Chapter Text
Sunwoo saw Kevin first, waving from a table near the window. Changmin was beside him, looking animated as he told some story, pausing to grin and tilt his chin at Sunwoo across the cafe. Sunwoo thought it was just the two of them at first, his view partly blocked by another table of people standing up to leave. But then he rounded the obstruction and saw the third head at the table, bent over a drink, pale hair glinting in the sunlight slanting through the window.
Sunwoo was opening his mouth to call a greeting when that head lifted, eyes meeting his and brightening, and –
Sunwoo stumbled to a stop a few feet from the table. He stared. The most beautiful boy Sunwoo had ever seen widened his eyes, his lips parting.
“Sunwoo?” It was one word, but the tone was as clear and inviting as the sound of bells over the water. Sunwoo would follow the voice over a cliff.
“Sunwoo, sit down,” he heard someone else say, but he couldn’t look away. The boy’s lashes trembled over dark, depthless eyes. His hair fell in bright arcing strands over his forehead, kissing the sharp line of his cheekbones. His eyes had been laughing and pleased at first, but now they looked sombre, and Sunwoo’s heart broke for whatever he did to disappoint him. He wanted to fall to his knees and touch the boy’s hands. He wanted –
“Sit down,” Kevin said, sounding panicked. “Holy shit, Chanhee, turn it off, turn it off.”
Sunwoo let himself get manhandled into a seat, still staring across the table. He was crying, he realised distantly, tears rolling slowly down his cheeks.
“I can’t,” the vision was saying, and he wasn’t looking at Sunwoo now – Sunwoo’s heart splintered – his eyes darting between Kevin and Changmin. “It’s not working, I can’t make it – shit, shit, fuck.”
Changmin stood, dragging the beautiful boy up by his elbow. Sunwoo heard himself make a noise that was almost a growl, distressed about the rough treatment. He tried to push to his feet, but then Kevin was heavy on his shoulders pushing him down again, his incredulous panicked laughter in Sunwoo’s ears.
Changmin spared Sunwoo a bright, curious look. Then he was pulling the beautiful boy away. Some heads at other tables were starting to turn, startled gazes fixing on the ethereal vision Changmin was hustling along by the elbow. But when the boy turned to look over his shoulder, it was at Sunwoo. His gaze was shining with worry and pain as it briefly met Sunwoo’s, and Sunwoo tried to reach after him. But he was too dazed to put up any serious opposition when Kevin and his stringy noodle arms wrestled Sunwoo back into his chair.
“Fuuuuuuuuuck,” Kevin breathed. The vision and Changmin had disappeared down the hallway towards the cafe’s bathroom.
Sunwoo finally turned to look at Kevin beside him. He blinked, and blinked again. His mouth opened and closed as he tried to re-find his words and his vocal chords.
“Wow,” Kevin said. “I’ve never seen him lose control of it that badly. In public. Holy shit.”
“Wha …” Sunwoo managed. He was still crying. He swiped his sleeve over his face, trying to stop. It felt as though his head was full of shining fog and bells. The fog was slowly starting to disperse, though.
“He’s going to be so mortified. He should be mortified, that was so bad. Are you okay? Nod once if you wouldn’t follow a pretty face into traffic.”
Sunwoo swallowed. “Can I have a drink of water?” he asked in a small voice.
Kevin produced a water bottle from his bag. Sunwoo took a sip and rubbed at his cheeks, trying to clean away the tear tracks. He felt trembly, and like the top layer of his emotions had been scraped away, leaving him raw and vulnerable. He still yearned to – something. His head was foggy.
Changmin came back, winding between the tables and dropping into his chair.
“Where’s –?” Sunwoo almost had a name to ask about, but it escaped him when he tried to reach for it, his thoughts too scattered.
“Still in the bathroom,” Changmin said. He said it in a half sing-song sort of way, but there was a serious air to him. “He’s going to stay there until he’s sure he’s got the thing under control.”
Changmin moved somebody's iced Americano out of the way so he could reach across the table and take Sunwoo’s hand, playing with Sunwoo’s fingers as he regarded him. “Give it a minute,” he advised Sunwoo. “Your poor fragile heart. Just a baby.”
Sunwoo gripped back, squeezing his eyes shut as he marshalled his thoughts. He felt Kevin’s cautious hand land on his back and start rubbing warm circles.
“What the fuck, though?” Sunwoo managed, eventually.
Changmin burst into bright laughter. “He’ll want us to wait so he can explain it,” he said, tapping Sunwoo’s hand as he pulled his own away.
