Chapter Text
please note this work is made with the intention of being jimin's thoughts only. whatever he feels, either in emotions or senses, influences his perception of things, and that means that his view or opinion may also be wrong from time to time. enjoy!
The sign on the door says “Closed” and the letter o is almost completely erased from it. Jimin scrunches his nose, hoping to see something a little bit more encouraging. But when he gets close to the window, all he can see inside is a messy laboratory that seems to have been left on its own a decade ago.
And that’s exactly what has happened, if the post online didn’t lie. Coughing away the dirt and dust he has inhaled from the window, Jimin puts down his luggage, a big trunk loudly slamming on the ground. He sits on it, sweating in his heavy clothes.
“Today. Out of all the days of the year, today has to be sunny and hot.”
He huffs and puffs, chest caving in while he crunches on his legs. He breathes in hard, fiddling with the string of his cloak to remove it from his neck. Standing up from the trunk, he snaps his fingers to open the lock and lets the heavy lid open. It almost snaps back from the force of his badly sent-out spell, and he has to press down on it not to have all of his things on the ground.
“Great.”
His cloak is quickly folded and closed into the trunk, and Jimin can see it readjusting itself quickly so as not to get any wrinkles before the lid snaps closed with a loud thump. Hands on the small part of his back, stretching his sore back, Jimin turns around.
The small shop he is standing in front of is not unique in design compared to the houses and shops of the small town he has launched himself into. Even though the shop with the big “FOR SALE!” sign on the door is similar to other buildings on the main street, it is definitely the least well-preserved one. Its walls, white as the others’ are, are crumbling down; its roof, although still red in its roof tiles, is missing most of them; the door, even when still a sturdy wood, is chipping and, as the mess of dead leaves and dust suggests, doesn’t protect the shop from much.
And to think it is still full to the brim with inventory! Jimin looks back inside for a second, and the sad and miserable view of all the rare and expensive ingredients inside, covered in cobwebs, makes his heart tighten in his chest.
“Oh, there you are!”
Jimin almost jumps out of his skin and has to restrain himself from casting a spell on the person who has just appeared out of nowhere. Jimin clears his throat, putting on a smile. A seemingly young man is standing in front of him, all in linen, neutral color clothes on, dark and perfectly messy hair framing his beautiful face.
“Hello.”
He tries to be normal about it, he really does, but the stranger is gorgeous. He has big eyes, but not too big, the roundness of them making the dark color pop beautifully against his clear and already barely tanned skin. His nose fits his face well, and his lips are big, pinkish, and plush. Jimin is jealous and sweaty and probably red and weird in his eyes, especially since the stranger has been nothing but calm this whole time, a small smile dancing between his lips and his eyes.
“Hi. You must be Jimin, right?”
Jimin nods. He is Jimin.
“I am. You must be…?”
The stranger laughs softly, but it is uncanny, in a way, seeing him smile when his eyes are playfully aware. He looks like he knows exactly what Jimin is thinking – but then again, he would be the only one to do so. Jimin is extremely confused.
“I am.”
“The witch.”
He seems taken aback, but it is only the surface. His eyes remain calm. What is this man?
“Aren’t you a witch too?”
“Yeah. Yes, I am.”
“Good. Great. Then you must be Jimin. I’m Seokjin.”
Seokjin offers his hand to Jimin, who shakes it briefly. Just like if he were to stand in the middle of the sea, a wave of energy, big, sturdy, and ancient energy, washes over him. Seokjin seems to know, which freaks out Jimin even more.
“Let’s go inside.”
Jimin nods. That is one powerful witch right there.
✩⋆｡𖦹 °✩
“So, there is the laboratory.”
If seeing it from the window was disheartening, walking into it is even worse. The amount of absolute dismay the supplies and ingredients verses in hurts Jimin to his core. All the old, precious books are probably full of mold by now, the ingredients could be even worse, and Jimin is sure there are rats everywhere. But Seokjin seems unbothered, walking into the messy room with no doubt whatsoever, bits, vials, and even a stool, scrambling to get away from the way while he passes through. And he doesn’t bat an eye. Wow.
“There is a bit of a mess because I haven’t been in here in… well, over a decade now. But you know, you can always salvage something. A bit of work doesn’t kill anybody. And, perhaps,” he turns to look at Jimin, a book sliding on the ground, getting back to the shelf where he probably belonged in the past, “you can get to know the space better like that.”
Jimin nods, wordlessly. He can only think about how much of this he will have to throw away. Does this town even have a good waste separation system? Or, even worse, a witch’s ingredients disposal system? He doesn’t think so.
