Archive of Our Own

I. 

For a moment, all he did was look at the kids. I would do anything for them, he realized. It was an old realization, one that came to him from time to time. Each time he remembered, it felt like remembering the weight of the world on his shoulders. 

They were asleep. Chan was loathe to wake them, but they had promised to see this through; beyond that, they needed to get out. Responsibility had rested on his shoulders for a very long time. He understood what he needed to do. 

Carefully, gently, he placed his hand over the closest ankle he could reach — Jeongin. They were all light sleepers, and Jeongin blinked awake, confused for a moment before he saw Chan and sighed. 

“Have you got your bag ready?” Chan whispered. 

“Yes,” Jeongin said. He scrubbed his face and groaned as he sat up in bed. As Chan had asked, he was already dressed; he only needed to put his jacket and shoes on, and he was good to go. “Can I take my pillow?”

“It’ll be your responsibility,” Chan told him, moving on to the next bed. “Are you okay with that?”

“Yes, hyung,” Jeongin said. His jaw creaked with a tremendous yawn. “It’s cold.”

“I know,” Chan said. If he could, he would bundle Jeongin up in the softest, warmest blankets in the world. If it were up to him, Jeongin would never be cold again. “It’ll be warm in the car. I promise.”

Jeongin just blinked at him wearily. As Chan moved onto the next sleeping body, he stumbled out of bed, giving it one last look before grabbing his bag and shoes and sneaking out of the room. Chan didn’t worry. He trusted him. 

One by one, he woke his kids. With various degrees of sleepiness and grumbles, they all rose and gathered their things. A few of them lingered for a moment in the room before moving on; this place meant different things to different people, and Chan wouldn’t begrudge them their silent goodbyes. 

Felix stood by Chan once he got up. Though he would never admit it, least of all to himself, Chan was grateful for his support. He needed it more than he liked to know. Felix was just like that — always there, knowing what Chan needed. After Chan woke Changbin and sent him on his way, it was just the two of them left in the room. 

They didn’t say anything for a moment. Felix watched as Chan sat on the nearest bed — it had belonged to Minho (though the distinction wouldn’t matter in a few minutes) and still had a sketch drawing taped to the wall behind the headboard. The sketch was of an old oak tree that stood in the yard of the home. Chan understood why Minho would want to leave it behind. 

“Do you have your bag?” Felix asked. 

“Yes,” Chan replied, though he made no move to get up. 

“Your shoes?”

“Yes.”

“Your jacket?”

“Yes.” 

Felix sat across from Chan, on the bed that used to be Changbin’s. Most of them had decided to take their pillows with them, but Changbin had apparently refused; Chan made a mental note to remind him before they left. 

“Do you have… all that?” Chan asked Felix, though he had asked already, when he had just woken. “Jacket, shoes, things?”

“I do,” Felix said. “Food and supplies are in the trunk of the car, and… it…?” 

“It’s with my things,” Chan said. “I thought I should hold onto it. Just until.”

“Of course.” Felix shifted on the bed, making it creak and groan; their mattresses had always been old and thin, and Chan was used to the noise by now. “If… you, you know one of us could take it for a little while. Or we could take some of your things, so you didn’t have to, you know, leave anything behind for the sake of… it.”

“I can’t ask you to do that,” Chan said, shutting down that train of thought before it could continue. “You need your things more than I do. I can manage.”

“Chan…”

“It’s my responsibility to look after you. Let me do my job, okay?” Chan gave Felix a small smile so he wouldn’t worry, and rose from the bed, grabbing his jacket and shoes and bag. It bulged strangely with the shape of their precious cargo, and the smile worked strangely over his face as he lifted it up and shouldered the weight. 

“Chan.”

“Let me take care of you,” Chan said, and left. 

As planned, the others were waiting for them in the car. The keys were waiting for him in the bowl by the door, a swirl of blown glass in orange and brown and green. Chan lingered on it for a moment. It had been the first thing he had noticed when he walked through those doors all those years ago. He hadn’t had much chance to see beautiful things that were still intact; before the bowl, the prettiest things he had seen were found outside a seamstress’s shop, where she had thrown away spare scraps of fabric. An embroidered ribbon here, a strip of rich brocade there. Chan had collected the scraps, though he couldn’t do anything with them, and eventually they were lost. 

“Does everyone have everything they need?” Chan asked as he opened the driver’s door. Those that had been drifting off snapped awake to mumble “yes” at him. “Changbin? Your pillow?”

Changbin made a face and leaned back against his seat. “I’m fine.”

“You sure? You’ll never get it back.”

“There will be other pillows,” Changbin said, and that was that. 

“Where’s Felix?” Seungmin asked. 

“He’ll be out in a minute, he’s just… getting things,” Chan said, though in truth he didn’t know what Felix was still doing in the house. The seat next to his was strikingly empty. “He’ll be out in a minute.”

Chan didn’t dare turn on the car until Felix was with them. He checked the rearview mirrors, peeking at his kids; despite the cold and the worry in the air, they were already drifting off back to sleep. Each second felt like an hour. 

It didn’t take long for Felix to come jogging out of the house, his bag bouncing across his shoulders and one of his shoes untied. He settled into the passenger seat with a complicated look written on his brow, and shut the door as quietly as he could, his bag and Chan’s bag on the floor between his feet.

“I almost thought you had changed your mind,” Chan said quietly, trying not to show how much that affected him. He chuckled. 

“Of course not,” Felix told him, glancing sideways at him before turning to look at the other kids. “Why would I? I know what we have to do. We all do.”

“Right,” Chan said. He turned the car on, and heat filtered out; it fogged up the windshield, but the kids relaxed, even subconsciously. 

“And if you think I’m going to spend another second in that house, you’re out of your mind,” Felix grumbled. He was the only one of them who had never, not even once, called the place “the home”, but he was also the only one who bothered to look at that red door until it disappeared from sight. “It feels strange to leave,” he confessed. “I remember walking up those steps for the first time. I had no idea what was waiting for me.”

“None of us did, I think. I know I didn’t.”

“Doesn’t it feel… strange? To leave it behind?”

Chan had left many places and things behind in his life, and the home was just a new entry on a long list. “In a way,” he said. “I spent a lot of time here.” The home was a ways away from any town or village, and there were only the sparsest streetlights to guide his way in the dark of night. They would be driving out further into the wild before their journey was over. “Mostly I’m just glad to be leaving.”

“Yeah, same here,” Felix said, his voice quiet and deep. Chan risked a glance over. He was staring straight out the windshield, though every time he blinked, his eyes closed a little bit longer. 

“You can sleep, if you want to,” Chan told him. 

“Then who would keep you awake?” 

With a small smile, Chan turned his attention back to the empty road, and drove on. 

II. 

Jisung leaned his head on Minho’s shoulder. Minho glanced down, though he was unable to see much; only the tip of Jisung’s nose poking out from a mess of brown hair. 