Kevin made a doubtful face. “He’s probably hoping the bathroom floor swallows him right now so he doesn’t have to have this conversation. But I agree he should tell you himself.”
Changmin just laughed again.
It was another five minutes of Sunwoo sipping water and finally starting to feel normal again before Kevin’s eyes fixed on something over Sunwoo’s shoulder. Sunwoo turned quickly to look.
It was Chanhee, squeezing between two chairs at the next table – the people sitting there barely looked at him this time – before coming to a stop a foot from Sunwoo.
It was Chanhee.
He was biting his lip. His pale dyed hair fell into his eyes on one side, and he had one hand gripping the elbow of his other arm, fingers wrinkling the hem of his salmon-coloured sleeve. He looked worried and a bit small, and his knees were kind of knobbly under his usual shorts, and there was a scrape on his shin from where he’d tripped on a step yesterday. Sunwoo had been with him. They’d gone to get boba because Chanhee was stressed about his group assignment.
It was just Chanhee.
“Oh, thank god,” Kevin said. “You found your off switch, then.”
Sunwoo pushed back his chair, scrambling to his feet. His legs were trembling with some kind of fight-or-flight instinct.
He could see, now: Chanhee’s dark eyes, Chanhee’s cheekbones, Chanhee’s mouth falling into an awkward wince at Sunwoo’s reaction. Sunwoo couldn’t understand how he’d thought Chanhee was a stranger. How those features could have looked so …
Sunwoo’s stomach was a tight, awful ball of stress and embarrassment. He was horribly afraid he was going to cry again.
“Well, this is the worst possible way this could have gone,” Chanhee said. His voice was strained.
“Sit down, Sunwoo,” Kevin said kindly. Sunwoo sat. Chanhee worked his way around to the other side of the table and sat too.
“Why did you look like that?” Sunwoo demanded.
“I can’t just look hot sometimes?” Chanhee asked weakly.
“Choi Chanhee,” Kevin said, and Chanhee winced again.
“Sorry, I know. This is really hard, all right! This is harder than when I told you.”
Everything each of them had said since the beginning reinforced the fact that they’d all known this secret, whatever it was. That Sunwoo was the only one Chanhee hadn’t shared it with.
Sunwoo fumbled for his backpack, grabbing it off the floor beside him. He pulled it to his chest. “I’m going,” he said. “You can text me when you work out what you want to tell or whatever, hyung, I’m just going to –”
Chanhee lunged across the table, grabbing Sunwoo’s wrist. He looked remorseful. “I’m telling you, I swear I’m telling you, Sunwoo.”
Sunwoo stared at Chanhee’s fingers wrapped around his wrist. There was still a delicate strength to them. Sunwoo still felt a kind of nauseous thrill from the contact, even though that luminous beauty from before had fallen away.
Sunwoo heard Chanhee draw in a ragged breath, then let it out with a whistling sound as he whined, “This is so embarrassing, though.”
“But I think it makes you so interesting,” Changmin said.
Chanhee took his hand back so he could swipe half-heartedly at Changmin. “Okay,” he said, turning back to Sunwoo. He pressed his hands to his cheeks, steepling his fingers over his mouth. “Okay,” and he lowered his voice this time, keeping the volume below the hubbub of cafe sounds. “So I am not entirely human.”
He met Sunwoo’s eyes as he said it, his own eyes anxious.
Sunwoo didn’t know what his own expression was doing, but he nodded.
Chanhee looked relieved to have made a start. “It’s not even a big deal!” he said. “It’s just a family thing. A few generations back one of my relatives got, um –”
“Cuddly,” Kevin offered.
“– with something pretty and umm monstrous, and we inherited some … things.” He chewed on a fingernail, seeking out Sunwoo’s eyes again.
Chanhee looked so nervous that Sunwoo wanted to reassure him. He still didn’t really understand anything, though.
“You didn’t look monstrous, hyung,” he said softly.
“I can look different than that,” Chanhee said, his mouth twisting. “There’s another form, that – it’s not sexy.”
Changmin snaked an arm around Chanhee’s neck, pulling Chanhee in and tucking his chin over Chanhee’s shoulder. Chanhee swayed with it, closing his eyes for a second in what looked like gratitude. He was sitting with his back to the window. The light through the glass gave his hair and the line of his cheek a soft, warm halo.
