Work Text:
Jiseok is five when he learns that he’s cursed. A child conceived on a blue moon and born when the blood moon washes the sky with the crimson of carnage is a demon wearing a human’s disguise.
He doesn’t feel much like a demon. The worst thing he’s ever done is forgotten to lock the sheep pen and now one of the baby sheep is really sick from wandering in the pouring rain. So sick his parents are talking about taking it away forever, lest it infect the rest of the flock. Jiseok doesn’t want that. He likes the sheep, enjoys letting them out into the meadow behind the village, loves how warm they are in the winter.
Jiseok goes to the baby sheep every night and sings the little animal a lullaby, the lamb’s head cradled in the palms of his hands, round eyes and soft wool pressing into his body.
He only knows a handful of lullabies but the baby sheep and its mother don’t seem to mind. They’re much nicer to him than the other kids and when he stumbles over the lyrics sometimes, they never lose their temper like his parents always do.
When he sneaks back into the house on the seventh night, the moonlight seems to make his hands glow. There’s a shimmer to his fingers. As Jiseok stares at his knuckles and then his palms, little fractals of shimmering colors appear, bubbles of the tiniest rainbows, and warmth too.
For a moment, Jiseok feels as safe and comforted as he is in front of the hearth, wrapped in a thick quilt with the lazy smell of hot tea and sleepiness floating in the air.
It’s gone in the span of a heartbeat. Jiseok is left to shiver in the freezing night, rushing for shelter. The incandescence though, remains warm in his bones.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
He has magic.
Jiseok doesn’t realize it at first. He can sense the frustration in his mother’s knitting, the anger and guilt swimming in the incomplete flaxen. When he goes to the market to buy a meager loaf of bread for the upcoming week, he feels a flood of sensations at the exchange of coins, a confusing mishmash of despair and something adjacent to happiness, satisfaction maybe, the exhaustion of the baker waking before dawn every day to knead dough and stoke the oven’s fires.
He’d tried asking about the coins before, about the neighbor’s well-kept flowers, about jugs and umbrellas and wind chimes, and his mother had only blinked at him with confusion and annoyance.
On a late evening, his hands brush his father’s barely touched dinner bowl one night as he’s reaching to clean up, his parents speaking with increasing intensity and fervor. Jiseok flinches at the touch. He’s never felt such an ugly curl of emotions before. He nearly drops the bowl, just barely gritting his teeth through the flash of what feels like darkness shot through with poisoned spikes dragging down his throat.
It takes a bit to work up the courage but Jiseok thinks one question won’t hurt. He hasn’t spoken all throughout the dinner of watery rice and potato stew anyways.
“Abeonim, why don’t you like the house?”
His mother looks over, perplexed. It’s his father’s gaze that freezes his feet in place, however, surprise and then a tighter expression that Jiseok recognizes because he sees it in himself:
Fear.
He stands abruptly and Jiseok remains planted where he is, knowing what will happen next, bracing himself for the blossoming of new bruises.
But his father says nothing, does nothing. He only breezes past the creaky dining table and leaves through the front door.
The hem of his coat had caught the side of Jiseok’s cheek. He isn’t sure what to make of the gnarled sensation of what he thinks is dislike – it’s far too strong to be dislike. Jiseok doesn’t have the words for it and isn’t sure labeling it would help.
“Jiseok!” His mother’s tone is acerbic though the bite in it doesn’t cut him the way it used to. Neither does the slap. The sharp snap of his head feels vaguely like routine these days. “Don’t speak of things you don’t understand.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re lucky he was patient with your silly questions,” she says, dropping back into her chair.
Jiseok doesn’t dare voice that it wasn’t just the house his father disliked but everything and everyone within too, a not-so-secret realization. He’s aware he sensed something he wasn’t supposed to, something no one else should know of.
That night, his hands glow, sparking a memory he had forgotten. There’s a slight warmth from deep within his chest although it’s dampened, a mere ghost of an embrace, and the blue around his fingertips is mellow, muted. He still doesn’t know what to make of it but he knows enough to keep his mouth shut.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
There’s a boy in the sheep pen, partially buried under the flaxen hay. Outside, the promise of sleet beats against the rafters, howling angrily into the nooks and crannies and yelling in triumph as Jiseok fights to close the door.
A pair of eyes blink open to stare at Jiseok. In his dripping clothes, Jiseok stays planted at the door, the silence filled with rain and thinly veiled curiosity.
Jiseok caves first, never liking the itchiness of anticipation. “What are you doing here?”
The boy shrugs awkwardly and lifts himself a little. “The hay is warm.” A lengthy tear travels from the shoulder of his tunic to his stomach and although his clothes are nice, they’re rumpled and pricked with hay. “Are the sheep yours?”
“They belong to my father,” Jiseok says with a shake of his head. “I help take care of them.”
“Then they’re yours too,” the boy argues. He wraps his arms around his waist and steps precariously out of the hay. The sheep don’t seem to mind his presence. “I’m sorry, I only meant to stay until the rain got lighter but it just kept coming and now it’s getting dark and I’m intruding.”
