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‘Nice to meet you,’ the young man says as he sits down next to Jeongguk. There’s a small smile on his full lips, a sparkle of light in his dark eyes. His black hair falls into his eyes in an elegant. Jeongguk has never met this person before, never even seen them walking through the halls of the university before. And yet his name rises to his mind before the words spill over the man’s lips. ‘I’m…’
‘… Park Jimin,’ the boy who’d sat down next to him says. There’s a smudge of dirt on his cheek but his military uniform still looks clean, new. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Jeongguk-ssi.’
The café is crowded, a sea of noise trapped within colourful walls. It takes more effort than Jeongguk is used to, to understand what Jimin is saying. Jimin’s fingers make the keyboard clack at a speed completely foreign to Jeongguk’s own clumsy clicking.
‘Are you from Busan, Jeongguk-ssi?’ Jimin asks, eyes darting up for a quick seconds as he asks the question before settling on his screen again.
‘I am,’ Jeongguk mumbles, feeling colour rise to his cheeks. He knows that his Busan accent still tinges his words despite how hard he tries to mask it. ‘Is it that easy to spot?’
Jimin throws his head back to laugh. ‘Only to those who know what to listen for, don’t worry.’ His voice is so heavy with a Busan accent that it almost doesn’t sound like the Jimin he knows anymore. ‘It’ll fade, you’ll see. I mean, look at me! And I’ve only been here a year longer than you!’
Jeongguk grumbles wordlessly in response, and Jimin chuckles. Jimin’s hand comes up and ruffles Jeongguk’s hair quickly. Jeongguk freezes at the touch, at the feel of fingers scratching at his scalp. At his confused look, Jimin only offers a small smile.
‘Why do you keep doing that?’ Jeongguk grumbles.
Jimin laughs, something bright and clear despite the dirt and sweat that clings to them in the oppressive heat and the dark circles that linger under both of their yes. ‘You’re like a puppy! All that’s missing is a dog tail!’
‘I’m not a dog.’
‘True. Maybe more of a bunny, with floppy ears. You know the kind, the tasty ones with the soft fur.’
Jeongguk’s hand flies to his matted hair. It’s grown long, reaching almost to his jaw.
‘I’m not tasty though,’ he says.
‘Hmm, I think you could be quite tasty once cleaned.’
Jeongguk only huffs, but doesn’t say anything as Jimin chuckles beside him.
‘Here.’
The moment Jeongguk’s eyes leave his phone screen, a cup of steaming hot coffee is pressed into his hand. He almost yelps at the sudden heat that almost burns his palm, the sound that escapes him instead is strangled. He glares up at where Jimin as looking at him with an amused grin.
‘You looked like you needed it,’ Jimin says as he slides onto the couch next to him. ‘You should sleep more.’ His finger traces the thin skin below Jeongguk’s eyes, darkened by the lack of sleep from the past few days.
‘I need to finish this first,’ Jeongguk sighs. His essay is just as dreadfully unfinished as it had been hours ago (his twitter account has had a surge in activity though). All he wants is to curl up on the couch in his apartment with his game console in hand and a bowl of snacks next to him. Or maybe to go to the gym for the first time in over a week, he feels like a limp noodle.
‘When’s the deadline? Have you eaten? Hyung will make you dinner.’ Jimin doesn’t even wait for an answer before getting up again, plucking Jeongguk’s phone from his hand as he strides to Jeongguk’s small kitchen.
‘Tomorrow evening,’ Jeongguk answers, cradling the cup of coffee close to his chest. The heat reaches through the thick material of his sweater, curling around his sternum. The screen of his laptop is less horribly bright with Jimin’s noise surrounding him.
‘Hmm. Then I’ll make you dinner and you’ll sit down with me and we’ll talk for a bit before you get back to it. And then you’ll sleep for a few hours. How about that? You need to take care of yourself Guk-ah.’
‘I know.’
There’s the sound of pots and pans moving around, metallic and echoing. Jeongguk closes his eyes, waits for the sound to chase the erring thoughts from his head. The rooms smells of coffee and cinnamon.
