I know,” Kino replied dully. “I was there.”
“Oh, you were, weren’t you?” Hui smiled, and there was something more there than his humor. Affection, maybe. Pride. Kino wanted to bury his face in his chest, but was immediately embarrassed by the thought of it. Hui caught the look on his face and his smile turned to a chuckle.
“When I leave, you’ll be free. Aren’t you excited about that?” He gestured around the room: at the well he’d just closed, the sinks full of liquids in various colors, the balls of clay on wheels and long grey treys, the stacks upon stacks of paper, the instruments on the wall, canvases and paints piled in corners. “I don’t use half of this stuff—most of it is yours, and Yuto’s. And Wooseok’s. I’m pretty sure that one there belongs to Yanan. What we create doesn’t belong to me as much as it belongs to all of us. All I’m doing is handing you and your friends the keys.”
“What if I don’t want the keys?” Kino demanded plaintively. Hui raised an eyebrow at him, and Kino realized what he was saying. He bit his lip until he, as always, bit too hard. “What if I don’t want them yet ?”
“Don’t you think Hongseok asked the same thing, when Jinho left? But look at him now. Look at how much he’s grown. He didn’t think he’d make a very good protector for the people beyond the cap of that well; now, some of them recognize him more than they ever recognized Jinho. He’s their hero, just like Jinho was for the people and worlds before him. Now, don’t you think you can do the same for me?”
“No,” Kino whispered. “At least not as well as you. They’ll notice . I can make worlds, but I can’t make them like you can. They’ll miss you, and I won’t be able to do anything about it. Even with Wooseok and Yuto’s help. We’re...we’re not you.”
“Good,” said Hui, suddenly earnest. In the face that Kino had found round and childish moments before, he now saw the Hui that the people who lived in their worlds saw: a man who was, first and foremost, a passionate creator. “Who would want to live in a universe designed by one person? You’ve made some of our most interesting worlds. What about that one where the people speak in song?”
Kino pursed his lips.
“And the one with five hundred variants of the same language? The one where people live in harmony with their mirror reflections? The one where birdsong opens a portal to a different galaxy?”
“We worked together,” he mumbled.
Hui beamed, patting his head. “Exactly. When I come back, this universe will be unrecognizable, and I can’t wait. You’ll have so much to show me. But right now...” He stood, brushing off his legs as he undid his apron. Several unlit stars fell off of it and rolled across the floor. “I’d better get going.”
“Wait—”
“I’ve waited a while already. That human plague was a bit of a mess.”
“I know, I know.” Kino reached out and grabbed onto Hui’s arm as the latter started to gather his things: a small bag on the ground, a pile of books, a dagger. “I get that you have to go, I—I’m not going to stop you. But aren’t you—aren’t you afraid? Of what’s beyond the mist? No one knows what happens when we go through it, just that you come back replenished with enough energy to last a lifetime.”
“Of course I’m afraid,” answered Hui. “But I was afraid when we created our first world, too. I was afraid when I had to make my first river, when I weaved an ocean out of those silly little pins we found in that drawer. I really thought there was no turning back. But it worked out, and we kept going. I was afraid, every time we sent a protector into the well, that one wouldn’t come back. But they always did. Or they chose to stay behind. Either way, we continued on.”
He smiled and pointed at the wall, still holding his bag. “Now, will you get those lights? We’re going to be late.”
--
“That’s not embarrassing at all,” Yuto tells Kino when he finishes. “I wish I’d talked to him too, before he left.”
Kino’s eyes just drill a hole into the ceiling. They’ve reached their workroom, which was Hui’s workroom just days ago. Inside, Wooseok can be heard tinkering away at whatever he’s working on.
“That wasn’t all I did though. I asked him a favor.”
“What?”
Kino’s ears burn. “We said goodbye to all his stuff. I asked him to. It was the last time I was going to see him, so you can’t blame me! We said it to the well, his drawers, that book with the folded-up pages…but you can’t tell anyone about that. Hongseok won’t let me live it down.”
Wooseok’s puttering noises stop and Kino immediately wants to melt into the floor.
“Oh no.”
“You did what ?” Wooseok demands, poking his head out of the workroom and into the hallway, a wide grin on his face.
“Nothing.”
“This is the best thing I’ve ever heard. I’m going to tell Hongseok.”
“You’re not going to do that.”
“Okay, I’ll tell Yanan, and then he’ll tell at least half of our worlds. They’ll believe him. They already believe him when he says—”
“Shut up! No. Don’t tell Yanan.”
“ I can tell Yanan,” Yuto comments, and then ducks as Kino swats at him. Yuto dives into the workroom as Wooseok also hurtles back inside, way too many feet of him shaking with his high-pitched screech of delight. Kino pounds after them, also yelling, but stops next to the well. The cap slipped off a little in the mayhem, and he can now see several of the stars in their universe whizzing through the well’s depths. Slowly, he yanks the cap fully off and bends over the edge.
“Anything new?” he asks Yuto, who moved to his side.
“Not yet.”
“We can add something now,” says Wooseok, cheeks still ruddy from running. His eyes, though, are thoughtful. “I just finished.” He raises his fingers. At first, Kino thinks they’re stars, but then he realizes what the small white specks fluttering off of Wooseok’s fingers are.
“Isn’t it a bit late? Winter is ending,” Yuto comments, frowning.
“Hui said we would be free without him,” Kino replies, cupping the snow in his hands. His own creator’s energy, free of any green tendrils or deadlines, rushes to his fingertips and sends snowflakes whirling into the well. “We’ll tell him about our first gift: spring snow.”