“It’s okay,” Jiseok rushes to say when the boy starts trying to bow in apology, shivering. “Why weren’t you at Academy?” Everyone else Jiseok’s age are allowed to attend the Academy. The doors have always been shut to the devil though.
“I didn’t like what they were saying about magic.” He glances quickly at Jiseok and then at the ground where tufts of wool flutter with the storm the old barn can’t keep out. “I don’t think it’s all bad.”
Maybe it’s his words that make Jiseok trust him, maybe it’s the way kindness seems to seep from soft eyes, maybe it’s the way the sheep who bleat and make a fuss around his parents’ presences, are perfectly fine with the boy’s.
“I can mend that for you, if you’d like.” He points at the tear in the boy’s clothes and pushes through his nervousness to offer, “I’m Jiseok.”
The boy blinks and then smiles, gentle and tender and so unlike any of the grins usually turned Jiseok’s way that his world thunders to a halt for this snapshot of time.
He learns the boy’s name is Kim Jungsu and he’s half a year older than Jiseok, a full seven years old. He learns that Jungsu has magic too, that he can heal minor wounds and hurts though his powers only work on people, hence his torn tunic.
And most importantly, Jiseok learns what it’s like to have a friend.
They walk to the market together with Jungsu’s mother and he holds Jiseok’s hand. He sneaks extra steamed buns and other food from his mother’s cooking to give to Jiseok despite the rumors of his cursed soul. Jiseok shows Jungsu where to watch the fireflies on their summer flights and takes Jungsu to the riverbanks, teaching him how to catch the little minnows in the palms of their hands with little success but a lot of laughter.
Jiseok never tells him of his own magic. It’s with Jungsu though that the flashes of sensations and blurs of emotions and memories become more prominent.
Jungsu drags him to watch the sunrise one fateful spring morning. When Jiseok slips on the morning dew and the slick grass, so deceptively soft in the daylight, cuts through his knees, Jungsu presses his palms to the bloody mess without hesitation.
“It’s okay. Don’t cry,” Jungsu frowns through Jiseok’s sniffles, looking close to tears himself. “It’s all better now!”
The sapphire glow of his fingers fade but Jiseok’s own falter, scintillating between purple and blue. Jungsu’s eyes are wide and Jiseok stutters through his guilt to offer an explanation. “I-I have magic too…but I’m not sure what it does.”
He searches for anger and betrayal and hurt in Jungsu’s features. He fails. Jungsu cups his face and then squishes his cheeks, his own cracking into an ear-splitting grin. “It’s pretty, I don’t think it needs to do anything,” Jungsu says matter-of-factly. The words make Jiseok’s chest ache. He drops his voice into a whisper even though there’s no one around, “It could also be from your soulmate.”
“What’s a soulmate?”
Jungsu tugs him down below the branches of a tree that Jiseok thinks is called a sycamore tree. A tiny furrow appears between his brows. “I’m not too sure. But a soulmate is someone who is important to you.”
“Like you are?” Jiseok blurts out.
“Aw,” Jungsu coos, bumping his shoulder as Jiseok tries to bury his blush in the tattered sleeves of his clothes. He hums and stares at the horizon where the darkness is being chased away. “I think they’re someone who shares a piece of you and understands you like nobody else. Someone who will always be with you, no matter how far away you may be.”
They watch the sun shoot its gold throughout the sky. Jiseok is reluctant to return to the village, as he always is when he’s with Jungsu.
That night, he tries to pull on the flurry of emotions always settled in his heart and begins to understand that he isn’t the only one responsible for everything there. His soulmate must have a big heart to hold so much and Jiseok is a little bit in awe.
It takes a few months but squished into Jungsu’s bed one night, holding his hand tightly, he thinks he finally tugs hard enough. Little sparks of white float from his fingertips and his own surprised delight explodes, shooting electricity through his veins.
Faraway, in a voice he’s never heard but one he knows with the compass of his heart, his name: Jiseok.
And so Jiseok learns about soulmates in whispers beneath the moon and flickers of dancing starlight in the frigid silence of winter and the pounding echoes of his deadened hearth.
In turn, he learns his soulmate’s name is Jooyeon, a fitting name for something so precious. Jiseok learns what it’s like to be loved both by a friend and by a kindred soul.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
He gets better at differentiating between passing stories and the pieces that matter to the few people he cares about.
It’s complicated with Jooyeon. He often operates at a base level of luminosity which Jiseok has marked tentatively as his vibrant soul and personality, loud but kind. It’s hard to sense the rest of his emotional spectrum, often coalesced into an amalgamation of sensations in what Jiseok has dubbed as Significant Moments.
Still, Jiseok cradles the knowledge that he has a soulmate and guards the snippets of memories that he sometimes gets flashes of and the colors that slip through to paint his fingers, even the ones that make his heart ache in shades of smoke and shoot helplessness down his spine.
He tries to give Jooyeon some happiness too from the few good memories he has but he wonders if he’s truly able to, especially after Jungsu moves away, leaving Jiseok with little pinpricks of rosy sunsets, a tiny charm shaped like a bunny and what feels like a gaping hole in his chest.