They didn’t say anything. They had never needed to say much to each other — whatever Jisung had on his mind, Minho understood, and vice versa. Minho gently brushed back Jisung’s hair and bumped his chin on the crown of his head. I need comfort. This was what Jisung was telling him. I need to know that you’re here.

“It’s cold, isn’t it,” Minho said quietly. The car was near silent. There was another hushed conversation in the front seat to keep Chan awake, but most everyone else had gone back to sleep. Jeongin had put his pillow on the window next to him. Very smart. 

“Hyung,” Jisung said quietly. He must have been more tired than Minho first thought. “You doing alright?”

Minho clicked his tongue and pushed Jisung’s hair back again, hoping for a glimpse of his eyes. “Of course I am, Sungie. Should be asking you that.”

Jisung was quiet for a moment. Minho could see that he was looking at his hands in his lap. “I’m alright.”

“What’s on your mind, Jisung?”

Jisung breathed in sharply, his forehead creasing with an emotion that was difficult to describe. “We’re… we’re going to be okay. Right? All of us.”

“Of course,” Minho said. He didn’t even have to think about it. “As long as we have each other. We can do anything together.”

The emotion on Jisung’s face didn’t go away. “What if we’re not always together?”

“What, are you planning on leaving us?” Minho was only half-joking. 

“No — I mean, yes, one day. When everything’s okay, and normal… we can’t always be together. It’s not safe to be so co-dependent. But beyond that… I think about my future sometimes, you know? What I want my future to be. And there… I’m not alone, but I am removed, in a way. We’re still friends and everything. But I can stand on my own if I need to. I can support myself. Right now, I need you. And Chan. Everyone, really. I just want to be someone that doesn’t need you so badly.”

I hope you need us forever, Minho thought quietly, but it was a selfish thought and he put it aside. “I understand,” he said instead, though he didn’t really. “Is that what’s been on your mind?”

“That, and…” Jisung sighed in frustration and crossed his arms across his chest, hiding his trembling fingers. “I think I’m worried about Chan-hyung. A little bit.”

“Yeah?”

“You weren’t… you weren’t there,” Jisung began. His eyes closed and he shifted his head on Minho’s shoulder, digging deeper into the warmth. “When it was just the two of us. He was different before I came along. A little strange, I think, from what I can remember from before we were close. Very alone. I don’t… I don’t think he would have made it if we didn’t show up. If I didn’t show up. Now that we’re… going away, I worry about what that’ll do to him.”

Minho was quiet for a minute. He put his arm around Jisung’s shoulders, not without some awkward fumbling, and thought about what he might say. Of their little family, he was the most recent addition. Though he had managed to slip into the group dynamic easily and had come to grow fond of everyone, there was plenty of history that he had missed out on, and that was only revealed to him in bits and pieces. A part of him wished that he had come into their lives sooner, just so he could have helped with all of their pains and struggles, but then he reminded himself of the life he had lead before and how it was all over too soon. 

“He’ll be fine,” Minho told Jisung. “We’re here now, and we’re here for him. If he isn’t fine, we’ll bully him into being okay.”

Jisung shifted under Minho’s arm and brought his feet up onto the car seat, squishing him into something small and delicate. “I don’t wanna bully him.”

“You know what I mean,” Minho said, fondly exasperated. Jisung huffed a laugh and Minho could feel the vibrations through every part of his body that was pressed to the warm creature under his arm. “Go to sleep, Jisung. We’ll still be here when you wake up. I promise.”

He could feel the puffs of breath against the skin of his neck even out, and Jisung went slack, the tension falling from him as he fell asleep. Minho only clutched him tighter and sighed, looking over Jisung’s sleeping figure out the window, to the unending black of night. 

Last night, the moon and stars had fallen out of the sky. 

The world was hushed and all asleep when Minho awoke with the sense that something was terribly wrong. He woke Seungmin, who roused the others, and together the eight of them snuck out to the old oak tree in the field behind the house to watch. Everywhere they looked, the stars were falling. 

None of them said anything; this moment was as much sacred as it was fundamentally wrong. Jeongin found his way to Minho’s side, as did Jisung, and Minho put his arms around them and held them close to himself. 

He didn’t know how many stars were in the sky. Countless billions. The universe was as big as infinity, but there had to be a number, even if their human minds couldn’t comprehend it. And they were all falling, tumbling out of the sky like coins falling off of skyscrapers and landing on unsuspecting heads. A few fell in their field, shimmering brightly before blinking out. Felix would go in the morning and bring back five dull, smooth stones. 

The stars fell for what felt like forever. The eight of them stood by the tree for hours and hours until the sky was nearly empty; all that was left was the darkness and the moon, and after a moment of hesitation, that began to fall, too. 

Minho tracked it with his eyes, keeping careful watch as it grew closer and larger. It fell without a sound, as all the stars had. 

He took hold of Chan’s sleeve and tugged him a couple steps closer. A moment later, the moon crashed into the dirt precisely where he had been standing. It shone with a silvery light, casting the field and the boys with an unearthly glow. 

“Oh,” Chan said, staring at the moon. It rested innocuously in the tall grass as if it hadn’t just flattened him to a pancake; though it was only the size of a football, it would have done serious damage.

“That’s… the moon,” Seungmin said, breaking the spell of silence that had been cast over the eight of them. “The actual moon from the sky.”

“It’s very small,” Hyunjin said, crouching down to get a better look. “Do you think we’ll find tiny footprints? A tiny American flag?”

“Moon landing was faked,” Jisung said. Changbin punched him in the shoulder for it. 

“It’s beautiful,” Jeongin said. And it was. Pocked with craters and canyons, the silvery light created deep, dark shadows upon the moon’s own face, making it look complex and precise. 

“What are we going to do with it?” Felix asked. 

The eight of them were silent until the light of the sun broke through the darkness. Minho was surprised, he’d admit — he didn’t think the sun would make an appearance again. It was a star, too. It should have fallen with the rest of them. And yet, as the night was shot through with grey, then blue, then the riot of the sunrise, there it was. 

“We have to put it back,” Chan decided. “It’s not meant to be up here. We have to put it back.”

“How?” Minho asked. “You wanna throw it into the air and hope it sticks back up there?”

“Worth a shot,” Changbin said. He went up to the moon, hesitating before it. Minho opened his mouth to say something, but Changbin shook his head in determination and crouched to pick it up. With a grunt, he hefted it up into the cradle of his arms, and then said, “Oh, I don’t know if I can throw it, guys.”

“Seriously?” Hyunjin said, then tsked. “What, is it too heavy?”

“Do you want to hold it? See how heavy it is. Try to throw it.”

Jisung jumped into the argument before it could truly start and gently coaxed the moon from Changbin. He wheezed when it was given to him, but with a strain of effort, swung it down between his legs and, using the momentum, threw it into the air. 

It barely cleared the lowest branches of the oak tree before it came thudding down to earth once more. The eight of them stared at it, waiting for it to move, but it only rested there in the dirt and shone gently. 

