Work Text:
Wonwoo steps out of the taxi and into a sudden downpour.
He stuffs his hands into his pockets, hunches his shoulders, and speed walks down the street. He doesn't stop until he's standing in front of a shop nestled between a secondhand bookstore and a pawn shop. It's small and unassuming, nothing but a blue wooden door and a lopsided sign hung over it that says 'Jun's'.
A jaunty little melody rings out as Wonwoo pushes the door open. He stands still at the entryway for a while, dripping water onto the carpeted floor, waiting.
No one comes.
Wonwoo removes his glasses, shakes off some of the droplets of water, then attempts to wipe the rest of it off with the only dry patch on his shirt. It doesn't do much, and when he puts his glasses back on, everything's a little bit smudged. He sighs and trudges further into the store.
None of the walls are visible, covered as they are by towering shelves full of books. Not all of them are magical. There are some poetry collections that Wonwoo's pleased he recognises as he walks down the hall, and a stray textbook here and there. Most of the books are what he expects though—dusty old tomes with cracked spines and yellowing pages. A handful of them seem to be written in Chinese.
At the end of the hall, instead of a door there's a curtain of hanging beads, dark blue with little flecks of yellow, like the night sky. Wonwoo pushes through and enters the main section of the store. It smells like a long walk on the beach with the person you love most. Wonwoo's a little thrown by how inviting it is. He's gotten used to the mass-produced spelled candles, the ones that work well enough but lack that touch of warmth and personality that come from handcrafted, handspelled candles.
The rest of the area looks just as cosy as the candle makes him feel. There's a comfortable looking armchair propped up in a corner, and in front of that a small table with a tea set on top. In the centre of the room there's a couple beanbags positioned so that they're facing each other, and on the floor between them is a deck of tarot cards. Filling up the empty spaces are plants of all sizes, some magical and some not. A blue star fern turns its leaves towards Wonwoo, as if sensing his approach.
He runs a finger along one of the fern's leaves, feels a little zap of energy rush up his arm. He smiles a little.
A door he hadn't noticed on the adjacent wall is suddenly flung open.
Wonwoo retracts his hand in surprise, blinking at the onslaught of colour. There's a man standing in front of the door that Wonwoo assumes leads to some kind of workroom, and he's got purple hair. Or blue hair. Or both, actually. Some strange pastel amalgamation of the two colours.
For a moment they do nothing but blink at each other.
"You're wet," the stranger points out.
Wonwoo looks down, as if to confirm. "Right. Sorry, can you—?"
The stranger walks back into the workroom, disappearing for a couple seconds before re-emerging with a towel in hand. He passes it to Wonwoo with a polite half smile. "I'm not a spellcaster, so you'll have to make do with this for now."
"Thanks," Wonwoo mumbles.
He makes his best attempt at drying himself off with the towel, but it doesn't work very well. His clothes are still wet and sticking uncomfortably to his skin, but at least his glasses are properly clean now, no longer smudged.
"Jun's not going to be back for another fifteen minutes," the stranger informs.
Wonwoo resists the urge to frown. "Ah, okay. Do you... work here too?"
"Technically no," is the answer he gets, which really isn't an answer at all. "I'm Minghao, by the way."
"Minghao." Wonwoo tests the new name on his tongue. "I'm Wonwoo. I uh, made an appointment."
Minghao walks over the beanbags and sinks into one, somehow managing to look graceful while he does it. "Mmm, I know. Jeon Wonwoo, twenty seven, cursed. Eight o'clock appointment. You're early."
Wonwoo stays standing, hovering awkwardly while Minghao starts shuffling the tarot card deck. "Sorry."
"You want a reading while you wait?"
He wants to say no. Wants to turn and leave so he can be by himself before Jun arrives and inevitably tells him what he's already heard a dozen times: sorry, I can't help you.
"Sure."
Wonwoo sits on the beanbag opposite Minghao's. It gets wet underneath him, but Minghao doesn't seem to mind so Wonwoo doesn't comment on it. He watches Minghao shuffle the cards, hands moving deftly, intimately familiar with the process. His nails are painted, Wonwoo notices. A blue so dark it's almost black. Every once in a while the polish shimmers, the blue getting lighter and lighter until it shifts to pink, then orange, then finally fading back into dark blue. A sunrise and a sunset.
The shuffling stops. Minghao spreads the cards out across the floor, face down. "What do you want to know?"
"My future." The response is immediate. Minghao lifts his gaze and gives him a knowing look. "How does this work if you're not...?"
Minghao smiles. Wonwoo has a feeling that's a question he gets often. "I just interpret the cards myself. No magic, no spells, just me."
"Oh."
"Scared?"
Wonwoo shakes his head. "Relieved, maybe. Magic is infallible, but people aren't."
If Minghao gives him a bad reading then, well, that's just what Minghao thinks. There'll be no magic there to seal his fate.
"I see. Well, go ahead then, pick a card."
Wonwoo picks up the one right on the end and flips it over. It's not a major or minor arcana like he expects, but the number 8. Inside the upper hole, there's a sun, and in the bottom one there's a moon. In the background there are tangling vines, some sprouting flowers, others sprouting fruit.
Minghao exhales softly, surprised. "It's a balanced number," he says, smiling a little mysteriously. "For some people that means stagnation, for others it means stability. No more big ups and downs in your future, but whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is up to you."
Balance. Stability. The thought is comforting. Less grim than Wonwoo was expecting, especially considering his current prospects.
He flips over his next card, near the other end of the deck. It's the number 10. The 1 is a tree, standing tall, and the 0 is a large window with a cat inside, its tail flicking lazily. Behind the numbers are two mountains and the bright blue sky.
"A round number." Minghao's tone is purposefully ambiguous this time. A careful neutral. "Signifies things coming to an end, reaching a conclusion. A goodbye."
Wonwoo lets that sink in. If he's optimistic (which he typically isn't), he could take it to mean his curse getting broken. An ending to his problems. The other option is too bleak to really consider.
He picks his third and final card. 13. The numbers on this card look like they've been etched into sand. There are colourful seashells and small crabs in the surrounding space. A baby turtle hangs off the edge of the 3.
"An odd number," Minghao says, as if there aren't more obvious, unlucky associations to it. "A change. Newness. You'll be pushed out of your routine, taking steps outside what you consider comfortable."
That almost sounds like something Wonwoo would get from his daily horoscope. Or something that Soonyoung would text him pretending it's from a horoscope but really it's just his way of telling Wonwoo to leave the house every once in a while.
"Thank you, I think."
Minghao laughs a little while he packs the cards back up. "You're welcome."
Before Wonwoo can gather the courage to speak again, a familiar tune rings out in the shop. He catches the sound of the door opening, briefly hears the rain still pouring outside, before the door slams shut and someone comes stomping towards them.
"You want some tea?" Minghao asks, as he rises to his feet.
Wonwoo flicks his eyes between him and whoever's approaching. "Um, yes?"
The beaded curtain gets flung open dramatically and a blonde man emerges. He zeroes in on Wonwoo for a moment before pointing his finger at him. Wonwoo flinches at the sudden blast of warm air to his face, only to realise he's now completely dry. The blonde then shoots him a charming little grin before disappearing into the workroom.
Wonwoo hears the mystery guy and Minghao bickering in Mandarin for a while before he comes back out with a folding chair.
"I'm Jun," the blonde introduces himself, as he opens the chair up in front of the table in the corner. "Come sit, Jeon Wonwoo, and we'll figure out how to break that curse of yours."
Wonwoo's a little stunned by the shift in energy, but quickly gets to his feet and moves over to sit on the armchair. It's soft, just as he'd expected, and now that he's dry, he finds himself comfortable enough to sink into it.
"Do you know what kind of curse it is?" Jun asks.
Wonwoo grimaces. "No. I went to a couple other spellbreakers and none of them could figure it out."
