Archive of Our Own

Renjun stares back at Jeno from the highest shelf in the supermarket, right beside the odour of days-old crustaceans. Up there, he has unblinking doe eyes and skin made of orange-red synthetic fur. Although the stitching could use more work, Jeno doesn’t knock them off for alteration: if the company doesn’t pay close attention to the technicalities, Jeno won’t, either.

The majority tumbles and falls back, crashing with soft thuds on the next aisle. A dead-eyed Fox Renjun falls on his foot, arms displayed open as though Jeno’s frame could fit in the tight embrace.

And Jeno kicks it across the aisle.

Three months’ worth of design, three more for production, two for marketing, and this is what it’s come to. A mere whisper of his past.

Fox Renjun swirls in the air, and as soon as an employee slides into view, it hits her uniform pants.

She lifts it by a pointy ear. “Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to leave.”

It’s not fair, it’s a neighbourhood supermarket, it’s Jeno’s plushie, it’s Renjun incorporated. Reborn, rebirthed, right out of Jeno’s mind.

I’m not crazy! Jeno wants to say. It’s just my mind playing tricks on me!

Instead, he lowers his head, hunches his shoulders, and treks the aisles until he’s past the sliding doors. They close in front of him, scratching over their metal hinges. Behind the glass, the employee stands with authority, holding Fox Renjun as she crosses her arms.

Jeno’s path back home hurts more because, as soon as he steps inside, the lack of groceries is painfully noticeable. A groan rips through him as he closes the door and flops onto his couch. He bounces and he sighs.

He kicks his foot against the cushions. He punches the cushions. He takes a cushion and slams his face into it. He roars into the cushion.

If he were to still be chained to technology, Jeno would pull his phone, tears in his eyes, and post wordless tweets. Just meme after meme — slightly altered from their original shitpost state — to symbolize his gradual descent into madness. A Mike Wazowski-Sulley face swap would be captioned, When u realize the voices in ur head don’t come from the radio waves, followed by a manic Rick Sanchez saying, I just hallucinated for the past year lmao!

But the only piece of tech in his one-room apartment is a scratched-up computer missing the letters K and P on its oily keyboard, taken from the nearest junkyard. Jeno has revoked his phone, deleted social media, and wiped off his digital footprint to the best extent, all under Renjun’s influence. His departure hasn’t convinced Jeno on returning to the virtual brutal world of social media. Damn you, Renjun!

In retaliation, Jeno busts out of the pillow nest to trample toward the computer, and, under heavy breathing, he types: Dear Manager, it is with great sorrow that I must not tae part in another roject. In fact, if I do, I might ill myself lest I roduce another athetic design of glaring lagiarism. Goodbye. Best Regards, Jeno.

While delivering the email, the ENTER button gets stuck, and suddenly Jeno has an outlet to forward his anger other than velvety cushions. He clack-clack-clacks at the key until it jumps back into place, and it’s with a sore greasy finger that Jeno notices the Manager’s response: a simple ‘You’ll be back.’

And, listen here, Jeno has lived two-and-something decades without conceding to impulses. Unlike his peers, Jeno hasn’t a competitive bone in his anatomy. However, Jeno believes the average human possesses a single free-pass card for one minor stupid choice, and he hasn’t used his during gap year. If there’s any moment to use this card, it’s now.

Therefore, no, Dear Manager. Jeno will not be back.

Because, in different stages of progress, the fox design is attached to Jeno’s studio walls. They hang by wrinkled adhesive tape, fluttering whenever he opens the window or closes the fridge door. They are half-finished sketches, some more carefully detailed than others, some fully coloured, some the exact same replica of Renjun’s ball pen drawing once made on Jeno’s wrist.

For the majority of the year, Jeno’s been blind. Blind, despite his breakthrough from technology enslavement, despite self-imposed work isolation. Blind, despite Renjun’s personal possessions still laying around, by his nightstand, the top of his fridge, perched on his living room rack, pinched onto the entrance’s coat hanger. One of those possessions Jeno drags out from under his bed.

An annotated map, circled and dog-eared. If Renjun had to leave, why hadn’t he taken it with him? And the answer is so simple, an answer that shakes Jeno into a bundle of happy nerves. He’s holding the map, shaking the map, like he’s just pressed Start on a game — back when he played any. Isn’t it obvious? Isn’t it so like Renjun? To set Jeno on the path toward himself? It’s like a trap, and Jeno is the mouse helplessly flaying in it.

And this is what’s going to happen: Jeno will fold this map, pack it into his gym bag with just enough amenities to keep his body alive, and he’ll hunt Renjun. And then Renjun will explain himself.

—

There were many scenarios Jeno hadn’t considered. For example, road pirates. Unfortunately, this thought comes to mind right when he wakes up on his reclined car seat by a knock on the window.

It’s somewhere past midnight, he’s on a crossroad, untouched land from left to right, surrounded by plot and dirt, and there’s a stranger on the other side of the door. The only safety measure he can conjure up is crawling to the passenger seat, far from the driver’s window, and clutch the car keys.

Jeno and the stranger stare, eye to golden eye, and with the tinted windows, this man can’t possibly see Jeno, but he does. The eye contact is direct, unwavering, and the stranger’s voice is muffled behind the glass. It sounds soothing, fogs the window. The stranger brings a finger to write against the condensation, Ribe plz?

Despite the d and s being reversed, Jeno doesn’t judge this man’s handwriting. Instead, he comes forward and slides the window down.

“Hey,” he says. “Going North?”

Jeno gulps. “Yes.”

“Can you take me with you?” The stranger bows his head, looking down at his feet. “I’m injured.”

With a silent nod, Jeno nearly opens the driver’s door. As he hops back onto his seat, the stranger rounds the car, and Jeno unlocks the passenger door. When the man settles in the passenger seat, his leg cast is in full visibility for Jeno’s eyes, and so is this stranger’s glowing blue hair.

“Thank you so much,” the stranger yawns. “I’m Jaemin.”

“Jeno,” Jeno says. He doesn’t start the car just yet. To brown the garlic, or so to say. This moment, the beating of Jeno’s heart, the new presence in his car, and the hanging air freshener… it all can make anyone feel nauseous. But Jaemin just sits there, and there’s no slash of the draw of a knife out of the cast.

“So,” Jaemin says. There’s no reason why Jaemin’s hair should be like this, a blue neon street sign. Perhaps this is the result of tech, a TikTok trend, a fashion statement. None of those motifs impresses Jeno. “Let’s go?”

Jeno starts the car. The motor hums, coughs, and they take off.

—

As though under the spell of Jeno’s laptop screen, Renjun bleached his hair. They’d been together for 2 weeks, known each other for 5, and had just moved in together. Therefore, among stacks of beige boxes labelled STUFF 1 and STUFF 2, Jeno wore his most ragged T-shirt to mix the powder and fret over the box-assigned bleach ratio. Renjun’s hair was precious — it still is, in Jeno’s mind’s eye — and when he laid the brush on the coloured curls, Jeno froze.

“From ends to roots, Jeno,” Renjun said. “That’s what Brad Mondo said.”

“Yes.” Jeno held the ends with a gloved palm. He held it like a hatching egg, cupping the strings like they would overflow his hand, and brushed the mixture over them. “I still think this is a bad idea.”

“Oh, you, shush.” Renjun rewinded the video all the way to the intro. “He’s a professional hairstylist.”

“Yeah, but I’m not.” Ends to roots. Then foil paper. Then ends to roots. Then foil paper.

“Is the camera on?” Not waiting for the answer, Renjun turned around. Jeno, holding on to his hair for dear life, made Renjun wince with the unintended tug. “Ow. Yeah, it is. Red is for recording, right?”

Red means a lot of things these days, but back then—

“Red means recording, yes,” Jeno said. “Where are you from, the 19th Century?”

Renjun exploded in laughter, and his caked hair escaped Jeno’s gloved hands.