“I know this will be very different for you, Jimin, as you come from the big city. But worry not. You will get used to it. In fact,” he tilts his head to the side, observing Jimin for a moment, “I think you are more fitted for this rather than a big, busy shop in the city. You seem like somebody with a messy laboratory.”
At that, Jimin cannot help but release a snort from his nose. He tries to cover it with a cough, but Seokjin doesn’t even turn around again to respond to him while he opens the door to the back of the shop, to the backyard. Behind them, Jimin’s trunk is slowly entering the shop. Again, Seokjin is not moving a single muscle.
“You shouldn’t be judging me out of this mess here, Jimin.”
He says his name quite a lot, and Jimin feels his heart jumping up and down in his chest every single time, without fail. He gets Seokjin probably is someone who likes to be in control, and a name is something rather important, in the witchy world. And since Jimin knows, he had made a point not to use Seokjin’s. Not when unnecessary. Not when he can sense Seokjin is way more powerful than his normal – yet beautiful – appearance may lead to believe.
“I haven’t been here in a long time. Let’s say,” he lets Jimin walk out of the laboratory, into the small patch of overgrown grass standing tall, “I have let a friend experiment here.”
“That’s kind of you.”
“It is. He messed up my laboratory.”
Looking at him, Jimin lets out a small laugh, a very small laugh, that seems to be acceptable in Seokjin’s book because he smiles a bit too.
“That is the backyard. It is small, but everything in this town is, and we followed the rules when building this place. You can still grow quite a bit of things here if you’re able to or can get a hold of a botanist.”
Jimin snorts for real, this time, disbelief exiting his body. A botanist? A botanist?! In this century? Nobody has a botanist anymore, these days. They are worse creatures than ichthyocentaurs, and Jimin says because at least someone from the Academy claimed to have seen one. And nobody ever said to have seen (let alone get a hold of) a botanist.
Seokjin, however, looks back at him unamused. The calm, sun-kissed, and long stems of grass rapidly get tangled in a wind-induced dance that is everything but natural. The stern look on Seokjin’s face might, just might be a clue to what’s causing the wind now. Jimin presses his lips together, gulping down an apology.
“You are one young witch, aren’t you?”
Nodding, Jimin fiddles with his hands on his back.
“Yes.”
“How many years?”
“Two. Well, more like one and a half.”
“I can see.”
Jimin nods, but it is just out of shame. He doesn’t know exactly how long Seokjin’s been a witch, nor how old he is, but the number should be high. And getting witchy-shamed by the witch that is selling you their laboratory is not the best way to approach the town you’ve decided to practice in.
“I’m sorry. It’s just, they’re such an urban legend that actually getting a hold of one,” he mimics some quotation marks with his fingers, “seems impossible.”
“Is that the way their work is seen now in the Academy?”
Jimin would nod in response to that, but Seokjin is not looking at him anymore. He seems a bit lost in his own thoughts, and Jimin doesn’t have the heart to interrupt them. Then, as if nothing had happened, the grass stops flopping around, and the wind stops.
“Wonderful. Let’s go to your home now, should we not? It is already late.”
Seokjin starts walking back in, the door opening on its own while he walks with his hands laced one with the other on his back. Jimin follows swiftly, watching Seokjin walk up the stairs of the spiral staircase to what will be Jimin’s apartment. While he steps on the staircase, Jimin can see his trunk slowly floating up behind him.
“This is your new home. It is small but has everything you would need, especially in a small town. Again, a bit messy, but you can do whatever you want to it. I do not mind.”
Jimin passes through the door that separates his new laboratory from his new home and finds a small apartment full of light in front of him. Yeah, it is a bit messy, but even then, nothing compared to the laboratory. The entrance is in the living room, a small space with a couch, a table, and a kitchen. Seokjin doesn’t give him any time to think; he is already walking to the other door, magically opening, where Jimin can see a bed, a desk, and a small bedside table. Before he can speak a word, Seokjin shows him a simple bathroom.
“Now. I know what I said about getting yourself used to the hard work and the space – he is walking towards the entrance door, and Jimin follows while his trunk is going into the bedroom – but I do feel bad that you have to clean all of this alone before even having time to adjust. So, for today, and only for today, I will help you out a bit. Okay?”
While his mouth malfunctions, Jimin nods a bit. Seokjin looks him up and down, nodding slightly.
“Very well. I am giving you the nest I’ve grown out of as a witch, Jimin. Do not disappoint me, okay?”
“No. I won’t disappoint you.”
Seokjin stares him up and down a second more, before nodding again and turning around to the door, opening it, and walking down, not looking back. Jimin is unsure whether to follow, but he can hear the shop’s door opening before having time to do so.