‘Here, eat this.’
The nutrition bar is obviously broken, hanging limply from Jimin’s hand.
‘I can’t take that. It’s yours,’ Jeongguk says softly, pushing Jimin’s hand back to the man’s chest.
Jimin’s eyes are dark, his cheeks sunken from hunger. His lips are pressed together until they’ve gone white.
‘Take it. You still need to grow. Hyung isn’t hungry.’
That’s a lie. Jeongguk knows it. And Jimin knows that Jeongguk knows it. Still, Jeongguk doesn’t say anything. The hunger gnawing at his stomach is too painful for him to really think about saying no. Still, he only eat half of the bar, pressing the other half back into Jimin’s hand.
‘I’m not hungry anymore.’
Jimin smiles a little, a wan little thing that barely reaches his eyes.
‘If you say so, bun.’
Jeongguk sinks against Jimin’s side, where their bony frames fit into each other like badly cut puzzle pieces. Jimin smells of dirt and sweat and a sweet tinge of cinnamon. Jimin’s fingers in his hair are more comforting than any food in his stomach could ever be.
Jeongguk is aware that there’s a lot Jimin isn’t telling him. They have a two year age difference, but Jimin is only one year above him in university. Jimin will gladly hug him and help him with anything he needs but never asks for anything in return. Sometimes Jimin will disappear for days on end, not a single message as a warning or reassurance, only to reappear in Jeongguk’s apartment as if nothing happened. Jeongguk doesn’t know where Jimin lives and Jimin has never offered to take him home. Jimin studies physics but barely ever studies despite passing with flying colours. Jimin has a scar on his stomach. The big, jagged white kind that means there is a backstory.
And sometimes Jimin will look at him with eyes as dark as a starless sky, an expression Jeongguk can’t quite place on his face.
Jimin hasn’t answered – or appeared in Jeongguk’s apartment – in four days now. And Jeongguk knows that these disappearances can sometimes last up to a week, but those are rare and he’s getting more and more antsy as the days pass. There’s no more food in his fridge.
The silence in his room is oppressive, suffocating. Sometimes he’ll turn on music even if just to make sure that he has not suddenly become a ghost. It doesn’t make the crushing weight on his chest any lighter. Even when he cooks himself the sound of pots and pans doesn’t echo, merely metallic in a way that is eerily familiar and sends shivers down his back.
Worst perhaps, are the dreams. He doesn’t see anything in these dreams, everything a pure black. But the smell of blood and dirt makes his lungs ache and the sounds of gunshots and screams surround him from everywhere. Sometimes he hears someone with a voice eerily resembling Jimin’s screaming his name. They appear only when Jimin is gone, when his chest feels constricted and the silence too heavy. He’ll turn on every single light in his apartment and turn on music as loudly as he dares to in the middle of the night.
His gaming console is on, but his thumbs aren’t moving. He can see the flickering images on the screen in front of him but they barely register. He can hear a key in the lock – he’d never given Jimin a key but that hadn’t ever kept him out – and the sound is almost deafening after all the silence.
The door clicks open, shoes dropping before the soft pad of feet approaching.
‘Hey.’ Jimin’s voice wraps around him like a blanket, soft and warm and infinitely comforting. ‘How are you, bun? Have you eaten yet?’
‘No,’ Jeongguk says softly and lets Jimin’s scolding roll over him. The welcome back sits heavy on his tongue.
‘It’s so silent,’ Jeongguk notes, his fingers running over the straps of his backpack as they trudge through the forest. Next to him, Jimin suddenly stops in his tracks, head shooting up. ‘The birds have stopped chirping,’ he continues.
‘Get down!’ Jimin yells and all of the men surrounding them drop down in unison. Jimin’s body crashes against Jeongguk’s back and they go tumbling down a small hill. The gunshots break through the silence like glass. Words in a foreign tongue are yelled, familiar words are screamed. The rifle in Jeongguk’s hand is heavy, unwieldy. Jimin’s body is still covering his, even though he has pushed himself up into a crouch.