To touch Renjun’s hair like that, wrap it in foil like a warm meal, then resisting thirty long minutes without picking at his nose with the sticky gloves, has become a core experience for Jeno. Because there was no more place between Renjun, the boxes, and the acrid bleach scent has become an entity larger than Jeno’s apartment, swallowing Jeno’s reaction to the unfoiled result of Renjun’s hair.

Wiggling on the stool, Renjun asked, “How is it?”

Jeno stared at it. “Orange as… an orange.”

And Renjun, instead of losing his mind and stomping out of Jeno’s tiny, box-packed apartment, shrugged and said that he liked it.

And he kept the colour, until two days after, when he felt compelled to be a platinum blond by Instagram Reels. So they tried again: now following instructions step by step. By the end of it, Renjun looked even more painfully beautiful.

—

It’s tough to juggle his attention between the road and Jaemin, neon-sign Jaemin, overtly distracting Jaemin. Even under the weight of silence, Jaemin’s hair shines onto Jeno’s side like a second moon.

By his side, Jaemin holds to his silence as Jeno holds the wheel, but it’s beside himself if Jaemin is as nervous as him. On one hand, Jeno has the upper hand. He can take them wherever he wants. On the other hand, Jaemin is… a complete stranger, full of horrifying possibilities. Whenever the car hits a bump, he doesn’t flinch like Jeno. And when Jeno sneaks a glance, he’s looking ahead, a smile plastered on his face.

The only solace is that they’re nearing the first marked spot: an uncharacteristic 7/11, astray amid deserted land, one Jeno has visited with Renjun one uncharacteristic afternoon. A fun day off Jeno previously thought nothing of.

Jeno realizes it’s a bad idea the second he parks in front of it. His bladder screams for release, Jaemin is inside, and the car is too small — the keys dangle too close to Jaemin’s hands.

“Do you need to use the restroom?”

Jaemin tilts his head as if considering. “Not really. You?”

“I, uh…” He starts, but doesn’t know how to end the sentence. Jeno wipes his hands on his jeans. Maybe the stars will help his vocabulary, shining too distant from the window, like hundreds of miniatures of Jaemin’s hairstyle.

The door clicks and startles Jeno back into reality. “I think I might get a sandwich.” Jaemin’s out of the car, and Jeno hopes he doesn’t visibly slump back into the seat, but that’s how he feels.

Jaemin hops into the store on one foot, knee folded in a relaxed angle and splashing dry soil on Jeno’s shoes. Once inside, they part ways.

This 7/11 hasn’t matched Jeno’s memory. The inside has been renovated. Nothing major: a few display cabinets are extended closer to the entrance door, and the bathroom door has been upgraded from a cracked, barely functioning one into a wooden door with a loose latch lock. Jeno slides the bolt into the strike plate, fighting himself to not imagine how Renjun used this same bathroom the last time they were here. He tries not to think of it, tries really hard, as he points and shoots at the blue toilet water.

He has to wipe the toilet seat with a piece of paper. The water flushes counterclockwise.

The door creaks when opened, and Jaemin, sitting at a raised two-seat table with his injured foot dangling off like a swine in a slaughterhouse, looks at Jeno over his pulled-pork sandwich. There’s a slushie, the same colour as Jaemins’s hair, standing tall and sweaty, wetting the table. Jaemin waves at the display in front of him, at the chicken sandwich and pizza slice. A twinning slushie sits on the side. Does Jeno look like he eats that much? He will eat that much, but does he look like he has a big appetite?

“I didn’t know what you wanted, but those were the safest bets,” Jaemin says, apologetic. “Choose what you like the most. I already paid them.”

So Jeno can only eat one. Perhaps Jaemin wants the rest. Tough choice. He could keep the sandwich, but what if the chicken was dry and unsalted? And what if the pizza was too crisp, too cold, and the cheese too un-stringy? What did Renjun tell him? The pizza is bad — no the pizza is good. Or is it about the slushies? Jeno sits in front of Jaemin and reaches for it to take a sip. Juicy. Cold. Blueberry. Good. Is it the chicken? What is wrong with the chicken? There must be something wrong, what’s wrong with the—

—

“Chicken?” Renjun screeched. On the other side of the counter, the cashier flinched. So, leaning closer to Jeno’s ear, he whispered: “No, don’t. It tastes like fish.”

“I like fish,” Jeno whispered back.

“Well.” Renjun glanced at the uninterested cashier. “This fish doesn’t taste like fish. It tastes like… cardboard.”

“Chicken that tastes like fish that tastes like cardboard,” Jeno teased. “Got it.”

“Just don’t buy it,” Renjun huffed, pouty. He was beautiful. Back then he had black hair. He nodded at the display cabinet. “Take the pizza.”

—

Jeno tears a bite of the pizza. Each time he chews, the combination of melted cheese, tomato, and crust explodes taste onto his tongue. It’s just as though Renjun is sitting across from him. But he isn’t. Jaemin is. Blue-neon-haired Jaemin, eating pulled pork.

“Good?” Jaemin says over crunchy chewing. Jeno nods. As Jaemin takes another bite of his sandwich, Jeno’s questions his vision, because he can swear something is squirming in between the bread.

Well. It certainly isn’t myopia. He’s gotten Lasik a few years ago.

—

One week into their relationship, Renjun suddenly grew paranoid about the TV.

“It’s the red light, Jeno,” Renjun said. There was a tremble to his voice Jeno had never heard before. “Red is for recording. Right? Red is for recording.”

Renjun’s background was tricky, since back then Jeno couldn’t coach out a single family story, or any story from Renjun’s past. But if Jeno would guess, Renjun might’ve grown up on a farm, with a strict family, surrounded by forest animals and explosive shotguns. That’d explain his ignorance, at least.

“No. In this case…” Jeno pressed the turn-on button. “Means the TV is off. See? Now it’s on.”

“Turn it off!”

“Sorry.” Jeno turned it off.

Renjun’s eyes scanned the small apartment, the walls, the floor, the ceiling. “How do we make it stop?”

“You want me to stop the TV?”

“Exactly.”

“Well, it’s plugged into the power outlet.”

His shirt stretched out of his body. Renjun was gripping it so Jeno would turn to face him. “Where is it?”

Jeno glanced at the wall, then at Renjun, then at the wall again, laughter stuck in his throat. How did one act in a situation like this? At that time, he still believed Renjun was laying tiny hints of sarcasm into the quiver of his lips. He’s playing dumb, Jeno would think back then, like Paris Hilton.

“In the wall?” Jeno bit back a smile.

The couch shook as Renjun hasted out of it and glued himself to the wall, arms stretched like in a hug. He slid left and right, and Jeno laughed at the silliness. This was all a theatrical comedy piece, and Renjun was a good actor.

By the time Jeno’s stomach began to pinch and his laughter had calmed into a little giggle, Renjun had found the power outlet. With a swift pull, he detached the TV from it, like cutting an umbilical cord or plucking out a leech from skin. Renjun was dead serious.

“Now we can’t watch Netflix,” Jeno pointed out. He wished he hadn’t.

Renjun turned, panting, shaking. His expression reminded Jeno of a young kitten who’d experienced the cruelty of the world too soon.

“We’re never watching anything again.” Renjun let the wire fall to the floor, and that was the last time Jeno watched TV.

—

The A/C is broken, the windows are open, and Jaemin’s hair flutters in the speedy air.

“Where to next?” Jaemin asks.

Jeno wants to glance at the map, choose a random destination, but it’s crumpled by the back seat, dog-eared nearly into origami. It’s harder to keep the fantasy in his head, harder to not pull up at every lonely building and look for Renjun while Jaemin is with him. “I’ll know when I see it.”

Jaemin looks out of the window. “Are we lost?”

Good question. 

“No. I have a map. Back seat.”

From his peripheral vision, Jaemin turns to look behind them. But Jeno has to keep his eye on the road. It’s bumpy, hole-y, and devoid of street signs. Still, Jeno sees Jaemin reaching for the map. He sees the way he flinches, spasms rippling through his body like an electric shock. Jeno also sees a glance of red, crimson blood pool out of Jaemin’s index finger before he takes it between his lips.

Jeno whips his head back and forth, between Jaemin and the road. “Are you OK?”