He wonders if all his soulmate will ever feel are flashes of pain in the broken shards of his life.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
It’s overwhelming sometimes, being able to experience the history of an object when it’s passed between too many hands in close succession or if it’s associated with visceral memories and experiences.
Jiseok learns the hard way the first and last time he attends Academy. He’s ten and he’s been allowed a ‘trial period’ with the other kids. His initial steps beneath the columned archway high above is filled with buzzing anxiety and tingling excitement. Distantly, Jooyeon’s presence tries to mend the frayed threads of his nerves with random bouts of joy and bursts of humor.
He appreciates the distraction and thinks maybe it’ll be alright.
He lasts all of a semester before the administration deems him too “volatile”.
In the end, Jiseok can’t even pinpoint what sets off his magic to display to the class. The entire morning, he’d felt a bubbling sensation in his chest. Every pair of gloves he owns – ones he always wears with meticulous care – had mysteriously gone missing. The threadbare fabric around his sleeves could only offer a flimsy barrier.
Jiseok thinks he had touched the icy lattice of the window in the lecture hall, the one towering over the courtyard. Something visceral tries to crawl its way up his throat, drowning him in sorrow and agony and hopelessness, lives flashing before him, many of them cut short, sharp edges of glass repaired and replaced, wiping all physical damage but not quite the emotional destruction of ruined futures and ruined lives.
His hands light up the lecture hall with shades of midnight. The dark colors are run through with angry scarlet and blinding violent vermillion. It’s speckled with deep blue and leaded grays, the grief and bitter nihilism choking him, even as he didn’t quite understand what it all meant, only how it felt wracking his body.
Though it’s not dangerous, the fear is palpable in the air, the instructor pale before the lectern, the hatred and distrust slashing him to ribbons from all sides.
Jiseok doesn’t wait for the official suspension to leave. He knows when he’s not wanted, has felt it his whole life.
(It doesn’t make it hurt any less.)
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
There isn’t anything in particular that puts the final nail in the coffin, which cements the floating idea into a tangible choice. Jiseok has dreamt of burning the world he’s known to the ground more often than he cares to admit, to create something where he can thrive instead, a selfish vice he’s curled around his sternum and taken comfort in.
Maybe it’s the blood that refuses to staunch, a slow taunting trickle down his nose as he slips through the door of the barn. Maybe it’s the heaviness in his bones as the weight of memories crumbles into his skin. Maybe it’s simply the warm simmer of sunlight from Jooyeon that he shared with little bursts of red and fuchsia and all Jiseok could feel was his heart shattering, unable to give anything in return.
Maybe it’s none of those things. Maybe it’s just a long time coming.
Jiseok sings one last lullaby for the night as he shears the sheep, exhausted days flooding through him in the wicked sharp points of the shears, satisfaction weaving through the strings of the wool bag, patches of crimson painting color on the silvery and pure whites of fluff.
When he drifts into the realm of fantasies and twisted reality, he finds himself standing at the top of the knoll overlooking the village. It’s a late evening when the gloaming of oranges has faded into bruised purple. There are packs slung across his shoulders, weighing him down and anchoring his floating soul. He’s hesitating. He doesn’t understand why.
He tries to poke for Jooyeon’s presence but he can’t quite feel him beyond a vague shadow in his mind. Twelve years old suddenly doesn’t seem so old, even as he’s been taking care of himself for years now.
Jiseok hugs his elbows. A decision. An important one – one that’s all his own to grasp and hold and morph into a future he wants. No one else can make it for him.
Jiseok blinks awake to the starlight waving goodbye as the first tendrils of sunlight slither over the horizon.
The phantom sensation is already starting to fade but Jiseok can still feel the warmth of careful fingers on his wrist, so different from what he’s used to, lightly encircling, pulling him towards the lights of the cosmos, all soft skyglow amidst the bruises.
Maybe he can wait another few years, press salve and salt into the wounds, exist around the place that should be home. The thought leaves rocks of glacial ice in his stomach.
So Jiseok makes the decision. He’s going to follow his soulmate. He’s going to follow the sun.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
There are whispers of another witch in the village, a devil incarnate so much worse than the previous one. Jiseok still remembers the young lady who couldn’t speak but did the village’s washing. Allegedly, she liked to take strands of hair from the fabrics and collect them for her china dolls and if someone wronged her, she would set the strand of hair aflame, thus causing the coughing sickness of the previous winter to descend onto the unfortunate owner of said hair.
Allegedly.
Because Jiseok had helped her chip away the ice along the river in the throes of a cold snap and she had always smiled at him with eyes alight with gratitude and sincerity. Because she would try to stop the kids who would hurt him and trip him at the market and put pests in the rice he’d just bought for his family when everyone else turned a blind eye.
Because sometimes when Jiseok went to sit beside the ancient sycamore tree and breathe in the vastness of the stars and pretend it didn’t hurt how his parents no longer spoke to him as if he was already dead to them, a ghost of an unpleasant memory, she would be there too with lines of sorrow and an unreadable gaze.