The first couple spellbreakers he saw had said it was benign, but when none of the spells they tried worked, eventually it was decided that his curse was belligerent. Then Wonwoo spent alternating days sweating in different types of ritual fire circles, but none of those spellbreakers could figure out how to break his curse either. The last one he went to had taken one look at him and said I'm not qualified for this before sending him out the door.
Jun, the newest in the line of spellbreakers attempting to break Wonwoo's curse, leans forward in open interest. "Oh, I see. This isn't benign."
Wonwoo's stomach sinks. "So it's—"
"It's not belligerent either."
Well. That's new. "Aren't there only two classifications for curses? What else could it be?"
"There are two classifications officially, but there's a lot of grey area. You wouldn't be the first person to have one that doesn't exactly fall into either category." Jun sounds knowledgable, experienced. Wonwoo relaxes just a fraction. "I like to call the ones in the middle... bumpy."
"Bumpy?"
Jun shrugs, grinning a little. All of Wonwoo's earlier worries resurface. "Not completely harmless, but not exactly hostile either. A little complicated. So, bumpy."
At this point, Minghao returns, placing a cup of tea in front of Wonwoo and another in front of Jun.
Wonwoo drinks the tea to calm some of his nerves. It's not any kind he's had before, but it's nice. Bitter in the way that he likes but otherwise not too strong. It settles some of the tension in his stomach and warms him up from the inside.
"Do you know how to break it?" Wonwoo asks once half his tea is gone.
Jun's expression turns to something more severe. "This is the difficult thing about the bumpy curses. They're more... specific. I can't just use the same method to break every one. Ritual cleansing fires tend to work for all belligerent curses, and simple unwinding spells for benign ones, but your type of curse... it needs something personalised."
That is... not great. Almost terrible, but not quite. At the very least it's not a belligerent curse. Wonwoo doesn't have to walk around everyday feeling the tendrils of animosity slowly leeching into his skin. But for his curse to require a personalised solution, he doesn't really know what that means, how that's even possible to achieve.
Minghao leans up against the back of Jun's chair. Jun, in response, tips his head back to rest against Minghao's stomach. They look close, comfortable.
"You might want to take some time off work," Minghao says.
"Why?"
"If we're going to figure out how your curse works and how to break it, you're going to need to spend as much time as you can here, with me." Jun winks then, as if convincing him it'll be a good idea with his good looks and charm.
It's only slightly working.
"What, like, everyday?"
Jun nods. "Pretty much."
Wonwoo sighs.
-
The call with his boss goes about as horribly as Wonwoo expects. Despite the fact that he's saved up enough paid time off for a month, when Wonwoo attempts to take two weeks off at once, he gets fired on the spot. Attempting to explain his curse situation just ends with him getting hung up on.
Soonyoung laughs when he hears about it.
"Are you crying? Turn the camera on, I want to see!" Soonyoung's voice crackles obnoxiously over the phone, somehow still too loud even after Wonwoo's already adjusted the volume.
"I am not crying," Wonwoo says, deadpan. He balances his phone between his cheek and his shoulder as he shuts his stove off, moving his pot of ramyeon over to the table. "It's not like I was super attached to that place. I just... I'm unemployed now. I haven't been unemployed since I was a teenager." He blows on the noodles, then eats a mouthful. He frowns at the bland taste. Too much water again. "I've given seven years of my life to this company."
Soonyoung goes aha. "Exactly! You've been there too long, and you didn't even like it there. Now you can go look for something new, something that you'll like."
"That's easy for you to say," Wonwoo mumbles, staring down dejectedly into his pot of watery ramyeon. "I don't even think I like anything."
"That's not true! You like playing games! Why don't you just make games or something?"
Wonwoo sighs around another chunk of bland noodles. "Just because I play a lot of games doesn't mean I'll know how to make them."
"But you're a computer expert, you know how to code and program and stuff, right?"
"I worked in the IT department, Soonyoung."
On the other end of the line, while Soonyoung goes quiet trying to figure out why those aren't the same thing, Wonwoo catches the sound of laughter in the background. Too bright and too loud for it to be anyone but Seokmin. And maybe Seungkwan too.
Wonwoo kind of wants to shove the rest of his sad ramyeon away and walk over to Soonyoung's apartment right now just to cajole Seokmin into cooking something for him. He has no job, no responsibilities, he has the time now to do those kind of things.
"Whatever. Now that you're unemployed you should come over and have breakfast with me and the boys." As if on cue, Seungkwan and Seokmin hoot and holler. "Seokmin made kimchi jjigae. Kimchi jjigae!"
"Yeah alright, I'll be there in ten."
He hangs up, halfway through putting his jacket on before he looks down and remembers. Right, he's cursed, and if he goes over to Soonyoung's then they'll all know. They'll all worry.
Wonwoo runs his hand down his face, conflicted, before ultimately deciding against going. He sends Soonyoung a text with some made up excuse. Bad ramyeon upset my stomach, sorry.
After he receives a few sad, consoling emojis in response, he heads out the door anyway, but towards Jun's shop instead. Jun had told Wonwoo he could come by whenever he had the time, no prior appointment needed. He still feels a little guilty about taking advantage of this though, so he stops by a bakery on the way to pick up a couple things before getting to the shop.
When Wonwoo gets there, the same short melody signals his arrival, and just like last time, no one comes out to greet him.
He walks down the hall, past the beaded curtain, and finds Minghao sprawled across both beanbags, book in hand. He sets it down against his chest when Wonwoo enters the room, and props himself up on his elbows to look at him. His hair's still as colourful as last time, but Wonwoo finds his attention snatched away by his earrings today. They're silver, and dangle distractingly when Minghao moves his head.
"I have bread," Wonwoo says, holding up the bag he got from the bakery.
A smile breaks across Minghao's face. Wonwoo promptly loses his train of thought.
Minghao gets to his feet, taking the paper bag out of Wonwoo's hand and rifling through it before emerging with a croissant. "You're officially my favourite customer," he states, before taking a bite.
Wonwoo's stomach rumbles. The sound of it makes Minghao laugh, which makes Wonwoo flush.
"Come on, we can share."
Minghao leads him behind the door and to the workroom, but once Wonwoo's inside he realises it's not a workroom at all. It's a kitchen. There's a fridge and an oven and everything. Beside the fridge there's stairs leading up somewhere.
"That's where Jun does his work." Minghao follows Wonwoo's eyes up the steps. "It also doubles as his apartment, but you'd never be able to tell."
Wonwoo makes a vague noise of interest as Minghao pulls out a large plate. He tips all the pastries out of the bag and onto the plate, then arranges them neatly, before bringing it to the small dining table pushed up against the wall.
They have breakfast quietly, sitting there in Jun's kitchen, feet bumping together once before they both decide to keep their legs still. Wonwoo almost forgets why he's there in the first place, until Jun descends the stairs, yawning.
He comes up behind Minghao, grabbing his wrist and bringing it up to his mouth so he can take a bite of his croissant before Minghao twists his arm out of Jun's grip, huffing. Jun only chuckles after he swallows, lips ghosting over the top of Minghao's head in apology. It doesn't seem to actually placate Minghao any.
"Oh, Wonwoo." Jun blinks, like he's only just noticed Wonwoo sitting at the table.
"Hey, sorry if it's early, I just—"
"No, no, it's fine. Did you bring breakfast? Oh man, you're officially my new favourite customer. Let me just fill up my stomach, then we can get right to work, 'kay?"
Wonwoo nods, watching in mild amusement as Jun proceeds to stuff his mouth. Minghao only sighs, finishing up his single croissant and getting up to wash his hands. Wonwoo doesn't realise he's staring, watching the way Minghao lathers up by the sink, meticulously cleaning up each and every finger, even making sure to scrub out the space underneath his fingernails, until he turns and finds Jun looking at him.
There's something knowing in his gaze and a hint of mischief in the curl of his lip. Wonwoo feels transparent, seen through.