“Mhmhmhm,” Jaemin muffles.

“Was the cut that deep?”

“Mhm.”

An uneven bump shakes the car. Jaemin groans. “I think I have a first aid kit below the seat. Look under yours.”

Jaemin reaches bellow, finger still in mouth. A muffle of frustration.

“Maybe it’s under mine.”

Jaemin fumbles under his seat, arm knocking against Jeno’s ankles. From his irritated noises, it isn’t there, either.

Bump in the road.

“Under the back seats.”

Jaemin dives behind him. The car swerves slightly from the road, and Jeno’s breath hitches, freaks out just a bit. Well, it wouldn’t make much difference. If Jeno keeps driving straight ahead, even if they bump and rattle the car, the road is dark, devoid of other drivers. The headlights can pick up ahead only so much, but Jeno is at least sure of that.

Fully in the back seat, Jaemin fusses around like a toddler having a tantrum. His knees are on Jeno’s back, and one of his elbows knocks on Jeno’s arm, consequently knocking the car out of course. Jeno turns the wheel, sharp, until it’s back to the safest side of the road. Among kicking and ruffling, Jaemin doesn’t seem to find the first aid kit, and Jeno wonders if he’s ever even brought it along, if he ever touched it since the last time he had to use it.

“It’s not here.” Jaemin’s head pops out from the back seat, finger stuck in between his lips. It’s baffling that Jaemin can still speak like this. “Do you have some sort of cloth or anything on the glove compartment?”

“I’m not sure. You can look if you want to.”

Suddenly, Jaemin’s cast is in full view, jolting with each road bump. Jeno’s teeth chatter along with the clattering of the hanging air softener, listening to the car's suspension creaking and groaning as it struggles to absorb the shocks from the road. If the kit is in the car, it’s awfully unmovable. When Jaemin hops into the passenger seat, he groans along with the car.

This might’ve distracted Jeno for too long — not so distant ahead, a bright beam shines in their direction. It’s just one, perhaps a car with one broken headlight, as lost as Jeno. Is it on the hunt for Renjun, like Jeno?

Probably not. It drives towards them, gradually approaching, remaining on the wrong side of the road. Ready for collision.

As a warning, Jeno blinks the headlights twice, and then grips the steering wheel. Whoever is behind that light can surely see them, but it keeps coming, like an unstoppable shooting star.

Jeno stares as it gets just a little bit shinier, then bigger, then closer, closer, until they’re part of the star.

—

One day, Renjun fractured his ankle.

He showed up at Jeno’s door, limping just like Jaemin, blood staining his white sock and trailing in a thin stream down his shoe. He limped into Jeno’s arms and let himself be dragged to the bathtub, where Jeno washed him as he dazed off, head hanging from the edge. A living picture.

By that point, Renjun was already quite opposed to anything corporation, and that included hospitals. Therefore, Jeno had to pull the first aid kit from his bathroom rack, dust it off, and stick four band-aids to Renjun’s ankle.

The next day, he disappeared.

—

Today, Jaemin doesn’t disappear. The car hasn’t exploded, nor is it turned over, crashed off the road. Instead of having himself hang upside down, the seatbelt the only thing stopping his body from crashing into the ceiling, Jeno sits on the passenger seat, gravity weighing him into the cushioned surface.

His shoulders move first, unbroken, with no sign of pain. He rolls them on their blades, still half-asleep, before sitting upright. Beside him, Jaemin and the car have become acquaintances, fully comfortable in the driver’s seat with an elbow resting on the open window.

“Are you awake?” Jaemin muses. In the same injured-Jaemin fashion, Jeno mutters gibberish, which Jaemin responds with a chuckle.

They fall silent. The car has lost the hum and they travel smoothly through the crossroad. It’s early morning, so Jeno has to pull the sun visor to shade him from the bright sunlight.

“Is your finger okay?” Last night, there was blood, there was panic, so uncharacteristic of this serene moment.

“Yeah,” Jaemin simply says.

Jeno lifts himself out of the seat to take a brief look into the front of the car. Other than blood, there was a crash. A single-headlight-vehicle crashed with Jeno’s car. Didn’t it?

“We hit a truck.” Jaemin hasn’t the sun visor down, he welcomes the sunlight to wash over his face with a delighted smile. His voice doesn’t match the subject he’s talking about. “But there was minimal damage, don’t worry.”

Hit by a truck. Well, that explains the blinding light. Terrifying. Glad they made it alive, and, by the looks of it, Jeno might’ve blacked out from the mere shock. Embarrassing.

At least the ‘minimal damage,’ or so Jaemin claims, has fixed the car’s previous incessant engine hum. Now, it flows smoothly, like the wind against Jeno’s hair.

They fall silent again. Without the responsibility of driving, Jeno’s mind floods with memories from the day before.

“What were you eating earlier?” Jeno asks. “When we stopped by the 7/11.”

“Earlier? Or later?” Is it mockery Jeno detects in his voice? They were in the convenience store close to or past midnight. Jaemin is way too witty, and Jeno is so stale, rummaging through his mind in search of an answer that matches Jaemin’s tone. It’s something that has become too familiar to him. Back when he dated Renjun, it was too easy for Jeno to be teased, to be left speechless. Jaemin has the same talent. He’s more merciful, though, finally responding to Jeno’s question with: “I’m vegan.”

Jeno won’t argue against that.

“What is your excuse?” Jaemin blurts. There’s only the wind as background noise. Even the road has smoothed out.

“Excuse me?”

“For not having a phone,” he clarifies.

Contemplating the reason for that question was an afterthought. Jeno has heard this countless times, mostly coming from morbidly curious coworkers and annoyed superiors. His mouth just does the thing. “I guess I absorbed my ex’s lifestyle. He hated technology.”

“Yeah, sounds about right,” Jaemin says. “Same to me.”

“You too?”

Still leaning against the window frame, Jaemin bites his index finger and laughs. “I accepted nature as my lord and saviour. Well, ‘nature’ and ‘my ex-fiancé’ can be interchangeable.”

Crazy. Jeno can say the same about his ex.

“Oops,” Jaemin suddenly says, glancing at Jeno, then at the car panel. “We need gas.”

Promptly, Jeno reaches behind to grab for the map, but his hand stops mid-motion. By now, anything Renjun once possessed might as well be cursed. This same map caused the disaster, Jeno thought, an insane reach, but a very viable one. But they need directions, so Jeno pinches it off the backseat, utterly afraid of tearing his skin during the process. Jaemin’s blood, dried into a brown blotch, takes up half of the map when unfolded. Even without the blood, the small spots untouched by it can be barely read from the damage in the paper, sharply wrapped like tin foil. It’s unreadable.

However, against all odds, they run into a gas station.

Jaemin pulls the brake handle and turns the keys. As Jeno unbuckles his seatbelt, he’s already out the door, slamming it shut, and signalling Jeno to stay. Like a well-trained dog, Jeno does: he slumps into the seat, still shaken from the night before. The mere thought of having a truck collide with his car as he drives makes the sweat at the back of his neck freeze in fear. He longed for a phone, or a tablet, or anything with internet connection, to livetweet this moment. He’d start with, travelling through deserted roads with a stranger, a thread, above a freshly taken picture of his surroundings. In his imagination, it’d go viral, despite Jeno’s whooping 17 followers, all IRL friends, family, and frenemies from work. It would also provide well-needed peace of mind, even if superficial.

Outside of the car, Jaemin walks to the gas station. He walks. His leg stretches out, like the one from the average able person, bends at the knee at a healthy angle, and stomps on the ground without any qualms. Long forgotten is the cast. A plethora of explanations spam Jeno’s head, all of them dangerous, all of them catastrophic. All of them end in one horrific fate: Jeno’s death. 

As if to amplify Jeno’s frenzied thoughts, a couple far ahead, inconspicuously pumping air into a tire, stare at Jeno. On their heads, the same neon multicoloured flock of hair Jaemin sports is present, like a flag, like a symbol, like an omen. They spot him in the distance, and wave. The windows are tinted — a stylistic choice Jeno paid for due to his own paranoia inherited from Renjun — Jaemin has his back turned to them, and when Jeno turns on the seat to check the car’s back, nobody is standing behind it. They are waving directly at him.