Even as the village turned from pitying her to condemning her and smoking her out of her own home, Jiseok knows where the real depravity lay.
He thinks her name was Nabi though she never shared it in words or writing. When they dragged her to the gallows, Jiseok pleaded for her case and then tried to cut her free once it was clear the elders wouldn’t hear him. Didn’t give a shit really.
He received ten lashings for it. Jiseok couldn’t move for days and sometimes on cold nights, phantom fire still lances its way down his back. But he doesn’t regret it. Nabi had sent him a tiny smile before the platform was kicked. The butterfly clipping she always wore never quite burned, the elders locking it away as dangerous though Jiseok suspects they keep it as some misplaced sense of sanctuary.
That was all a year ago. His parents haven’t even tried to look at him since.
So when the whispers begin, Jiseok doesn’t wait to find out who they’re talking about. He packs a bag with the few possessions he can claim as his own tossed alongside some matches and dried foods, some coins.
On the night he leaves, the worry snagged in his chest doesn’t feel like it’s all his own. He follows the moonlight and the celestial giants shining upon the muted crimsons and scarlets of the autumnal leaves and cups the twist of blue sorrow and silver relief in the palms of his hands.
Despite the drowning uncertainty, Jiseok holds a tiny flame that his soulmate will still be with him even across the distance of the sun.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
Oh Seungmin has a sharp smile and an even sharper right hook.
He’s Jiseok’s first customer in this mountain village, carved right out of the jagged cliff faces with his diamond-cut nose and a marble jawline. He appears with a slight tilt to his head and introduces himself with caramel in narrow dark eyes.
“Did you knit that yourself?”
Jiseok follows Seungmin’s finger to the shawl on his left, light dashes of fairy wings interlaid carefully into the fabric. He contemplates lying, that it isn’t his handiwork and rather his mother’s, the last time he’d nodded ending in howling jeers and uncomfortable advances. Something tells him it’s alright. Just this once. “I did,” he says quietly.
Seungmin grins, pearly whites on full display. “It’s beautiful!” He reaches out to touch the fabric but pauses at the last second, glancing up at Jiseok for permission and that tiny probably insignificant gesture to Seungmin means the world to Jiseok.
He asks if he’ll see Seungmin again without spontaneously combusting from embarrassment and is rewarded with a smile that’s twinkling and a gaze that’s a little too piercing.
He thinks that’s the last of it. Seungmin clearly has better things to do, filling his time with more important work than fabric shopping, so in a temporary lapse of judgment, Jiseok leaves his own name on the paper receipt.
A week later, Seungmin stops by again but instead of buying anything, he sits down beside Jiseok like they’ve known each other since they were kids and shares his lunch, insisting his father made too many noodles because the temperature is hard to control on a smaller batch or something.
Jiseok tries not to grin too hard into the warm broth.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
Sometimes, Jiseok stares at the cards he’s been dealt in life and laughs in the face of it all.
It’s not a happy laugh. The lanky teenage boy currently trying to turn Jiseok’s face into a squashed tomato pauses in his administrations with uncertainty and horror slowly leaching away his permanent sneer. The curse of the blood moon and the devil inside spill from Jiseok’s mouth in wordless tones, his eyesight blurry with sweat or blood or tears, he can’t tell. Can’t bring himself to care.
And then, the teenage boy is being torn off Jiseok in a flurry of limbs. Jiseok sits up lethargically. He stares in a daze, uncomprehending of the sight.
Seungmin’s lean frame packs a punch to the gut and then his features fill Jiseok’s vision, dark narrow eyes alight and lips pressed thin as he drags Jiseok to his feet and urges him to run.
Longer fingers twine in Jiseok’s hand and even though he can taste the salty metal of blood dripping into his mouth and they’re sprinting hard, his chest is tight with emotions he doesn’t dare name, for fear that identifying them will make the warmth and the care shatter.
Jiseok may or may not hide behind Seungmin’s taller frame as they enter his house, hearing Seungmin’s parents talking and clattering around in the kitchen. The moment they walk in though and Seungmin’s father takes one look at Jiseok, they’re rushing him to a chair. Jiseok is still blinking at not being evicted immediately when Seungmin’s mother cradles his face and starts to clean the blood from his skin.
Seungmin is the one who presses salves and ointments to the cuts, his parents hovering a room away but giving them space. He blows on them when Jiseok even winces microscopically and Jiseok wants to tease yet his heart feels too close to tumbling out with the tight inexplicable aching.
Seungmin’s mother brings them spiced ginger tea before dinner. Seungmin sips his but when Jiseok finishes his cup first, he shoves his into Jiseok’s hands with deceptively strong fingers. His parents practically corral Jiseok into staying for dinner that night.
From that day on, Jiseok sees Seungmin at least three times a week and is hauled home for dinner with his family no matter how much Jiseok protests that he’s imposing. He has a roof over his head on those nights and it’s on one of those nights when Seungmin asks.
“You know, it would be easier if you just stayed. The market is way closer to our house,” he remarks lightly.