“Thank you! B-bye!”
Halfway down the staircase, Jimin stops and stares at the small bell attached to the doorframe, still shaking a bit.
“Wow. Okay. I guess you didn’t want to help me, over al-“
He has to stop mid-sentence while opening his new apartment door because that is not what was left behind for him before. A shiny, clean, and iris-scented apartment is staring back at his agape mouth while he inspects every corner, every window’s glass, and every bit of it, not a single speck of dust to be seen there.
A fucking powerful witch indeed.
✩⋆｡𖦹 °✩
“Well, shit.”
The whole place is really messed up. Jimin can see the supplies being all tangled up in the cobwebs, piles of strangely annotated pages stocked up to the ceiling, and wood being polluted from the ground to the walls with things that only an old and hoarding witch could have accumulated.
He is pretty sure nothing in there is usable in any kind of recipe, and although exhausted from the trip, he would not rest well at all knowing all of that dust and dead leaves are absolutely everywhere, infesting his new laboratory.
Jimin exits to the backyard and stares at the grass, again calm and docile under the sun. A small cabinet is resting against the wall of the laboratory, the wood eroded by the rain over the past decade. Jimin opens one of its doors and finds some old brooms and buckets. Bingo.
Shaking one broom in the air to get some cobwebs out of it (nothing new there), he finally can get to some cleaning. At least the floor would be noticeable again.
He had found that old, abandoned laboratory online. Everybody else at the Academy came from a wealthy family or a long line of witches and would be inheriting some big, brand-newly-restored, and fully stocked laboratory. Everybody, but not Jimin.
Going to the Academy had been Jimin’s dream ever since he was a baby. He had been trying his best every day in school, trying to get a scholarship, because there was no other way for him to actually attend the school otherwise. Being born into a normal family with limited funds was not easy for an aspiring witch, and so he fought with all he had to be there.
That meant that he had no background to keep him up after the Academy, though, and so he had to look everywhere for a cheap place that offered him a laboratory and a job as a witch. Seokjin was offering a wildly inexpensive laboratory and a place to live. What more to ask?
Even though that meant that Jimin had to live in a small town when he was used to being in a big city, he decided to take the leap. Every town and every city needed a witch, and since Herbsville had so few inhabitants, then that meant everybody had to rely on him to be the town’s witch.
So, there he is. In a city he is alone and knows nobody but the old witch, Seokjin, who seems so far from him that Jimin wouldn’t actually count on him. And so, he needed to get out the word that a new witch was in town.
That should be easy, in a town that small. Jimin doesn’t want to take the chance to waste this day: he opens the door wide, sweeping away the dead leaves from his floor.
He’s been at it for a total of an hour when he realizes not only the floor hasn’t gotten as clean as he thinks it should have been after all that work, but he will never be able to do it, not only just today but like that altogether. He is sweating and he is tired and he wants to bathe in a violet-scented bath.
Groaning, he smashes the stiff bristles of the broom to the ground, entrusting all his weight to the stick of it. What kind of creature can leave an entire laboratory full to the brim with good, expensive, and rare ingredients like that?
Jimin decides he is going to try some spells here and there. Sure, Seokjin says he should be suffering hands deep into a soapy water bucket, scrubbing the floor until it sparkles (or something like that), but isn’t he a witch, after all? A good one too! Top of his classes in almost all of them. Math and botany do not count.
“Okay, what about this…”
He flips the broom a little, concentrating on some Latin words he only whispers. No need to scream them out loud and scare off the neighbors, right?
A stream of sad-looking, unsure, and dim green sparkles dies fast in the dark laboratory.
Nothing changes. The dust is still there, dancing in between the sun's rays. The cobwebs don’t even shake. Not even a little.
“Perfect. Have I forgotten it already? I don’t think so. What about…”
He circles the broom in the air (bad idea, a cobweb ends up in his hair) and pronounces another spell, a stronger one, with a bigger stream of sparkles coming from the broom. A spell that should be cleaning both his and the next two houses.
Nothing. Jimin groans and agitates the broom into the air, kicking the bucket down. It rotates on the floor, empty as it was before.
“Why the fuck nothing is working in this inhabited, old, stupid tow-“
“Hello…?”
Jimin jumps in the air, the broom shooting in the direction of the unknown voice coming from outside his new laboratory. A man is staring at him, eyebrows raising at the newly found weapon Jimin is pointing at his chest.
Slowly lowering it, Jimin huffs away his scare while observing the man. He should probably stop trying to attack people in the town if he wants a good clientele. The stranger has beautiful, tanned skin with pungently brown eyes and a pout on his mouth. Jimin coughs, feigning nonchalance when he scrubs away the sweat from his temple. And the cobweb.
