Chapter Text
The forest had a particular way of breathing at dawn—a soft, almost tentative kind of respiration that only came before the world fully woke. Yeosang was too small to need much sleep, but he loved the quiet hours just before sunrise anyway, when the mist clung to everything and the world felt like it belonged to him alone. This morning, he'd curled up in her favorite sleeping spot: a hollow beneath the largest crimson mushroom in her precious circle, lined with downy feathers he'd collected from molting birds and soft moss that smelled like rain and earth.
He'd been sleeping deeply, dreaming the way fairies did—in colors and sensations rather than narrative—when the rumbling began.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was worse. It was the vibration of something enormous moving through the forest, heavy-footed and utterly indifferent to the life it was disturbing. Yeosang surfaced slowly from sleep, his lavender-tinged eyelids fluttering open, and that's when he felt it: the mushroom cap above him shifting, tilting, moving away from where it had been rooted for seasons.
Terror hit like a physical blow.
Yeosang was on his feet in an instant, wings unfurling as he scrambled out of the hollow, but he was too late. The entire circle of mushrooms—his entire world—was being torn from the earth by large hands, dirt still clinging to the roots, the air suddenly wrong in a way that made his chest constrict. The human holding them was tall and broad-shouldered, with the kind of focused expression of someone on a mission who hadn't bothered to look too closely at what he was destroying.
"No. No, no, no—stop!" Yeosang's voice cut through the morning air like a bird's cry, shrill with panic. "Put them down! Put them down! Those are mine! My home! You can't—you can't—"
The human froze. He looked down at the mushroom circle in his hands, then scanned the forest floor, clearly trying to locate the source of the sound. Yeosang was hovering now, his wings beating frantically, his tiny body suspended in the space between absolute fury and absolute heartbreak.
"Did you—" the human started, but Yeosang was already moving.
All his rage, all his terror, all the anguish of waking to find his entire world being ripped from the ground and stolen—it condensed into something that felt like action. He flew at him, and though he was barely the size of the human's hand and weighed less than a sparrow, he threw himself at the man with every ounce of conviction he possessed. His tiny fists came at his chest, his shoulders, his face, a flurry of lavender-skinned fury that would have been adorable if it weren't so genuinely devastating.
"How dare you!" Yeosang was sobbing now, his voice cracking between rage and anguish. "How dare you! You just—you just come into my forest and take whatever you want without even asking! Without even caring! They were living here! I was living here! This was my home! This was everything!"
Each punch was like being assaulted by a particularly aggressive butterfly, powerless and soft as feathers, but the ferocity behind them was unmistakable. The emotion in his tiny voice was absolutely unmistakable. Jongho stood there, completely still, absorbing the assault without defending himself, and Yeosang could see it in his face—the guilt, the dawning horror at what he'd done, and it made the whole thing worse somehow, made it more real.
"I'm sorry," Jongho said, his voice quiet and steady, which somehow made it worse because Yeosang didn't want calm acceptance. He wanted outrage, wanted him to fight back, wanted something to match the magnitude of this devastation that was tearing him apart from the inside out.
"Didn't what?" Yeosang spun in the air, his wings catching the early morning light as they shimmered with iridescence. He darted back in for another assault, but his movements were less precise now, broken up by the sobs that wracked his tiny frame. "Didn't realize there was a fairy living here? Didn't think that maybe, just maybe, I had a right to exist? That I belonged somewhere?"
The human was backing away, carefully, clearly trying not to step on anything as he retreated toward the forest edge. Yeosang followed, continuing his assault with all the power of a creature with absolutely zero physical capacity to cause harm but infinite emotional commitment to the fact that he'd just lost everything. Each strike landed soft as a feather, but the devastation behind it was crystalline and cutting and absolutely genuine.
"Where are you taking them?" Yeosang demanded, and he could hear the break in his own voice, the way his wings were trembling now from more than just exertion. Tears streamed down his lavender face, and his entire tiny body was shaking. "What are you going to do to them? What are you going to do to me?"
"Soup," Jongho said, and it sounded like a confession wrung from him by the weight of those tiny fists and that even tinier, devastated voice. "I was going to use them for soup. But I didn't—I didn't know. I didn't see you."
The word 'soup' hit Yeosang like a physical thing, and his next punch missed entirely because his vision had blurred completely with tears. He hung in the air, his small frame heaving with sobs that seemed far too big for his body to contain, and the rage drained out of him as quickly as it had come, leaving only the raw, hollow, infinite ache of loss.