“Incredible,” Seungmin commented. “So, that’s not going to work.”

“It probably has to be night,” Jeongin mused. “The sun’s coming up, so we can’t do it now.”

“I don’t think we can do it here,” Felix said slowly. He looked around at the eight of them, then dragged his gaze to the house on top of the hill. “It won’t want to go back up while it’s still here, where it fell in the first place.”

“So, what? We just take it as far away from here as possible?” Minho asked. 

“Well, yeah, I guess. Unless anyone has any objections? Or a better idea?”

“Are we… are we all going?” Seungmin asked. 

“Why not?” Chan said. “We… we all want to get out of here. Don’t we?”

The eight of them looked back at the home. The windows were all dark in the morning light, and frost crept up the hill over the grass and flowers to nest in the eaves and windowsills. 

“I was going to bring you all with me anyway, when I was old enough to leave,” Chan told them. “This is just… accelerating the process.”

“You want to kidnap us,” Jisung said bluntly. Chan frowned at that, but didn’t deny it. 

“I’m not going to say no to being kidnapped if it means I get to leave that house,” Felix declared. “Whatever the rest of you decide, we should leave soon. I don’t… I don’t think we can trust anyone else with… it.”

“I’m going with you,” Minho said. He knew that if both he and Chan left, the others would follow. “We’ll find a way to put it back. We’ll make it right.”

As the sun rose fully into the sky, the eight of them walked back to the dark, silent house, the moon in Chan’s arms. 

III. 

They drove all through the night and all through the morning. Chan only stopped at a small town in the afternoon so that everyone could eat and so that he could have coffee. No one complained. 

As the kids were eating, Changbin took Chan aside and said, “Hyung, I can take over driving if you want. You could sleep.”

“I’m fine,” Chan said. Changbin frowned. It was patently obvious that Chan was not fine. 

“It’s dangerous to drive while you’re sleep deprived,” Changbin said. “There’s nothing wrong with letting one of us take over. We have a ways to go yet, and you can’t be awake for all of it.”

Chan smiled tightly. 

“At least eat something,” Changbin said, knowing that he was going to lose this fight. No matter. He would win one of these fights eventually. “You can do that much, can’t you?”

Though he was reluctant, Chan had a sandwich and a bag of potato crisps. It wasn’t the full meal Changbin wanted him to have, but it was enough. Afterwards, Chan kept scrubbing his face every couple minutes, and Changbin only caught his eye to give him a significant look. 

“What was that,” he head Minho say as he walked away, to which Chan responded, “Don’t worry about it.”

It didn’t take long into the next drive for Chan to pull over and give Changbin a sorry look. The car was silent as they traded places, and after a few minutes of driving, Changbin looked back to see Chan sound asleep. 

“I wonder why it has to be all of us,” Hyunjin said the next time they took a break. He said it as if speaking to everyone, or just to himself, but he had walked over to Changbin to give him an energy drink and it was only the two of them in the vicinity. 

“Ah,” Changbin said, wary of answering if Hyunjin wasn’t actually talking to him. “I think it’s too big of a job for one person, you know?”

Hyunjin hummed in response. “That’s true. But eight people is a lot of people.”

“I think eight people is a perfect amount of people,” Changbin said, letting a little grumble into his voice. “Besides, it’s not all about… you know, the thing. We’re not going back to the home and we need to stick together no matter what. We just need to do this thing first, and figure out the rest together, later.” 

Hyunjin glanced back at the other six, who were stretching and passing around a fruit jerky, and slid closer to Changbin. When he spoke, his voice was a whisper. “We don’t even know where we’re going. Away isn’t good enough.”

Changbin wanted to wrap him up in bubble wrap and smother him with kisses. He settled for putting a hand on his shoulder. “Leave that to the hyungs and I, okay? We’ll figure it out. There’s no need for you to worry as long as you’ve got us.”

They broke apart at the sound of someone clearing his throat, and turned to see Chan. He gave them both a weak smile, and said, “Changbin, can I talk to you for a moment?”

Changbin and Hyunjin met each other’s gaze, and Changbin said, “Yeah, of course,” as Hyunjin walked off. “What’s up?”

Chan waited until Hyunjin was truly gone before he spoke. “Changbin, you’ve got to let me drive.”

Changbin, thinking this was a joke, only gave Chan a disbelieving smile. “Seriously? I was just going to take over. You can think about where we’re headed instead.”

Chan, who was not joking, made a frustrated noise. “I — Changbin, I worry. You know this. Just let me drive. Please.”

“Hey, okay, man,” Changbin said, worry flooding into him. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Chan told him. 

“Don’t give me that. I’ll only let you drive if you’re honest with me. Tell me what’s bothering you.”

“Changbin, I’m fine,” Chan said, loud enough that they got a few sideways looks. Changbin was speechless — Chan had never really raised his voice at him, at least not since they were really kids. Luckily, he seemed to regret it immediately, giving Changbin a pitiful look and shrinking a couple inches. “I — I’m sorry. I don’t mean to yell. But this… you’ve got to let me take care of this situation. I feel like an anthill. If I don’t take charge, don’t take care of you all, then ants are going to start coming out of my eyes and out from underneath my fingernails, and no one’s going to like that. So please don’t argue with me on this. Please just let me take us where we need to go.”

Changbin was quiet for a long moment, though in his heart he had already agreed. That wasn’t what he was thinking about. “You can let us take care of you too, you know,” he eventually said. “We’d like to.”

Chan only gave him a tight, unconvincing smile in return. 

IV. 

They were on the road again. Hyunjin was tired of being trapped in the back-backseat of the car. He was only here because he had a stomach of iron, but now, after a couple days of nonstop driving, he could feel himself getting a little carsick. It wasn’t even motion sickness, not really. He was just sick of the car. 

He had listened in on Chan and Changbin’s conversation earlier, though he did feel a little guilty about it. Luckily, the guilt didn’t outweigh the worry. Unluckily, Hyunjin was a coward who would do nothing about either emotion. 

One day, maybe, he would be a man and tell people about his worries and feelings. For now, that was all bottled up tight. He could only worry about Chan in the privacy of his own head. 

He just really wished he’d brought a book along. Staring out the car window while Seungmin dozed on his shoulder was getting old.

The eight of them stopped for the night — or at least, Changbin had stopped for the night, and absolutely refused to let Chan get into the driver’s seat. Felix helped, to Chan’s chagrin.

In the general hubbub of everyone getting ready to sleep, Hyunjin caught a quiet “Aish, look at you,” from Chan. He glanced over, his toothbrush hanging out of his mouth, to see Chan wipe some toothpaste spit from Jeongin’s chin. 

“Hyung,” Jeongin whined. It attracted a couple other glances and chuckles, though Hyunjin was the only one who kept watching, bored of everything else happening nearby and wondering what Chan would do. 

