Archive of Our Own ^beta

The meadow was a place where birds lingered past dusk and even the grass seemed reluctant to welcome the dark. It was also, by every sensible measure, a place Soobin ought not to have been. Yet curiosity had always moved him more surely than caution, and so he now stood at the meadow’s edge facing a red-haired fairy who was only a little smaller than himself and very evidently displeased by his presence.

“You should not be here,” the fairy said, his voice low and controlled. His hands were drawn tight at his sides, wine-red wings stirring in slow, measured beats that spoke less of fragility than restraint. He looked, Soobin thought with quiet astonishment, exactly like something pressed between the pages of the old books in his study.

Soobin became aware that he had been staring and attempted, not entirely successfully, to recover his composure.

“What are you looking at?” the fairy continued, unimpressed. “You may go home.”

“O—oh. Right. I only—” Soobin adjusted the collar of his sweater, a small, absent gesture that betrayed the fact that he had not, in truth, prepared for success. He had come seeking something unusual, perhaps, but not this.

The fairy’s eyes narrowed with quick perception. “If you have a question, ask it. You are not nearly as discreet as you believe.”

Soobin cleared his throat. “Your name. May I know it?”

A faint scoff escaped the other.

“My name?” The fairy folded his arms across his chest, leaves shifting softly with the motion. “It is Nobody. Now you may leave.”

The answer was delivered with such dry finality that Soobin almost believed it was meant to end the matter entirely. It might have, had the grass not stirred at that very moment.

The sound came light and quick, accompanied by the soft rush of movement through the tall stems. A second figure emerged from the green, voice touched with an easy, unguarded pout.

“Hyung, you’re being mean again.”

Soobin turned—and quite forgot whatever he had been about to say.

The newcomer was younger, that much was immediately apparent. There was a brightness about him not yet tempered by caution, something open and curiously luminous in the way he approached, as though the fading daylight had chosen to linger at his shoulders. He looked between them with mild curiosity, entirely untroubled by the tension he had stepped into.

It was, Soobin realized with some dismay, a dangerous sort of presence to possess.

The red-haired fairy noticed the direction of Soobin’s attention at once.

“Do not even consider it,” he said sharply.

His hand came down upon the younger one’s shoulder, firm but practiced, already guiding him back the way he had come. The gesture was protective in a way that required no explanation. The younger fairy allowed himself to be turned, though not without a small backward glance that carried more curiosity than caution.

“We were only looking—” he began.

“We are leaving,” Nobody replied.

He cast Soobin one last look, steady and distinctly warning. “The sun is going down. It would be wise of you not to remain in these lands after dark.”

The pair withdrew into the shelter of the willow trees, their forms gradually dissolving into shadow and leaf until only the faint murmur of their voices remained, and then not even that.

Soobin did not immediately move.

The wind rose again, cool along the back of his neck, stirring the meadow into a soft, restless hush. Somewhere below, the valley spread wide and familiar, his house a small, distant shape waiting patiently in the deepening light.

He was aware, quietly and inconveniently, that something about the evening had shifted. His feet, however, seemed in no particular hurry to follow reason home.

The scent of roasted tea lingered warmly in the air, accompanied by the steady scratch of pen against paper. A careful arrangement of scentless candles, varied in height and shape, cast a soft and uneven glow across the narrow room, their light catching on the crowded spines of books that pressed in from every side. It was, by all reasonable judgment, a wonder the place had not long since burned to the ground. Soobin preferred to attribute its continued survival to luck.

He wrote with the quiet urgency of a man who suspected time might at any moment grow impatient with him. His friends had once remarked upon it; he had merely offered them a faintly smug shrug in return. 

Writing had always been among his dearest disciplines, and being of a restless and many-minded nature, he had cultivated it with particular devotion. Yet he had long entertained the private suspicion that ambition, in excess, was merely folly dressed in respectable clothes.

Thus he found himself here: not in the orderly halls of the academe where he had once been expected to thrive, but bent instead over a cluttered desk, committing to paper an experience no sensible colleague would have believed.

He exhaled—and stilled. Beyond the windowpane, pale against the deepening dark, a figure hovered. Wings caught the candlelight, green-gold and unmistakable. The younger fairy from the meadow, smiling.

Soobin scrubbed hard at his eyes with his knuckles, once and then again. When he looked back, the glass reflected only his own face, drawn and faintly pale in the candlelight.

He told himself, in the days that followed, that ‘Exhaustion had been the more reasonable explanation.’ He almost succeeded in believing it.