Minghao wanders back over to the table, pulling on Jun's earlobe to get his attention. "I'm going to work now. You make sure to do your best to help Wonwoo, yeah?"
Jun swats Minghao's hand away. "I'm literally older than you, why are you talking to me like I'm a baby."
Minghao ignores him to look at Wonwoo. "I'll see you later?" It's half a question.
Wonwoo nods. "Yeah, see you."
It strikes him then, as Minghao levels them both one last smile before leaving, that they might really be seeing more of each other. In the upcoming days Wonwoo will be spending all his time here, in Jun's shop, hoping to find a way out of his curse. And Minghao, it seems, spends most of his free time here. Wonwoo wonders if he does tarot card readings for other customers, if it's something people pay for.
Jun wipes the crumbs off the corner of his mouth, then jerks his thumb towards the stairs. "Let's get to work."
Wonwoo silently trails after him and up the stairs, and is not at all prepared for what he sees when he reaches the second floor. The first thing he notices is the ritual circle drawn onto the floor. The markings look half faded, like it's been through repeat uses. The area surrounding the circle is slightly scorched too. Beyond that, there's papers and notebooks scattered across the floor. Wonwoo assumes they're Jun's scribbles, his research into spells spilled over every flat surface.
By the back, there's a work station set up. A modestly sized cauldron sitting on top, and a mess of ingredients spread out over the table. Beside that, there's an unlit candle, already half gone. There's a small frog carved near the bottom of it.
To the left there's a door, along the wall which the small couch is propped up against. Wonwoo assumes that's where Jun sleeps.
The entire space looks more like a messy office or study than a living room.
"Okay." Jun puts his hands on his hips, smiling confidently. "Show me what you got."
Wonwoo jerks slightly in surprise. "Ah, right." He bends down, taking a deep breath, before removing his left shoe and lifting up his pant leg slightly.
Jun crouches down, staring intently at the empty space where Wonwoo's foot should be. "When did this start?"
"Friday, I think. It started with just a toe at first, but now..." Now Wonwoo's whole foot has disappeared.
"Interesting." Jun pokes a finger at the empty space, but comes into contact with Wonwoo's ankle. "Oh, it's still there?"
Wonwoo twitches a little. "Yeah. I can still feel it and everything, I just can't see it anymore."
"You're turning invisible." Jun looks up at Wonwoo, grinning now.
"I'm turning invisible," Wonwoo confirms.
The glee on Jun's face is only mildly off-putting.
-
On Wednesday, Wonwoo goes home.
Home home, not the apartment he has in the city. There's a pouch of magical detoxifying herbs given to him by Jun that he's carrying with him. His grandmother picks up on the smell immediately and narrows her eyes at him like she knows. But she keeps quiet as his mother fusses around him, already preparing to make his favourite dishes. Wonwoo is overwhelmed, as he always is when he comes home, but he's smiling nonetheless.
After dinner, as he's doing the dishes, his grandmother walks up behind him and smacks his shoulder.
The plate he's holding slips free and clatters in the sink, on top of the other unwashed dishes. Nothing breaks, miraculously.
"Grandma?" Wonwoo peels back one of his rubber gloves to push his glasses up his nose. The look on his grandmother's face is scarily familiar.
"I smell magic on you." There's something accusing about her tone.
Wonwoo winces a little and rubs the back of his neck. "They're just some herbs. They're meant to... cleanse my aura or something."
"What's wrong with your aura? Why do you need it clean? Did the bad energy get you? I keep telling you that there's too much impure magic in the city! It'll stick to your skin and make you sick if you're not careful!"
She swats at his arm again for extra emphasis.
Wonwoo laughs and doesn't manage to duck in time to avoid the contact.
"It's not that." He removes his other glove, sets it down beside the sink and turns to face her fully. He hesitates here, debating on whether or not to tell her, but ultimately gives in to the worried look she shoots him. "I got cursed," he admits finally.
His grandmother's eyes go wide. "Is it serious?"
"I don't know?" Wonwoo shrugs. "It's complicated. It's not a normal curse, apparently."
It happens, he wants to say, but he doesn't know how true that is. Jun said bumpy curses were pretty rare, but that he'd definitely had enough experience with them to help. He hadn't gone into much detail about his previous cases, as curses of this nature are too specific to the curse-bearer for there to be any helpful information for Wonwoo to glean. All he knows is that Jun has one half success and one total failure under his belt. When Wonwoo asked about the half success, he said it wasn't his story to tell, then winked and laughed, preventing Wonwoo from asking again.
The lines of his grandmother's face turn harsh. "Who cursed you?"
"Some bored spellcaster, I think. I didn't see them. Didn't know I was cursed until I got home."
Most curses happen like that nowadays. Sometimes it's easy to figure out who it comes from, when the curse is belligerent. Something about the strong intent that lingers in the spell needed for a curse of that strength. But benign curses—and curses like Wonwoo's—can come from anybody, for any reason. Most people have gotten cursed at least once in their life. Usually it's nothing to worry about.
Wonwoo's grandmother takes his hand and pats it gently. "Don't stay too long," she says sincerely. "I know there are no good spellbreakers out here by the countryside, so go back to the fancy ones in the city and get that curse broken, okay?"
Wonwoo smiles. "Okay."
He doesn't tell anyone that he lost his job just yet, somehow that seems even more daunting than admitting he's cursed.
"Good. Now go rest, go to bed, I'll finish the rest of the dishes."
"But—"
"No buts! You're cursed, we don't know what kind of havoc that type of magic could be wreaking on your body! You need your rest."
"It's not—"
"Go, go!"
Wonwoo gets one last smack on the arm, and then a gentle shove towards the door. He gives in and heads upstairs to wash his face.
Later, after his teeth have been cleaned too, he lights up a candle on his bedside table. Jun had imbued it with a spell of his own making, something that should 'set things back the way they were'. Wonwoo hadn't understood much of Jun's explanation, as he went about his magic less scientifically and more with just his intuition. But what he did understand was that hypothetically, if the spell worked, after Wonwoo slept a whole night with the candle lit beside him, in the morning he'd be back to normal.
Wonwoo doesn't have much hope for it working, but the doubts have nothing to do with Jun. He just gets the feeling that it would be too easy, if it ended here.
And he's right, of course. In the morning when he lifts up his blanket to check, his foot still can't be seen.
He sighs, staring unblinkingly up at his bedroom ceiling for a couple moments before fumbling for his phone.
He dials the newest number on his contact list. It rings four times before someone picks up.
"Hello?"
The voice that comes across the line is very clearly not Jun, despite the fact that Jun had told him this was his mobile number. Wonwoo doesn't say anything for a beat too long. It's obviously Minghao on the other end. He probably shouldn't be this surprised, but he still is.
"Hello?" Minghao tries again.
Wonwoo coughs. "Uh."
"Oh, Wonwoo?" Minghao sounds pleasantly surprised.
Wonwoo wonders if it's strange that they can already recognise each other's voices through the phone even though they haven't known each other long. "Good morning."
"Good morning."
Another awkward silence stretches out between them. Minghao ends up laughing before Wonwoo can think of anything to say. Even over the phone the laughter sounds sweet, has Wonwoo unwittingly smiling to himself.
"Jun's still asleep. He's not a morning person."
"Ah. Okay."
"Did you need him for something?"
"He asked me to update him after I used the candle he gave me."
"A candle? ...Did it have a frog carved on it somewhere?"
"Yeah, it did."
Minghao pauses briefly, then mumbles something about Jun that Wonwoo doesn't quite catch. "That was one of mine then," he says eventually.
"Huh." Wonwoo turns to look at his bedside table, where the candle's been melted down to practically nothing. "Are all the candles in the shop yours?"
"Most of the things in the shop are mine." Minghao laughs again, softer this time. "The tarot cards I used for your reading, I made those. Oh, and the beaded curtain, I made that too."