Chan didn’t take his hand away from Jeongin’s chin, even when the toothpaste was gone. There was a strange look in his eye. Hyunjin didn’t quite know how to describe it. “You’ll sleep in the car, right,” Chan said quietly. “You’ll do that for me.”

“You can sleep in the car, too,” Jeongin said through a garbled mouthful of toothpaste.

“It’s not that cold out here. I’ll be fine.”

“Hyung.”

“Aish.” With a smile on his face, Chan patted Jeongin’s cheek, making him frown and swallow thickly. “We can’t fit everyone in the car, as much as we’d like to. You know that. We’ll be fine out here. I just want you to be safe and warm.”

Jeongin pouted as best as he could through his toothbrush, but Chan was already turned away. Hyunjin turned away as well and finished brushing his own teeth, rinsing his mouth out with a water bottle and wishing he had the modern luxury of a sink. 

Afterwards, his task, as given to him by Minho, was to gather dry twigs and dead leaves with Jisung. The two of them stuck together, wary of the quickly darkening forest and the dangers it held within. 

“I wonder how the animals are taking it,” Jisung mused as they rooted around the forest floor. “They can’t know what’s going on. They must be freaked out right now.”

“You think the animals don’t know what’s going on? Bro, neither do we,” Hyunjin said. “All we know is that the moon fell out of the sky. Who knows why?”

“Who cares?” Jisung said. “It happened, and knowing why or how won’t change the fact that it did.”

Hyunjin was quiet for a moment. He had given up gathering kindling to stare at the bark of the nearest tree: the way it bulged and wrinkled, its grays and browns and greens running and crossing each other in an intimate, chaotic manner. 

Eventually, he said, “It might help if it happens again.”

Jisung was quiet for a moment, but he had stopped, too. “You think it might happen again?”

“What’s more likely, that this was a freak accident that’ll never happen again, or that it had a reason? What happens when the conditions for that reason are met again? Maybe that’s why we couldn’t put the moon back up when we were by the oak tree. It wasn’t us, or our location. It could have been something we didn’t know about that made the moon and stars fall in the first place.”

“Wait, you think we might have been unable to put it back because of… us?”

“Well…”

Jisung scoffed and threw down his gathered kindling. “Why are we even doing this at all if you don’t think we can put it back up ourselves? Why’d you even come along if you think it was us? What, are we not right? Are we not chosen?”

“No, no, that’s not it,” Hyunjin said, getting close to try and placate Jisung. He only scoffed and turned away. “Jisung, please. I’m just saying we have no way of knowing what caused this, and no idea what to do about it.”

“No, what you’re saying is that we’re stupid to try and put the moon back in the sky, no matter what we do!”

“Jisung, I’m not,” Hyunjin said, making a real effort to keep his voice down. He didn’t want the others to know they were arguing, especially Chan, who would jump on them and probably disintegrate from the stress. “Look. Listen. The situation is beyond our control. No matter why, the moon landed in front of us, so it’s our responsibility to put it back up. So we must. That’s all. I didn’t mean to make it sound like we’re doing all this for nothing. I don’t feel that way.”

Jisung was quiet for a minute, and then, near-silently, said, “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay.”

With relief, Hyunjin helped Jisung pick up his fallen kindling again. He couldn’t resist pulling him into a short hug; neither of them said anything about it, but it helped to reassure Jisung, if the little smile he gave was any indication. 

At camp, Minho had already constructed a complicated-looking stack of logs inside a ring of rocks. Changbin and Chan were both lying stretched out on the ground, with the little hand-ax they’d taken from the home lying nearby as well. Hyunjin couldn’t help but laugh when he saw them, and gladly gave up his kindling to burn when Minho demanded it. 

They told ghost stories around the campfire, scaring themselves and anyone listening in on them, and Hyunjin fell asleep in between Changbin and Felix, content to be with his family no matter what. 

V. 

Jisung woke with a start. For a moment he was disoriented and confused, staring up at a fuzzy grey ceiling; his dream-memory clung to him, immersing him in that old place of thin mattresses and fear. He shook himself and sighed. That wasn’t his life anymore, not now that they were on the road. 

Behind him, Minho was stretched out in the back bench of the car. He was snoring softly, and Jisung was loathe to wake him, so instead he maneuvered around Jeongin lying back in the passenger seat and climbed out of the car. 

The night air was fresh and cool on his face, and for a moment Jisung didn’t remember that anything was wrong. The other five kids were huddled together in a sleeping pile a few feet away, by the smoldering remains of the small campfire they had tried to set up last night. Jisung looked at them for a little while, enjoying the sight of their faces, then moved into the sparse forest and walked between the trees. 

When he looked up, he knew not to expect the stars, but it surprised him anyway. They were far enough from any kind of civilization that no light pollution should have affected the view, but there was nothing. Only the wide expanse of the black night. 

At the sleep pile, Jisung gently shook Chan awake. He grunted, surprised, and peered at Jisung through eyes swollen with sleep. 

“Go sleep in the car,” Jisung whispered, patting his arm and gesturing with his head to the open door. 

“Wha’bout you,” Chan mumbled. 

“I’m done sleeping. I’ll make sure we don’t get eaten by mountain lions.”

Chan groaned and squeezed his eyes shut. “Moun’in lions.”

“Or bears.”

“Ough.” He sat up and pinched the bridge of his nose, then gathered himself and his pillow and all but fell into the space Jisung had left in the car. Within a few seconds, he was out cold; Jisung positioned the pillow underneath his head and gently closed the door. They’d turned off the car, of course, but it would still be warmer in there than it was out in the wilderness. 

There was a space in the pile that Chan had left behind, and Jisung squeezed himself into it, gathering Seungmin under one arm and Felix under the other. They slept on, oblivious. 

Jisung stared at them for a while, and at the others in the pile, but his mind was on Chan. He’d insisted on sleeping outside, wanting some of the others to have the comfort of the car. Jisung was only thankful that he was too tired to protest it now. Sure, he might be in a stinky mood come morning, but it would be better for him in the long run. 

That was just how Chan was, though. He liked doing things for people. Jisung was pretty sure that he needed to do things for people; he remembered being young and under Chan’s care back in the home. It had only been the two of them before anyone else came along, and Jisung missed it sometimes; being the sole focus of Bang Chan’s attention and care felt like the entire sun was shining on you and only you. It was so good that it almost hurt. 

That didn’t mean that he’d give up the other kids. Every one of them was as precious to him as Chan was, though in a corner of his mind, they would always be the interlopers that stole Chan and his attention away from him. He had learned to let that feeling go. It wasn’t fair to him, or to the others. 

In an effort to make up for his uncharitable thoughts, Jisung pulled his kids closer to him and kept them warm through the dark night. 

VI. 

Felix knew that Chan relied on him. It was very obvious. He allowed it and never said a word about it, because if he didn’t, Chan would have self-destructed a long, long time ago. 

Felix had come to the house already jaded and cynical, and the house only exacerbated that. Most of the others were already there and obviously, deeply cared for each other; Felix would escape them as often as he could, running down to the old oak tree so he could hide in its branches and tell himself he wasn’t lonely. 