Until one noon—an hour which flatters the absurdities of the world more than it illumines them—his hands lay surrendered to a basin of industrious foam when a shadow, at once impertinent and elegant, crossed the kitchen window. The plate fled his grasp and met its porcelain destiny with a crack of such moral severity that he started as though rebuked by etiquette itself.

The fairy stood without, in broad daylight.

A wreath of small, conspiratorial flowers had taken liberties with his hair, and his wings were folded with the tidy discretion of one who knows he is being observed and means to be admired. His smile possessed that enviable lightness which belongs only to those untroubled by consequence.

For the first time in many years, Soobin permitted himself the disquieting hypothesis that his mind had begun to cultivate fictions without his consent.

“What the—“ he murmured, reaching for the medical kit with a gravity usually reserved for philosophy. A slender thread of red declared itself upon his thumb where the porcelain had exacted its tithe. 

“Careless,” he added, as one does when assigning blame to a principle rather than a person.

He cleansed and bound the wound with admirable efficiency; yet his attention, like a well-bred guest, had already begun to wander.

Later that afternoon a crisp tap upon the study window solicited him once more. His elbow betrayed the inkwell; blackness advanced across the desk in a patient, encroaching tide—an argument in liquid form. He rose at once, chair protesting, and rescued the paper while the ink contemplated the brink of ruin and, with uncommon mercy, refrained.

Soobin exhaled a careful breath, set aside the sacrificed sheet, and extinguished the nearest candle with a practiced indifference to drama before crossing the room in strides that suggested both purpose and reluctance.

He opened the door.

“To what do I owe this visitation?” he asked, with a sharpness that surprised even his own civility.

The fairy turned in place. His wings gave a languid flutter that scattered light with the extravagance of a careless constellation. He looked altogether too pleased with existence.

“Have you something I might eat?” he inquired, with the bright innocence of appetite unacquainted with manners.

Soobin halted, briefly disarmed by so artless a demand. He cleared his throat and stepped aside with the resignation of a host who suspects he has been invited into his own home.

“I imagine one who professes such intimacy with nature might find an apple tolerable.”

“Oh,” the fairy replied, keeping easy pace at his shoulder, “I have spent all my life in nature.”

“An education of admirable consistency,” he said, making a brief notation. “Though one suspects it lacks certain refinements.”

Soobin hummed—a sound that balanced skepticism with interest—and, almost involuntarily, drew a small notebook from his pocket. A fleeting smile visited his mouth as he made a quick notation; the gesture summoned shallow dimples, as though his face conspired briefly with pleasure.

The fairy observed this. For the span of a heartbeat, recognition—private, impertinent, and immediately denied—lit his gaze before dissolving into its customary brightness.

Soobin, oblivious, pushed open the barn doors and crossed to the bucket of apples gathered that afternoon. He selected one with the fastidiousness of a curator and sent it lightly across the intervening space.

“Do you approve of these?”

The fairy caught it with only slight effort. “I do.”

“So fortunate,” Soobin returned, a thread of dry amusement in his tone. “It would be regrettable to exercise hospitality without consent—though not, I confess, impossible.”

“Hmph.” He pouted with studied conviction. “Apples, as it happens, are my favorite.”

He settled himself atop a hay bale with easy familiarity, legs swinging as he bit cleanly into the fruit. Several paces away, Soobin rested his weight into one hip and folded his arms, observing with the thoughtful air of a man who had quite forgotten whatever else he had meant to accomplish that afternoon.

The fairy’s free hand wandered absently over the surface of the hay, fingers brushing and rubbing at the dry strands with quiet fascination. Soobin recognized the behavior as something he had once read in the academy archives, though the memory failed to arrange itself into anything immediately useful.

He was still attempting to place it when the fairy spoke again.

“What do you do with these?” The apple core dangled from the stem between his fingers as he examined it with open curiosity.

Soobin approached, the corner of his mouth betraying a restrained smile.

“We return them to where they came from.”

The fairy tilted his head, clearly unconvinced. “I live in nature and may not follow all the… hygienic customs of your kind, but is it truly wise to put the core back on the branch?”

For perhaps the first time that day, Soobin looked genuinely caught off guard.

“No,” he said, the word escaping softer than intended. His expression softened into something warmer as he stepped closer. “Not the branch. We plant them in the ground.”

Understanding dawned slowly, followed at once by visible embarrassment. The fairy’s face scrunched as he covered it briefly with both hands.

“Oh, that is far more sensible. How foolish of me.”

“So… what do you do?”

Soobin looked up from where he stood, the question catching him unprepared. “Well…”

“Well?” the fairy prompted, leaning forward just slightly.