Wonwoo thinks of the number 8 card, the sun and the moon. He thinks of Minghao leaving traces of himself over everything in the shop, leaving an imprint of his hands over the rug or the handmade tea set or the funny little coasters in the kitchen. Wonwoo finds himself wanting, longing. He wants someone to do the same for him, to come into his life, into his space, and leave a mark on so many things that it becomes unclear what belongs to who.
It startles him some, just how strongly he wants.
"You're good with your hands," he murmurs.
"Thanks," Minghao replies. Wonwoo imagines him smiling, something small and private. "When I was a kid I really wanted to be a spellcaster. All the magic just seemed so amazing to me. When I finally realised that magic wasn't something you could just learn, I got really upset. My mother felt bad for me I think, so she signed me up for a bunch of different extracurriculars to get my mind off it. There's this one thing she told me that's stayed with me all this time. She said, making something with your own two hands is a kind of magic too. Naturally, I decided to take that to the extreme and now I find myself making stuff whenever I have any free time."
Minghao's mother is onto something, Wonwoo thinks. It makes him want to take up a new hobby, pick up a pencil and start sketching, just to make something, anything.
"Your candles are really good."
Minghao huffs. "You don't have to say that now that you know I'm the one who made them."
"No, I mean it." Wonwoo comes off sounding a bit too insistent, but he wants Minghao to believe him. "A lot of people think handmade candles and mass-produced ones feel the same, but to me there's always been a difference. I think your mother's right about there being a type of magic in just making something, because I swear I can feel it. I think when someone spells a handmade candle it amplifies some of what's already there, whatever piece of themself they inadvertently end up putting into the candle while they're making it. It feels... more personal, somehow? More authentic, maybe. Does that make sense?"
Another silence blankets them. Wonwoo angles his head towards the window and watches the clouds roll by. He could feel nervous about the amount he's just spoken, about revealing more of himself than he'd meant to. He could.
He breathes easy, in and out. It's simple, and somehow talking to someone like this feels almost comfortable, for once.
"Yeah, it makes sense." Maybe it's just that Minghao is easy to talk to. Something about his voice, or the expression Wonwoo can picture him making, one of quiet understanding and acceptance. "I don't think I've ever felt anything like that, and I'm the one making the candles, but... it's nice that you can feel those things. It's sweet."
Sweet.
Wonwoo turns and hides his smile into his pillow. Selfishly, he hopes Jun stays asleep for a while longer.
-
"Strip," is the first thing Jun says to Wonwoo when he walks into the shop on Saturday.
Minghao looks up from where he's nestled comfortably in the armchair, book in hand. Wonwoo hesitates, hands hovering over the zipper of his jeans. Jun rolls his eyes and gestures with his hands for Wonwoo to get on with it. Wonwoo sighs. The jeans come off. Minghao looks, eyes lingering on the parts of Wonwoo's thighs that his boxer briefs aren't covering, until he catches what isn't there. Wonwoo's entire left shin is no longer visible.
Jun doesn't frown, but Wonwoo seems to sense the downturn of his lips anyway. "Okay. Okay. So that's a no on the herbs and the candle." Jun pulls a clipboard out from somewhere behind him and crosses a couple things out. "Bath bomb's next, I think."
"Bath bomb."
"Yep. Bath bomb. Get upstairs, you're using my tub."
Wonwoo thinks about protesting, but then Jun cuts him this look as if to say is your modesty more important than breaking your curse? and Wonwoo remembers his apartment doesn't actually have a bathtub, so he quietly ambles towards the stairs, jeans clutched in his hands.
He walks around the mess of papers on Jun's apartment floor, stepping into the bathroom he'd only caught a glimpse of before. There's a clawfoot tub resting against the wall, looking more expensive than the entire rest of Jun's apartment combined. It's suspiciously pristine looking, compared to the slightly yellowed bathroom tiles.
As Wonwoo starts up the tap, the door opens behind him.
Minghao walks in with a tray. The aforementioned bath bomb sits in the middle, a mix of muddy green and mustard yellow. Surrounding it are loose leaves and petals from a bright pink flower.
The tray gets set on the floor while they both wait for the tub to fill up. Minghao perches on the edge, tapping an unknown melody onto the porcelain as Wonwoo stands there, still in his boxers and his shirt, thinking of nothing in particular.
When the tub is three quarters full, Minghao turns the tap off. Wonwoo then watches as Minghao drops the bath bomb into the water.
There's an ominous sort of bubbling at first, and for a moment it seems as if the entire bathtub's boiling, but then the bubbles slowly fade and what's left behind is discoloured bathwater. It's brown, and looks like one of those old school medicinal concoctions Wonwoo used to find his grandmother drinking.
"You should get in before the water gets cold," Minghao says. He's still sitting by front of the tub, beside the tap, and doesn't seem to be planning on leaving. He even turns his head to the side to give the illusion of privacy, though the very fact that he's in here with Wonwoo has already made this the least private a bath could get.
Wonwoo tugs his shirt off anyway, then gingerly steps out of his underwear before getting into the bath. The water sloshes to the edges of the tub as he sits. It's too hot to be warm, but not hot enough to be boiling. His skin tingles oddly too, but not enough for Wonwoo to determine whether it's unpleasant or not.
Minghao picks the tray back up and sets it on his lap. He scatters the leaves over the tub first. As soon as they come in contact with the water they start to dissolve. Wonwoo feels the tingles subside, but now there's a strange smell permeating the air. Something like old earth and aged wood and the first dawn of winter. Some of the tension leaves his shoulders.
"Feel okay?" Minghao asks.
Wonwoo nods.
Minghao then drops in the pink flower petals one by one. With each one, the brown bathwater turns lighter and lighter, until it's a milky white. Wonwoo's just glad it stays opaque.
With the tray empty, Wonwoo expects Minghao to get up and leave, but he lingers by the other end of the bathtub, like he wants to say something but isn't sure he should. Wonwoo feels too relaxed to worry about social niceties or the fact that the two of them barely know each other. He lifts his hand and flicks water at the side of Minghao's head.
Minghao jumps a little when the water hits the side of his face, then laughs at Wonwoo's unapologetic expression half submerged in the water.
"Did Jun ever tell you how we met?"
Wonwoo shakes his head. He would remember if Jun had mentioned anything about that.
There's a wistful twist to the smile on Minghao's face now. "I'd only just moved to Korea, for work. I thought I'd prepared as much as I could. I took classes, learnt the language, studied for it. I wasn't worried at all before I left. But then I got here and suddenly the gap felt so much bigger. Whenever I heard myself speak Korean it always sounded like my accent overpowered every word. Well—it did to me at least." He sighs here, eyes focussed on some version of himself that Wonwoo can't really picture. "So then I decided to just stop talking. Talk as little as I could get away with."
You're amazing, Wonwoo wants to say. Brave and talented and lovely and amazing. Wonwoo would've never been able to pack his life up and move to a whole new country, not on his own. Not without someone waiting for him.
It's hard though, for Wonwoo to say those kind of things out loud. Especially now, with the fumes of this magic bath making him too tired, too relaxed, to open his mouth. He crawls forward instead, uncaring of the way his movement makes water spill out the sides of the tub.
When he reaches the other end, he leans his head against Minghao's thigh. Some of his hair's wet, and it'll definitely end up soaking through Minghao's pants, but this is the only form of comfort Wonwoo can think to offer.
Minghao stiffens up. Wonwoo shuts his eyes, thankful for whatever spell Jun had put into the bath bomb that's making him too loose to remember how to be embarrassed. Eventually, Minghao relaxes, breathing out slowly through his nose. One of his hands finds its way into Wonwoo's hair, fingers dragging gently against his scalp.