It was only a matter of time before he shuffled along to another place. He wouldn’t stay in this isolated homestead forever — he couldn’t. He was made for better and bigger things. Not this… garbage house in this garbage field with these garbage kids. One day everyone on the planet would know his name, and he would never, ever think of this place again.

Chan was a protector. He watched over everyone in the house, made sure they were clean and fed and did their work; even Felix, though he chafed under the fumbled attempts at mothering. The other kids were fine with being told what to do and how to do it, but Felix could take care of himself. He didn’t need some stupid child to tell him how to live his life. Chan learned that lesson after he tried to sew up a rip in Felix’s jeans and found all his shirts without sleeves in the morning. 

So they kept their distance from one another. Felix did his work and kept himself running, and Chan spread his mothering all over the other kids, who lapped it up. 

One day, a new kid came into the house. Lee Minho. Felix took one look at him and made for the tree — he didn’t want to watch another kid get suckered into becoming another of Chan’s little ducklings. Minho was everything Felix wasn’t: sad, sweet, trusting. Chan would latch onto him, and Minho would do the same, and they’d both be great with each other. 

A few weeks ago, Felix had nicked a small paring knife from the kitchen and stashed it in an old woodpecker-hole up in the trunk of the tree. He was trying to teach himself how to whittle, and it was going pretty alright; his best creations were stored in the same hole, and the creations that looked like garbage were strewn about the roots of the tree, blending in with the flaking bark and falling leaves. He took the knife and cut off a small chunk of wood from the end of a branch, then settled into his favorite crook of the tree. It hid the house from his view, and made him invisible to anyone looking at the tree from the house. 

He didn’t know what he wanted to make, so he shaved off the thinest pieces of wood he could manage, hoping that something would take shape. 

People asked him, sometimes, why he was like this. Like what, he would snap back at them, but he knew what he was like. He was a cheese grater. Any which way you found yourself angling to get to him, you came back bleeding. All his edges were made to hurt. He couldn’t help it — that was the way he had been made, and he couldn’t change to sweet any more than the old oak tree could change to elm. 

He was glad Chan had dropped him. And Minho would be a much better person to take care of; he needed that care in a way that Felix didn’t. Chan would comfort him and berate each and every ill wind that came his way, and Minho would latch onto Chan like a lamprey, just like all of his other kids. They’d both eat it up and be happy. 

They didn’t know Chan like Felix did, was the thing. The two of them had silently and mutually agreed to stay out of each others’ way, but that didn’t mean they never crossed paths. A few weeks ago, Felix had woken in the middle of the night to grab a glass of water. He had seen Chan sitting at the table, his head in his hands, and decided to back away slowly and silently. 

The piece of wood wasn’t taking shape, and Felix cursed at it under his breath. Chan would clean his mouth out with soap if he heard. Minho had probably never said a bad word in his whole life. 

The knife slipped and cut deep into the meaty flesh of Felix’s thumb. Startled, Felix dropped both the knife and the wood, and they fell through the branches and leaves onto the dirt floor. 

A strange feeling filled Felix’s chest, squeezing him from the inside, threatening to make his eyeballs burst from his head. Felix crunched into the smallest ball he could and held his bleeding thumb close to his heart. It was only when he heard himself give a shuddering gasp that he realized he was crying. He was getting blood on his jeans and the fabric of his sleeves, but he couldn’t even care. The nameless feeling was so all-encompassing that there was no room for worry about something as stupid as a blood stain. 

He needed to get ahold of himself. He had come way too far and fought for way too long to be brought low by a small cut on his thumb. With a series of desperate gasps, Felix forced himself back into his body, seized control of his lungs and heart, and made himself un-tense. He couldn’t look at his thumb, at the cherry red blood that bloomed. If he did, he would be lost forever. 

The tears didn’t stop, even as Felix stepped down from the anxiety. So he stayed up in the tree, waiting for either the crying to stop or for himself to pass out from dehydration, whichever came first. 

Then he heard the rustle of a branch, and his heart leapt into his throat. Whatever noises he had been making, he ceased, and hid his hurt thumb in a fist held close to his chest. The rustling came closer. Felix closed his eyes and waited for the inevitable. 

Chan settled on a branch that was close to Felix, but far enough away that he couldn’t shove him off. He sighed as he settled, probably tired from puzzling out the best way to climb the tree; he wasn’t like Felix, who knew the tree like the back of his hand and almost never found himself out of breath whenever he climbed it these days. 

“Hi,” Chan said. 

“What do you want,” Felix bit out. The sooner he could remind Chan that they weren’t friends and didn’t talk, the better. 

“You left pretty quickly back there,” Chan said. “Everything alright?”

“I’m fine,” Felix told him. “Go away.”

“You haven’t even tried to push me out of the tree yet.”

Felix gave it a weak effort, though he was half turned away and didn’t want to give Chan any ground. That meant stayed turned away. His hand didn’t even make the halfway point, but he knew he had made a mistake when Chan sucked in a quick breath. 

“Is that blood?”

In lieu of an answer, Felix turned away even more, holding his hands to his chest and resolving never to take Chan’s bait ever again. 

“Felix, are you bleeding? Don’t you need to see a doctor?”

“I’m fine,” Felix said again, louder and even meaner in the hopes that Chan got the message. He didn’t, if the way he climbed through the branches to be within pushing range was any indication. “Go away! I don’t want to talk to you.”

“I can help you,” Chan told him. “I’ll run and get a bandaid, just stay right here and I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

Felix would rather run into the woods and be lost forever than let Chan help him, but that wasn’t what he said. Instead, he said, “I won’t let you help me if you can’t even help yourself.”

Chan, who was poised to jump down out of the tree, paused and looked at Felix for a long moment. “What do you mean by that?”

Felix brought his knees closer to his chin and ducked his gaze to the side, unable to meet Chan’s eye. “You know. I’ve seen you, you know, late at night. You think no one knows how you feel, but I’m not stupid. I won’t let you help me if you’re just going to self-destruct later.”

Chan slowly came back to sit down next to Felix. They were both quiet for a while, until Felix sniffed and realized he had stopped crying. He couldn’t help the small, proud smile that appeared on his face, but he hid it from Chan the best he could. 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chan said, though he didn’t sound like he wasn’t taking Felix seriously. “I won’t self-destruct.”

“Yes, you will. You’ll go home after this, and then you won’t sleep, and you’ll sit at the kitchen table all alone because you don’t know how to be anything but what you are, and it’s killing you.”

“You could still let me help.”

“You don’t understand,” Felix told him, louder than was right because when Chan shut up it didn’t feel good. So he made the effort to speak softer. “I don’t like you, but I don’t want to make you kill yourself. And I can get my own damn band-aid.”

To his surprise, Chan let out a short laugh. “I’ll stay here and let you get it, then. I like it here. It’s nice.”