Jeno attempts a wave, wary of his own perceived rudeness. Even from afar, it’s easy to spot sketches of their smiles.

With a startling click, Jaemin hooks the gasoline pistol to Jeno’s car, body partially seen through the rearview mirror. He swapped seats with Jeno as he was under the spell of shock, helplessly unconscious. Through the mirror, the gasoline gun slugs juice into the car like a mother bird regurgitating on her baby’s hungry beak, and Jaemin’s leg bounces with a silent tune. He’s known him for a day.

Still far ahead, the strangers eye him with newfound interest, attention alternating between him and Jaemin. The man punches the level. The woman slides a coin into the slot. Their refuelling gun appears to accumulate air in a loose ball before reaching the tire. Back in Jeno’s car, Jaemin fiddles with the door handler, not paying any attention. He could lock Jeno in the vehicle.

There’s a difference in the intensity when they stare at Jaemin, one that Jeno can’t quite pinpoint. Like they know him, like this is all an orchestrated arrangement, like Jaemin has planned this all along, since the very moment he knocked on Jeno’s window in the middle of the night. Back then, just yesterday, he was sleeping. Just like minutes ago, Jaemin leapt into action at Jeno’s shut eyes.

Jeno busts out of the car, leans against it, right beside Jaemin, and gulps air.

“Are you OK?”

Jeno tries to breathe but chokes on air. “Yes.” 

“Yeah… you look shaken. Do you need anything?”

“Water, please.”

“Okay.” Jaemin slides the gas pistol out and walks to the holder. The couple watches his every move, colourful hair fluttering like a distant flame. When Jaemin walks — he’s walking — back toward Jeno, he takes his wallet out and says, “Fresh or sparkling?”

“No,” Jeno chokes out. Man, is it hard to talk when heaving. “In the car, in my bag.”

“Oh. About that.” Jaemin scratches his blue hair. “Sorry, but I drank it all. After the crash, I got thirsty trying to fix the car. So, yeah, sorry.”

Jeno rips himself from the car. It’s hard and sticky, like peeling a ripe orange, the back of his T-shirt glued to his skin. He rounds the car, a drug-sniffing dog on the hunt for the criminal’s stash. In his peripheral vision, the strangers move their heads in sync with his movements.

The bumper is intact, the hood is smooth. There’s no sign of collision, and definitely no sign of ‘minimal damage.’

The back of the car has a similar appearance: untouched. Worn out, if that, since Jeno’s scarce finances limited the impulsive purchase of a better-looking used car.

Empty-handed, he comes back to Jaemin, who still stands by the gasoline pump, also watching him.

“So,” Jeno says. “How exactly was the car damaged?”

Jaemin still has a hand on his wallet, glued to his back pocket. “I fixed it.”

“What have you fixed?”

“The tire.”

“You fixed a tire.”

“Changed a tire.”

“I never had a spare tire.”

Jaemin looks around, and in a moment of near surrealism, he acknowledges the strangers. “A tow car came up.”

“Did it?”

Jaemin nods. “I’m gonna get you some water,” he says, and trods to the store. 

Jeno wants to chase after him, demand answers, escape from the constant stares. But every second that he hesitates to follow Jaemin into the convenience store, his wariness grows bigger, bigger than the lump in his throat, bigger than the ice in his lungs. He’s tempted a grim fate since he let Jaemin into his car, and to be so careless now would be like laughing in the face of death.

Tight-fisted, Jeno reclaims his position in the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel until his knuckles whiten. The car is so cheap it shakes under Jeno’s every move, like it’s in tune with his movements, just like the ominous strangers that still — still — watch him from afar. However, something’s missing. It’s more of a sensation, a knee-jerk reaction. When he reaches for the keys, they aren’t there, hanging from the ignition, assuring Jeno of his escape. Jaemin took it.

Therefore, Jeno sits there, helpless, avoiding the strangers’ eyes that stare through the tinted window like it’s made of clear glass.

Fortunately, when Jaemin gets back, he doesn’t try to take the driver's seat. He taps the glass from the passenger side, cradling a water bottle and jiggling Jeno’s keys in his free hand.

“Not trying to make a run for it, are you?” Jaemin teases. His tone immediately throws Jeno off guard. But with a glance at the bottle he’s holding, Jeno’s guard is up again like a bricked wall.

“Give me the keys,” Jeno says.

It’s easier than expected, though the expected is not quite clear, thankfully, and Jeno stifles a sigh as he turns them on the ignition.

Jaemin slips the bottle into the holder, almost touching Jeno’s hand that rests on the gear shift. “Here’s your water.”

He’s not drinking that, for a few glaringly obvious reasons. Firstly, the bottle is not sealed: the cap is slightly skewed, its seal unforgivingly broken. Secondly, there’s a nearly imperceptible amount of water missing, as though Jaemin has taken a small sip of it during his short walk back into the car. Thirdly, the ‘mineral water,’ as it says on the package, is green.

“Not thirsty?”

Due to his silence, Jeno has to hold his cool as Jaemin shakes the bottle on the side of his face. The liquid inside bubbles. Jeno holds his silence. Jaemin finally gives, “I’ll save it for later.”

When Jeno passes through a road bump, it’s too late, too unfocused to drive. The car shakes, fragile, weak, just like Jeno. “Why don’t you drink it?”

“But I drank all your water.”

“You can drink this one, too.”

“Are you upset because of that?”

“I’m upset,” Jeno says. Road bump. His teeth clack. “Because you’re lying to me.”

“I’m not lying to you,” Jaemin retorts, a quick, sharp bite.

Road bump. “Yeah? Then why don’t you tell me what really happened when I got knocked out?”

“I did.”

“Jaemin,” Jeno warns. Every ridge in the spongy surface of the steering wheel presses to his palm. “We’re in the middle of god’s ass-crack, no phones, no nothing — and I remember the map said, ‘Nearest stop around 150km away.’ And don’t say it’s inaccurate. Renjun is strict with technicalities.”

It’s a slip. Renjun’s name, said out in the open, in public. All of a sudden, Jeno has addressed the invisible elephant in the room, one that materialized from his mind and into his car. There’s no taking back, either. Unlike Jaemin’s previously hurt calf, his ears haven’t given any signs of failing.

Jeno is frozen in place, hands tight on the wheel, waiting for the remnants of his voice to stop echoing.

By his side, Jaemin doesn’t let it die. Instead, he whips his head at him, so violently Jeno could be convinced he’s slapped him. “Renjun?” Jaemin squeaks. With the sudden road bump Jeno runs the car over, Jaemin is startled into gripping the door handle.

“My ex-boyfriend,” Jeno responds. He hopes it’s enough. He wants to forget it — this whole conversation. Better leave it, come back to the status quo, as serialized cartoons do. He’s survived Jaemin throughout this whole time, and there’s no cast to hide a knife anymore, so why would Jeno be in danger now?

“No,” Jaemin blurts. “ My ex-boyfriend.”

What the Hell? Jeno grips the wheel, suddenly at a loss of his own bodily reactions. Jaemin gets the map from the back seat and tries to open it up without getting cut again. It only gets torn a bit. “What are you doing?”

“It’s true,” Jaemin says, contemplating. Jeno has great difficulty tearing his attention from the road, now done with the shaking of the car. From the corner of his vision, Jaemin folds back the map as neatly as it can be.

“What is? Do you know Renjun? Who the fuck are you?”

“Jeno.” Jaemin slumps over the seat like it's a burden to hold his body up straight. “Renjun and I were supposed to be engaged. When were you two dating?”

“Engaged?”

“Answer me,” Jaemin chokes, voice reminiscent of Jeno’s just minutes ago.

“Two years ago,” Jeno says, and watches Jaemin’s foot spasm. “We were together a year before breaking up”

Jaemin looks out the window and bites a knuckle. There’s the sign of tears in his eyes.