“I read. Study. Write,” Soobin said, though even to his own ears the answer sounded insufficient.

Beomgyu’s brows drew together. “Like… what do you do?”

A faint breath left Soobin’s nose. “I suppose I am merely a scholar of my own making—somewhat limited to the books already in my possession.”

The fairy absorbed this with surprising seriousness, pacing a few thoughtful steps across the barn with his hands clasped neatly behind his back. The motion had an oddly formal air to it, though the soft sway of his wings betrayed the act. Then his head lifted.

“Oh!”

Soobin straightened slightly at the sudden brightness in his expression.

“Do you have any books… about me?”

The question landed more squarely than Soobin had anticipated.

“I—” He hesitated, which was answer enough.

Beomgyu tilted his head. “So you don’t.” Soobin shook his head once.

For a brief second, the fairy seemed to consider this, lips pursed in mild disappointment. Then, quite without warning, his face brightened again with renewed enthusiasm.

“Then you should study me,” he declared cheerfully. Soobin stared.

“You… want me to study you?” he repeated, each word carefully measured, as though verifying he had heard correctly. 

Beomgyu nodded at once, entirely pleased with his own solution.

The scholar opened his mouth, closed it again, and found—rather inconveniently—that coherent language had deserted him. The fairy’s expectant expression did not help matters; there was something distinctly puppy-like in the hopeful set of his eyes, a comparison Soobin immediately and firmly pushed out of his mind.

When Soobin did not answer at once, the brightness in Beomgyu’s face dimmed.

“Well,” he said, drawing back a fraction, lips settling into a small pout, “it’s all right if you don’t wish to. You might simply have said so politely. You humans pride yourselves on manners, do you not?”

Soobin went very still. His hands had curled faintly at his sides, not in anger but in the quiet frustration of a man whose thoughts had become unexpectedly tangled. He opened his mouth to respond—

—and found the fairy already turning away, as though prepared to abandon the matter entirely.

Something in Soobin resisted that outcome. “Wait,” he said, more quickly than he had intended.

Beomgyu paused mid-step but did not yet turn around.

Soobin exhaled slowly, gathering his composure with visible effort. “It is not that I am unwilling,” he said at last, his voice more measured now. “Only that most proper studies require… structure.”

That was enough to bring the fairy’s attention back at once.

“What kind of structure?” Beomgyu asked, curiosity returning at once, bright and undiluted.

Soobin hesitated, which in itself was answer enough that the matter was not a simple one. He shifted his weight slightly, one hand coming up to rest against the back of his neck—a small, thoughtful habit he had never quite rid himself of.

“In proper study,” he began carefully, “one does not simply… observe whatever one pleases. There are considerations. Boundaries.” His gaze flicked briefly toward the fairy before settling somewhere just past his shoulder. “Ethics.”

Beomgyu blinked.

“Ethics?” he repeated, the word sounding unfamiliar on his tongue.

“It means,” Soobin said, a touch more gently now, “that I cannot treat you as though you were merely a specimen to be catalogued.” His mouth curved faintly, self-aware. “Scholars who forget that distinction tend not to be very good scholars.”

The fairy regarded him with open interest, head tilting slowly to one side. One of his wings gave a small, absent flutter, stirring the loose strands of hay beside him.

“So you’re saying,” Beomgyu said slowly, “you need permission.”

Soobin met his eyes properly this time.

“Yes.”

The answer settled between them with more weight than the single word suggested.

Beomgyu seemed to consider this with surprising seriousness. He slid off the hay bale in one light movement and took a few slow steps closer, hands once again tucked behind his back. 

Up close, the easy brightness about him was even more distracting than Soobin cared to admit and became acutely aware of the elegant line of Beomgyu’s shoulders, pale as a moonlit marble, and immediately coughed into his sleeve as though propriety itself had caught in his throat.

“And if I give it?” the fairy asked. 

Soobin did not answer immediately. Instead, he studied him—not clinically, not quite, but with the careful attention of someone who had just realized the situation before him was far less simple than it had first appeared.

“If you give it,” Soobin said at last, voice quieter now, “then we proceed properly.”

Beomgyu’s brows lifted. “But I was the one who suggested it.”

“You did,” Soobin said calmly. “Enthusiasm, however, is not the same thing as consent given with full understanding.”

The fairy stared at him, clearly not expecting the distinction.

Soobin’s tone softened, though his posture remained composed. “If I am to study you, even in the most harmless sense, then you ought to know what you are agreeing to. Anything less would be…” He paused briefly, searching for the precise word. “Unscholarly.”