No comparison to Jiseok’s current place of residence (which really depended on what direction the wind and sleet was blowing). Seungmin’s known for a while. Jiseok never let him bring it up. He smiles now. It feels bitter on his lips. “I’m not your family, Seungmin,” he says quietly. “I can’t even be a good friend.”
“I think you and I have very different definitions of both family and friends.” Seungmin reaches for his shoulder and Jiseok is too weak to turn him away. “Being nagged together, traumatic experiences together, getting fresh fruits for Eomma and Appa, eating at the same table,” he reaches down to tug at the hem of his wool sweater, “Giving gifts to each other? Don’t wound me, Jiseokie.”
The nickname makes him blush and embarrassingly, his hands glow with a light flush of floral pinks and calming turquoise. Jooyeon never makes things easy. “Oh.”
Jiseok doesn’t realize he’s crying until Seungmin pulls him into a hug and he stains his shoulders in greens and blues.
He stays and Seungmin’s parents are somehow delighted to have him, smothering him with blankets when he shivers slightly and heaping far too much food on his plate. Really, not too much changes, the little flame in his chest growing into a hearth.
It’s what he always feels simmering in his bones with the bubbly shape of Jooyeon in his mind and in his heart. The tangle of tender aching has almost always been secondhand, except maybe with Jungsu all those years ago and the butterfly girl who was too sweet for her own good. For what might very well be the first time, Jiseok manifests the feeling of home and snakes it through the link to reach Jooyeon. He receives the ghost of warmth brushing his cheek, a feather-light kiss.
He wonders if maybe he isn’t so unlovable after all.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
The archives bring about a sense of peace Jiseok can’t really explain. He doesn’t go there to read or study or conduct research on late nights like the students whose families can afford to send them to the kingdom’s top Institutes.
There’s something about the ambiance, the crinkling of scrolls and fluttering of parchment, the quiet comprehending of centuries upon centuries of history and culture, the knowledge that there have been hundreds if not thousands of individuals who have left tiny traces of their presence, their minds, their hearts and souls, on midnight words and spanning stories.
Seungmin and their roommate Gunil, who’s an older student at the Institute, know of his late night wanderings. They never question him about it though he doesn’t miss their concern.
Jiseok doesn’t know Gunil well but he does know he’s kind despite their somewhat delicate dynamic. He always feels like he’s imposing, a plus one to their study sessions and meals, working in the administration doing menial tasks while Seungmin and Gunil are studying to change the world. He still doesn’t understand why Gunil continues trying (and failing) to help him cook or let him borrow the books he sees Jiseok brushing a gentle hand over or cradle blankets in his arms to drape over them both when their schedules align after Jiseok’s shift and Gunil’s lectures so they can walk back to the dormitories together.
It’s nice to be taken care of and he will never take for granted the warmth to which Gunil and Seungmin always treat him, no matter how stressed they may be. It’s just that, sometimes, it gets too much. He isn’t made of glass, no matter how brittle the smiles he wears may be.
His magic curls eagerly around his fingers, craving to reach out. Not necessarily the words scrawled in ink but the ones of people who have left their experiences written all over the scrolls. It’s always interesting feeling which stories have the most memories.
Jiseok gently tugs the crisp ribbon tying a yellowing scroll. He receives a flash of excitement from a young woman looking forward to a fantasy novel. He feels the laughter of an elderly couple reading the dialogue to one another, mimicking the accents. Farther back, the details of experiences and sentiments fade into blotches of memories and occasional ebbs of creative sparks upon different sets of hands.
The scroll is a well-loved one and Jiseok puts it back down with a smile on his face and nostalgia wreathing his lungs.
They’re always fleeting. Sometimes, Jiseok walks away feeling emptier, yearning and craving for vibrancy that the empty void in his mind loves to drain away.
On those nights, he pretends he doesn’t see Seungmin shooting him worried glances or Gunil sitting beside him in silent encouragement for if he ever wants to speak his thoughts. Jiseok is more partial to pretending he’s alright, that pain isn’t the essence of who he is.
But often, especially on sleepless nights like this one, it makes Jiseok’s life feel a little less lonely and little more bearable.
He brushes his fingertips down the spines of bound books as he walks down a different aisle, snippets of laughter from a young family, cathartic tears of different souls and a student’s frustration over a difficult concept running through his bones.
Jiseok comes to a stop as the candlelight and torches fade. He rarely comes to the darker corners of the archives. It’s not so much the unknown and almost eerie atmosphere of these niches, rather the acknowledgement that these corners carry the ancient past, as close to a living breathing version as they will ever have in the present.
Taking a deep breath, Jiseok ventures into the shadows. He’s feeling a bit braver tonight and squints at the scrolls through the dust.
A light imprint of what appears to be a dragon with its wings spread catches his eyes. Jiseok reaches forward and grasps the scroll.
Golden light swirls around his fingers, wisps of what almost appear to be water vapor if not for the brilliance. He flinches and the scroll slips from the shelf and onto the floor. The saffron stains his fingers for a few seconds longer, easing into orange and scarlet before fading completely.