“Anyway,” Chanhee said, opening his eyes and straightening. “The creature, my ancestress, we don’t really know what she was. I’ve tried to research it, find something in folklore, but it doesn’t match up very well with anything I’ve read.” He palmed the back of his neck, his elbows drawn close to his sides. All his body language was pulled in on itself. “I don’t know if that’s because the folk tales got things wrong or because what we inherited just changed a lot, when it got mixed with human genes. But we think she must have been one of the creatures that –” He paused. “I mean, I really don’t think she was a gumiho, it doesn’t fit, but you know how gumiho were supposed to bewitch and lure people and then eat, um, their livers? We think she was one of the creatures who – probably lured people. Used her glamour to dazzle them into following her, and then, um.”
“Ate them,” Changmin said.
“But I don’t eat people!” Chanhee said. “I couldn’t even if I wanted to. My teeth aren’t that sharp, even the – and I don’t use the glamour on purpose, our mum was really strict when we were growing up.” He chewed anxiously on one of his knuckles. “It’s really just a nuisance when I slip up and the glamour comes out. It’s not normally that strong. I’m sorry, Sunwoo.” The last words were low, weighted with regret.
Sunwoo shrugged, looking down at the table and then back up. “It’s okay, hyung,” he said quietly.
Changmin and Chanhee shared a look full of silent communication, and then Changmin shifted his chair closer to Sunwoo, looping his arm through Sunwoo’s elbow. “No one’s ever cried about it before, I don’t think,” Changmin said, brushing at the stains on Sunwoo’s cheek with the back of his fingers.
Sunwoo screwed up his face, leaning away from him. Changmin cackled as he hauled him back in.
Sunwoo looked back over at Chanhee. Chanhee was still glowing softly in the light from the window. His eyes looked soft too, and almost silvery, as if there was moonlight in them.
Sunwoo shivered, biting his lip. “Oh um, I think …”
Kevin jerked his head around to look at Chanhee. “Oh my god, seriously?” he said.
Chanhee groaned and buried his face in Kevin’s shoulder. Kevin stiffened and looked down at him, faintly alarmed. “I’m not that immune, you idiot,” he hissed.
Sunwoo wasn’t immune. It wasn’t bad yet, but it was really hard to look away from the curve of Chanhee’s cheek, half-hidden against Kevin’s shirt. Sunwoo’s mouth was dry. His heart felt tight.
“Oops,” Changmin said. “Come on, fragile baby. Choi Chanhee, try not to drown any sailors today.”
Sunwoo let Changmin tug him out of his chair and shove his backpack into his arms again.
Changmin grabbed his hand and led him away towards the door. When Sunwoo turned around for a last look, Chanhee had lifted his head from Kevin’s shoulder, his eyes full of moonlight and sorrow.
Sunwoo made a helpless, strangled sound in his throat. Changmin opened the cafe door and pushed him through it.
It took about a block for Sunwoo to get his head straight this time. Changmin kept his arm threaded through Sunwoo’s elbow, occasionally making some nonsense remark as they walked.
“Hyung,” Sunwoo interrupted him after a while. “You’re not a folklore monster, right?”
Changmin dropped his head onto Sunwoo’s shoulder. “I’m not. I’m just naturally this cute.”
Sunwoo nodded. “How long have you known?” He tried to make his voice casual, but he knew it wouldn’t fool Changmin.
Changmin hummed. “A couple of years,” he said. He shot Sunwoo an apologetic look. “He wanted to tell someone, I think, and he knew I liked weird things and I wouldn’t judge.”
Sunwoo hunched his shoulders. “He thought I would judge?”
Changmin hooked his arms around both sides of Sunwoo’s shoulders. “That’s not what I meant.”
Sunwoo nodded again, looking down at their feet moving on the pavement.
“Kevin knows because they’re roommates,” Changmin said. “It’s hard not to slip up sometimes when you’re living with someone.”
Sunwoo sighed, letting his shoulders slump. “Yeah,” he said.
Changmin hesitated. “And Younghoon hyung knows,” he said.
Younghoon was not Chanhee’s roommate.
“He’s really sensitive,” Changmin explained. “He was getting affected by it, even when Chanhee was just normal, sometimes. Chanhee didn’t think it was fair not to tell him.”
God, it wasn’t a competition. Sunwoo should not be feeling inadequate because he didn’t have a special sensitivity to lure magic.
He could hardly imagine being more sensitive to it, anyway. Even now, when Sunwoo thought back to the cafe, it felt as though an irresistible lassitude might flow into his limbs – a force dragging him like the tide towards that ethereal version of Chanhee.
“I’ve met his family a few times,” Sunwoo said, leaving the Younghoon issue behind with an effort. “They seemed really normal. Kind of high-strung, like Chanhee hyung, and really smart, but normal.”
Changmin hummed. “Lots of families seem normal,” he said.
“Yeah,” Sunwoo sighed.
