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Renjun had always been an avid fan of magic.
Having to grow up with his family managing a local carnival, and his grandfather hosting magic shows every other night, it wasn’t a surprise that he took the myth to heart. He stayed up at night trying to see when the fairies will fetch his tooth, tried to peek outside the window to catch a glimpse of Santa delivering gifts, and talk to Man in Moon when he was lonely.
And now, at the age of 21, he almost, almost let the magic in his heart fade away.
Because when his family’s carnival shut down and suffered due to bankruptcy, how could he still believe that a sprinkle of magic dust would bring it back to life? When he felt how cold his grandfather’s hand was, with Man in Moon showing no signs of listening to his desperate pleas, how could there still be something left for him to believe in?
Fear had always been a stranger to Renjun, but during those moments, he felt like caving in. Every night he thought he heard the Boogeyman visit his room, haunting his dreams, pulling the tears out of Renjun’s eyes as if he never ran out of them.
Until someone sprinkled magic dust to whisk those tears away.
And slowly, Na Jaemin showed him how it’s not too late to still continue believing.
If there were words Renjun would use to describe Jaemin at first, those would be insufferable, annoying, difficult, impossible—he could go on, longer than the distances that the Easter Bunny could jump.
How could he not when Jaemin always pulled tricks at him, always talking back at him and had the two of them arguing over the most trivial of things? How could Renjun not see Jaemin as such when all Jaemin did back then was be the child that Renjun had to look after at university, due to the younger’s strict parents’ wish?
If it weren’t for the scholarship the Na’s had given him, Renjun wouldn’t have to meet Jaemin.
But if it weren’t for Jaemin, Renjun also wouldn’t know how good it feels to welcome the wonder inside his life again.
Renjun hadn’t seen it coming, really.
It wasn’t as grand as Psyche falling off a cliff and meeting Eros, and it also wasn’t the same as Orpheus going to the Underworld just so he could be with Eurydice again.
The magic that Jaemin brought was different, calmer...it was the slow rise of dawn after the darkest moments of the night before. The warm that seeps through your soul with a drink of hot chocolate during a cold winter night.
But Renjun should’ve seen it coming—how such love was too good to be true, and how such magic was wanted by the strongest of forces.
✰
The Crillon Ball is held annually to introduce the future successors of the biggest corps and companies of South Korea. Renjun, having to be a part-timer of a catering service, had the privilege to be there and witness the whole thing. Mark was with him, smoothening his apron and looking at his reflection for the nth time since they arrived.
“This is going to be so cool, I wish we were allowed to take pictures inside,” Mark says, looking at Renjun with a grin. He fishes out his phone and turns the front camera on, motioning for Renjun to join him. “We should at least keep a souvenir, right?”
Renjun merely raises an eyebrow. “If you were going to keep a souvenir, at least make it special.” He looks around and finds a dirty cloth on the floor, pointing at it with his lips. “Like that. Keep that.”
Mark rolls his eyes and keeps his phone instead, though the grin was still on his face and was impossible to miss. “You’re no fun. Loosen up a bit! We’re at a party, Renjun. You should at least fake a smile.”
Renjun does not fake a smile. “We’re at a party to work, idiot. We’re wearing aprons. Uniforms. The least that we should do is not fall on our feet when serving the food.”
“Yeah, I know, of course, but—” Mark’s words got cut off short when they’re called by their manager, ordering them to start serving the appetizers to the guests, as the program will start shortly.
They hurry, and it doesn’t take long before they carried trays with one hand, ushering towards their respective stations, wherein Renjun served the ladies, and Mark was apparently assigned to serve the young successors’ families.
It was a party for the 1% of the triangle, alright. Ladies of Renjun’s age are seated in their respective tables, wearing all sorts of jewelry that Renjun knows for sure costs more than everything he ate for the past 21 years of his life. They were chattering endlessly, and he caught sentences of arrogant bragging that merely made him want to throw up.
He found himself wondering then, how Jaemin must’ve looked in the other station. He knows Jaemin would be here; he’s the successor of the Na family. He probably wore a suit as elegant as the dresses he’s seeing right now, the younger’s hair styled differently from his usual messy one.
Renjun tries to ignore the way his heart flutters at the image of Jaemin, but a small, amused smile is etched on his face as he goes down the hallway, tray empty, mind full of Jaemin only. He thinks how Jaemin is now introduced to the world, and how there are a lot of opportunities laid out for the guy already.
He’s really, really, full of magic. One that Renjun admires the most.
Renjun passes by the station where Jaemin is at, and he contemplates whether to take a peek or not. He could just easily swoop in since he’s a waiter, and he’s there for a short while only—no harm could possibly be done by wanting to see how his friend is doing for the night, right?