"About a month after I arrived, I got cursed," Minghao reveals. Wonwoo's eyes fly open. He tries to angle his head back, so he can look at Minghao, but Minghao's hand keeps his head in place. He runs his hand through Wonwoo's hair again, blunt nails scratching lightly against his skull. Wonwoo fights off a full body shiver. "I didn't even realise until I was on the phone with my mother. She kept asking me to speak up, said I was being too quiet. I tried raising my voice, but I couldn't. It was like my body wouldn't let me. I found Jun a couple days later. He wasn't my first choice for breaking the curse, but when I clicked onto his website and saw Chinese on there, well... my homesick heart decided for me."
Wonwoo can understand that. Jun hadn't been his first choice either. Or his second. But now he's here and he's glad for it, in all honesty. Though that might not actually have anything to do with Jun himself.
"The shop was a lot more boring looking before me." Minghao laughs softly. "None of the furniture matched, and there was an offensive amount of unused space. At the time he only had these two plastic fold up chairs and an old coffee table. He made a terrible first impression, honestly. But I could talk to him in Mandarin, I could speak without feeling or sounding stupid. So I stayed, and even though he didn't really know what to do with me, I let him try and help me anyway.
We figured out what my curse was after a couple days: I was getting quieter and quieter with every passing moment. Eventually I would've gone completely silent, unable to make a sound. At the time I remember thinking that I brought it onto myself, that the universe saw how I wasn't making use of my voice and decided I didn't deserve it anymore."
Minghao's fingers continue to card through Wonwoo's hair. He'd thought initially that it was done for his benefit, but maybe it's just Minghao's way of grounding himself.
"I was Jun's first ever bumpy curse," Minghao admits with a small smile. "We were practically living together while he was trying to figure out a way to break it. In the end he found a way to delay it, give me a little more time, but he couldn't get any further than that. For about two months all I could do was whisper. At some point I just got fed up. All that time I spent studying a new language, only for me to lose my voice before I could gather enough courage to have a single full conversation in Korean? Fuck that. So, one day I walked into work and just started talking to my co-worker about what I was going to have for lunch. It was... nice. One of those inane conversations you forget as soon as it's over, but it was easier than I thought it'd be. The next day I woke up and my voice was back to normal."
Oh.
Wonwoo thinks he understands what Minghao's saying, why he's telling him this.
"I have a theory about these types of curses," Minghao continues. "You know what benign curses and belligerent curses have in common?" Wonwoo doesn't answer. "Intent. Spellcasters know what they want the curse to do when they cast the spell. But your type of curse, our type, I think when the spellcasters cast the magic, there's no intent at all. Maybe just a bit of curiosity, and the expectation that something interesting will happen, but nothing beyond that. I think, without intent from the spellcaster, the magic ends up taking direction from the curse-bearer instead. It finds our fears or insecurities, any type of mental hang up we have, and forms the curse around that."
Oh.
Wonwoo remembers something his grandmother used to say often: not all magical problems have magical solutions.
-
This might be becoming a habit; taking his pants off in front of his friends.
Soonyoung alternates between glaring at Wonwoo's invisible left leg to glaring at Wonwoo himself. He looks more sad than angry though, which is about what Wonwoo had expected. Still, he can't help the nerves, the mortification of being looked at like this.
"Why didn't you tell me earlier?"
Wonwoo was expecting that question too. It still makes him flinch to hear it.
He pulls his sweatpants back up but leaves the strings untied. "I didn't want you to worry."
"That's stupid," Soonyoung says. Wonwoo thinks he's probably right.
"Sorry," he mumbles, as he sinks into the couch beside Soonyoung. "I thought it would be fine if I just fixed it myself, and then you wouldn't even need to know that anything was wrong."
Soonyoung leans his head on Wonwoo's shoulder, though he still makes sure to express his displeasure by kicking his ankle. The one that's still visible. "It's bad, isn't it? That's why you're finally telling me."
Wonwoo keeps quiet long enough for Soonyoung to know the answer is yes.
"Would you still be my friend if you couldn't see me anymore?" Wonwoo then asks, to the tune of would you still love me if I was a worm?
"You're an idiot," Soonyoung says. "Yes. Of course I would. You'll still wear clothes, right? You wouldn't just walk around naked all the time just because it meant no one could see you anymore, would you? Because you could go to jail for that. And you'll definitely get an infection or two if you sit on a bench or a bus with your junk just all out there."
Wonwoo snorts. "I'm still going to wear clothes, Soonyoung."
"Okay. Good. Just making sure." He kicks Wonwoo's ankle again, this time just a light tap. "You went to see a spellbreaker about this?" Wonwoo nods. "What did they say? Can they fix it?"
That's more of a loaded question than Soonyoung knows. Wonwoo tries his best to explain it all anyway, about Jun and his shop, the fact that no other spellbreaker had known what to do with him, and then he talks about what Minghao had told him just yesterday. He doesn't know how to actually talk about Minghao himself, how to describe him. He doesn't technically work at the shop, he's not technically helping Wonwoo break his curse. But he isn't not helping either—at least, not to Wonwoo.
Soonyoung seems to pick up on the fact that he's left a couple things out, but he doesn't push Wonwoo to fill in those blanks. Not yet anyway.
"You remember being nine?" Soonyoung asks suddenly.
Wonwoo doesn't know where this is going. "Think so."
"You transferred to my class because you wouldn't talk in your other one and your parents thought maybe you just didn't like the kids there." It's Wonwoo's story, but it still surprises him to hear it, shocks him that Soonyoung remembers. "But that wasn't it, and you wouldn't talk in your new class either. The teacher had to bribe me with candy to make friends with you because no one else would. So during break one day I made you play hide and seek with me and my friends, but no one could find you because you hid so well. I started crying because I thought the teacher was going to blame me for losing you."
That Wonwoo does remember. Soonyoung never specified what places were off limits, and Wonwoo, thinking he was so clever for noticing, hid in the janitor's closet. He remembers the feeling of triumph slowly giving way to boredom, then finally to concern, when he heard the teachers running up and down the hall frantically searching for something. He didn't realise that something was him until they started calling out his name.
When he emerged from behind the door, his teacher was holding onto a crying Soonyoung's hand and ended up scolding Wonwoo for worrying everybody. Wonwoo then burst into tears. It startled Soonyoung so much he stopped crying as a result.
Wonwoo still doesn't know what it was about that day that made Soonyoung decide to befriend him properly, but when they returned to school the next day, Soonyoung declared himself Wonwoo's best friend and hasn't left his side since.
"That was the first time I'd ever cried like that in school."
Soonyoung laughs, presses his cheek down harder against Wonwoo's shoulder. "Later I asked you why you didn't talk, you remember what you said then?"
"No. What did I say?"
"You said you didn't like it when people looked at you." Soonyoung's voice goes quiet, careful. "When we were seventeen, you got drunk at that party and told me something then too. I asked you why you didn't want to meet my friends and you said I was enough, and that you were scared if anybody else looked at you, they'd see something they didn't like."
Wonwoo closes his eyes, rests his head against Soonyoung's. Hearing this feels like picking at an old scab and reopening a closed wound.
"You remember Mingyu?" Soonyoung asks next.
Another old wound reopens, bleeds again like it's new. "Yeah." Of course he remembers.
"You told me he said something, when you guys had that big fight."
Wonwoo remembers. Like most things to do with Mingyu, he's unlikely to ever forget it.
They met when Wonwoo was twenty three, which isn't so long ago in actuality, but feels lifetimes away now. Mingyu was friends with Seokmin, who was friends with Seungkwan, who was friends with Soonyoung. Wonwoo had only just gotten used to Seokmin and Seungkwan being around when he met Mingyu. It surprised everyone that they clicked so easily, fell into conversation without any of Wonwoo's usual awkwardness.
Wonwoo hadn't realised what they were heading for back then, but Mingyu might've known the whole time. They kissed at a new years party, right at the end of the countdown. It should've been the start of something.