Felix glared at him, suspicious. “Fine.”

“Fine.”

With one last “fine!”, Felix jumped out of the tree, grabbed his knife, and ran back to the house, looking back at Chan in the tree every five steps.

Later that night, he found Chan sitting at the dining table alone, with two mugs of bedtime tea in front of him. He greeted Felix with a tired smile. 

“Is your thumb better?”

It was, but Felix only looked at him and the set-up with suspicion. “What do you want?”

The smile fell from Chan’s face, and Felix decided to sit across from him, taking the offered tea warily. “You know, I… I don’t know. I don’t know what I want. To know you’re safe, I guess. I want to protect you.”

“I don’t need protecting,” Felix said, because he didn’t. Though he was wary of the direction the conversation was barreling towards, he had taken the tea and couldn’t escape it, so he decided just to see what happened. 

“I know you don’t. But… I do. I need to take care of you — it feels weird when I can’t.”

All of a sudden, Felix felt bad for all the times he had run away from Chan or been mean about his bad attempts at being a mom. He ducked his head and sipped delicately at the tea. 

“Not just you, but all of the kids,” Chan continued. “You don’t have anyone else who’s going to look out for you. This home is just a place. It can’t protect you.”

“It can’t protect you, either,” Felix pointed out. “You’re just a kid, too. Who’s looking after you?”

For a long moment, Felix waited for an answer that didn’t come. He sipped some more of his tea. 

“If you need someone to protect, you can protect me,” Felix finally said. “And in return, because you need it and I can give it, I’ll protect you. Is that fair?”

“Yes, that’s fair,” Chan said, meek in the face of Felix’s determinism. Felix smiled at him over the lip of his mug, proud and pleased that Chan had accepted his proposal. Chan gave him a smile in return, first hesitant, then relieved as the truth of the situation settled in. They finished their tea together and went to bed. 

From that moment on, they were friends. 

Chan was driving again. They had been driving for days now, and the car smelled a little funky, not to mention themselves. Felix’s scalp itched. 

Outside, the sun was setting, throwing a riot of colors into the sky. Chan didn’t need to be kept awake, so Felix was silent as he stared out at the setting sun. They were driving through a field, so everything was cast in a golden light, even Felix. When he turned his head, so was Chan. 

They said nothing as the sun set, though he wasn’t the only one looking at it. A part of him — of them all, he would hazard to guess — was angry at the sun. Why had it not fallen along with its celestial counterpart? They were equals in their opposition. Depending on who you asked, they were brother and sister, or husband and wife. When the moon fell, why did the sun stay in the sky? Shouldn’t it have fallen as well? 

Then again, he shouldn’t exactly be advocating for the sun to fall out of the sky. It was going to explode in six billion years. He shouldn’t rush it. Beyond that, humanity needed the sun more than they needed the moon. The moon was a pretty rock in the sky; yes, it controlled the tides, but it wasn’t the sun. The sun gave life to every single living thing. It was warmth and comfort. Without it, the planet they were on would be a miserable, lifeless hunk of rock, much like the one in Chan’s bag.

“How’s it doing?” Felix asked once the others were asleep and it was just him and Chan. 

“Hm?” Chan didn’t look at him.

“You know, the… the moon,” Felix said. He hated saying it. Saying something out loud made it real. 

“It’s fine,” Chan said absent-mindedly. 

“Have you even checked?”

Chan pouted. “Not really. It’s doing fine on its own.”

“You have the moon in your bag and you haven’t even been looking at it?” Felix couldn’t believe it. It was a good thing he wasn’t in charge of the thing alone, because he would have been staring at it all these days and getting nothing done. 

Chan, shamed, only deepened his pout. “I’ve been driving.”

“Whatever,” Felix muttered under his breath. He took Chan’s bag and unzipped it. There wasn’t much in there, besides the moon, which made Felix’s heart hurt. He deserved the things he had become attached to as much as the rest of them. It was just so hard getting Chan to accept that fact; when he dug his heels in, there was no moving him, no matter how much Felix threatened and pleaded. Add in a time crunch, and there was no way. It was a good thing, then, that Felix had packed some of Chan’s things in his own bag behind his back. 

Then he frowned at the bag. When he moved Chan’s things out of the way, he realized why. 

The moon was very heavy, and Felix wasn’t exactly made of muscle, though he wasn’t weak either. It took some effort to lift it into his lap, and the angle in which he was sitting didn’t help. Once it was there, he contemplated it; there was no flag or anything, though he supposed it would be too small to see like this. 

He didn’t want to confront it, but there it was. 

“It’s dimming,” he said quietly, unwilling to voice his observation. If he didn’t say it, it wouldn’t be so. But the light had gone from silver to a sort of dull gray, and the canyons and shadows grew deeper and darker. There was nothing he could do about it except notice and speak.

Soon, the moon would be nothing but a beautiful, special rock. 

VII. 

“We’re here,” Seungmin said, pointing at a spot on the map they had bought from the nearest gas station. The eight of them were huddled around it just outside the door, garnering suspicious looks from the attendant inside. “There’s plenty of places we could go from here.”

“We could go to the sea,” Minho suggested. “Put it in the water or something. The moon controls the tides, right? Maybe there’s something there.”

“You want the moon to get wet?” Changbin said. “That just isn’t right.”

“We need to get closer to the sky,” Jeongin said, his voice quiet and mysterious. “If we’re going to put it back, we need to find someplace high up, so we can stick it up there for good and make sure it doesn’t fall again. Somewhere we can touch the sky.”

“We can’t exactly climb Mount Everest, Ayennie,” Minho said. 

“Well, we can’t just wander endlessly around, either,” Felix told them. “We need a plan. Any plan.”

“Maybe we should just try throwing it up. Wherever, whenever. We’re pretty far from the house, aren’t we?” Jisung asked. “You thought it didn’t want to go up while it was still back there, and we’re several days out by now. So let’s just do it.”

“Here at the gas station?” Hyunjin said, incredulous. “That’s, like, sacrilegious.”

“Fine, not at the gas station,” Jisung snapped back at him. “When we go hide in the forest for the night, then.”

“We can try that, but if it doesn’t work, we should have an idea of where to go,” Seungmin said, trying to keep the kids from arguing. When he met Jisung’s eye, he raised an eyebrow, which brought him back in line. “The sea is a day’s drive away from here. If that doesn’t work, then we can go to the mountains in the east and try Jeongin’s idea. If neither of those things work, then we’ll regroup and figure something out.”

“We can’t just stumble our way through this,” Minho said with a sigh. “We don’t have much time left, now that the moon is getting dimmer. We need to know what will work.”

“Right, because there’s a set of instructions for anyone who happens to have the moon land at their feet,” Jisung snarked. “We can just ask the last people this happened to and see what they did.”

Minho scowled. “I’m just saying. We can’t keep wasting time.”

“Which is exactly why we have a plan now,” Seungmin said, loud enough to be heard over the growing argument. “First the sea, then the mountain. After that, we’ll think of something else.”