What made Jiseok drop the scroll however, wasn’t the colors. Jiseok presses a hand against his heart and reminds himself to breathe, shutting his eyes at the intensity of experiences flooding his mind and his body. There’s a swing under a willow tree and many sunlit afternoons spent exploring its branches and the surrounding meadows and forests.
Laughter and heart-shaped smiles running through a downpour, gut-wrenching terror at climbing too high up a branch with no sure footing back down, teasing and bantering without the specifics, only the feelings of competition and companionship.
But what makes Jiseok’s chest clench is the familiarity of the warmth. He knows this presence, has felt their emotions and sentiments, experienced their highs and lows, no matter how vague.
He knows this soul, has loved them since before he even knew of his magic, before he’d ever known the concept of a soulmate. Jiseok stares at the scroll on the floor, the majestic dragon with its wings spread wide, enjoying its freedom or perhaps in preparation to dive into the unknown of the world, searching too.
Jiseok holds his hands against his chest and for the first time in his life, begins to hope that he can find his soulmate after all.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
Manifesting the emotions in targeted form is much more difficult than experiencing them in the moment but he still tries to shoot the sensation of excitement to Jooyeon. Surprise and sadness echoes through their link in return.
Jiseok doesn’t understand until he overhears Gunil and Seungmin talking, their scrolls sprawled before them, dotted with inky academics and boredom.
“Would you consider the program?”
Gunil hums. “Maybe if I had nothing tying me down. They all seemed a little—” Jiseok sees part of his shrug through the doorway of the common area “—lost, you know? Like they were looking for something and this program was the only choice they believed they had.”
“I think one of them found something,” Seungmin replies conspiratorially. “He set off a flare or maybe burned through a candle – his hands were glowing red.”
“We can practice metaphors later, Seungmin, it’s not good to lie.” There’s a twinkle in Gunil’s eyes but Jiseok is shoving through the light-hearted atmosphere, his presence a knife through warm melted butter.
Jiseok slams a hand down on the table, making them both jump. “His name, did you get his name?”
They stare at him for a long moment. Seungmin shakes his head numbly.
Jiseok searches his eyes, heart beating wildly in his throat. “You said his hands were glowing. Did he go to the archives? Where is he now? Where do travelers stay in the Institute?”
“I’m not sure, I mean, they probably visited the archives at some point,” Seungmin says with an apology that feels deeper than this mess of a conversation that Jiseok is butchering. “It’s the highlight of our Institute.”
Gunil winces, “I think they’re probably heading towards the coast.” He exchanges a long weighted look with Seungmin that Jiseok doesn’t have the brainpower to interpret before turning to Jiseok fully, his voice filled with something softer, cautious, “He was just passing through.”
Just passing through.
Of course, Jooyeon with his smile of a thousand suns and a heart filled with passion and love, could never be kept anywhere or by anyone. Jiseok was fooling himself into thinking Jooyeon was ever his.
A coastline of burning orange sand and turquoise waters, as stained with admiration and breathtaking wonder as it is layered with sorrow and twisted frustration.
Perhaps, Jiseok was never cursed with the devil but by his own heart. The honeyed sweetness of Jooyeon’s memories, the traces of sensation he tries to press imprints of into Jiseok’s mind, draws a constant yearning that’s too thick to swallow. Maybe one of these days, Jiseok will be choking down the bitter poison of helplessness instead, hoping the glassy shards of heartbreak drag its claws through his bones on its way down.
There’s a cruelty in being fed the scintillating embers of hope only for the fickle hand of chance and circumstance to snuff it right back out.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
Hyeongjun is someone Jiseok meets on ink and paper before he ever greets the boy in person. Threads of contemplation and wonder and yearning walk through his letters and through the pages of the bound books he reads and returns, wrapping hints of tender comfort and a sharp mind into scrolls of adventure.
When he asks Jiseok where to find sealant wax, Jiseok lets curiosity run his mouth.
It isn’t uncommon for many of the new students to feel homesick in their first terms at the Institute. Teenagers playing at being grown-ups. Jiseok hadn’t really experienced it in full. He missed the familiarity of Seungmin’s place, of Seungmin’s parents and their kindness but he understood the transition was much more difficult for Seungmin, especially those first few months when his gaze would sometimes drift, the way his eyes were rimmed red when Gunil made gukbap, how it had tasted like home.
“Sending letters for your family?” Jiseok ventures.
Hyeongjun creases the paper in his fingers carefully, his brow dipped a little. His voice is lower than Jiseok expects and gives the quietness of his words more weight. “For a—” he pauses, a flash of something unreadable passing over his features, “For a friend.”
Jiseok hums and doesn’t push. “I’m sure they appreciate it.”
Hyeongjun hands the letter to Jiseok with the little wax emblem of a bunny in crimson. The bunny matches the tiny charm on Jiseok’s wrist that he’s kept through the years. It feels fitting the way the paper and the still drying ink bleed with longing. “I hope so,” he whispers.
This is the third time Hyeongjun has brushed into the administrative office and they’ve bumped into one another at the archives on more than one occasion but this is the first time the two of them have been alone. Hyeongjun lingers at the counter and Jiseok pretends he doesn’t notice, busying himself with stamping the letter and marking the address correctly.