‘Stay down,’ Jimin hisses at him, before lunging upwards, over the crest of the small hill, rifle pressed against his shoulder.
Jeongguk knows he isn’t supposed to stay down, knows he should leap up and help his comrades. But the gunshots are loud, the smell of gunpowder and smoke makes his lungs feel as if they were on fire. And so it takes a few moments before he can gather the courage to disobey Jimin’s orders. He struggles upwards, towards the ringing sounds. The rifle goes from unwieldy to familiar. He knows how to shoot. He was the best sharpshooter in this whole team, damn it.
But the target on the other end of the scope are moving, living humans, not paper cutouts. And rather than the faint sound of tearing paper, this bullet makes someone scream, makes blood cover green uniforms. It’s just as easy as the paper cutouts and yet ten times harder. The trigger feels stiff.
It doesn’t matter.
‘Jeongguk!’ Jimin’s voice screams.
The air is cold with the first signs of winter. The last few leaves cling to the trees in the park. Jeongguk’s breath comes out in little silvery clouds.
His phone is heavy in his pocket. Jimin had asked him to come to an unfamiliar address, on the other side of the park. His heart had almost beaten out of his chest, painfully thudding against his ribcage. Would he finally get to know where Jimin lived? Another part of him had been more wary. Jimin hadn’t said anything, just told him to bring clothes for a sleep-over. After this long, would Jimin just let him come over, just like that?
The dead leaves crunch underneath his shoes. The people on the path flutter past in a colourful array of coats. And then a dash of orange flashes across the path, stopping just barely outside the bushes on the other side of the path. Its head comes up and turns in Jeongguk’s direction. The fox’s tail is tipped in black, as are the tips of its ears. For a moment Jeongguk stops walking, looking at the small fox that stands stock still next to the path despite the curses thrown in its direction by the other people walking along. It’s not looking at him, he tells himself. Just in his general direction. There’s probably someone with food behind or near him.
It feels like its looking at him though.
It’s the first time Jeongguk has ever seen a fox, he knows that. And yet he somehow knows that the black tips to its ears and tails mean something. They’re supposed to be white. And black tips means… means…. The fox ducks into the bushes and disappears. The weird discomfort lodged in his chest diffuses. The thought gone. It’s probably just something he’d read on the internet.
‘You see that fox?’
‘Hmm.’
‘When you see a fox with a black-tipped tail like that, you should follow it.’
‘Why?’
‘They’re spirits. Of a sort. They’ll bring you to safety.’
‘I didn’t know you believed in spirits.’
‘Why wouldn’t I, if I’ve got a bun spirit sitting next to me, hm?’
The address Jimin had sent him is not the place Jimin lives, that much is clear. Jeongguk tries not to feel too disappointment, but a bitter taste coats his tongue anyway. Instead, it’s a car rental, and Jimin waits for him leaning against the wall with his phone in his hand. Jimin’s hair is now orange rather than its usual black, a late night dyeing adventure that had made Jeongguk feel as if he were walking on clouds for days afterwards.
‘I just got my driver’s license,’ Jimin says in explanation at Jeongguk’s bemused expression, ‘and I thought we could both benefit from a few hours outside of the gross city air. See some stars maybe?’
Jeongguk nods, because it does sound good. The disappointment lingers, but the bitter taste is replaced by cinnamon as Jimin presses a candy to his lips before ruffling his hair.
‘Let’s go, bun.’
The car ride is filled with music and they both sing along at the top of their lungs. Whenever a song neither of them likes is being played, they open the windows and let the wind whirl through the inside of the car, cold and cutting into their skin. The buildings make place for trees and the disappointment fades away, replaced by sugary sweetness and cheery songs.
