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It was early afternoon at Wonpil’s suburban cottage. A rather peaceful day, to be honest — no ley line glitches, no hunter sighting report, and the sharehouse residents (read: Jooyeon) hadn’t come up with some weird shenanigans this time. The moon rabbit was sitting at his front porch, herbal tea in hand, enjoying the cool, crisp autumn breeze. Beside him, Sungjin, the city’s guardian entity, sat unhumanly still, so motionless that it was easy to mistake him for a statue. His dark eyes were unfocused, flickering faintly with golden static, and he hadn’t blinked a single time for the past ten minutes.
“You look like you’re daydreaming,” Wonpil remarked.
“I’m thinking.” Came a reply from the guardian, his gaze shifted to the smaller man, quietly admiring how soft his wavy hair fell into his silver-tinted eyes.
“About what?”
“What it is like as a mortal — to settle down, to grow old, even to pass away surrounded by your loved ones.”
“Well, I’m not the best person to answer that.” It was true, Wonpil had lived for millenia; he saw kingdoms rise and fall, outlived everyone who he came close enough to care about. Mortality, too, sounded foreign to him, as if it was a melody he could hear but couldn’t truly sing.
Wonpil took another sip of tea. “But I think their mortality is what makes everything precious. Every moment, every bond, every laughter — they become more meaningful when you know you’re here temporarily.”
Sungjin turned his gaze back to the horizon, his chest arched with the thought that what he cherished the most, in all the countless centuries since his creation, was already sitting beside him. Nevertheless, he only came up with a quiet hum of agreement.
The wind rustled through the autumn leaves, filling the silence of both Sungjin and Wopil’s unspoken thoughts — a longing that they didn’t dare to say out loud. The moon rabbit lowered his teacup, lingering a beat too long on the cooling porcelain, as if he was waiting for a confession that never came.
Neither of them spoke, but in that stillness, it felt as if someday, somehow, they would.