“How is this Renjun of yours?” Jeno tries. “Maybe it’s not the same person we’re talking about. What does your Renjun look like?”

Jaemin slumps further into the seat. “Like a dream.”

That is enough to quiet the tension. Jeno feels the wheel and its ridges, and the wind licking at his face inducing dry tears. Look at them, say the name Renjun and watch two grown men cry. Renjun also looked like a dream, a technicolour dream, full of blinding lights and electro waves. Renjun rejected technology and covered his face near screens. Renjun, paranoid Renjun, gone forever.

“Shorter than me, always dying out that beautiful red hair,” Jaemin keeps on. “No one could stop him. Oh, the anger issues. He’d go red like his hair, twist my arm, but you just couldn’t take him seriously. That cute face! So cute when angry— Jeno, the road!”

The car swerves left, then right, then left again, zigzagging along the empty road. Jeno’s hands keep slipping off the wheel. They slide up and down like a caress, making it difficult to steady the car’s direction. Whoever Jaemin is describing, that’s Renjun. Renjun, slightly altered. No, Renjun reincarnated, like the fox plushie. Like all the stops, there’s a bit of Renjun everywhere. 

“That’s my Renjun.”

That’s finally enough. Jeno doesn’t turn his head to see it, just hears it: the faint noise of Jaemin crying. Is he watching out the window just like Jeno? Reminiscing about a Renjun time? A before and after Renjun time, perhaps. Jeno imagined Renjun, the idea of him hopping through their heads, to be a mystical creature, an urban legend. That excites him, because perhaps urban legends can be summoned.

“Are you looking for him?”

Jaemin peels his wet cheek from the glass. “Yes. Are you?”

“Yes.”

“It’s an odd coincidence.”

“It is.”

“It’s like he’s planned it.”

“Who?” Jeno looks at him.

“Renjun,” Jaemin deadpans. “Always seven steps ahead, playing people like puppets. Glad I’m not the only one, it eases the pain.”

—

With the newfound information clouding the air and fogging the windows, they fall into a contemplating silence. It’s the sort of silence you’re afraid to break, the one you just sit and wait to dissipate organically. 

But it doesn’t go away. It clings to the space in between them, crawls at the back of Jeno’s neck, and sits on the backseat. An unwanted passenger.

And as day bleeds into night, Jeno takes comfort in solely driving, trying to swat away any other thoughts that try to askew his concentration from the road. What breaks his focus, however, it’s not Jeno’s traitorous mind, but what’s in the sky.

When night fully falls, what was previously a mere outline now takes a clear shape. At first, it’s the moon. It looks like the moon. It also looks like a second moon has collided with the first moon and proceeded to envelop itself around it.

“Jaemin,” Jeno calls.

At no sign of answer, Jeno turns to the passenger seat. What he once thought was the result of their collective Renjun revelation, has just been the product of Jaemin’s tiredness. Beside Jeno, unmovable due to the smooth road, Jaemin rests his neon blue hair on the window. Peaceful, silent.

“Jaemin!”

Startled awake, Jaemin grips the handler. “What is it?”

Jeno has to fold a bit in his seat, angling his head just right before pointing at the sky. “Jaemin,” he says again. “Is that Saturn?”

Jaemin follows him by ducking his head to see it better. “Yes. And that’s the moon.”

Going completely unnoticed, there’s the moon, just beside Saturn, glinting with innocence. 

“Why is Saturn so close?”

“Because it’s dawn?”

Jeno heaves. It’s an involuntary reaction, one he’s become too familiar since Jaemin’s unexpected arrival. He steps on the brakes. Jaemin’s response is too shallow, too flat. A bit mocking, too.

“What’s the matter?” Jaemin asks. “Jeno, we’re in the middle of the road.”

It doesn’t matter. There’s no car in sight, no car since the weird couple, no car since Jaemin appeared. Jeno points at the sky with a shaky finger. “Why is it there?”

Despite Jaemin’s lack of reaction, Jeno keeps his finger pointed at the pesky planet, maintaining his posture as he drives with one hand.

“Jeno, let me drive.”

“What’s happening, Jaemin?” It’s hard to speak. It’s been hard to speak. Like frustrated tears are being forced out of his throat, not his eyes. This whole time. “What’s in the water?”

“The water? Jeno…”

“You’re weird. Who are you? Why do you know Renjun, why was your leg injured? Why is it better now? What happened to the car? Answer something!”

Jaemin looks afraid. Afraid of telling? Afraid of Jeno? The window is closed, rolled up all the way to the top, and still, Jaemin’s hair drifted in a shy flutter above his head. “You are the one acting weird! Aren’t you heading North?”

“I was ,” Jeno huffs. He looks around. “I don’t know where I’m going anymore.”

“And… Are you sure we’re talking about the same Renjun? Because if we are, I don’t understand why you act like—” Jaemin stops himself, like on the receiving end of an electric impulse. “Jeno, are you human?”

Tired of pointing, Jeno slaps his hand back on the steering wheel. It’s foggy inside and out of the car, the road coated in mist, and it reflects the inside of Jeno’s head perfectly. The cogs of his mind turn in opposite directions, exhaling smoke like clockwork. Jeno looks at Saturn, looks at the Moon, looks at Jaemin.

 Then busts out the door, screaming for help.

Jeno runs until he’s out of the road, amid smelly corn and the buzz of insects. Jeno screams for help while he runs through the cornfield, arms being bristled by the plants, bitten by bugs. “Help! He’s crazy! Help me!”

But there’s nobody but Jaemin, who calls for him, a distant Jeno! Jeno! and wearing a neon sign on his head. Throughout all this time, Jeno was sharing a claustrophobic space with a lunatic. A lunatic that questions Jeno’s humanity. 

“Jeno! Jeno!” Jaemin keeps calling, closer and closer.

“No! No! Get the fuck away.” Jeno slaps corn stalks away from his path, and eventually reaches a circular empty field.

It’s a man-made circle, and stabbed in its middle is a scarecrow. Its posture is slack, like a broken Jesus, slumped towards the grass. A perfect place for Jeno to hunch over his knees and retch, loud and wet, although nothing comes out other than ragged breathing.

Jaemin catches up with him. “Jeno,” he says.

Jeno shakes his head, which worsens his situation. Another wave of nausea ripples through his throat, and now water splurts over the grass.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

“Shut up.”

“First you say you’re going to North, then you say you know Renjun,” Jaemin says. “I just assumed–”

“That you could slip some type of drug in my food? In my drink? What’s in that bottle, Jaemin? What really happened during the ‘crash?’”

Chest going up and down, frightened tears prickling his eyes. Jeno might finally look on the outside like what he’s felt since Renjun’s departure. Jaemin’s hair is enough to illuminate the tears that fall into dots next to his shoes, wetting the soil like raindrops. The night has gotten darker, colder, and more lights brighten up the sky. Saturn looks closer. And so does Venus, Mercury, Neptune. They’re closer than ever.

“Look at the sky, Jeno,” Jaemin finally says. “You’re not home anymore.”

—

Against all odds, Jeno eventually calms down. It’s the calm before the storm, a product of the promise of returning unscathed under the wheel.

Which proves impossible.

The cornfield has become a maze before his eyes, especially now, in full darkness, with only Jaemin’s alien hair and freakish planets to guide both, forcing Jeno to stay close. Jeno keeps just a step away from touching Jaemin, closer than they’ve ever been despite sharing a tight space for so long. Jaemin has a leaf stuck in his hair, and Jeno itches to take it off, pull it along with his hair enough for Jaemin to notice Jeno’s hand near his neck, then slip his arms onto Jaemin’s shoulders, weave it tight along his chest. They’re roughly the same height, the same size.

“It’s too dark, Jeno,” Jaemin says. “And I’ve been bitten, like, a hundred times. Don’t even know what bit me. I’m scared.”

“What do we do? Everything is in the car.” They left with only the clothes in their bodies to fend for themselves amid a cornfield — a situation Jeno put them in. Who could blame him, really? He still can’t quite grasp the circumstances, can’t accept what Jaemin implied. Jeno is not home anymore, was there ever a home for him? He hasn’t had one since Renjun.