“Fine,” Minho grumbled. He wasn’t the only one uncomfortable with their plan, and Seungmin couldn’t really blame them. More than anything, he was sick of being driven around in the car aimlessly, and he was sure the others felt the same. Seungmin wanted to do something here and now. He was tired of waiting for the answer to come to him. 

The eight of them piled back into the car, this time with Seungmin in the front seat to navigate for Chan. This was a good place for him. He really loved telling people what to do, though he rarely got the chance to do so. 

They would be driving all day. It was still early in the morning, and the sky was shot through with white clouds; there were few other people on the road and only talking heads on all the radio stations.

None of the others had bothered to look at the newspapers stacked in the gas station, more interested in the snacks they could get, but Seungmin did. The front-page picture was just a square of black ink. 

Still nothing. That was the caption. Still nothing.

He hadn’t bought the newspaper, but a cursory look at the article talked about how there was still nothing new about the moon or stars or planets. The astronauts aboard the International Space Station had been taken down, and there had been no communication from the Mars Rover or any deep-space satellites. Even the telescopes weren’t picking up anything. People had flooded to science, space museums and observatories. They wanted to know what was going on, demanding answers from scientists who had none. 

We thought we knew what we had, someone said in a quote. Now that it’s gone, everything we had built our lives and systems of knowledge around are gone, too. What we would have passed down to the next generation is useless, defunct information. We have to build the whole world from the ground up.

Another quote, from a philosopher instead of a scientist, read, It could be the end of the world. I wouldn’t be surprised. A star fell onto my roof that night, so I took it down and put it on my bedside table. If you find it hard to sleep, take comfort in knowing you’re not alone in that. I’ll go outside sometimes and bring my star and look at the darkness. We speak of the call of the void sometimes, and now more than ever I understand what that means.

“Turn here,” Seungmin said to Chan. Somewhere nearby, getting closer every second, the sea glittered like diamonds under the light of the sun.

They stood in the sand by the sea. The sun was setting over the waves. Seungmin looked up, though he knew he wouldn’t see the stars. 

It didn’t feel real. When he was a kid, he had loved astronomy; he had owned a small encyclopedia about space, with planets, distant stars, and galaxies all placed before him. But now, even the planets had dropped; Venus, the evening and morning star, the second most bright object in the night sky, was no longer there. Seungmin shivered. They were alone on this planet, with only the sun as company. 

Although a small town rose up behind them, there was no one else on the beach. Which was a shame, because it really was a beautiful sunset. But Seungmin couldn’t blame people for hiding away. The sky had gone dark, and no one out there had any idea what had happened to the moon. 

“Alright,” Chan said, once they had gotten their fill of the sea. He heaved the moon over to the push and pull of the waves, with his pants already pulled up to his mid-calf. The seven of them watched as he placed it within the water. 

It sat there, as innocuous as ever, as the waves lapped over it. The glow was nearly gone, especially with the last bits of the sun coating it with its own golden light. Slowly, as the waves lapped over it, it sank incrementally lower into the soft, wet sand. 

“Well,” Seungmin said, fully prepared to state the obvious. “It’s not going back up into the sky.”

“Wait, let’s wait until the sun is all the way down,” Hyunjin said. 

So they did, and for a while, nothing happened. Jeongin and Jisung went to sit down, and as the sky darkened, Hyunjin and Changbin joined them. Seungmin, Felix, Minho, and Chan stayed standing, staring hard at the unmoving moon. 

Once the sun was well and truly set, they could fully see the extent of the moon’s glow. When it had freshly fallen, it had filled the field with silver light, fully illuminating each of the eight of them. Now, though, its light barely reached Seungmin’s feet. The four that were sitting down were lost in the darkness. 

As Seungmin realized this, something curious began to happen. The water of the ocean, which had been illuminated by the moon, began to glow on its own, a deep blue glow that grew in intensity and began to spread. The white-capped waves glowed from within, strands of blue and green of every shade greedily washing over the moon as if to bring it down into the oceans deep, dark depths. 

“Take it out,” Seungmin said, suddenly seized by panic. He gripped Chan’s arm. “Take it out!”

“What?” Chan asked, shaken from his reverie to look at Seungmin incredulously. “Seungmin, what are you talking about?”

“It — ” Seungmin made a frustrated noise, unable to put his fear into words. “Please, we have to take it out.”

Chan searched his eyes and didn’t question him again as he walked into the water to take out the moon. The glow, which had almost spread to the horizon, rocketed back to the moon; the water clung to it, unwilling to let it go. But when Chan brought it back to his kids, it was dry once more. The ocean and beach were all dark again, with only the moon and the town up on the ridge shedding any light. 

Chan threw the moon into the air. It thudded back to earth with little ceremony. 

“That was a bust,” Minho said lightly. He didn’t seem too angry that his suggestion hadn’t panned out. 

Seungmin could only stare at the moon as Chan lifted it into his arms once more. Its silver light had neither faded nor grown, but shone as evenly as it had been.

“To the mountains, then,” he said, near breathless from the rush of anxiety. 

“To the mountains.”

VIII. 

Jeongin didn’t very much like that the moon was losing its light. He didn’t very much like that it had fallen in the first place, either. 

The eight of them left the seaside with great reluctance. Despite what he wanted to display, Minho was obviously disappointed that his idea hadn’t panned out; Jeongin did feel a little bit bad that they were moving onto his idea instead. He really wished it had worked out for his hyung. 

Once they had realized what was happening to the moon, they didn’t let it out of their sights. It had rested on each of their laps at least once; now, as noon rolled over them on their second day of driving into the mountains, it was Jeongin’s responsibility. They were close. The sea was far behind them, and the mountains loomed ahead, digging into the clear blue sky. 

“We should be up there by sunset,” Seungmin announced to the quiet car. “Then we can hike up, and be at the peak during the night, so there won’t be any reason why it can’t go up. At least based on our predictions so far. If it doesn’t work, we’ll regroup.”

“If this doesn’t work, I think we should give it to someone else,” Changbin said, though he seemed reluctant. Jeongin twisted to look at him in the back-backseat, as did most of the other kids in the car, save Chan who was driving. “What? I’m just saying. There’s got to be someone out there who knows what to do with it. Someone that’s not eight kids stumbling around who have decided it’s okay to not shower for a week.”

“What do you even think will happen to it if we give it to someone else?” Minho asked. “The thing is lucky we don’t want to keep it. Imagine owning the moon. People would kill and die for that. Nations would wage war.”

“You don’t think we’re the only people on the face of the planet who want to see it put back?” Hyunjin said. “It’s for the common good of humanity. We should have given it to NASA.”

“NASA’s no better than the venture capitalists. They would have locked it away in some facility and run all sorts of tests on it,” Jisung said. “People are greedy in all sorts of different ways. We don’t want or need anything other than each other, so we’re the perfect candidates for putting it back. We never once thought about keeping it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jeongin mumbled, running a fingertip over the crack of a deep canyon. 