They danced around it for two years instead. They made out in dark corners, slept in each other's clothes, kept their hands joined together under the table. It never really got any further than that, and at the time Wonwoo had just thought they were taking it slow. He could wait, he thought. He would wait. Mingyu was worth waiting for.
(It would take a long time before he realised Mingyu was the one waiting. Wonwoo was the one running.)
On that last night, Mingyu made them both dinner. Halfway through Wonwoo had mentioned something about catching one of the screenings of an old arthouse film at the cinema when Mingyu suddenly asked, "what are we?"
Wonwoo can't remember his exact response, but it had been something along the lines of, "we're us." In hindsight, it was a terrible answer. A cop out. He hadn't recognised it then, but Mingyu certainly did.
"What are you scared of?" Mingyu got to his feet, heartbreak on his face. "It's like you put up this wall between you and anyone who isn't Soonyoung. I thought I'd be able to break it down eventually, but I realised it won't ever come down unless you want it to. And you don't want it to, do you? Not even for me."
It stung then, and if he thinks about it too long it still stings now. The truth of it hurt, but Wonwoo hadn't understood that then, so he got up too and tried to deny it. Tried to argue otherwise. Outside of Soonyoung, Mingyu was the one who knew him best. Or so he thought.
"Knowing how you like your ramen and what your favourite colour is isn't the same as knowing you."
But it is, Wonwoo said. No it isn't, Mingyu insisted.
"I've never seen you sad," Mingyu said next. "I've never seen you scared, or overjoyed, or angry, really angry. You never show any of it. You keep yourself locked up so tight, and for what?"
Wonwoo could've begged. Could've told Mingyu he was sorry, told him how much he really meant, told him that he would try harder. But he didn't move a muscle, didn't say another word.
At the end, Mingyu said, "I look at you and I'm not even sure I'm actually looking at you. Sometimes I wonder if you're even really there at all."
Wonwoo opens his eyes, blinks away the image of a heartbroken Mingyu. "You think that's what the curse is about?"
"I think it's related. I think the curse saw how you were just letting life go by, too scared of letting someone in, and it decided to do something about it."
"By turning me invisible?"
"The curse has a sense of humour, clearly."
"I don't know what the curse expects me to do about it."
Soonyoung pulls his head off Wonwoo's shoulder, then shifts so that he can face him properly. He gives him one of those all knowing looks, the ones that always make Wonwoo feel like he's been stripped bare.
"Really? You don't even have a teeny tiny inkling? An itty bitty hunch?"
They both know Wonwoo's smart enough to understand where to go from here.
Wonwoo sighs in defeat.
Soonyoung beams bright enough to light up the way.
-
The fingers on Wonwoo's left hand have disappeared by the time he next sets foot in Jun's shop.
He lifts his right hand to wave, when Jun greets him. As usual, Jun's not alone, but instead of Minghao accompanying him, today it's someone new. He's short, is the first thing that Wonwoo thinks. The new guy levels Wonwoo an unimpressed look as if he knows exactly what's going through Wonwoo's head.
"Wonwoo, this is Jihoon." Jun introduces the two of them with a grin. "Jihoon, Wonwoo." Wonwoo attempts another wave. Jihoon does not return it. He barely even manages to stop scowling. "Guess what? We're all the same age. That's fun, isn't it?"
Jihoon doesn't look like he finds anything fun. "You're right, this is fun. I'm loving every minute of this."
Jun cackles.
"Please keep talking," Jihoon grits out, looking as if he means the exact opposite.
"He's cursed too," Jun stage whispers to Wonwoo. "It's like yours."
The last of Jihoon's patience seems to vanish entirely. Instead of cursing Jun out, like he clearly so desperately wants to do, he just turns around and storms off. Wonwoo jumps out of his way, wincing at the sound of the door slamming.
Wonwoo turns back to Jun, who looks wholly unaffected. "Is it okay to just let him go like that?"
"Probably." Jun shrugs. "He's more bark than bite, trust me. He's just pissed he can't bitch about me to my face without it coming out flipped and complimentary instead."
"...So you two have known each other a while then?"
"What? No. We just met a couple days ago."
"Oh. Okay."
"So, you ready to become my lab rat for the day?"
"Uh."
Wonwoo winds up T-posing naked in a ritual circle. It's not like any of the other ones he's been put into before. He doesn't know much about spells, but he can tell the markings in the circle are completely different. The circle's also much wider than usual, and the flames burn green instead of the usual blue. Jun's been circling him for the past couple minutes, jotting who knows what onto his little clipboard.
He notices stickers stuck all over the back of it. Most of them of cats, but a couple of frogs and random objects like bicycles and fruits and a star here and there. He wonders if Minghao has made these too.
"If you want to talk you can," Jun says. "It won't disrupt the magic or anything, if you're worried about that."
Wonwoo isn't. He just doesn't know what to say. What he wants is to know where Minghao is, what he's doing, why he isn't here today, but he doesn't want to ask. Doesn't want to put that curiosity into words to be spoken out loud.
"Why did you become a spellbreaker?" Wonwoo ends up asking.
Jun looks up from his clipboard, surprised. "You know what they say about spellbreakers, right? It's a profession for people who like breaking things." Wonwoo's definitely heard that a couple times. A kid likes to kick sandcastles and rip pages out of books and the adults will all say 'maybe he'll grow up to be a spellbreaker,' then laugh. "What people don't know is that there's nothing actually destructive about it. It's more of an... unravelling. My dad was a spellcaster, but I was always more interested in taking a spell apart to figure out how it worked than making spells of my own."
"That's the first time anyone's ever made it sound appealing," Wonwoo admits.
Jun winks. Wonwoo wishes he'd stop doing that. "What they don't tell you is that spellbreakers also love to gatekeep."
They both laugh. Jun's timer goes off shortly after.
When Wonwoo's clothed again, half of the left side of his body still unfortunately invisible, Jun brings him to the kitchen. Wonwoo sits at the table while Jun prepares some sort of soup. He grinds something with a mortar and pestle, then drops it into the pot of soup. The smell of pepper is so overwhelmingly strong for a moment that Wonwoo actually sneezes.
By the time Jun sets the soup down in front of Wonwoo though, it doesn't smell of anything at all. It doesn't look terribly unappetising either.
"Pretend it's chicken broth," Jun suggests.
Wonwoo tries his best, and puts a spoonful of the mystery soup into his mouth. It doesn't taste anything like chicken broth.
Jun slides into the seat opposite Wonwoo at the table, resting his head on his palm as he watches him attempt to finish off his bowl of not chicken broth.
"Minghao's working today," he says without prompt.
Wonwoo slurps up his soup and doesn't say anything. There's something happening in his stomach now, but he's not sure if that's the effects of the magic soup or something else entirely.
Jun continues on, as if he's just talking to himself and Wonwoo's not there to catch every word. "I keep telling him he should just quit his job to work as my full time assistant, but he actually likes his job apparently. Being a private art curator for a chaebol sounds so much more boring than working with me, don't you think?"
It doesn't, actually. Wonwoo's kind of fascinated, and wants to ask more about it, but he'd rather have that conversation with Minghao himself. For now, he just makes a vague noise of agreement around a spoonful of soup.
"Did he tell you about the time he was cursed?"
Wonwoo nods.
"Oh he did, did he? Interesting." Jun smiles. There's an edge to it that makes Wonwoo's palms sweat a little. "Well, when he first moved here, he was working for this huge tech company. They started up in Beijing, then decided to set up an office here. And when they did, they brought Minghao over. He was miserable back then. Didn't have any friends and looked like he'd bolt off back home at any minute. He stuck it out though, 'cause he's stubborn like that. Determined. But the curse didn't help any. Only made things worse."
Wonwoo tries to picture Minghao a couple years younger, his hair its natural dark colour, ears only pierced at the lobes, nails unpainted. He goes to work everyday in clothes that blend in with everybody else's, and he doesn't talk unless directly addressed. Wonwoo can imagine the feeling of being stifled, the itch for his hands to create—only inspiration never strikes.