Jaemin spins in front of him. If Jeno were to be attached to his back, he’d spin along, like a baby koala clinging to its mother. With a finger, Jaemin points to a hill, a small elevation not too far from their spot on this corn maze. He points at it just like Jeno did to Saturn.

“We go there and look for it,” Jaemin says. “I’m afraid we’re going in the opposite direction.”

Although Jeno wishes to be back in the comforting familiar space between the door and the gear shift, it’s more promising to climb a hill than to keep battling bugs and wanting to cling to Jaemin’s skin.

And so Jeno follows Jaemin’s hair uphill, escaping the smelly untended corn and buzzing insects. Up here, the air is cleaner, stronger, and licks at Jeno’s eyelashes, planting them flat to his eyes.

“There it is,” Jaemin says, nodding at the car. There it stood alone in the road, unbothered by its surroundings. The two headlights are still on, illuminating its front, two sources of light for no use. If they don’t walk back now, the battery will run out quickly. But Jeno has gotten so little sleep and they walked for so long…

With a thud, Jeno plops on the muddy ground. “Let’s just sit down for 10 minutes.”

Wordless, Jaemin sits next to him with no sign of protest. He must be as tired as him.

Jeno grunts as he lays himself down, a good stretch. The stars up above mix among the planets in an odd checkers game: star, planet, star, planet.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” Jaemin is once again too close. “No offence, but it’s too bland where you come from. Especially in the city and stuff. Can’t see anything.”

No offence taken. “I agree.”

“I bet you have a lot of questions.”

“I don’t.” Better if he doesn’t know anything. He might fall asleep soon…

Jaemin ignores him. “We— I mean, Renjun and I, we’re part of a race called Celesti. It’s from Celestial. It’s a parallel world.”

Jeno really doesn’t want to know. Is that Pluto?

“As a Celesti, you are dangerous for the average human. They’re too weak.” Jaemin looks at him. “Sorry.”

They seem the same size, the same build, but Jeno shrugs. Who’s he to argue with the alien?

“So you— I mean we , only have 15 days of surveilled tourism before being escorted back to the Celestial world,” Jaemin keeps on, towards a point Jeno is afraid of hearing about. Surveilled. Surveillance. Just like Renjun, just as he told him— “They watch you through technological devices.”

Jeno inhales loudly.

“So you see how hard it was when I had to come looking for Renjun after a month?” Suddenly, Jaemin’s face is turned to him. “Are you crying?”

Jeno sniffles. “No.”

“Okay.” Jaemin turns back to the starred planets. “Renjun has been there for years. I had to go look for him because, well, things aren’t pretty. You saw me yesterday, saw me how bad my leg looked. That’s because, if caught, you’ll be implanted with an electronic tag around your ankle before being taken back home. It hurts. In and out.”

Images of Renjun bleeding, shaken, afraid. He was at Jeno’s door just before disappearing. Should he have helped him, truly helped him, would Renjun still be there by his side?

“It roots deep into your skin. Even after healing, your nerves are still damaged, and your bones a little impacted. That’s why I was limping. Once we came back to the Celestial world, my physical body was completely restored.” As Jaemin spills the information, Jeno can’t help but listen, too engrossed with Renjun’s origins, attributing every word to him. Oh, why? Why is Renjun an… alien? Celestial being? Jaemin has given plenty of information, but he hasn’t been clear.

“The stops we pulled by, and the ones in the map, are all Celesti run. Illegally. So, now you see why I thought you were a Celesti on the run, too. Like, maybe you dyed your hair, I don’t know.”

A tear slips and traces his temple, pooling in the shell of his ear.

“And just to clarify, since you seemed to be intrigued, I don’t eat human food. I am a vegan. Those sludgy things I had in my sandwich were Celestial plant, best meat replacement. Taste better than they look. At least better than human food, sorry.”

Jeno shook his head. It’s way too devastating to talk, too tiring to partake in the conversation, to ask a million things. All of them about Renjun.

“There really was a tow truck, you know. The tire didn’t survive the shift,” Jaemin says. “That’s minimal damage, by the way.”

Now, Jaemin twists his body to face Jeno. Jeno does the same. Jupiter is just behind Jaemin, and Jaemin is just a breath away. He seems out of breath, having spoken for so long with minimal engagement from Jeno, so now he exhales in small puffs of sighs, his eyes trailing Jeno’s face in search of a response. Be it the remains of Renjun still clinging to him — like an unwashable perfume, soaked into his skin permanently, akin to a tattoo — or how up here, the sensations are otherworldly, like he’s spinning in space… Jaemin looks familiar. Oddly familiar, like he’s a part of Renjun himself. Space Oddity plays in his head, just one verse, in repeat: the stars look very different today , and the stars are Jaemin’s eyes. Odd. Renjun hated that song. Renjun hated almost everything.

In a leap of faith, Jeno catches Jaemin’s puffing lips in his. It’s a risk. Kissing a stranger unprompted, one as shady as Jaemin, is definitely a risk. Especially after spewing nonsense. Who can confirm what he said, who can prove those words true? But Jeno knows. Celesti. Of course, Renjun was celestial. Poetically, technically, and biologically. Jaemin is undoubtedly the same, principally this close, where Jeno can see the glow of his hair even with his eyes shut.

Against all odds, Jaemin responds. Jaemin moves his lips accordingly to Jeno’s, Tetris-like, slotting in between Jeno’s, just like Renjun used to. Jeno entangles his fingers along Jaemin’s hair, so painfully curious about its texture. It feels like normal hair.

Jeno falls back on his back, gathering his breath. “I know I said 10 minutes but,” he breathes. “I don’t think I can walk.”

By his side — always by his side — Jaemin taps at his lips as though waiting for them to turn into ice against the cold breeze. “Did we walk too much?”

Jeno mutters gibberish not even he understands. He falls asleep gazing at the space between Saturn and the Moon, seeing first the Fox Renjun plushie, then Renjun. A floating-head Renjun, with fiery red hair, and turning to look down at them from the sky.

—

Jeno wakes up to the end of a bat poking at his face.

The holder is a neon-headed boy, flanked by two other same-haired boys. All threatening, all holding a smile that’s visible even with the scarcity of light.

“You’re coming with us,” the one holding the bat says.

“Jaemin?” Jeno grapples for the shape of a body next to him. He finds it, solid but soft, right to his right. The shape trembles and shivers against the wind, under his hand, and Jeno turns to look at an alarmed Jaemin. Not his doing, then. Jeno relaxes, even under the threat of the bat, because although they’ve gotten into quite a pickle, at least Jaemin hasn’t been waiting this whole time to do him any harm.

“Him, too.” The trio of strangers stand tall over their lying bodies. Jeno has overestimated Jaemin’s capability of appearing mysteriously threatening, since now he can truly witness a risky situation.

One of them, the one closest to Jaemin, says: “Thought you escaped, Your Highness?”

The whip of Jeno’s head might cause more prolonged damage than his previous sleeping position. “What,” Jeno mutters, dumbstruck.

The bat comes closer to his head, as though willing to kiss Jeno in the centre of the forehead, and the trio laughs.

Jeno is still processing the two words when rough hands grab him by his clothes, forcing him to his feet, propelling him forwards until he’s walking, bat nestled in between his shoulder blades. Your and Highness. They sound like foreign words in his mind, especially attributed to Jaemin. Although, Jaemin does look like royalty. Well, so did Renjun. Maybe it’s a Celesti thing, a cultural slang. Maybe they greet each other like that. Hi, dude! Would be Hi, Your Highness! And that would explain it all. Jeno can imagine how this would pan out for Celesti comedians: Yes, you’re high, Ness! BAHAHAHA!

Deep in meaningless thought, Jeno only sees they’re out of the untended cornfield once his car is right before his eyes, beaten into junkyard trash.