And once they’re safely ensconced in the trees, green surrounding them and sheltering them from both wind and sight, they lay out a blanket and lay down to look at the stars that dot the sky. There’s more of them than Jeongguk can remember having ever seen, brilliantly bright. And yet he knows where to look for the Big Dipper, for the Pegasus and Andromeda. When Jimin points them out, Jeongguk doesn’t question how he knows them, this boy from the same city as Jeongguk where the lights are too bright for any stars to shine.
‘And those faint stars over there, those are Vulpecula,’ Jimin tells him, ‘the little fox.’
‘And what is its myth?’ Jeongguk asks. He shuffles closer to Jimin, until he can put his head on Jimin’s shoulder. He’s taller, but that doesn’t really matter. What matters are the fingers gently tugging at his hair and scratching at his scalp.
Jimin chuckles lightly.
‘It doesn’t have any. It was just given that name by some European astronomer or other, along with the goose just in front, there.’
‘Weird,’ Jeongguk notes. ‘Considering there’s so many myths about foxes.’
The silence lingers for a few seconds too long. Just barely long enough for Jeongguk’s thoughts to fall back to the fox he’d seen in the park, with it’s black-tipped ears and tail.
‘Yeah,’ Jimin whispers. ‘I suppose so.’
‘Do you see those stars above? That’s Pegasus, the winged horse. The myth says it jumped out of the neck of the beheaded Gorgon Medusa.’
‘Who’s that?’ Jeongguk asks, he’s curled up against Jimin’s side. The fire heats up his legs and Jimin is steady on solid against his side. The sky, usually so far away and cold feels a bit less unreachable with Jimin’s arm around his shoulder.
‘A woman with snakes for hair, whose gaze could turn everyone into stone. It’s a Greek myth.’
Jeongguk hums.
‘And those?’ he asks as he points to a faint line of stars just barely visible through the branches.
Jimin’s hand that had been pointed at the sky falls back to his side. His arm tightens around Jeongguk’s shoulders.
‘Nothing. Isn’t your neck starting to hurt, tilted back like that? We should go to sleep.’
‘Okay,’ Jeongguk whispers in agreement. But once they’ve both laid down, curled up around each other he can’t help but look up at the faint line of stars again.
Morning comes in shades of grey. Jeongguk is alone. The car is still there next to him, the blanket rumpled underneath him. But the clearing is otherwise empty. Jimin is gone.
Jeongguk wipes the sleep from his eyes and sits huddled on the blanket, arms wrapped around his knees as his eyes dart over the trees. He’s never been here before, he’s absolutely sure of that. To be honest, he isn’t even sure he’s ever been here before but why… in the grey light of dawn, the trees loom large and threatening and it makes his chest tighten. His ears ring faintly with something that is neither silence nor sound. A dull roar maybe, the blood flowing through his veins. But that isn’t entirely accurate either. A scream, more like, muted but without start nor end.
A bird takes off from a branch, and its chirping cuts through the screaming for just long enough for Jeongguk to shake his head and get to his feet. He feels cold all over and yet there’s sweat coating his skin. Maybe, if he gets to his phone, he can call Jimin and tell him to come back. But, what if is this one of these disappearances? What if Jimin isn’t coming back? What if….
‘Jeongguk? Look, I found some berries not far from here.’
Jeongguk whips around, to where Jimin is standing between two trees, cupped hands full of red berries. Except Jimin isn’t wearing the skinny jeans he’d been wearing the day before, nor the dark green sweater that had made Jeongguk say he looked like a reverse carrot. No, Jimin is wearing dark green all over in a camouflage pattern, his hair is boring black again. Sturdy boots adorn his feet and there’s a huge backpack on his bag, a rifle dangling from his shoulder.
And there’s blood trickling down his hands, where there had been berries but moments before.
The scream builds in his chest, ripping through his throat and tearing at his tongue. He stumbles backwards as Jimin looks up from his hands and Jeongguk can finally see his face. Sallow skin pulled taught across his bones, sunken eyes that are completely black without even a sliver of white to be seen. His foot trips over nothing but he goes crashing down, back hitting the ground and head hitting the wheel. The pain jolts through his entire body, dull and sharp in all the wrong places. But that doesn’t stop him and he clambers to his feet again. Something is wrong – no, everything is right, finally – and he needs to get out of here to….