"You should've seen him when he first came to the shop." Jun sighs, lost in a memory. "He was even skinnier than he is now, and that huge coat he was wearing only made him look even smaller. My brotherly instincts immediately kicked in, so I just sort of ended up taking him in. It gave him an excuse to start making things again, being forced to see my shop in its sad empty state everyday. I think it was a relief for him, to find someone he could open up to." Jun looks at Wonwoo pointedly. "I think he's trying to do the same for you now."
There's an underlying warning in everything Jun's just told him, Wonwoo can sense it. Jun, at the end of the day, is Minghao's best friend first before he's Wonwoo spellbreaker.
Jun smiles a little too sharp.
The timer goes off again.
Wonwoo's fingers are still see through.
-
At two in the morning, Wonwoo gets curious.
He finds Jun's website, then clicks around until he finds his socials. His email's been linked, along with an instagram page for his shop. Wonwoo opens up his instagram, types in 'junshop' and clicks on the very first photo. It was posted four months ago, and features Minghao in the middle of shuffling his tarot card deck. His face isn't visible, but Wonwoo can tell it's him. The caption of the post says, 'free readings on tuesdays, 4-6pm'.
No one's been tagged in the picture, but when Wonwoo goes through the likes on the post (there are only ten), he finds a 'minghao8'.
His finger hesitates only briefly before he clicks on the name and is taken to Minghao's instagram page.
The profile picture is of Minghao with his back turned to the camera, standing in front of a painting. The first few posts on his page are all of art. Paintings, mostly. Some sketches here and there, and then one of a messy potter's wheel. The first post Wonwoo finds that actually contains Minghao himself in it is a mirror selfie, taken at a gym. Minghao's wearing a sleeveless shirt, and all the muscles in his arms can be seen. Wonwoo's mouth goes dry. He clicks on another post.
This one has Minghao standing at the base of a tree that's just beginning to change colours for fall. He looks comfortable, in a knit sweater and baggy jeans. Wonwoo stares at this photo for probably a couple moments too long, imagining the wind blowing through Minghao's hair, the leaves falling around him, the sound of hummingbirds in the background. The caption for this post is only the camera emoji, followed by '@chwehs'.
Wonwoo clicks onto the new account. The posts are sparse. Less than ten. The most recent one is of two movie ticket stubs. Minghao's been tagged over one of them. He's also left a comment on the post, a blue heart.
Something unpleasant worms its way into Wonwoo's thoughts.
He moves to the next post.
Whoever this chwehs is, he's handsome. He stands, half smiling, in front of a clear blue sky. He's got on a colourful sweatshirt, a beanie, and hiking boots that look new. Wonwoo swipes to the left. The next picture is one of Minghao, bundled up in a warm looking jacket, a matching beanie, and hiking boots that have definitely seen better days. There are three green hearts in the caption, and a comment from 'junhuiwen' that says: you guys are adorable.
Wonwoo locks his phone and places it screen side down.
The universe has a sense of humour that Wonwoo really does not appreciate.
His phone rings just a second later. Wonwoo answers without looking at who's calling, mind spinning.
"Why are you awake?"
It's Minghao's voice. Wonwoo sits up so fast he almost gets dizzy. He holds the phone at arm's length and sees the call coming from a new number. Minghao's number, perhaps. But why. How. What?
"I saw that you liked one of my old photos on instagram so I got your phone number off of Jun," Minghao says, when Wonwoo's been silent too long.
Wonwoo attempts to fight off the panic, scrambles to remember which photo he could've possibly liked by accident. "Sorry," he mumbles, when he can't come up with anything better to say.
Minghao laughs. "You're doing things out of order. You're supposed to follow me, then wait for me to follow back, then you can start liking my old posts."
"Isn't liking someone's old posts some sort taboo?" Wonwoo asks, as he pulls instagram back up and follows Minghao's account. By the time he does though, he sees that Minghao's already following him.
"To some people it is. For me... I think it depends on who's doing the liking."
Wonwoo has no idea what to say in response to that. Minghao laughs again like he knows.
"Your boyfriend," Wonwoo blurts out of nowhere. "I saw him."
There's a brief silence on the other end of the line. "My boyfriend?"
"I saw your posts."
"Did you now?"
"Yeah. He's... he seems nice."
"That's funny, because I don't have a boyfriend."
Wonwoo blinks into the darkness of his bedroom, his face beginning to burn. "Oh."
"Oh," Minghao echoes, voice on the edge of teasing.
Wonwoo flops back onto his bed, exhaling hard through his nose. He feels silly, like he's a dumb teenager again. Somehow finding Minghao's instagram by snooping, then accidentally liking one of his photos without even realising. But Minghao doesn't have a boyfriend. He doesn't have a boyfriend. That knowledge is enough to overpower the embarrassment.
"Did you call me just because I liked your picture?"
The question manages to startle another laugh out of Minghao. Wonwoo imagines it's accompanied by a slight flush sitting high on his cheekbones. "Yes. I wanted to know what you were thinking when you liked it."
"I didn't mean to like it," Wonwoo confesses. "Which post was it?"
"The one of me at the museum. Jun took those pictures. Apparently it was a boring day for him."
Wonwoo remembers now. It was a set of photos taken of Minghao before he'd dyed his hair blue-purple. His hair was black then, and longer than it is now. "I was thinking you were pretty, when I saw those pictures. I probably just liked the post as some automatic response."
The line goes quiet again. Wonwoo squeezes his eyes shut and prays he hasn't screwed this up.
"Where do you live?" Minghao asks, after an excruciating three second pause.
It's too late for house visits, Wonwoo thinks. Also his apartment is smaller than he'd like it to be and nowhere near ready for visitors who aren't Soonyoung. He gives his address to Minghao anyway, because he's the one asking, then he spends the next fifteen minutes attempting to clean up the best he can.
When the doorbell rings, at a quarter to three, Wonwoo is out of breath.
He opens the door to Minghao, who stands there in an oversized hoodie and a pair of shorts that nearly reaches his knees, looking like he stepped straight out of bed to come here. "Hey," Minghao says. He doesn't mention anything about the fact that he can only see half of Wonwoo's face, that the entire life side of his body is transparent.
"Hey," Wonwoo says back, then opens the door wider to let Minghao inside.
Minghao walks in, leaving his crocs decorated with multiple colourful pins by the doorway before he steps further into Wonwoo's apartment. He shuffles across the floor in his socks, taking in Wonwoo's decor, or lack thereof. Wonwoo notices how Minghao's eyes will linger in empty corners or unused surfaces when he catches them. He wonders if Minghao's imagining all the different things he could put there, the things he could make to liven up the place. Wonwoo's heart lurches in want. It has him tripping over the leg of his coffee table, bringing him and Minghao crashing to the floor.
They end up chest to chest, Wonwoo's head throbbing from where it smacked against the floor, and Minghao, breathless, sprawled on top of Wonwoo.
"Sorry," Wonwoo grunts, eyes shut in mortification. He's got an arm wrapped around Minghao's waist. He knows he should move it, but can't quite bring himself to.
"You okay?" Minghao's breath ghosts over Wonwoo's chin as his hands reach up towards Wonwoo's head. "You hit your head pretty hard."
"I'm fine." Embarrassed beyond belief, and with a sore spot on the back of his head that'll probably ache for the next few days, but otherwise fine. "You?"
Minghao drops his head onto Wonwoo's shoulder, cheek pressed up against his collarbone, then laughs into his neck. "I'm okay."
"This could've gone better." Wonwoo cracks an eye open, and stares directly into his ceiling light.
Minghao hums. "Probably."
"Can I tell you something?" Wonwoo blinks until the bright spots stop dancing in his vision, then angles his head down so that he can look at Minghao.