Its windows are cracked and the dents in the paint are the exact shape of a bat swing, leaving no doubt of what’s happened. It just adds another layer of danger, another hazardous game with the smiling strangers. If Jaemin said the truth and Celesti are dangerous to humans, wouldn’t that compel Jaemin to be protective of Jeno, especially after the moment they spent together at the hill? Under the stars? Under Renjun’s watchful gaze?

Much too easily, his head is pushed as not to bump into a van’s door, a van Jeno only realizes now it’s occupying most of the road, the first vehicle he’s seen drive near his car. The van is all ragged and unclean, its door has to be slid closed and open and closed until it can shut behind the trio, who shackle them with what seems to be wireless bracelets, tying Jeno’s hands together with an invisible strap. It’s clear what these people are. Treasure hunters.

“Man, you were right,” the driver, throwing a Starbucks cup out the window, says as he starts the van.

One of the strangers, crouched opposite Jeno and Jaemin, huffs with indignancy. “I told you the blood tracking would be worth it.”

“Yeah, but it cost half my salary,” the driver rebuts.

“Dude, we’re gonna make ten times your salary today,” another says.

“Ten? More like a hundred.” Yet another, the one holding the bat, uses it to point at the last seat of the van. “We have the two of them.”

Overall, Jeno is only human, and so he is predisposed to present morbid curiosity. For all he knows, a cadaver is in the backseat, blue and cold. He turns to look anyways since, well, he’s only human. He doesn’t know what Jaemin’s reason is, but it must be a serious one, since he’s faster to find out what resides behind them.

“Renjun!”

Renjun. Renjun? Renjun! Ren-jun. Ren. Jun. Renjun!

Curled on the busted cushioned seat and quivering with the engine, Renjun lies unconscious, dark hair displayed along the surface of the seat, hand hanging toward the floor of the vehicle. His clothes are worn out, but overall untouched by aggressive forces, and Jeno relaxes a bit, content Renjun doesn’t seem to have been handled the same way Jeno was. On the other hand, his hair’s grown, covering his face, but that’s Renjun. Renjun, in person. Renjun, in the flesh. Just… Renjun. Rebirthed.

Next to his ear, Jaemin’s breath trembles with Renjun’s name as a whisper on his lips.

“Who else?” Snaps one of the treasure hunters.

Renjun looks like he’s asleep, upper front teeth peeking in between lips. Now with the moving van, his head bounces with every street bump. Jeno wants to reach toward him, but the cuffs limit his wrists, even though not bound to any sort of string, keeping them connected through an imaginary force, linking his wrists together.

Jeno holds his neck, still injured from sleeping on hard ground, to keep staring at Renjun’s sleeping form. Inside, Jeno fears he’s an optical illusion. It’s all too sudden, all too easy. He’s been on the hunt for Renjun, and there he is — prey, just like Jeno.

When Jeno gives in to the pain in his neck, the car is oddly calm. The treasure hunters have long stopped their delinquent cheers, settling better against the door and falling asleep on each other shoulders, like a kindergarten sleep-train formation.

He takes the chance to whisper Jaemin, “How do we get away with Renjun?”

Tearing his gaze away from the road, Jaemin turns to him, baffled. “‘Get away?’ We found Renjun, didn’t we?”

“Yeah,” Jeno rasps his voice, lowering as much as he could so the driver and the rowdy teen-to-twenty-somethings won’t catch his escape plan. “But where are they taking us? Shouldn’t we try to escape?”

“No.” Jaemin looks down at his magical cuffs. Then looks ahead to the road – or what’s left to see in between the front seats and their kidnapper’s head –, his voice is apologetic when he directs it back to Jeno: “We’ll be taken to the Citadel, and then Renjun and I are going to get married.”

—

The first thing that greets Jeno as he unglues his lashes is the light of a thousand suns.

Once Jeno regains his vision, there aren’t a thousand suns in the sky. There are only two.

The treasure hunters murmur within themselves, forming a tight-knit clique Jeno is excluded from. With only quick glances thrown at him, they whisper words that are unintelligible to Jeno’s ears, mustering embarrassment that Jeno hasn’t felt since high school, reminding him of times when he’d bow his head, utterly afraid of human interaction. That behaviour followed him into adulthood, until he met Renjun. And has returned again, at this exact moment, along with Renjun. Maybe that’s also a Celesti trait: breaking Jeno’s heart.

They drive like this. Scorning at Jeno’s existence, for sure. The car has only two windows: the driver’s window, and the windshield. Both are tinted, way more than Jeno’s anti-social car’s, thus making it difficult for Jeno to accurately analyse the place.

The Citadel is just like an ordinary city. A well-tended, tree-hugging, high-rise buildings, people-less city. Through the black windows, Jeno can’t detect much other than that. It’s odd, no doubt, but after driving down empty roads for so long, Jeno has grown accustomed to that.

Without anything to hold to, Jeno grabs his seat. He has to hold tight, because the van swerves left and right, as though under the lead of a drunken driver. Upfront, there’s an unending ramp leading up, up, in spiral twists that whoosh him along the seats.

Jaemin, on the opposite corner of the van, ignores the treasure hunters, leaning his head on the seat’s headrest and sulking at an earlier conversation — one in which Jeno got creative with his insults, the overabundance of Pop media knowledge that’s clogged his brain finally coming to usage. On the other hand, Renjun’s mere presence heats the back of Jeno’s neck, like an overheated oven, toasting Jeno’s brain, melting his consciousness.

There’s no protest left when the van door is swung open and his futuristic shackles pulled out of the vehicle.

Jeno has underestimated the suns.

Once outside the van, although still somewhat indoors, the small hint of sunlight invading through a hole in the wall pierces through the car park and lands just next to Jeno, forming a perfect circle of light on the ground. Out of curiosity, Jeno holds a hand next to it. The beam of light fries his hand, a sharp burn that stings just in between his thumb and index finger.

“Whoa,” the Bat Holder points at him. “Why would you do that?”

“I don’t know,” Jeno says. The burn swallows into a bubble before his eyes. He doesn’t know anything.

Around them there are cars as big as trailers, as tall as buses, contrasting with the treasure hunters’ ragged van. 

The driver locks the door behind him and fishes out a still-sleeping Renjun from the back seat. He hangs over the man’s shoulder like a ragdoll and his arms swing pendulum-like along his back.

Jeno follows along with a bat poking at his back. Jaemin is a bit farther ahead, golden eyes on Renjun. They’re escorted into a nearby lift, which presents an abundance of floor numbers to choose from. They range from 0 to 80. However, they go ignored by the captors, and instead, the T button is punched.

The lift hums on its way up, buzzing under Jeno’s shoes. Jaemin’s are two treasure hunters away and he refuses to make eye contact. If there has been a more crucial moment for Jeno to retrieve his phone, this would be the time. Time to scroll down his empty notifications, check the weather, type nonsense into the notes app, faking virtual interpersonal interactions to avoid real-world social implications. But what would Renjun say if he were to wake right now and catch him? Would that still matter here, in this strange world with the deadly suns? But right now, dangling from his captor’s shoulder, Renjun can’t do much.

The doors slide open to a busy entrance hall.

It’s a lobby, adorned with sleek metallic finishes and impossibly high, curved designs — a cross mix between antique and postmodern — coaxing a blend of megalophobia and vertigo in Jeno’s churning stomach. Wide but crowded, the entrance hall is dominated by glowing-haired people in beige jumpsuits, tapping at their own palms as if holding an invisible phone.

The oddest features in this room, however, have to be the tree-sized sculptures of Jaemin and Renjun, embalmed in golden paint. Both of them, side to side, immortalized.

Without a warning, Jeno is pushed out of the lift and sent scrambling over his feet. He’s stopped by a firm hand.

“Bionics, please,” someone in a beige jumpsuit with green hair flattened along her scalp stops him.

At his silence, she takes his hand in hers. Like the sunlight in here, her touch stings.

“Bionics, please,” she says again, but to the group behind him. The treasure hunters display their hands with a proud flick of their hands. Jaemin gets extra attention, needing the staff’s palm in his eye, and Renjun receives the same treatment: still hanging along the man’s back, she lifts Renjun’s head with a technical, practical, almost medical motion, then lets it fall back to its place.