Except, the clatter of heels peels his attention away from the door of the station, and he turns to see the coordinator of the night, a proud smile shown on her face. Her boastful eyes meet with Renjun’s, and she ushers him to go to the banquet hall before the main event of The Crillon Ball starts.
As soon as Renjun enters, he’s greeted by a completely different world. Much, much bigger than the station he was assigned to earlier. The young sons of various companies have lined up already at the center, and Renjun saw how the daughters that he had served earlier were already going through the other entrance of the hall, too.
Renjun sees a vase of pink roses displayed at the very front, and he realizes that it was time for “the dance”. His eyes scan the room to search for Jaemin, to see if the boy was already lined up with the others, but the coordinator ushers him further inside.
As he walks in and processes the extravagancy sprawled before him, he can’t help but realize that all of this is actually Jaemin’s life. The guy had always acted humble when they were together—hanging out with convenience store food as their meals and taking the bus to go wherever—that Renjun hasn’t thought about the fact that Jaemin has his own chauffeur and goes home to a mansion every night.
His heart feels heavy when he finally makes eye contact with whom he calls a personification of all things magical, the latter prepped up in a well-tailored navy suit, his hair pushed back perfectly to display his handsome features. The way Jaemin carried himself tonight made him seem standing proud and tall—a successor, indeed, for an already well-established company.
But Jaemin smiles at Renjun, and the cold and harsh demeanor that his stylist had set up for him tonight was seemingly blown away like puny specs of star dust.
Warm, Renjun thinks, his heart aching more than before, Jaemin has always been so warm.
The coordinator snaps Renjun out of his reverie, and he tears his gaze away from Jaemin’s to look at what the glacial world has to give him. He kneels down, and takes out the towel to wipe away the drink that one of the guests has spilled, vaguely hearing the coordinator instruct him to get another batch of drinks for the table after.
“The roses that we have here symbolize courage,” the host starts, but Renjun doesn’t look. Though, he listens. “Our gentlemen here will take the courage to ask whoever he wants to dance for the night; dance with a fine young lady for the whole world to see.”
At the corner of his eyes, Renjun sees photographers come nearer, anticipating to post this on every platform they had with them.
And then it dawns on him, with every family circling him, with every fancy food he’s been serving since earlier and with every media that has come to this event—Jaemin’s success is anticipated by many. The whole world wants to see Jaemin stand tall, follow his parents’ footsteps, and soar high after graduation.
Jaemin had a big jar of pixie dust to fill. Meanwhile Renjun...how much pixie dust does he even have with him to help Jaemin fill that jar?
He looks down at the stain he’s wiping, then to his uniform. His vision becomes blurry as the ache in his heart grows, as if it was being punched by the Minotaur over and over. He tries to hold back his tears as he finishes his work, too occupied to even notice that the cameras were now on him, that everyone was looking at him.
It takes a familiar voice calling his name to pull Renjun out of his thoughts.
And he pauses with what he’s doing, letting a few beats pass before he turns around and looks up at Jaemin, smiling softly at him as the younger holds out a pink rose.
The music stops, and the camera flashes become too bright that Renjun would’ve mistaken them as lightning. He becomes aware of the appalled faces looking at him, all of them incredulous of what’s happening.
All of them except for Jaemin.
Jaemin was looking at him like this was always meant to happen, when it shouldn’t be. Renjun’s just a mere side character in Jaemin’s fairytale-like life. That’s how the story should be written.
“Jaemin, I—” Renjun takes a shaky breath, “—I don’t belong here.”
“But you’re the one that I want to be with,” Jaemin insists, voice gentle as he kneels on one knee to be on the same level as Renjun. “You’re the one that I want to dance with tonight, the one that I want to dance with until all our hair’s gray.”
Renjun could almost feel the Minotaur slowly shattering his heart, and he shakes his head, the words merely stuck in his throat.
“Jaemin, stop this nonsense immediately,” Jaemin’s mother inserts herself in the picture, anger dancing in her eyes as she looks at the scene unfolding before her—and the whole world.
Nonsense.
Renjun looks away from Jaemin and decides to run. Run away from this scene, run away from Jaemin’s story, too, probably, and let the younger share the magic with someone else. But for the love of Man in Moon, he trips on his way to the exit, right in front of everybody to see how shattered he looks and how powerless he already is.
He tries standing up again, but his ankle aches, and he curses as he realizes he might’ve sprained it. The tears in his eyes are overflowing, and he finds it hard to even pray to whoever are up there to carry him far away from this place, farther than where the North Pole could be.