"Please," Yeosang whispered, and it was the worst thing he could have said because it was so utterly sincere, so completely broken. "Please don't. They're not ingredients. They're alive. They matter. I matter. And you were just going to—to take us and consume us like we're nothing. Like my home is nothing."
Jongho had stopped walking. He was looking down at the mushrooms in his hands, at the tiny fairy suspended in front of him with tears streaming down his luminescent face, at the way Yeosang's whole being seemed to be fracturing from this loss, and something shifted in his expression. It was the look of someone having a revelation they weren't prepared for, someone suddenly understanding the true weight of the casual destruction he perpetuated.
"I'm going to fix this," he said quietly. And then, with more conviction: "I'm going to fix this. I promise you, I will fix this."
What Jongho did next was take Yeosang to his house at the forest's edge and spend the next several weeks genuinely trying to recreate home in miniature. He gathered supplies: a large terracotta pot, specialized potting soil, careful implements for transplanting. He worked slowly and methodically, using knowledge he apparently possessed about cultivation and care. He recreated the exact arrangement of the mushroom circle, positioning each fungus precisely as it had been in the forest, surrounding them with the same forest soil that had nurtured them for seasons, installing a small water feature that mimicked the forest stream nearby.
Throughout the entire process, Yeosang sat on the edge of the pot or hovered nearby, watching him with red-rimmed eyes that gradually shifted from suspicious to cautiously, tentatively understanding.
"Why are you doing this?" Yeosang asked eventually, his tiny voice still hoarse from crying.
"Because I hurt you," Jongho said simply, patting down soil with careful fingers—fingers that Yeosang realized weren't actually that much bigger than his own at this size. "And because those mushrooms matter to you. And because..." He paused, considering. "Because I think I'm tired of a life where I take things without asking if it's mine to take."
The first week was the hardest. Yeosang barely ate, barely moved, curled up beneath the largest mushroom cap and grieving for the forest that had been his entire world. But Jongho came to the greenhouse every single day. He brought water—cool, clean water—for the mushrooms and for Yeosang. He brought small foods: honey drizzled on leaves, fresh berries, flower nectar in a thimble-sized cup. He would sit in the greenhouse and talk, quiet monologues about his day at the restaurant, about what he'd cooked, about his regrets and his philosophy on food and life and the ways he'd been careless with both.
"I think I became a chef because I liked the idea of consuming the world," he said one afternoon, his voice thoughtful in a way that suggested he was working something out in real time. "Taking things apart, transforming them, making them mine. But I never stopped to think about what was being lost in that consumption. Not until you."
By the fourth day, Yeosang emerged from his spot. He was still small, still barely functional with grief, but he was present in a way he hadn't been. Jongho had brought a small plate with three different types of flower petals, and something about that specificity—about him clearly having spent time thinking about what a fairy might want—made something shift inside him.
"You're an idiot," Yeosang said, his voice still rough but carrying a hint of something other than devastation. "A massive, thoughtless idiot who almost destroyed my entire life."
"I know," Jongho agreed readily. "I am definitely that person."
"But you're trying," Yeosang continued, landing on one of the petals and examining it. "You're actually trying to make it right. That's... that's not nothing."
"I want to know more about you," Jongho said. "About what you need. About how to not be a catastrophe of a person in your presence."
So Yeosang began to tell him. He told him about the forest, about the language of growing things, about the way the mycelial network connected everything underground in a kind of vast, communicative web that most creatures never perceived. He told him about fairy culture, about the way he navigated time differently than humans did, about the complicated relationship with magic that was less about spells and more about understanding the fundamental nature of living things.
Jongho listened. He brought a notebook and actually started writing things down, making notes about the mushrooms and the conditions they needed, about Yeosang's preferences and patterns. He modified the greenhouse to be more perfect for him, installing a better water feature, planting some of the surrounding plants that Yeosang had loved in the forest, adjusting the humidity and light carefully.
Days turned into weeks, and the pain of loss softened into something more manageable. Yeosang stopped grieving the old forest and started making peace with this new iteration of it. There was something to be said for the intentionality of a home that someone else had built specifically for you, even if it wasn't what you would have chosen.
One evening, about three weeks in, Yeosang curled up to sleep beneath the largest mushroom in the pot, exhausted from a long day of telling Jongho stories about the forest and pointing out which plants he'd gotten wrong (most of them). He fell asleep easily, trusting now in a way that would have been unthinkable weeks before.
He didn't notice that Jongho was awake long into the night, didn't see him carefully, gently lifting the entire pot. Didn't feel the drive back to the forest, back to the exact spot where the mushroom circle had originally grown. Didn't notice as Jongho, working by moonlight with the kind of care usually reserved for surgical procedures, replanted each mushroom exactly as it had been, pressing the soil down around the roots, watering it gently, making sure everything was perfectly positioned.