Minghao lifts his head off Wonwoo's shoulder so he can meet his eyes. "Yes."
"I think you're beautiful," Wonwoo says. The eye contact is excruciating and the angle of his head makes his neck start to stiffen up, but that's all fine. Inconsequential, in this moment. "I thought it the first time I saw you, and then it just got worse from there. Because you're also patient, and kind, and you make pretty things that impress me more than magic ever has." Minghao's eyes are wide as he looks at Wonwoo. "I like you. A lot. I want you. More than I've wanted anything in a long time."
Minghao immediately scrambles to get off him. Wonwoo is left bereft from the contact, laying there on the floor staring at nothing, until Minghao grabs his hand and pulls him up into sitting position.
"I like you too," he says, then takes Wonwoo's face in his hands and kisses him.
Wonwoo's so overwhelmed he forgets to respond. Minghao's lips are soft against his, gentle, careful. Wonwoo manages to kiss back before Minghao pulls away, gripping the end of Minghao's hoodie tight like he might disappear if he lets go. Minghao tilts his head to the right, nose brushing against Wonwoo's, and then their mouths slot together just right and suddenly they're kissing kissing.
The bump on his head, the crick in his neck, the embarrassment, the panic, the nerves, the curse—all of it becomes background noise under the weight of Minghao's body against him.
-
It feels odd, to be starting something new at this junction of his life.
Wonwoo's entire head is invisible, and soon his right shoulder will disappear too. Minghao asks him out on a date anyway.
Jun boos from upstairs. "Just stay here! What's wrong with movies? And my couch? None of you have emailed me back about turning this thing into a threesome by the way and I'm very sad about it!"
Minghao rolls his eyes. Wonwoo thinks of the email sitting in his inbox that he probably should've deleted by now but has left untouched for some reason.
"The answer is no," Minghao yells up the stairs. "And I'm signing your co-dependent ass up for at least three different dating apps first thing in the morning!"
"I'm not co-dependent!" Jun screams, as Minghao and Wonwoo head for the door. "I just have really bad FOMO!"
The door shuts as Minghao starts laughing. Wonwoo's too busy memorising the feel of Minghao's hand in his to laugh along with him.
Minghao stops laughing to shoot him a look like he knows what he's thinking, like he thinks Wonwoo's being silly. Then he walks off down the street and tugs Wonwoo along with him.
People are staring. It's hard not to, when Wonwoo's just a pair of floating glasses at this point. He regrets not having brought his hat and mask with him, but he tries to focus on Minghao instead. He's telling him about the art gallery they're going to, how he's been a fan of this artist for a while now, how they've exchanged a couple messages on instagram even. Wonwoo takes it all in, the sound of Minghao's voice, the smile he has on his face, the feel of their fingers slotted between each other's.
When they reach the art gallery, there's thankfully only a few people milling about inside. Minghao pulls him up to one of the paintings hanging on the wall.
"What do you think?" He asks.
Wonwoo takes a moment to look. Most of the painting's a green-ish black, except for a spot in the centre of the canvas, which is a bright yellow-ish white. In that white circle, there's a small figure of a man on all fours. Or maybe it's just a dog. Maybe it's one of those paintings that changes meaning depending on who's looking at it. Wonwoo thinks the figure looks more like a man than a dog, but what that means is beyond him.
"I think there's a tiny little man in the circle," Wonwoo says.
Minghao snags one of the complimentary glasses of champagne off the table beside them. "And what do you think that little man in the circle is feeling?"
Lonely, is the first word that comes to Wonwoo's mind. "He's on his knees, so he's struggling, I think. Tired. The rest of the world is dark, and pressing in on him, and I think the white spot's the last bit of hope he has left, but it's getting smaller and smaller. It looks like it might get swallowed up by the dark at any moment."
"Hm. That's interesting." Minghao takes a sip of his champagne, and looks much more at home standing here than Wonwoo feels.
Wonwoo takes the glass from Minghao's hand and takes a sip from it too, just because he can. "What do you see?"
Minghao snatches the champagne back, glaring half heartedly. "To me, it feels more like this is someone looking through a telescope, and out in the distance, they see a baby crawling on the ground. It's like... looking into a life you want but can't have for yourself, or something like that."
"Oh wow." He looks at the painting again, trying to see what Minghao sees, but it's still just the same thing for him. "Which one of us do you think is right?"
Minghao grins like he knows something Wonwoo doesn't. "I think the point is not to be."
They move onto the next painting. And then next, and the next, and the next; until they're stood in front of a small one, just a quarter the size of all the other paintings.
Three glasses of champagne have been drained between the two of them, and they haven't let go of each other's hands the entire time.
Wonwoo looks at the new painting, at the swirls and bursts of colour, and thinks of bright things like hope and love and faith. He looks at Minghao, and he thinks this time they might be seeing the exact same thing.
"The last relationship I had, or attempted to have, was a disaster," Wonwoo tells Minghao. "At the time I thought that I tried my best, but I was just lying to myself. I was actually afraid. The idea of letting someone in that close, letting someone know everything, and see everything, it scared me."
With Soonyoung it was easy, because Soonyoung pried his way in. Because they were both children and by the time Wonwoo knew how to be properly scared, Soonyoung already had access to everything. When Wonwoo grew up and had to start opening the doors himself, when he realised he had to start giving pieces of himself up if he wanted the same in return, he told himself it just wasn't worth the effort.
"Why?" Minghao asks. His hand is warm against Wonwoo's, keeps him in place.
"I was worried they wouldn't like what they saw. I was worried I'd be too much. I thought it was safer to just keep it all locked up tight." He squeezes Minghao's hand, fights off the urge to tear up. "I didn't realise what I was missing out on until..." Until the curse. Until he started disappearing and discovered that being known, being seen, was not the worst thing in the world actually. Until, "you."
Minghao squeezes Wonwoo's hand back and smiles so beautifully it has Wonwoo's heart doing somersaults in his chest. "Me?"
"I want you to know. I want you to see all of it, all the ugly parts, the parts I've never shown anyone before. I want you to climb inside me and make a home there," Wonwoo says, and for the first time, decides not to worry about whether or not it's too much. If it is, he thinks Minghao has the stomach to take it. "I've never... this is the first time that feeling's been stronger than the fear. I thought to myself, if I ruined this by hiding myself away like always, I'd regret it for the rest of my life."
It's still terrifying, is the thing. It's still daunting, laying this all out on the table like this, being vulnerable like this. But he thought about fumbling this, he thought about Minghao walking away and out of his life and he thought about never setting foot in Jun's shop again. Somehow, the thought of that was infinitely more terrifying than anything else.
So he's here now, over emotional and terribly exposed in this art gallery, and it's... liberating.
Minghao reaches a hand up and cups his cheek. "I see you," he whispers.
Wonwoo smiles. "I know."
"No. Wonwoo, I see you."
Wonwoo blinks. Minghao sighs, fond, then drags him back over to the front of the gallery, by the floor to ceiling glass panels. Wonwoo looks, and finds his reflection in the glass. His own face, shell shocked, staring back at him.
He turns back to Minghao, mouth parted in surprise.
Minghao leans in and kisses the shock right out of his system.
"Congratulations," he says when he pulls back, grinning.
Wonwoo can't believe it's just over like this. "I should've gotten cursed earlier."
Minghao laughs. "No you shouldn't have."
"Then I should've just met you earlier."
"Maybe." Minghao kisses him again. "I think everything worked out just fine though."
"Maybe," Wonwoo concedes.
They stand there, smiling and looking into each other's eyes, like two lovesick idiots, and then Minghao's phone goes off.
He pulls it out of his pocket and snorts. "Jun says he ordered fried chicken and noodles and that if we come back within the next half hour he'll let us pick what to watch instead of forcing us to sit through old episodes of Big Brother."
Wonwoo's stomach growls. "I could eat."
"Alright then."
They walk out hand in hand. Minghao leads the way home.