He bonked his head lightly against Changmin’s, untwining his arm and stepping away. “I’m okay now, hyung,” he said. “I think I’m gonna go and find somewhere where I can just think for a bit.”
Changmin opened his mouth, and Sunwoo said, “I haven’t forgotten about the different start time for practice tomorrow.”
Changmin looked satisfied.
It was only Changmin’s amateur crew that Sunwoo was part of – he didn’t do formal dance training like Changmin did – but there wasn’t any kind of dancing that Changmin didn’t take seriously. The fact that Sunwoo had just found out, in the most overwhelming way possible, that his friend was a supernatural creature – well, that definitely wouldn’t count as a reason to skip, for Changmin.
They were only a block away from campus, so when he left Changmin Sunwoo turned and headed in that direction. He’d go find a quiet corner in the library, maybe. He had reading to do before his next class, although the chances of him being able to concentrate on it were slim.
He dug out his earbuds, unlocking his phone and hitting shuffle on whatever playlist he’d been listening to last.
The music helped. It took the world that half-step further away, leaving him in his own head as he walked, free to think.
In Sunwoo’s first year of high school, he thought he’d seen a ghost.
He’d been walking home from soccer practice. It was summer so it wasn’t full dark yet, a pale halo of lighter sky along the horizon where it showed between buildings. He’d been listening to music then, too, mouthing along to the rap verse, when he saw a flash of something lighter in the shadow between two buildings.
He’d thought it was a dog at first. Only then it seemed to be moving wrongly for a dog, too fast and fluid. Too high in the air.
There hadn’t been anyone else at the same end of the street as Sunwoo. When the shape moved again – when it seemed like the pale maybe-a-dog lifted its head to look at him, with that same jerky wrong movement – Sunwoo’s nerve had broken and he’d gone rocketing away up the street, his school bag thunking against his tailbone as he ran.
Maybe it hadn’t been a ghost. But he’d told his friends about it, that he’d seen a ghost after practice. It had definitely felt at least seventy percent like a real ghost encounter.
Sunwoo had always at least partly believed in the supernatural – in ghosts and other things like that. He wasn’t closed off to the idea. Nervous, for sure, but open to it.
So the idea that Chanhee’s great-great-grandmother, or whoever she was, had been some kind of dangerous fey creature who may possibly have eaten people’s livers – that that was a thing that someone’s great-great-grandmother could be – didn’t feel so impossible to fit into his worldview.
Some people were part creature, and sometimes they could show a different kind of face to the world: all right then.
But that other version of Chanhee – the way the two Chanhees seemed to be superimposed over each other when Sunwoo thought of him now, each one fading in and out of view – that was a lot harder to deal with.
Chanhee hadn’t been one of the friends Sunwoo told about that maybe-a-ghost encounter. They hadn’t been very close in high school – the age difference had loomed a lot larger, back then. But they had lived in the same neighbourhood, and gone to the same high school and caught the same bus in the mornings, and their parents had known each other a little.
If they ran into each other and Chanhee wasn’t with his older friends, or even sometimes if he was, Chanhee would smile at him and ask Sunwoo how soccer practice went. Sometimes he’d treat Sunwoo to something from the convenience store.
One time when Sunwoo was fifteen and his little sister was on a sleepover, their parents made Sunwoo come along to a wedding where it turned out he and Choi Chanhee were the only young people present.
At the reception they’d sat against the wall together near the refreshment table, their legs stretched out into the path of the adults trying to get to the bathroom, so the boys were constantly having to shift their feet up out of the way. They’d sung along dorkily to the old Cho Yongpil songs on the reception playlist, and Chanhee had told Sunwoo about how interested he was in photography at the moment. He’d cocked his head crookedly and said that Sunwoo would make a good photography subject, because he was kind of kinetic.
Their knees had bumped up against each other all night, and Sunwoo had felt fizzy under his skin; floating, almost, in a space outside of normal time.
He recognised later that he’d developed a crush that night – thinking for weeks about Chanhee’s long legs and his crooked head tilt and Cho Yongpil songs. But they still weren’t friends really, and it had faded – the feeling had subsided more than a year before Sunwoo figured out that it meant something when he felt like that around a boy.
An Epik High song came on shuffle as Sunwoo reached campus. He wove around the bollards blocking the path, and the other people streaming in and out, shoving his hands into his jacket pockets. He let his stride adjust to the beat, slower, his shoulders swaying.
When Sunwoo started university back at the beginning of this year, he’d found out through the parent grapevine that Chanhee was at the same uni Sunwoo had gotten into. The parent grapevine had also managed to pass their respective KKTs along to each other, so that Chanhee could help Sunwoo get adjusted.