Jimin stands before him, hair orange, sweater green and hands devoid of either berries or blood.
‘Jeongguk? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Did you get hurt? Why did you scream? Is your head okay?’
‘I…’
But these words settle heavily in lungs instead, pulling him down, down, down.
‘I’m okay,’ he says with a little smile that is not genuine. He knows Jimin knows it’s not. ‘Just got a fright is all.’
There’s blood all over Jimin’s hands, even a few spatters of it on his cheeks. It’s the only thing Jeongguk can focus on or he will drown in the pain coming in waves from his abdomen. He knows he’s dying, he knows he is, because there are four fox tails – tipped in black, ‘they’ll bring you to safety’- waving around frantically behind Jimin.
‘Jeongguk! Guk-ah! Look at me, bun, look at me. Don’t look away, you hear? Stay with me. You’ll be okay, we’ll be okay. Don’t close your eyes, bun, please, Jeongguk, please, don’t close your eyes.’
Jimin’s tears feel hot against his skin, but he can’t taste their salt on his tongue, only metallic blood and smoky gunpowder.
‘Jeongguk, baby, don’t leave me now, please.’
‘Hey, hyung,’ the words hurt, thick with blood and thin of breath. ‘I love you, always. Please don’t cry.’
‘Please, Guk-ah, please don’t leave me, don’t …’
‘Jimin.’ The trees rush past the car window, the sky now a clear blue. There is no music on, no sound but the wind coming through half-open windows and the dull roar of the engine. ‘What are you hiding from me?’
Jeongguk turns to look at him, at this man who means the world to him and yet is but half a story. Jimin is looking forward, eyes dark and lips pressed together. The words not said in the minute that follows fill the car more surely than the wind does, stealing all the air away.
And then Jimin sighs, something long and so very tired.
‘It’s a long story.’
‘I have time.’
‘Then let me tell you…
the tale of a gumiho.
A fox with nine tails, ears and tails dipped in ink, that sometimes take the shape of a
man, to visit mortals. They’re tricksters at heart, you see. Neither evil nor good. But you should never be afraid of them, bun, for I promise you they will never hurt you.
They live forever, gumiho’s. The longer they live the more tails they have, until they reach nine and then they are immortal.
They have this bead that grants knowledge of the universe if a human swallows it.
Sometimes, when they take the shape of a human, they mingle in their midst. And one day, one such a gumiho, a young one, with just barely four tails, accidentally got drafted into the army.
Once a human has swallowed it, they have to look at the sky, the land and the people they will get all this knowledge but if
Once there, this gumiho met a young man with the nose and teeth of a bunny and a smile more brilliant than any star.
they forget to look at one of these, they will simply get some powers and not the knowledge they all seek.
They became friends, a gumiho and a bunny, through hunger and cold and many nights looking up at the stars at
And this power, it can be anything, from keen sight to healing to
Andromeda and Pegasus and Orion and never Vulpecula, for that is the constellation of foxes.
reincarnation.
And one day the bunny soldier got shot and almost bled out under the gumiho’s hand. So they gave it the one thing they cherished most, the bead they carried at their throat.
But a gumiho without its bead is barely a gumiho at all. They do not age but they lose what made them a gumiho in the first place, their
The soldier died under the gumiho’s hands and the gumiho erred for years, lost and without anything to live for, no hope left to carry them forward until
fox form.
they saw a young man with the same nose and the same teeth and the same name and the same smile.
Still, some choose to give it to their lovers in the hope that it might grant them immortal life so that they may forever remain alongside one another. All in the hope that one day they will have someone to look up with at the stars and say
And the gumiho befriended the soldier who’d once been his only friend and lover and together they looked up at the stars, just so the gumiho could say
‘that is the little fox’
‘that is the little fox’
‘and in front is’
‘the goose’
‘that is me’
‘and that is you’
‘forever in the sky’
‘together.’