As he’s wiping the tears in his eyes he doesn’t notice how a familiar arm wraps around his waist and he’s startled, shaken eyes clashing with comforting ones. All of the neverending murmurs and camera flashes become a blur as Jaemin carefully places another arm underneath Renjun’s legs, carrying him away from the scene.
Renjun stares, maybe a bit too much, but he found himself not caring. He didn’t care if Jaemin’s parents were screaming his name, telling him to come back. He didn’t care if the cold air started to bite at his skin the moment they were outside.
All he could think of was Jaemin, holding him gently and telling him it’s okay. Jaemin, who looked at Renjun and smiled, carefully placing him on the bench and saying, “I’ll tell my driver to take you home, okay?”
It takes a bit too long for Renjun to answer, making small laughter come out of Jaemin’s lips as he lightly tapped Renjun’s forehead. “I’ll be with you. You’re in no condition to walk.”
Renjun adverts his gaze to his sprained ankle and nods. “...thank you.”
Jaemin removes his coat and drapes it over Renjun’s shoulders.
“I’ll be quick, don’t worry,” the younger assures him, “hopefully I still remember where we parked earlier—”
“Jaem,” Renjun calls, “let’s just stay here a bit.”
“But…” Jaemin reluctantly sits beside Renjun. “Are you sure you don’t want to rest back at home?”
Renjun shakes his head, and envelopes his cold hands around Jaemin’s warm ones, dragging his gaze towards the portion of the cosmos sprawled above them.
“It’s like the heavens wanted to show you all of its best stars, huh,” Renjun says. He looks over to see the other’s reaction, only to find Jaemin staring intently at the night sky, the moonlight reflecting off of his eyes. “It’s like you’re special this way.”
This makes Jaemin turn to Renjun, his eyebrow raised as he says, “Night sky or not, we’re special. You know that.”
A lump forms in Renjun’s throat, and he feels Jaemin squeeze his hand lightly before the other continues, “Trust me, the sky wouldn’t look this magical if you weren’t with me.”
Renjun looks at their clasped hands as Jaemin intertwines them together. The younger’s thumb brushes against his knuckles. Then, Jaemin lifts Renjun’s hands slowly towards his lips, and presses a chaste kiss on it.
Renjun’s heart swoons, slowly dropping from the rollercoaster ride it was at earlier.
“You’ll believe in us, right?” Jaemin asks, voice almost consumed by the cold gust of wind that passed by them. “No one could ever give me the same magical experience as you do.”
Renjun doesn’t realize he’s holding Jaemin’s hand tighter, but he doesn’t answer, too. His thoughts drag him back to the multiple times when Jaemin could’ve just given up on them, the multiple times when their magic was almost taken by numerous of circumstances, yet Jaemin was still here.
He chose to be with Renjun, still, and believe in the magic that they shared.
“You know…” Jaemin starts again, still grazing his thumb over Renjun’s knuckles. “There was a kid that told me this once. I was young back then, but I remembered what he told me when he sprinkled his magic dust on me.”
Renjun freezes in his seat, the story sounding familiar.
“He told me that magic only ever happens when you believe in it.”
Magic only ever happens when you believe in it, Renjun thinks at the same time.
His eyes meet with Jaemin’s, and suddenly he remembers the arrogant kid that he met at his family’s old carnival. A laugh slowly makes its way out of his lips, and he’s unable to control the happiness that is now consuming his chest.
“What? You don’t believe me?” Jaemin asks, but he’s laughing along.
Renjun shakes his head. “I never said anything.”
“But you’re laughing.”
Renjun keeps the smile on his face, and makes himself comfortable as he rests his head on Jaemin’s shoulder. “Jaemin?”
Jaemin rests his head on Renjun’s. “Hmm?”
“Do you believe in magic?”
“Well...no.” Jaemin chuckles. “You do, though. Magic. Aliens.”
“They’re real,” Renjun says, his finger tracing the constellations he could find on Jaemin’s palm. “If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be right here.”
“You think it’s magic that pulled us together?”
“Very.” Renjun’s sure this time, the doubt slowly melting away. “Only magic could ever pull two people together, amidst the sea of strangers.”
Renjun had always been an avid fan of magic.
In fact, he knows a lot of fairytales, myths, and folklore involving all sorts of wonder.
But no storybook could ever compare to the magic that he shared with the man beside him.
The magic that Jaemin brought was different. It was like finding your old childhood toy while cleaning up your room. It gave the same feeling as looking forward to summer vacation after tolerating the last few days of exams. It was events after events that made you tougher and kept you going.
It was the kind of magic that would be stronger than the moon above.