Sunwoo might have been embarrassed about that, except that Chanhee messaged him straight away, and met up with him on campus the same day. His eyes had brightened and his mouth had fallen into a smile when he spotted Sunwoo, like Sunwoo was a precious schoolfriend Chanhee was glad to reconnect with.
And it was different, straight away, from when they were younger. It was like being here, being university students together, made them peers in some way that they couldn’t be in high school.
That first day, Chanhee showed Sunwoo around campus, gossiping about things that had happened at this location or that one. When Sunwoo was sceptical (Are you sure you should believe so many urban legends, hyung) Chanhee grasped his arm in indignation, laughing and demanding to be believed, until Sunwoo was pretending not to believe anything Chanhee told him – even that the shady grass under the tree near those steps was a nice place to sit – just to make Chanhee laugh.
It didn’t end up taking Sunwoo that long to make other friends. His natural extroversion reasserted itself once he felt steadier on his feet. Plus his roommate in the student dorms was an outgoing ball of energy, which helped.
So Sunwoo had Eric – which meant a lot of arguing with Eric about noise (Eric’s) and mess (Sunwoo’s), but also always having someone around who was good company. And through Chanhee Sunwoo met Changmin and Kevin. He met Hyunjun in his English class, and Sunwoo convinced him to come join Changmin’s dance crew with him. And he met Haknyeon when they struck up a conversation in the dorm laundry back in the third week of classes – the time Eric had demanded Sunwoo wash every piece of clothing that was lying on the floor before he was allowed back in their room.
And there were others: the other members of the dance crew, the guys he sometimes kicked a ball around with, classmates Sunwoo knew well enough to sit with in lectures or talk to on campus, even if they weren’t close friends.
But Chanhee was his first friend here. And things with him were different, compared to all Sunwoo’s other friendships. Mainly because, after the first few months, it didn’t feel like just a friendship.
Sunwoo was almost sure he wasn’t wrong about that. That the laughter and teasing and Chanhee pretending to be offended, and being tactile in a way that Sunwoo wasn’t but liked, and how bright and soft Chanhee’s eyes were when he looked over at Sunwoo sometimes – that that was all going somewhere.
The way everything felt lighter and fizzier to Sunwoo when they hung out together: a warmer and realer and sweeter version of that baby crush he’d fallen into at the wedding reception. Sunwoo was almost sure that it wasn’t only him feeling that.
Sunwoo had thought he understood Chanhee – he’d thought he saw him, he got him. Choi Chanhee who was silly and flirty and cool and uncool, and sometimes felt like a caring hyung but sometimes felt younger than Sunwoo too.
Sunwoo never saw a hint of that other Chanhee: the dangerous, fey one who sucked all the breath from Sunwoo’s chest and left him gasping.
Or if there had been hints, they’d sailed over his head. For years and years.
*
I’m sorry. I didn’t want that to happen.
Sunwoo crossed his legs on his bed. He chewed on his knuckle as he looked at Chanhee’s text.
Which part was Chanhee sorry about? The question was burning a hole inside Sunwoo.
it’s ok hyung, Sunwoo texted back eventually. i’m sorry if i found out before you wanted to tell me?
I didn’t want to tell you, Chanhee replied.
… that part then. Not sorry that Sunwoo learned about it in such a messy way. Sorry Sunwoo had learned about it at all.
Chanhee didn’t owe it to Sunwoo to tell him, of course he didn’t. It was a pretty personal secret.
But did he tell everyone else but Sunwoo because he still thought of Sunwoo as that kid from the neighbourhood, too young and dumb to share more complicated truths with?
This thing between them that had been lighting up this whole year for Sunwoo – was it such a casual, fairweather thing for Chanhee that he didn’t think Sunwoo would ever need to know this about him?
Sorry, Chanhee sent again. I told Changmin I’d come round after your practice tomorrow. We can talk then.
*
Changmin didn’t mention the Chanhee thing when Sunwoo turned up for dance practice, or seem to be thinking about it at all. It was only Sunwoo feeling like the whole world was different.
Changmin was trying to work out something with the sound system, and he waved a distracted hand at Sunwoo and told him to go partner up with Jaehyun hyung for warm-up stretches.
Sunwoo dropped down cross-legged in front of Jaehyun. Jaehyun had already started stretching. “Ah, hyung,” Sunwoo said, taking hold of his hands to help him lean further forward between his split legs, “I know you can do it. The muscles have just atrophied a bit from age.”