“I don’t mean to bother,” Hyeongjun stutters out, hesitating when Jiseok looks up. Jiseok sends him an encouraging nod. “Is there a place that visitors can stay at the Institute? Would our dormitories be alright?”
Jiseok frowns. There are protocols in place for the dormitories and certain conditions for the living situations. Students aren’t technically allowed to bring visitors. Heck, Jiseok isn’t supposed to be in the dormitories given he’s administrative support but he was an exception due to his age. “Have you spoken to your Dean?”
Hyeongjun presses his lips into a thin line. That’s answer enough. His once hopeful expression has fallen into resignation and Jiseok well, no one has to know. He doubts Hyeongjun will abuse the privilege. “It’ll be fine. Just make sure you communicate that with your suitemates and all.”
“I don’t have any,” Hyeongjun confirms. He smiles, tentative. “Thank you, Jiseok.”
He watches Hyeongjun leave, wondering how long he’s known Jiseok’s name and feeling a little warmer for it.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
The next time he sees Hyeongjun, he isn’t alone. There’s another boy with him, unfairly tall like Hyeongjun and with a presence that is grounding and comforting.
He’s weirdly familiar. Jiseok keeps his staring at a casual minimum across the courtyard where he’s raking the leaves, marveling at the ease to which Hyeongjun’s features melt and the flutter of his hands. He swears he can feel the newcomer light up and laugh with a full grin and crinkled almond eyes as Hyeongjun continues speaking.
Jiseok is bagging a pile of leaves for composting when he hears someone approach. His heart jumps and he hates that fear is what floods his body first, expecting the worst. But when he turns, it’s just Hyeongjun and his friend, the one he must have been exchanging correspondences with.
“Do you need any help?” Hyeongjun offers, wringing his hands.
He wonders if Hyeongjun feels like he owes him and grimaces internally. The beat of ensuing silence is interpreted as annoyance though because the other boy bows politely, stiffly, and smiles. “Sorry, we’ll let you get back to your work.” He reaches out to tug Hyeongjun’s wrist.
Jiseok’s gaze catches on the little roseate jewelry encircling both of their wrists. “Wait, I – I didn’t mean to be rude!” They both blink at him, Hyeongjun still fully facing him. He gestures a little helplessly. “Are you the friend Hyeongjun keeps sending letters to?”
Hyeongjun freezes and refuses to make eye contact with the other boy when he glances at him with surprise, sparks of delight in the curves of his lips. “If you mean Kim Jungsu, then yes. I didn’t realize we were flooding the dormitory mailboxes,” he says sheepishly.
“No, you’re all good,” Jiseok says distractedly.
Jungsu is wearing casual clothes instead of the Institute’s standard uniform like Hyeongjun, his eyes are still soft with care and love, his limbs still willowy despite the decade between them. He blinks twice in quick succession as Jiseok continues studying his face, uncaring that his stare is probably too intense for social standards. His features are so painfully familiar and Jiseok chokes on something between a laugh and a sob.
“Jiseok, are you alright?” Hyeongjun’s eyes are wide like a bunny’s, filled with innocence and worry, like the little charm on Jiseok’s wrist and the melting wax on his letters to Jungsu.
“Jiseok…” It’s Jungsu who repeats his name and Jiseok finds himself at the receiving end of a blatant scrutinizing gaze.
“Yeah, that’s my name,” Jiseok acknowledges, his voice a bit wet. “Don’t wear it out.”
When Jungsu pulls him into a hug, Jiseok feels the tightness in his chest unravel, a little chip of his heart folding itself over an old old scar.
His hands curl tightly into the back of Jungsu’s tunic and he senses the brush of Hyeongjun’s hand through Jungsu’s hair, the countless hours of reading, the burst of flavors on his tongue from a hearty meal of beef bone broth.
He can’t feel the flowing passage of time which had separated their lives, only that he’s found his first friend again and nothing feels unbearably impossible.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
Jiseok lets Gunil drape the offered garland over his neck as if that will make him fit into the student-only Institute party. Hyeongjun of all people had forged his invite – Jiseok should have known when he and Jungsu fit into their chaotic little trio but he’s definitely not complaining.
The prismatic glass scattering spheres of candlelight over the hall is a marvel to look at and Jiseok totally gawks at the architecture framing and interior décor, all open airy hallways and marble columns and elegant slanted roofs, of the buildings he’s never been allowed into.
He takes Seungmin’s offered hand as they sneak him in and doesn’t let go.
Eventually, Gunil tugs them both outside where the flickering hearth-fires give way to specks of celestial brilliance. The universe smiles coldly down as it always has but Jiseok thinks the stars feel especially warm tonight.
Hyeongjun meets them as Seungmin is holding a four-leaf clover and Gunil is trying to come up with the most ridiculous wishes, Jiseok chiming in to add his own for Gunil’s poor old age. His fingers are frozen but there’s a lightness in his chest that he wants to bottle up and keep forever.