“Hi! I’m the new witch!”
“Uh. Uhm, okay.”
He doesn’t seem happy. Why doesn’t he seem happy? Has Jimin gone too far with the broom? He is looking at him with shoulders crouched forward. Jimin readjusts his posture, instinctively.
“I just moved in, so the laboratory is still a mess, and I cannot provide you with any spells nor potions, but I will open soon! You should totally come and try some of my witchy stuff. I’m a good witch. A wicked one”, he laughs, and it is maniacal, and the man has his eyes almost popping out of their sockets, “if you will!”
Jimin is laughing alone, and his laugh dies in his throat fast. The man is not saying anything. Why is everybody in this town absolutely unable to accept a little bit of oddness? Back in the big city, Jimin is normal. Here, two out of the two people he has met have made him feel like a lunatic. Marvellous.
“No? Okay. I am Jimin!”
“I do not like witches.” Jimin winces. Alright. Good first client. “And I am Taehyung.”
“Nice to meet you, not-liking-witches-Taehyung! I won’t ask why, because as you can see, I am already way too busy to try to change your opinion. But, maybe, in a couple of days, you can come to see me, and we can see what I can do to change your mind!”
He is trying. He is really trying to maintain a good, healthy, positive attitude, but this Taehyung dude, all buff and tanned, seemingly spawned out of nowhere just like everybody else he had met in the town (meaning: Seokjin) is staring at him like he had just popped out another two heads. A fucking hellhound in the making, that is his first day as a witch.
“I mean, I do not need any convincing, to be honest.”
Jimin wants to strangle him. Instead, he smiles, faking a laugh, brushing the floor aggressively toward Taehyung, pushing dust toward his long legs. The man doesn’t seem bothered at all, which annoys Jimin even more.
“Well! Okay, then. If you want to excuse me, Taehyung, I have a very lengthy work to do here, so I cannot be chit-chatting with you much longer! So sorry!”
But Taehyung is still staring inside, seemingly evaluating the mess and the amount of stuff inside the laboratory. Jimin is sure a million splinters are lodging inside his fingers because of how tight his grip is on the broom’s stick.
“I could help you out.”
Gulping down a scoffing sound, Jimin shakes his head.
“Oh no, absolutely! A witch has to know their laboratory, and I must get to know mine, as the old owner said. So, I will be working here all on my own. And when I’m done, I can try my convincing on you.”
He nods, sure of himself now. Taehyung’s eyes are blinking, eyebrows pinching together.
“This is a big mess. Are you sure? I have nothing to do for half a week.”
Jimin wants to say no, really. He wants to stick to the I can do it better mentality and all that stuff, but looking back inside at the mess, he doesn’t think that can happen. And, with no magic involved!? He hasn’t raised a single thing weighing more than his cloak in a long, long time. And this Taehyung is buff. Really buff. Shiny muscles and all showing from under his white t-shirt. Damn.
“Didn’t you say you don’t like witches?”
Taehyung shrugs.
“Here, everybody helps everybody out. I don’t like your profession. I don’t know you.”
Jimin wants to say no. It is only logical to say no. Clean your own laboratory and shit. The responsible new owner of a laboratory. He cannot say yes. Also, he should be paying him at the end of it, right? He has no money, or, well, so little of it he can’t use it to pay someone to do what he should be doing. So, no. It is a no.
“Okay then. But I can’t pay you,” Taehyung shrugs again. Nice. “and I can’t assure you it will be quick and easy. I don’t think it will be, in fact.”
“It’s okay. I am a farmer. I can do hard jobs.”
Oh. That explains a lot.
✩⋆｡𖦹 °✩
Taehyung left with the promise of coming back in the afternoon, in a couple of hours. Jimin has watched him walk away and disappear behind a golden hill, filled with recently cut stems of wheat. Summer was hitting hard on its last days before Fall, and Jimin couldn’t wait for the next season to start and for him to finally gain some credibility. Putting on the cloak in the summer was out of discussion, so Jimin is patiently waiting for a time he can live without melting to the ground.
After a bit more sweeping (useless sweeping), Jimin had decided to try and categorize some of the things in there, at least some of the ones on the shelves. And that’s only because the whole counter and table are categorically inaccessible.
“Okay, so maybe I can actually see what’s in there.”
Some vials are just black, dark, and gooey liquid that barely moves from the bottom of them, leaving a faint stain where they’ve slipped up from. Jimin barely contains his disgust. He is glad, however, that he is not only magically unable to do something about it but also, like, nobody else would be able to.