It felt like the right thing to do. Yeosang belonged here. Not in a pot in a greenhouse, no matter how carefully constructed. Here. In the place where he'd made his home, where he'd built his entire world. Jongho had stolen that once. He wasn't going to let himself do it again, even if it meant losing the company he'd come to genuinely look forward to.
When he finished, he drove back to his empty house, carrying the now-empty pot like it weighed a thousand pounds.
Yeosang woke to birdsong and the smell of rain-damp earth and something he'd thought he'd never smell again: the specific, irreplaceable scent of his forest.
His eyes snapped open. He was beneath the mushroom cap, in the exact spot where he'd fallen asleep, but the air around him was different. The humidity was wrong. The light was filtered through trees instead of greenhouse glass. And when he scrambled out of the hollow and looked around, his heart nearly stopped.
The mushroom circle was back. Back in the forest. Back in the ground where it belonged, roots deep and soil real and everything exactly as it should be.
For a moment, Yeosang was purely happy. Purely, irrationally, completely happy. He was home. His real home. His forest. The place where he belonged.
Then he realized: Jongho.
Jongho had done this. Jongho had moved the mushrooms in the night, had returned him to the forest without asking, without even saying goodbye. And Yeosang had finally, finally begun to trust him, to consider him something like a friend, and Jongho had disappeared.
The betrayal hit almost as hard as the initial loss.
Yeosang took to the air, his wings beating with a fury that made them shimmer with color—purples and greens and blues catching the morning light. He flew toward Jongho's house at the forest's edge, toward the greenhouse that had become his entire world for the past weeks, and when he found Jongho in the kitchen trying to make breakfast with the kind of concentration usually reserved for defusing bombs, Yeosang launched himself at him without hesitation.
"You bastard!" Yeosang was screaming, his voice cutting through the quiet kitchen like a blade. "You said we were friends! You said you understood! And you just—you just took me back without even—you didn't even ask me!"
His tiny fists came at Jongho's chest, his shoulders, his face, but this time there was a different fury behind them. Not the despair of loss, but the white-hot rage of betrayal. Of someone he'd begun to care about making a unilateral decision about his life without his input.
"You don't get to do that!" Yeosang was crying now, but it was angry tears, frustrated tears. "You don't get to decide what's best for me! You don't get to play savior and then just—just abandon me!"
"Yeosang—" Jongho started, but Yeosang cut him off.
"Don't! Don't you dare try to explain yourself! I was sleeping! I trusted you and you just—"
Something shifted. It started in Yeosang's core, some fundamental response to the intensity of his emotion, to the betrayal and fury and hurt all mixed together. His body felt too small to contain it, felt like it was expanding, like he was expanding, like something inside him was demanding to be seen in the fullness of his anger.
He landed on the kitchen counter, and his body began to change.
It was far less graceful than a controlled transformation would have been. It was desperate and furious and completely involuntary, Yeosang's form expanding and extending as he literally grew into his rage. His chest, which had been impossibly delicate, transformed into something genuinely striking—defined pectoral muscles, a solid core, the kind of physical presence that you earned through thousands of small movements, through flying and exertion and existing at high intensity. His arms, when they extended, showed musculature that came from actual activity, lean and powerful in a way that suggested he could actually back up the fury he was expressing.
His face, beautiful in miniature, became even more arresting at human scale—sharp cheekbones, those otherworldly lavender eyes that seemed to contain starlight and right now contained pure, unadulterated rage, delicate features that somehow conveyed both fragility and absolute lethal capability.
His hair, which had been pinned back with flower stems in his small form, came loose and fell in thick, dark waves down his back, and he gathered the top half into a small, tight bun with the kind of economical movement that suggested he did it often, that suggested this was his real form, this was what he actually was.
And his vest—a simple thing with holes cut in the back for his wings—shifted with him, adjusting to his larger frame, opening more at the chest to accommodate his expanded musculature. His pants stayed fitted, and Yeosang stood there at roughly five and a half feet tall, absolutely jacked, with wings that were now even more stunning at this scale—gossamer and iridescent, catching light like stained glass, moving with subtle shifts in air currents even when he wasn't actively flying.
"Holy shit," Jongho breathed, and his eyes went very wide.
"Don't you 'holy shit' me," Yeosang said, his voice deeper now but still carrying the exact same fury. "You don't get to do that. You don't get to make decisions about my life. You don't get to uproot me and move me without my consent, even if you think it's what's best for me. That's not love, Jongho. That's not friendship. That's the same arrogance that made you take the mushrooms in the first place."