“Ayennie,” Minho scolded. Jeongin pouted. He didn’t think anyone had heard him. 

“I’m just saying, we couldn’t have trusted anyone else before this to put it back, and we can’t trust anyone now,” Jisung said. “It’s us, or it’s no one. Also, how the hell did you think we would have been able to give it to NASA? They’re on the other side of the planet.”

“We could figure it out. We’re smart,” Hyunjin protested. 

“We are not smart,” Changbin told him. 

The car erupted into a piercingly loud squabble that Jeongin tuned out at once, turning his head to look out the window instead. Under the midday sun, the green fields rolled by; black electrical lines heaved like waves against the sky. Jeongin saw a few birds perched upon them, but not a single other car was on the road. 

When the eight of them reached the base of the mountain, the sun was hovering close to the horizon, turning the world all gold. They piled out of the car and stretched, all groaning and whining to each other. The mountain they had picked was a popular hiking spot, but despite this, theirs was the only car in the parking lot. The sign by the trailhead told them about the paths they could take and warned them about the consequences of staying out after dark. 

“Time to Sisyphus it up and roll this boulder up a hill,” Hyunjin declared. He had been elected the fifth person to carry the moon; they had decided to do it in shifts so that no one person had to carry its weight the full amount of time. They’d ordered themselves by their strength. Chan had insisted on carrying it last, up the final stretch to the top of the mountain. 

So they set out. At first, the walk was filled with lively banter; they made awed noises at the trees and flowers, and cooed over Seungmin, who had been shafted with the role of first moon-carrier and was struggling just the tiniest bit. 

They took a small break as the moon was handed over to Minho, chugging water and commenting on the beautiful golden light pouring over everything. It even made their sweaty, greasy bodies look good. 

They were quieter when it was Felix’s turn. The sky had gone dark around the edges, and the sun was only half over the horizon line, casting a beautiful array of red and orange and pink over everything. Even if they weren’t all red-cheeked from exertion, the light would have given them that glow. 

When Jeongin picked up the moon, night had fallen, dark and mysterious. A small town in the distance glowed with light, but that was all they could see out in the world beyond the circle of light the moon shed upon them. All any of them said was encouragements for Jeongin; Chan ruffled his hair and said, “We’re just about halfway up. We’re almost there.”

He almost collapsed when he finally passed the moon off to Hyunjin, who groaned upon receiving it. “Good job, Ayennie,” Jisung said; “Good luck, Hyunjin-ah.”

“You’re next after me,” Hyunjin threatened, though he had no breath for it. They gathered themselves and resumed their climb. 

After it was handed off to Jisung and then Changbin, no one said anything. They were too exhausted. There had been trees near the base of the mountain, but now they were few and far between. The moon could only show the rocks and dirt they dragged their feet over. 

“Almost there,” Felix whispered as the moon was placed into Chan’s waiting arms. 

“Almost there,” Chan returned. 

Jeongin looked up at the sky. It was dizzying to stare into that empty blackness; he would never stop accepting the stars. He was directionless. Were the sailors in their ships all lost? Probably not; they had modern technology to help with their navigation. But it must be terrifying; for so long, people had relied on the stars for direction and guidance, and now they were gone. They were stranded. 

Now, at the top of the world, Jeongin was directionless. The eight of them crested the peak, or at least as close to the peak as they could get while remaining safely on the path; it felt right to stop where they did, and that was all that mattered. Jeongin felt ready to collapse. They had been walking for ages and ages, each of them doing their part to carry the moon — which was quite heavy — and they all sighed as they came to a stop on the ridge line of the mountain. 

“Here we are,” Chan said. He didn’t put the moon down, though his arms shook. Jeongin was too tired to think, so he just went over and wrapped his own arms around the moon, hoping to take as much of the burden away from Chan as he would allow. “Ayennie?”

“Let us help you,” Jeongin said, staring at the moon. Its glow had faded over the past couple days; now, it barely illuminated Chan’s questioning face, his deep eyes. 

“I can’t let you — ”

“Hyung,” Jeongin whispered, and he shut up. “Chan. You can’t do this alone. That’s why you have us. Let us help you. We want to help.”

Chan searched his face, a soft, pale gray in the moonlight. His eyes drooped with exhaustion, and Jeongin knew he was too tired to resist. A series of complicated looks passed over his face. Jeongin thought he was finally letting go of those unconvincing smiles and the burden of responsibility to which he had tied himself.

“Okay,” he said quietly. 

As if they had been waiting for it, Felix, then Jisung, then everyone else came and helped lift up the moon. Together, they raised it into the sky, hoping for something — anything — to happen. 

They didn’t have to wait long. The moon rose from their hands and fell into an invisible slot, hidden in the darkness — its own small niche in the sky. It settled in as if it had never left, and as their hands fell away, its glow brightened and brightened until the mountain, and then the valley beyond, and then everything else was illuminated with that smooth silver light. 

“Oh,” Felix said.” Jeongin looked over to see something glow bright white in his pocket. Felix fished it out and presented to them a small star — without prompting, it rose from his hand and floated up into the sky, settling into its own niche and joining the light pouring over the world. All around them, from the mountain and the forest and the fields stretching out below, small pinpricks of light rose from the ground and gracefully ascended into the sky, pricking the darkness with light once more. It felt magical, in a way that watching them fall hadn’t. The world was righting itself. 

The eight of them were silent as they watched. Jeongin felt someone take hold of his hand and reached out blindly for the other to be occupied, and so the eight of them stood together, holding hands, watching the night sky weave itself back together once more. 

They didn’t all go back. There were a few notable holes, and constellations with missing stars — the Big Dipper was missing one of its corners. But there were enough. 

Jeongin squeezed the hand next to him, and then looked over to who it belonged to — Chan. He was looking up at the stars too, in rapt silence, but looked at Jeongin when he asked for it. 

He couldn’t find words, so he squeezed Chan’s hand again, hoping that would convey everything he felt. Chan gave him a smile. A real one, bright and all-encompassing. Jeongin could see it so clearly in the silver moonlight, and he couldn’t help giving one in return. 

Thank you, Chan mouthed to him. Overwhelmed, Jeongin only squeezed his hand one more time, then turned his attention back to the stars. 

The eight of them stayed there through the night. Some of them drifted off, but others stayed awake, drinking in the sight. Seungmin explained the constellations in a low voice to anyone who wanted to listen, and Felix curled into Chan’s side, holding him tight even as he fell asleep. 

The thought of the future entered Jeongin’s mind, and he lazily chewed it over, too tired to truly dissect it. It didn’t scare him, which, when he realized, surprised him. Back at the home, he had been terrified of the future. It loomed on the horizon, huge and uncompromising. Now, though, it was easier to see the good things; it was bright and welcoming, a certainty in a positive way. 

We’ll be fine, as long as we’re together, he thought, and the thought was good and true.

The End