One of the few rules when it comes to magic is that you cannot create anything out of thin air and you cannot bring something back once it dies. So, if the magical power of whatever is in the vials Jimin is preparing to throw away is gone, then they are gone. That goes for everything, because everything is magical, in some way, shape, or form, and although magic shows in different forms for every single thing on Earth, it is still there. Until magic is still alive in something, then that something is still alive.
“Hello?”
Jimin turns to the door, where Taehyung is carrying a big basket with a hand on the wicker handle. He is completely taking the place of the door, the sun barely passing through from behind his broad shoulders. Jimin hushes him outside with a hand.
“Not inside! What’s inside the basket? If it is in any way still alive, then absolutely not inside the laboratory.”
Taehyung stumbles and trips on his feet while exiting the doorframe backward, and it is annoyingly endearing. Jimin stops him in the small space that is right in front of the shop, a small stone-floored piece of terrain with a cute but old (and showing) picket fence all around it.
“Wait here. I’ll grab some chairs for us.”
Going back inside, Jimin looks for something, either a stool, a chair, or even a step would be okay. But they’re all covered in dust, so he has to go look for some upstairs. The chairs of the dining table magically float in the air, climbing down the stairs before Jimin, who is trying so hard not to lose focus. His hands are shaking to maintain a good amount of magic into the green sparkles coming from them, words in Latin shivering away from his mouth while he can feel getting warmer and hotter, temples beginning to cover in sweat. Exercise, exercise for the mind as only a witch can do.
The chairs pass through the door, Jimin following close, and Taehyung can only be described as… well, as somebody seeing magic for the first time ever in their life. His eyes are bulging out of his skull, mouth agape in a weirdly horrified shape, and his big frame, tanned skin and muscles and all, is crawling away from the faint crackling the sparkles made from Jimin’s skin, now surely warm to the touch.
Jimin ends the spell, chairs collapsing to the ground but still standing, even when shaking in their legs. He exhales, satisfied, hands on his hips. Taehyung is not of the same opinion. His wickerwork basket is firmly and securely protecting him from the chairs, like they were some sort of possessed creatures that were surely going to jump on him and chew off his nose.
“What?”
“I do not like magic. At all.”
“Oh, c’mon now! I thought I could convince you it is great by showing you how useful it can get!”
Nothing but a dismayed look on Taehyung’s face while he pushes the chair a couple of times to make sure they stay still (they do) (of course they do). Jimin shows him they do by sitting on one of them and rocking back and forth in it. For some reason, Taehyung doesn’t seem reassured by that, but he complies and sits anyway. The basket gets on his knees, and when it opens, it is hard for Jimin not to jump right on top of Taehyung.
“I grabbed some of the things from the barn for you to eat. You seemed hungry a couple of hours ago.”
Jimin is hungry, he is so hungry that no matter what is in there, he would have probably eaten anyway. But looking into the red checkered linen basket, he can see that nothing there can disappoint him. Cheeses of different colors and shapes are stacked on a side, a loaf of bread dividing them from a variety of fruits and vegetables Jimin is sure he has never seen this fresh. Taehyung dives his callous hand inside, grabbing the sharp knife, and Jimin sits still. Not because he is scared, but because he doesn’t want to get in the way of the genius creating. He is sure Taehyung knows better than him how to combine those things so he can eat good food, and so he shuts up and waits patiently.
After running up the stairs to wash his hands and grab a couple of plates, Jimin descends again, finding Taehyung using a tree stump as a table where he had lined up a couple of pears, an apple, and something that Jimin can only imagine as honey. Nothing better than this, only paradise.
“Here, the plates.”
Taehyung works silently, but efficiently. He has big hands, callouses adorning almost every part of them, but they work with no coarseness, no roughness. While he is delicately cutting slices off the apple, his fingers are moving with grace, as if he had soft skin only used when necessary.
“You’re good.”
The man looks up from the last slices of the apple, scrutinizing Jimin as to try to find the point he would laugh and break the news that he is just making fun of him. Instead, Jimin is serious, eyes big and settled on the pieces of apple perfectly rounded in the corners, aligned on the plate, every one of them perfectly combined with a slice of a firm cheese Jimin is yet to try.
When he lowers his gaze again to the apple he is cutting in between his legs, elbows resting on his knees, Taehyung seems not keen to acknowledge whatever Jimin said.
“Why do you use magic?”
Jimin is grabbing a piece of cheese while Taehyung is following his hand’s movement from the corner of his eye. While he munches on it and secretly dies inside because it is wonderful and he loves it already, Jimin looks over at the small town all hidden in between the curves of the hill his shop is located on top of.