Gunil glances around as if Jungsu could be hiding in the bushes behind Hyeongjun instead of staring at him with so much tenderness, it makes Jiseok break a little that Hyeongjun continues to believe he’s alone in his love. “Where’s Jungsu?”
“He’s just around the corner!” Hyeongjun’s eyes are bright as he exchanges a meaningful look with Seungmin. “He has a surprise.”
“What sort of surprise?” Jiseok asks, a bit suspicious.
Hyeongjun turns to Jiseok with a grin. “From the nearby village, limited edition, highly anticipated.”
The words are purposely cryptic but Gunil and Seungmin seems to know what Hyeongjun is referring to and Jiseok scrambles to follow them in confusion. His eyes catch on a shooting star, the ghostly wisp of the burning celestial matter streaking towards the east.
He’s a little hurt that Gunil, Seungmin and Hyeongjun seem to know what’s happening while he’s been purposely kept in the dark. That is, until—
“Jiseok?”
He freezes in his step, Seungmin and Gunil’s voice and Hyeongjun’s presence by his side, slide from his skin.
He knows that voice. He’s heard it in his dreams, in waking hours as he toils away glaring at endless administrative paperwork, in memories dancing with the full spectrum of colors, in his highs where he felt he could breathe and life was good, in his lows where the world felt so agonizingly cruel.
The voice is quiet and yet, Jiseok has been attuned to their wavelength since before he understood what soulmates were. His name melts into something more fragile in the air and nothing quite like what he’s always heard but so very right nevertheless.
Jiseok turns to the source of the aching in his chest.
Jooyeon stands at the end of a paved stone pathway, Jungsu giving him a pat on the back before gesturing to the others. Jiseok thinks maybe they slip away into the rose gardens but he isn’t sure. He doesn’t dare look away from Jooyeon.
If it’s an illusion, he can still treasure the silky jet-black hair, the curved brows and chiseled nose, the defined jawline and the tentative little smile shaping into a heart.
“You found me?”
Jooyeon nods slowly, his gaze never leaving Jiseok. “You’re really here.” He takes a visible breath and then grins, his eyes curving into slivers of happiness. “Jiseok.”
It’s dangerous how addicted Jiseok already is to hearing his name fall from Jooyeon’s lips. Jiseok feels breathless in more ways than one and he finds himself tasting the shape of his soulmate’s name on his own tongue, “Jooyeon.”
In the unraveling time of a treasured heartbeat, Jooyeon is before him although Jiseok doesn’t remember moving. He aches to reach out, to hold Jooyeon’s heart and soul closer than he could have ever imagined, to tell him a million things and hear Jooyeon’s voice in return, lit up with joy and passion.
His mind is still frozen, trying to process how beautiful Jooyeon’s eyes are as they reflect starlight and silver, practically glowing with surprise.
“Your hands are glowing,” Jooyeon whispers with pleasant shock.
Jiseok raises the palms of his hands, effervescent sorbet and strawberry spilling from his fingers. They lace with the gold traces Jooyeon’s frame seems to be manifesting. “Terribly inconvenient growing up, I’ll have you know.”
Jooyeon laughs and they’re standing so close, a strand of Jooyeon’s hair caresses his cheekbones.
Of all things, that’s what makes the first tear drop. And then, Jooyeon is sobbing into his shoulder and he’s so close and warm and solid and real. There’s excitement in the threads of his clothes as Jiseok curls his fingers into the fabric, fatigue along the lining from travel and long sleepless nights and dreams of a future holding hands with his soulmate.
With Jiseok.
A complicated mess of emotions flood their link and Jiseok could never describe any of it in words but he understands. He squeezes Jooyeon harder.
Maybe it’s his imagination but he thinks he feels their souls sing in harmony, weaving threads to guide them back to one another, never to be separated for long again.
There’s nothing between us.
｡ﾟ★ *.✦ .* ★ﾟ｡
Later, Hyeongjun will comment, “Jiseok, your boyfriend is sparkling.” And Jooyeon will grin with cherry red ears while Jiseok tries to hide his face.
Later, after much astronomical consultation (and totally not just Seungmin blindfolding Gunil and spinning him until he’s barely upright to point a finger on the celestial map), Seungmin will set up a double date for Jungsu and Hyeongjun as well as Jooyeon and Jiseok.
Later, Jooyeon will wonder aloud about Jiseok’s plans for the future, staring into the unknown abyss of young adult life after the structure of his program and Seungmin and Hyeongjun’s impending graduation.
Later, Gunil will move out of the little academic town. He’ll be pleasantly surprised when five familiar faces find him quickly after to spool their savings together and tangle pieces of their life threads all the more.
Later, when they can afford fresher fruits and can keep the kerosene lamp on well into the evening, Jiseok will finally work up the courage to take Jooyeon’s hand in his and spill the caged words from his heart. To let the warmth that kept him going, from the fiery passion of the stars to the softer tinkling of sunlit solace, wrap around Jooyeon’s too.
And much, much later, Jiseok will ask if Jooyeon wants to stay until the North Star fades from the sky.
coda.