Jongho stood there, completely still, trying to process the fact that the tiny fairy he'd been caring for was now standing in his kitchen looking like he could absolutely destroy him if he wanted to, and there was a moment—a brief, crystalline moment—where Yeosang could see it dawn on him: this wasn't cute tiny fairy energy anymore. This was a genuinely powerful being standing in his kitchen, genuinely furious, and Jongho had just proven that he couldn't be trusted with that kind of power over Yeosang's autonomy.
"I'm sorry," Jongho said, and his voice was steady, serious in a way that suggested he understood the magnitude of his mistake. "I thought... I thought I was doing the right thing. That you belonged in the forest. That I didn't have the right to keep you."
"You were right about the last part," Yeosang said coldly. "You don't have the right to keep me. But you also don't have the right to move me. Those are my decisions to make. Mine. Not yours. You're not my savior, Jongho. You're not my caretaker. If we're going to have any kind of relationship—friendship, or anything else—then you need to treat me like I'm capable of deciding things about my own life."
"I know," Jongho said, and he took a careful step forward. "I know that now. And I'm sorry. I genuinely thought I was giving you what you wanted. What you deserved. But I wasn't asking. I was just... doing what I thought was right, without your input."
"Exactly," Yeosang said. His wings folded carefully against his back, and some of the immediate fury seemed to drain out of him, leaving behind something rawer and more honest. "And I need you to understand that I made a choice. After you hurt me, after you took my home, you tried to make it right. And I chose to trust you. I chose to stay. I was starting to care about you. But then you just... you took that choice away."
"What if I ask next time?" Jongho said quietly. "What if I give you the option? You could stay in the greenhouse. Or go back to the forest. Or we could figure out something else. But I'd ask. I'd give you the choice."
Yeosang was quiet for a long moment, looking at Jongho with those impossible lavender eyes that could see so much more than most beings could perceive. "I want to believe you," he said finally. "But I'm not sure I can right now. I need... I need some time."
"Okay," Jongho said. "Okay, I understand."
"Do you?" Yeosang asked. "Do you actually understand what it's like to have someone else decide what's best for you? To have your home taken, your choices stripped away, and then be moved again without consultation, even with good intentions? Because that's not understanding, Jongho. That's just apologizing after the fact."
"No," Jongho admitted. "No, I don't think I understand. But I want to. I want to understand you. All of you." His eyes tracked over Yeosang's transformed form, taking in the reality of him at full size. "Even when you're furious and justified in that fury."
"That's a start," Yeosang said quietly. "But it's not enough yet. You're going to have to do better than wanting to understand. You're going to have to actually do the work of understanding."
He walked toward the door, his wings unfurling slightly as he prepared to take flight, and Jongho didn't try to stop him. When Yeosang reached the threshold, he paused.
"The mushrooms are back in the forest," Yeosang said without turning around. "They will probably be okay in a couple days. Better than they should be, actually, given the trauma of being moved twice in a month." He looked back then, meeting Jongho's eyes. "That was a kind thing to do. Even if your execution was absolutely terrible."
And then he was gone, flying back toward the forest with his wings catching the morning light, leaving Jongho standing in the kitchen with the distinct understanding that he had managed to lose something he'd only just begun to understand he had.
Yeosang returned to the forest that morning with his heart still racing from the confrontation, from the transformation, from the way Jongho had looked at him like he was seeing something he'd never quite expected. The anger was still there, simmering beneath his skin, but it had shifted into something more complicated—something that felt uncomfortably close to hope, and he hated himself for it.
The mushroom circle was exactly where Jongho had replanted it, roots settling back into familiar soil, and for a moment Yeosang just stood there at human size, looking at his home with an emotion he couldn't quite name. It was right. It was where it belonged. Jongho had done that much correctly, at least.
But that was the problem, wasn't it? Jongho kept doing things. Kept making decisions. Kept acting like his good intentions were enough to override the fact that he never, not once, asked what Yeosang actually wanted.
Yeosang spent that first day in the forest, shifting between sizes as his mood demanded, checking on the mushrooms and the surrounding plants, reacquainting himself with the familiar rhythms of his territory. He told himself he was settling back in. He told himself this was what he wanted—his home, his forest, his independence restored.
By evening, he'd almost convinced himself it was true.
The next morning, Jongho came back.
Yeosang was fairy-sized, perched on one of the mushroom caps and watching mist curl through the trees, when he heard those heavy, familiar footsteps. His wings tensed, iridescent membranes catching the early light as he prepared to either flee or fight depending on what happened next.