Jaehyun squeaked at the strain. “Yah, I’m a grad student, I’m not dead,” he said. He sounded fond, though.
It felt good to be here – a comfortable belonging feeling. And once they started practice for real, Sunwoo found it much easier to lose himself in it than he’d expected. It was a relief to focus on the steps and the feeling of his body doing what he wanted it to. Some of the tension he’d been holding onto was already seeping out of him, leaving him lighter.
They were practising for a busking set – nothing serious, they were just going to do it near uni – some idol covers and one more challenging street piece. They were at the stage where the pieces were all coming together finally, and they could all see and feel how it was supposed to be, instead of only Changmin being able to see that. Sunwoo could tell that everyone’s mood was up, not just his, everyone buoyed by feeling things go right. He caught Hyunjun’s eye on a turn and they shared elated smiles.
Sunwoo was still in a good mood when they wrapped up. He scrubbed his hand through his sweaty hair, trying to make it a bit more presentable.
He didn’t need to be weird about Chanhee’s thing, he decided. Not like he could just turn off the part of him that was hurt at not being told, but he didn’t have to dwell on it.
If Sunwoo could be chill about things, then maybe Chanhee would want to tell him more – would let Sunwoo understand that other side of him.
So first: be chill.
He was crouching down to find his phone in his bag when he heard Yoojung call out a greeting. Sunwoo looked up.
Chanhee was leaning in through the half open door, avoiding stepping inside the practice space because he hadn’t taken his shoes off. He was wearing navy blue shorts and an overlong striped shirt, tucked in on one side – Sunwoo assumed for fashion, but he was bad at telling.
Sunwoo got squirmy butterflies in his stomach, but just the normal ones. Only a bit more anxious than usual.
Chanhee called back a greeting to Yoojung, giving a half wave to her and to Doyeon at her side. Doyeon’s hands were busy fixing Yoojung’s hair, but she smiled and called back a, “Hey, Chanhee hyung.”
“You guys just finished up?” Chanhee asked, looking around. He sounded normal too, his voice clear and sweet.
“Twenty minutes ago,” Changmin called, cheerfully lying. “You’re late, how rude.”
Chanhee gave Changmin a long offended look, his eyes widened. Changmin cackled, and Chanhee moved on to saying hello to the others – he was a frequent enough visitor to their practices that he knew everyone here.
Chanhee found Sunwoo last. Sunwoo stood up, grabbing the strap of his bag and shrugging it onto his shoulder. He gave Chanhee a small wave and a smaller, uncertain smile.
Chanhee bit his lip, some emotion leaping in his eyes. Then the effect rolled over Sunwoo like a truck.
He gasped, his lungs too small for the breath he needed.
He couldn’t see or think about anything other than Chanhee, standing in the doorway, his long legs crossed at the ankles. Sunwoo’s eyes snagged for a heart-stopping moment on that delicate turn of ankle to calf; the impossibly graceful line of legs to hips; the dip of his waist. Sunwoo’s throat scraped dry as he swallowed.
Chanhee’s top button was unbuttoned, his throat and the barest hint of collarbone bared. His hair just brushed the top of his collar. The line of his throat was intoxicating, inviting touch, except that you wouldn’t dare. Sunwoo wouldn’t dare.
“Oh,” Chanhee said, low, and Sunwoo’s gaze jumped to his mouth, trembling and perfect; to his eyes, wide and dark and seeming to gather in and mirror all of Sunwoo’s yearning back to him.
“Shit,” Sunwoo breathed, teary. His knees had gone weak.
“Damn it,” Chanhee said, raggedly upset. Then he stepped back and pulled the door closed in front of him with a thump, cutting him off from Sunwoo’s view.
A moment later Changmin reached the door too. “Sorry guys gotta go, great practice!” he called, following Chanhee through.
Sunwoo’s knees gave out.
Someone grabbed his waist before he could hit the floor. He blinked, disoriented, and discovered it was Hyunjun.
“Are you dizzy?” Hyunjun asked. “Maybe you should drink some water.”
Hyunjun seemed distracted though, glancing back at the door even while he shifted his hand to Sunwoo’s elbow, helping him find his feet. “Did Chanhee hyung do something different with his hair?” Hyunjun asked, a little dazed. “He looked hotter than usual, right?”
*
well that was STUPID, Sunwoo texted, when he was home and showered and sitting up on his bed, towelling his hair and glaring at his phone.
Chanhee responded immediately; maybe he’d been staring at his phone too. It’s not like I’m doing it on purpose!
we were supposed to talk today. when can we TALK hyung
The wait for Chanhee’s next message was longer. Finally, Chanhee sent, Is Eric there?