The staff’s palm buzzes, lights up, and fades into tiny pop-ups just above her hand. After a few taps, it expands, twirls in the air like a hologram, and peculiar symbols dance in front of them.

The treasure hunters cheer hard, one nearly dropping Renjun before other beige-dressed staff take him away, along with Jaemin, wordless, expressionless, into wide automatic sliding doors.

“Jaemin?” Jeno calls. Lost, so utterly lost.

There’s no turning back, no spare glance in his direction. Jaemin’s back stares at him as he watches the two of them drift away in the agglomerated mass of futuristic staff. With firm palms pressing Jaemin forward, the message is quite clear.

Jaemin is as helpless.

—

Jeno is directed to a room where the walls are made of windows, pushed into the end of a queue that beelines to a door. There’s no hint of neon, no vibrant colours standing in front of him. Not even the bright sky casts its burning light onto Jeno’s irritated skin. There’s just the room, the windows, Jeno, and bland-haired people, all expecting whatever is behind the door.

It’s a long way to the door and people are tired, mumbling among each other in dissatisfaction, just like in a hospital waiting room. And thus, yet again, Jeno falls into the usual slippery slope of social media yearning. Check the weather. Check email. Check notes app. It doesn’t matter now, Renjun isn’t here — hasn’t been, even know — and Jeno is free to acquire a phone again if he wants to. The thing is, he doesn’t. He’d rather have Renjun back in his arms.

In front and behind him, Jeno eavesdrops on conversations that are similar in their contents, all pertaining to the words marriage, royal, Renjun, Jaemin. Against his better judgment, Jeno thinks, Where is Jeno in this? Which means, after having so much of his life crushed by the unwieldy weight of Renjun’s essence, where does he fit in it, now?

Someone taps on his shoulder, snapping him back into the room, the overbearing windows, and the crowd of mumblers.

“Excuse me, where are we going?” It’s a man looking frantic and disoriented, sporting black hair and an air of pitiful loss that instils undistilled sympathy in him. It’s like staring at his reflection in the windows. “Where are they taking us?”

The words inspire his mind to finally click into place. Jeno has just come here, led by strangers, in a whole different… country? Place? World? All the while, no hesitation has crossed his thoughts, no protest has been shown in his behaviour. “No clue,” Jeno says.

“I hope this doesn’t take too long,” the black-haired man says. “I really need to use the restroom.”

What’s behind that door? What’s this room? What’s Jeno to Renjun? What’s Jaemin to Jeno, and what’s Jeno to Jaemin? Answers, answers, he needs answers. But he’s gotten them, hasn’t he? Renjun is an alien. It explains it all, all but one thing. Renjun, why did you abandon him? Why did you ever entertain his heart?

Jeno turns back to the man. “Will you save my spot?” And, without waiting for a confirmation, Jeno breaks the chain, hurling forward and fleeting away inside the nearest open corner, expecting resistance from neon-haired shadows that don’t come.

He wishes it had, because without anything impeding him from exploring these endless hallways, Jeno gets lost in less than a minute.

“Hello?” he calls. His voice echoes back to him.

“Hello!” he tries again. No answer, nothing other than sterile beige walls and a blinking purple light, almost imperceptible under the well-lit hallway. Like a moth to a flame, Jeno floats towards it, almost hypnotic.

Once the purple light faces him, Jeno tries to catch it in his hand, a cat hunting the red dot. It’s intangible, ghostly, waving and ascending like smoke when Jeno attempts to touch it. After a moment of frozen contemplation, watching the light turn and turn like a mirage caught in a flame. It takes shape in Jeno’s hand, morphing into a hologrammed projection.

Before Jeno can grasp its functions, still very unfamiliar with technological gadgets, his hand moves and, with it, so does the hologram.

It swirls in place, inflates until the hallway is encapsulated into its purple colour, and swallows Jeno whole. It’s so fast, he doesn’t get to scream.

—

Once the purple has detached from Jeno, he’s in another room. A vast, windowless room, as empty as it’s big, and so as colourless.

The only bit of colour emerges from a mantle of sheets, peeking out from the centre of a wide greyish-white bed, a living mass that is stirred awake by Jeno’s presence.

In the middle of the room, Jeno stands immobile, still attempting to hold a purple hologram that’s long vanished as strands of dark hair snake out of white pillows. When the sheets slide out of a waking body, Jeno is glad he doesn’t have anything in hand.

From the middle of the bed, Renjun rises from the fluffy beige fabric, as though regurgitated by a wild animal. He’s fully clothed, donning a familiar jumpsuit, and flinches at the sight of Jeno.

Jeno has so much to say, such as ‘Does he remember him?’ or ‘Why did he leave him?’ Jeno just wants to know, just wants to know how could he seed the fear of technology in Jeno’s mind, why does he change his hair so much, why did he ever let himself be loved by him, but all Jeno says is, “Renjun.”

Like a newborn giraffe with the inherent knowledge of walking, Renjun displays no remnants of slumber as he stands on his feet, clack-clacking at the embedded buttons by his wrists. It’s like a conventional suit, but blinding. With innocent eyes, as though he’s never broken anyone’s heart, Renjun says, “Jeno.” A simple, devastating word that becomes a weapon in Renjun’s mouth. “You can’t be here.”

“But I am.” Jeno gets closer, but not close, afraid Renjun is a hologram himself. “Why did you leave?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” It’s not what Jeno thought he’d hear as an answer, ever. At times, when he stared at the bathroom tiles, tears cascading along with the water, Renjun’s response in his head would be, I’m sorry. “Had to. Duties.”

His tone reminds him of harsher times, times when Renjun would turn his back, their bodies parallel against the mattress, royally betrayed by Jeno’s phone addiction. He’d still use his phone, back then. Would still talk to his family, back then. “Couldn’t you even say goodbye?”

“Jeno.” Renjun stands straighter, almost Jeno’s height, Jaemin’s height. At the aisle, they’ll stare eye to eye, exchanging vows that Jeno won’t even hear. “Imagine you’re in a place which isn’t meant for you, like you are right now. Now, imagine a nation is on the hunt for you, like you might be right now. When you are escorted out of this hotel, out of this dimension, forever, will your last thought be ‘goodbye?’”

“You didn’t mean to leave?”

“Of course not.” Renjun touches a gloved hand to his face. It’s silver, blends with the jumpsuit, and Jeno feels the fabric’s cold surface, not Renjun’s warm skin. “I want to stay with you.”

“Is this a dream? The whole trip? The whole… this ?” Did Jeno’s car really get hit by a truck? Is he in a comma? Does Renjun love him?

“Yes.” Firmer with his grip, Renjun brings Jeno’s face so their lips align. This kiss feels wrong, doesn’t feel like closure at all, and burns hotter than twice the amount of alien suns. Binding. Burning. Renjun pulls Jeno away before he can feel the real burn. “Goodbye, Jeno.”

—

Jeno met Renjun at the Uni campus. He leaned on Jeno’s car, watching the nearby pond and the ducks. His body curved slightly, supported by a sharp elbow propelled on the car’s hood, and his mouth mimicked the way a duck pecked at its feathers.

It was early afternoon, Jeno had a bag full of terrible sketches and a stomach empty of food. But none of that mattered, only this stranger leaning against his car, peacefully interacting with the world around him with child-like admiration. What he glaringly noticed was his hair. It was red, ruffled against the wind like a dare, and Jeno was a bull lured by its colour.

However, before he could approach this stranger or his car, Jeno’s phone vibrated him out of the beginning of a stupor: an email from his professor. He did a great job and his design was being forwarded to a toy factory, where Jeno could start a paid internship right away.

Renjun, as though sensing the magnetic presence of Jeno and his phone, stopped his duck-watching to look at Jeno.

“Is this your car? I’m sorry.” Renjun backed away, but still turned to take another glance at the pond. A particularly big duck dove its beak into the water and stretched its wings. Renjun stared, mesmerized. “It’s just so beautiful.”

Jeno watched Renjun and his fiery orange-red hair. “Yes, it is.”