Jongho entered the clearing carrying a woven basket that smelled like fresh bread and herbs and something else Yeosang couldn't quite identify. He set it down carefully at the edge of the mushroom circle, far enough away to not be intrusive but close enough to be clearly intentional.
"I thought you might be hungry," Jongho said, not looking around for Yeosang but clearly aware he might be watching. "I made some things. Mushroom risotto—not with your mushrooms, obviously, I sourced others—and some fresh bread, and there's honey from the market, the good kind that still has comb in it." He paused, and Yeosang could see him choosing his words with painful care. "I know you said you need time. I'm not trying to rush that. I just... I wanted you to have food. In case you wanted it. No expectations."
He started to leave, then stopped, turned back.
"Also," Jongho continued, and something about his tone made Yeosang's wings still completely, "I was thinking—if you want to stay in the forest, I could help maintain the area. Make sure no one else disturbs it. I could put up some markers, talk to the other foragers who come through here, make sure everyone knows this section is protected. Not because you need my protection," he added quickly, like he'd caught himself mid-sentence, "but because humans are idiots and they might not realize there's someone living here unless someone tells them."
That phrase. That stupid, well-intentioned, infuriating phrase. Not because you need my protection. Like Jongho had learned just enough to know he should add disclaimers but not enough to understand he was still doing the exact same thing—still showing up uninvited, still making plans for Yeosang's life, still assuming his involvement was welcome or wanted.
"Or not," Jongho finished into the silence. "You probably have your own ways of keeping humans away. You've been doing fine without me for however long you've been here. Forget I said anything. The food's there if you want it. I'll go now."
And he did. He walked away without looking back, without waiting for a response, without any of the hovering Yeosang might have expected.
But the damage was done.
Yeosang stayed on the mushroom cap for a long time after Jongho left, staring at that basket with something hot and acidic burning in his chest. The man had literally just said he understood. Had apologized. Had walked away from that confrontation seeming to genuinely grasp what he'd done wrong. And less than twenty-four hours later, here he was again, back in Yeosang's space with offerings and plans and ideas about how to "help" that Yeosang had never asked for.
"I need time", Yeosang had said. And Jongho's response was to immediately show up with food and future plans like those words meant nothing at all.
The food did smell incredible. That was the worst part. Yeosang shifted to human size and approached the basket, and when he tried the risotto it was exactly as good as it smelled—perfectly seasoned, the mushrooms cooked just right, the rice creamy without being heavy. He ate it all, then the bread, then most of the honey, sitting there at the edge of his mushroom circle and hating that Jongho had been right about him being hungry.
Hating even more that some traitorous part of him had been pleased to see Jongho come back, had wanted the contact even while his rational mind was screaming that this was exactly the problem.
Jongho couldn't help himself. Even when he understood intellectually what he was doing wrong, even when he apologized and seemed sincere, he still couldn't actually stop doing it. Couldn't stop inserting himself into Yeosang's space and life, couldn't stop making decisions and plans that involved Yeosang without ever actually asking if that's what Yeosang wanted.
The anger built slowly through the afternoon, crystallizing into something sharp and decisive by the time the sun began to set. Yeosang looked at his mushroom circle—his home, his sanctuary, the place Jongho had returned to him—and realized with bitter clarity that it wasn't his anymore. Not really. Not when Jongho now knew exactly where it was. Not when Jongho could just show up whenever he wanted with baskets and ideas and good intentions that trampled over every boundary Yeosang tried to set.
Jongho would keep coming back. He'd proven that already. He'd keep trying to help, keep making gestures, keep involving himself in Yeosang's life because he'd decided that's what making amends looked like, and he'd do it all while convincing himself he was respecting Yeosang's autonomy.
Yeosang couldn't stay here. Not if he wanted any real space to think, to process, to figure out what he actually wanted instead of constantly reacting to whatever Jongho decided to do next.
He spent the night excavating the mushroom circle with the kind of meticulous care that came from fury channeled into purpose. Every root carefully preserved, every connection point between the fungi maintained, all of it transplanted to a new location deeper in the forest—somewhere Jongho wouldn't stumble across, somewhere that would actually be his again.
By dawn, the original clearing was empty. Just disturbed soil and the ghost of where his home had been, and Yeosang looked at it with grim satisfaction as he flew toward his new location.
Let Jongho find that. Let him see what his "help" had accomplished. Let him sit with the reality that his good intentions had driven Yeosang away again, that all his apologies and understanding hadn't actually changed the fundamental pattern of his behavior.
Maybe then—maybe—Jongho would actually learn.