“What do you mean why? I am a witch.”
“Mh. I mean, why do you use it when it is not necessary.”
Eyebrows furrowed, Jimin chewed on a piece of apple, deeming it the best one he had ever eaten in the first two seconds of tasting.
“Magic is always necessary to me. Again, I am a witch, and that’s what witches do.”
“Even when carrying a couple of plates down the stairs?”
He had carried the plates using a spell, green sparkles, and Latin verses too, but Taehyung didn’t comment on it when he saw it. Jimin thought it was a small step forward, but evidently, it was not.
“Yes? It is what I chose for my life.”
“You can’t… unchoose?”
Jimin dips the corner of a piece of cheese into the honey, as Taehyung is doing while crouched on his knees, and he swears he can see more stars than he used to see in the big city.
“Why would I? I love being a witch.”
“But why do you have to be a witch always?”
Taehyung stares at him, his eyes are somewhat dark. Jimin lowers the food into his hand, elbow resting on his crossed legs. He chews because what is it Taehyung wants to hear? Is he supposed to know what the slowly rising darkness in Taehyung’s eyes is for?
“Isn’t a witch a witch always?”
“I’m not only a farmer. I can be other things, other than a farmer.”
He has golden hair, under the sun cascading into the horizon. Jimin sees them waving in between them, covering his dark eyes, and time seems to be accommodating his needs, slowing down.
There is something, buried deep down in Taehyung’s eyes, and Jimin wouldn’t know how to figure out what that is out. He stands up, back to the sun, while his shadow is sliding on the picketed fence.
He grabs a stick from the ground, one as normal as he can find one to be. Pointing it at the ground, he casts a simple spell, one that can make his shadow dance. Staying still in his place, the corner of his eye watching as Taehyung tenses, watching his shadow dance, Jimin waits. The sparks are vividly green in the sunset.
Jimin’s shadow is still moving on the ground when the stick falls to the ground. His hand is now warm, sparkles made of emerald erupting from his fingers, and Taehyung stays silent.
Closing his hand, Jimin stops his shadow. He turns to Taehyung.
“I had dedicated all my life and soul to this. I swore to continue to do so for the rest of it. That’s why I don’t carry two plates in my hands, but I practice and suffer to make it harder for me to bring them here. To make my body forget as late as possible I will always be a witch, no matter what.”
✩⋆｡𖦹 °✩
“I will come tomorrow at seven. Don’t be asleep still. We have little time to fix this.”
Jimin nods, waving goodbye to Taehyung’s figure, wavering between the green and golden wheat’s ears. The first thing he does, when he is securely closed in between the walls of his new home, is lie in bed, under the thin layer of the sheet, even when the warmth of the end of summer is lambing his body.
He can’t rest. He turns and fights against the sheet, eradicating it from the edge of the bed, clamping it into his hands. There is something strange in the air of this town. Nobody came to the shop, nobody even exited their houses today, as if nobody even dared to. Nobody checked out the stranger in town, even in a town that small. Jimin hasn’t seen anybody all day, except for Seokjin, the old witch, and Taehyung, who was casually passing by and doesn’t even live in the city.
And still, he felt the eyes of a million people watching him, today, as if everybody was eyeing him from corners of the streets he doesn’t know and cannot see without a keen eye. Even here, under his sheet, where the air is running low and he has to create a space between the mattress and the sheet to breathe, he feels like he is not alone. Like Seokjin is still hanging around in the rooms, like he still carves his body’s shape into this bed.
Jimin sits straight.
He has never been one to give up. This is an opportunity. He can start here, earn a bit of money, and move back to where he belongs. Give away his time for a bit in a town in the middle of nowhere, where the sounds of birds are far more persistent than the inhabitants’ talking, at least right now. Against the big window, the sun is still persisting in his pursuit, touching with golden hands Jimin’s face.
Yeah. He can do that. He can live here, learn to be a good, hell, a great witch, and leave. Pack up his shit, grab his cloak, and leave. The world needs witches, and he will comply. But for now, he will have to deal with dust and particularly silent houses.
Just for now. Just while he stares at the ceiling, just while he cleans the laboratory, just while he adapts to a life he is not used to.
He doesn’t even realize he has closed his eyes when he is awoken by a clashing and loud sound that makes him jump out of his bed, frantically looking for his assassin. Instead, a pair of pan lids is colliding, the sound unbearable not only because it can be heard from all the people in town, but also because Jimin was sleeping just moments ago.