Sunwoo glanced across at the neatly made bed on the other side of the room. Eric was having dinner with his parents, Sunwoo was pretty sure.
no just me
The buzz of the video call came through a moment later.
Sunwoo answered it with some trepidation.
He was met with Chanhee’s drawn-down eyebrows and pressed-tight mouth. Everything about him looked pointier than usual.
“It’s safe,” Chanhee said immediately. “The glamour doesn’t work through a screen. Sexy bog monsters weren’t evolved for technology.”
Sunwoo blinked. He felt a bit breathless, but when he prodded the feeling it didn’t seem supernatural.
“Bog monsters?” Sunwoo asked. He turned to roll onto his stomach on the bed, propping his phone up in front of him.
Chanhee wasn’t in his room, and after a moment Sunwoo recognised the background as the laundry room at Chanhee and Kevin’s boarding house. Chanhee was sitting on top of the washing machine, Sunwoo thought. He had one knee drawn up, supporting the arm he was holding his phone with. Sunwoo could see the top of his knee at the bottom of the phone screen.
Chanhee opened and closed his mouth. Then he seemed to deflate, leaning his head back against the wall. His lashes were a pretty smudge against his cheeks as he let his eyes close for a moment. Still not supernatural.
“Changmin likes to joke about drowning sailors,” Chanhee said. “And I don’t know, maybe. But I have … dreams sometimes.” His eyes flicked back to the phone screen, checking Sunwoo’s reaction. Sunwoo nodded encouragingly.
“They might not be any kind of real hereditary thing,” Chanhee said. “Maybe my subconscious is just coming up with creepy images. My hyung doesn't have the dreams, and my mum got offended when I tried to ask her. But I've always dreamed about … dragging people down into … dark water and this black, suffocating mud. In the forest, with mist around. Pulling people down into some kind of bog or swamp.” He made an unhappy face. “Really attractive, right?”
Sunwoo rested his chin on his arms. “I’d let you pull me into a bog, hyung,” he said, probably truthfully.
Chanhee looked horrified. “That doesn’t make me happy!” But he was laughing a bit too, so Sunwoo counted it as a win.
It was a weirdly potent image. That other version of Chanhee, or a more primal version than that even: his distant relative, beautiful and treacherous, reaching out a pale arm to beckon through the mist in a forest. But –
“Why do you keep saying monster though, hyung,” Sunwoo asked. “You didn’t look like –” And he couldn’t really describe what Chanhee had looked like, other than bewitching. When Sunwoo thought back, there hadn’t been any feature of Chanhee that was different to normal. It had only come together for a different effect, somehow. “You just looked like you, only shinier.”
Chanhee was biting his lip. “I told you before, I can look different,” he said. “My ancestress, she had the glamour for luring, but then she needed the – teeth, and claws, and things, for eating.” The view on Sunwoo’s screen went shaky and blurred as Chanhee waved his hand around. “But it’s diluted in us! The human genes blunted everything. I would really be useless at drowning sailors or suffocating lost woodcutters.”
Sunwoo licked his lips, nervous. “Does that ever come out accidentally, too?” he asked. “The teeth and claws?”
Chanhee blanched. “No,” he said, his voice high with horror. “Thank god. I mean, a couple of times when I was fourteen, because puberty was pretty rough. But I was only with my family at the time. And I’ve got it under control now.”
Chanhee chewed on his lip again. “I’ve got the glamour under control too, or I should have. I did. It really hasn’t taken over like that in years and years. I don’t know … why it is, now.”
His voice went a little weak and unconvincing on that last sentence. Sunwoo squinted at him. “Really?”
Chanhee drew his eyebrows together again, looking offended. “It’s probably because I’m tired! Or it’s the full moon or something.”
“Are you a werewolf too, hyung?”
Chanhee flicked his finger against the screen – presumably at where Sunwoo’s forehead was on his own screen.
Chanhee’s annoyance seemed to die away quickly, though. When he adjusted the position of the phone and Sunwoo could see him properly again, he just looked sad and, yes, tired. “It doesn’t matter, Sunwoo,” he said. “I’m going to figure it out, and things will go back to normal.”
Sunwoo wet his dry lips again. He asked quietly, “Does it have to?”
Chanhee’s eyes sharpened. “Does what have to what?”
Sunwoo ducked his head; looked back up at Chanhee through his fringe. “Do things have to go back to normal?” he asked.
He could see the transition in Chanhee’s face from sad-tired to sad-angry. Sunwoo’s view of him got a bit less steady, like Chanhee’s grip on the phone was trembling.