Reaching for them in the air with eyes closed shut, he grabs the pan lids by the handles, and they fall limp into his hands. But he is not done. Walking with pillow-shaped hair towards the window of the kitchen, overlooking the entrance to his laboratory, he throws both lids down. He doesn’t know what is going on. But he decided he would not care.
And he doesn’t.
So, crawling back into his humble abode, he sprawls again, and, in no time, he is asleep again. But the relaxation is fast gone as his doorbell rings. It is an old bell, black, hand-crafted, and beautiful. It has a long chain that you can use to ring it, and so it is used as a doorbell.
Right now, though, Jimin wants to burn it down and mold the remaining mixture of metals into a… into a? He doesn’t even know. Pressing his pillow on his face, even though he can still hear the doorbell perfectly, he waits patiently for the person to leave.
Yeah, he would love to meet the other townsfolk! Not now. Now, he wants peace. Silence. Dreams. Sleep.
Last ring. Then the sound stops. Jimin closes his eyes, and finally, he can rest.
Except, the alarm he had put up for Taehyung is ringing. When he sits up on the bed, Jimin wants to cry. But he looks at the way his hair is sticking up in all directions in the mirror, and he knows that is good. A good witch. A great witch.
He washes up (why is there all violet-scented stuff here?), brushes his teeth, puts on some clothes, and can only manage to close the door behind him and attempt to go down the first step before the sound of a knock is heard from the main door.
“Coming!”
He opens the door to Taehyung, looking at his mailbox, proudly hung on the wall. Jimin looks at it too and finds a small strip of paper hanging from it. He grabs it, reading its content.
“You missed a package?”
“More like, I avoided the package.”
Jimin reads the important stuff he is supposed to know about where and when he is supposed to go to take his package, while Taehyung stares at him.
“What?”
“Why are there lids in your front yard?”
Oh. Oh yeah, the lids. They are still on the ground where Jimin had let them fall onto, and he doesn’t think he wants to take them back in. In fact, if they were to do the same shit tomorrow as they did today, he will surely leave them there.
“Sunbathing?”
“The lids?”
“Yeah. Yeah. C’mon, let’s go inside.”
Taehyung doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he walks inside, and Jimin can see he is carrying a bucket with a couple of things inside. He wants to look, but Taehyung is fast.
“Have you already cleaned some?”
Jimin pushes out his lips, a guilty confession on his part. He did in fact clean, but the mess is not cleanable with only a broom. Not when the broom is dusty, too.
“Yeah. The broom didn’t do much, though. I guess we need more elbow grease.”
“I grabbed a bar of soap, too. We might get things cleaned faster with it. You should begin by filling the bucket with water.”
Jimin only nods. For the rest of the morning, they fill the bucket, clean, empty it, and fill it again. It seems like nothing is progressing, but when Taehyung is washing his arms in the small fountain where they’d been filling the bucket, in the front yard, and Jimin looks inside, he can see how much he is wrong.
First of all, he is covered in dust and cobwebs, so if that’s on him, then that means that it is no longer on the walls, supplies, and laboratory stuff. And, he can see outside the window! Actually see the trees and grass. And there is so much light inside now, shining on the slightly less dusty bottles and vials. He exhales, satisfied with his hard work. Maybe Seokjin is right. Maybe touching everything in there, no matter how dusty and old, was the only way to enter it correctly. So, he is doing it.
“You should go take your package, you know? Might be important.”
“Mh. You’re right. I’ll go right after lunch. Thanks again, by the way.”
Taehyung dismisses his thanks with one hand, the other one grabbing firmly the apple he is biting. He has his muscles showing under the blistering sun, rapidly drying the excess water still glistening on them. Jimin gulps down his apple. They eat lunch in silence, and Jimin is quick to take the slip of paper telling him where to go for his package.
It is however weird, he thinks while he walks to the mail office, Taehyung next to him, how he has already received a package. It had been only a couple of days since he had changed his mailbox to this town.
The sign revealing the post office is a metal one, just like most of them in town, a small mail envelope iron wrought and proudly fixed to the wall. Their entrance is signaled by the small sound of the bell attached to the door.
“Hello! Welcome to Herbsville’s post office!”
Jimin looks over to the counter and sees a young man who couldn’t have been more than a couple of years older than him smiling ear to ear. He gives a small smile back to him, even if the man is already looking behind him, to Taehyung.
“Hey, Tae! What brings you here? I don’t think I have anything to give to the farm right now.”
Taehyung points at Jimin, “I am just showing off the way to the new witch.”
The man’s eyes are almost falling out of his eye sockets down in his throat. Why is everybody so shocked by a witch? Didn’t they have one? A pretty powerful one, too. Jimin forces his hand into a small wave.