“I’m not a siren, Sunwoo,” Chanhee said, low. “I’m sorry if you were into that, but I’m not out here trying to lure boys into fucking bogs, okay?”
“Hyung …”
“Do you even know how you looked at me?” Chanhee said, overriding him. “You didn’t even recognise me. I’m not going to – to be that, I’m not.”
Sunwoo rolled back up into a sitting position, crossing his legs and pulling the phone closer. “That wasn’t what I meant,” he promised.
But it was too hard to articulate what he’d meant in the face of that glare from Chanhee. Chanhee’s eyes were glittering with what looked like the beginning of hurt, furious tears.
“You don’t know what you meant,” Chanhee decided. There were definitely tears in his eyes – he dashed them angrily away with the back of his hand. “It’s fine. Fuck ancestors. I’m going to figure this out, and someday Changmin will stop making fun of me for how this week is going. I’ll see you around, Sunwoo.”
“Wait, hyung –” Sunwoo said, but Chanhee was already ending the call.
Sunwoo’s hands tightened around his phone, staring at the Call Ended message until it went blurry and unfocused. His chest felt hollowed out.
Chanhee had said Sunwoo didn’t know what he meant, and – maybe Sunwoo didn’t. His thoughts were a mess.
He was thinking about Chanhee’s eyes shiny with unshed tears; Chanhee ethereal with glamour as he stood in the doorway to the practice space, impossible to look away from or think around; Chanhee on campus, any one of a hundred times, grabbing onto Sunwoo’s arm as he laughed at his own joke, or bought Sunwoo food and then stole half of it back, or dropped his head onto Sunwoo’s lap as they sprawled on the grass. Chanhee at the wedding back in the neighbourhood, his knee knocking against Sunwoo’s as they stretched their gangly teenaged legs out before them on the floor.
That other Chanhee he’d only hinted to Sunwoo about, with the claws and teeth.
There was more of Chanhee than Sunwoo had ever known. Sunwoo had never seen it, never realised.
He found that his fingers had navigated to the Instagram app, tapping through from his feed to Chanhee’s account.
There was a lot on it. Chanhee took his Instagram curation seriously. Sunwoo had seen him spend long, painstaking minutes on a single selfie, shifting from one seat to another, head tilting further and further as he found the perfect angle and lighting.
There were silly pics too though, and pics with friends, and of food, and artistic shots of whatever book Chanhee was reading arranged on the grass, and cute dogs and photos of leaves against the sky.
Sunwoo had seen them all before, but he found himself compulsively pouring over every photo now like it was an exam, or a cipher.
Sunwoo could recognise it now, was the thing. He could see how the terrible-beautiful siren version of Chanhee had always been there in the curve of his lips, and the graceful tilt of his wrist. He could see the danger in Chanhee’s breezy gaze. Those other sides were part of him, belonged to him, and Sunwoo had just never seen.
Some of the pics were casual or funny, even unflattering – Chanhee with Kevin, both of them duckfacing; Chanhee with his eyes full of amusement as he leaned his chin on Younghoon’s head, using his fingers to make a heart out of Younghoon’s fringe on his forehead; Chanhee tired and happy-looking as he leaned the side of his head against Sunwoo’s, both their hair mussed up between them as they leaned into the photo frame.
Some were sexier: careful selfies where Chanhee’s neck and bare collarbone caught the light, smooth and touchable, his mouth parted and his eyes knowing; other photos where Chanhee was pressed close or draped over someone – girls and boys – every line of his body slinky and easy, eyes sparkling, an inviting smile curling his mouth.
Chanhee was flirty around Sunwoo sometimes – a lot of times – but it was always fun and light and safe. Sunwoo hadn’t thought before about how Chanhee could look like this, but with Sunwoo he … didn’t.
It wasn’t that it looked serious, with the people Chanhee was with – some Sunwoo recognised, some he didn’t. It was that it looked so casual. It looked like it was natural to Chanhee, to be beautiful and flirt like this, even when it didn’t mean anything at all.
Sunwoo just felt – stupid, and young. Like he’d been wearing blinkers.
Stupid for taking the half view that Chanhee allowed him all this time, and acting like he got him.
Sunwoo didn’t want to go back to normal – back to when that smaller, safer, part-view of Chanhee was the only one he got to see.
He didn’t know how to explain that in a text.
Instead Sunwoo methodically hit like on each and every photo of Chanhee on his IG, including the funny and unflattering ones – especially those. He didn’t know what Chanhee would make of the stream of notifications, but he kept scrolling back as far as the app would take him.