“Oh my god, for real? You are?”
“Yes. I’m Jimin, the new witch. In the old one’s laboratory, though.”
He giggles slightly, but he is more nervous than happy. The man opens his arms wide, coming out from behind the counter to hug Jimin, who freezes on the spot.
“That is so good to hear! Herbsville’s about to explode right now!”
Jimin thinks that is absolute bullshit, but he doesn’t say. Nobody even put their noses out of their doors to see the new witch, let alone meet them.
“Kim’s lab is utter shit right now, though. That’s why we’re together. Because I’m helping to clean it.”
The man shifts his eyes from Jimin to Taehyung, and his smile fades a bit. He doesn’t turn to him, doesn’t tell him anything. Weird. He looks back at Jimin, and his smile grows back, but it is different. There is tension in the air, now.
“I’m Hoseok! The mailman. The postman. The man of the mail office.”
Jimin accepts his hand, shaking it, “I’m Jimin.”
Hoseok laughs a bit, and Jimin steals a glance at Taehyung, silent, stoic, next to him. This town is weird. Why is everybody either too stoic or too excited all the time? Everybody he has met, and there haven’t been that many human beings, has something wrong in them that Jimin can’t exactly place.
“Hey, I have a package for you! A pretty heavy one too! You weren’t home this morning?”
“No.”
Lying through his teeth, Jimin smiles a bit, following Hoseok’s hand waiving him in, and waiting at the counter for him to come back from the back of the shop. He taps his fingers on the wood, looking at Taehyung again. He is leaning on the counter with his hips, feet crossed. And he is not talking. Jimin wants to ask him something, but doesn’t know what, and has no idea what to say or ask. Because he truly doesn’t know him, of course, and truly can’t seem to be able to read him whatsoever.
“Here!”
The package is cardboard, with a couple of holes on every side. Immediately, Jimin feels like slapping himself in the face. Of course, he received a package. Is he even a witch? What has he trained for? He feels like a fool. But again, he has been doing lots of things that occupied his mind, and it makes sense he forgot.
“You can take it.”
“Can I open it here?”, Jimin is asking, but his fingers are already trafficking with the box. He doesn’t wait for Hoseok to tell him yes.
“Well, I haven’t been able to open it the least bit, but if you want to, then of course.”
Jimin looks at Hoseok, propped with his face smushed between his hands on the counter, and doesn’t even have the strength to ask why the fuck he tries to open other people’s packages. Maybe it is a small-town thing. But of course, he couldn’t open it. The writing on the side of the package, reciting Ministry of Magic in letters Jimin can only read by revealing them with magic, says it all. He concentrates, warmth spreading into his body, quickly sweeping out his hands.
With green sparkles flowing out of his index finger, Jimin follows the line of normal-looking tape, which lets open the flaps of the cardboard. He doesn’t even have time to take a look inside, because a black figure is already jumping out of it and making a run for the floor.
Jimin follows the movement of an almost all-black cat inside the small office, silent, while the Hoseok curses behind him and Taehyung slams a hand to the counter. Jimin closes his hand, and the magic stops, and swirls of sparks fall to the ground.
“You had a cat shipped to you shut in a cardboard box?!”
Hoseok looks at him like he has done it himself, so he has to explain to them what that means. Of course, he didn’t. But he is sure somebody like that could live in this town.
“That is not a cat. That is a familiar. My familiar. And it was shipped to me, I didn’t ship it myself.”
Hoseok still looks between Jimin and the familiar with his mouth agape, while Taehyung has a dark frown on his face that Jimin can’t decipher. He looks back at the familiar, sitting on the floor with sentient eyes fixed on him. Is there something wrong?
He blinks. Breathes. Licks his lips. Waits.
But nothing.
Silence in his head. Even his conscience is silent, waiting.
Nothing.
His mind doesn’t split in two to accommodate another witch in his head. He is alone. Alone and confused, hands carving signs of his nails into the wood counter. What is going on? Why is he alone still? He should be having The Spark. Should be intimately connected with an ancient witch. Should be living his moment with pride and joy, and happiness. Instead, he is alone.
The familiar lowers his gaze to his paw, beginning to lick it, passing it onto his head right after. Like a cat. A normal, boring, fucking animal. A cat that wasn’t a witch. And if Jimin didn’t see the slight sparkle of blue in his amber eyes, then he would absolutely believe, there and then, that is a fucking cat. An almost all-black cat, shipped in a box slightly magical, like somebody stuck shitty glow-in-the-dark letters on one side, that is now cleaning its fur with its paw.
What the fuck?
What the fuck.
Wait… no. Absolutely.
What the fuck?