Beomgyu blinked once at the explanation, then—rather unexpectedly—broke into a bright, unconcerned grin.

“Well, that sounds easy enough.”

Before Soobin could further qualify the matter, the fairy stepped closer with renewed enthusiasm, hands clasped neatly behind his back as though presenting himself for inspection.

“You may study me properly, then,” he said, with the air of someone granting a perfectly reasonable favor. “I give permission.”

The words were delivered with such cheerful certainty that Soobin could not immediately tell whether the gravity of the exchange had truly been understood.

He regarded the younger for a long moment.

“You are… remarkably quick to agree,” Soobin said carefully.

Beomgyu’s wings gave a light, pleased flutter. “You said you needed permission. Now you have it.” He tilted his head, eyes bright with expectation. “So what happens next?”

That, unfortunately, was an excellent question.

Soobin drew a slow breath and reached, almost reflexively, for the small notebook in his pocket. If the situation insisted on becoming absurd, the least he could do was impose some measure of order upon it.

“We begin with observations,” he said, settling into the familiar cadence of instruction. “Nothing invasive. Nothing uncomfortable. If at any point you wish to stop, you will say so plainly. Do you understand?”

Beomgyu nodded at once—perhaps a little too quickly—but his attention was fixed with eager intensity.

“What do I do?” he asked.

Soobin hesitated only briefly before gesturing toward the hay bale.

“For the moment,” he said, “you may sit.”

Beomgyu did not so much sit as he did lightly hop back onto the bale, wings adjusting with small, instinctive movements as he settled. His feet began to swing almost immediately, the picture of bright, patient anticipation.

Soobin opened his notebook. For reasons he preferred not to examine too closely, his handwriting was no longer entirely steady.

Beomgyu tilted his head, interest bright and unhidden. “But how is it,” he asked, turning the quill carefully between his fingers, “that sometimes you write as if the words simply appear, and other times you still reach for ink like everyone else?”

Soobin’s mouth curved, faintly sheepish, though there was pride beneath it.

“It is not quite as effortless as it looks,” he admitted. He reached forward and gently reclaimed the quill, testing its balance as though it were still half a thought. “I have been attempting to improve the reservoir. When it behaves, it holds enough ink to last me hours. When it does not…” His shoulders lifted in a small, resigned motion. “I am reminded that invention is mostly failure dressed in patience.”

Beomgyu’s eyes only lit further.

“That’s amazing,” he said at once, leaning in without hesitation, his earlier reserve entirely forgotten. “So sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t yet? You’re still perfecting it?”

“Relentlessly,” Soobin replied, though the word was softened by a quiet laugh.

For a moment, the space between them settled into something unexpectedly companionable. The candle on Soobin’s desk burned low, its flame bending whenever the night air slipped through the curtains, and in that gentle, wavering light Beomgyu looked less like a passing visitor and more like a question that had arrived early and intended to stay.

He rocked back on his heels, still smiling to himself, as though he had already decided this would not be his last evening here.

“Well,” Beomgyu said at last, bright but gentler now, “you’ll have to show me when it finally behaves properly.”

Soobin met his gaze, something thoughtful passing briefly across his expression.

“I suspect,” he said, setting the quill carefully aside, “that you would notice before anyone else.”

The hour had grown late without either of them quite marking when it happened. Outside, the night had deepened into that quiet stretch where even the wind seemed to move more carefully.

Beomgyu glanced toward the window, then back again, visibly reluctant in a way he did not bother to hide.

“I should probably go,” he said, though he made no immediate move to do so.

Soobin inclined his head, but his voice, when he answered, was unexpectedly warm.

“You know the way back now.”

It was not quite an invitation. It was not quite anything else. Beomgyu grinned anyway, bright and certain, as if he had heard exactly what he wished to hear.

“I do.”

He slipped toward the door with light, easy steps, but just before disappearing into the corridor, he paused and looked back—quick, curious, and unmistakably interested in whatever this strange, quiet scholar might become to him.

The door closed softly behind him.

Left alone, Soobin stood for a moment beside his desk, fingers resting near the still-warm quill, the faintest crease between his brows as though the evening had introduced a variable he had not accounted for.

Outside, the curtains stirred again, slow and silver in the moonlight, and the room did not feel quite as solitary as it had before.

A week passed with the quiet efficiency Soobin preferred. The nights settled into their usual order: lamp lit, books arranged, ink kept within reach should the temperamental quill decide once again to misbehave. On this particular evening, he sat bent over a botanical volume, sleeves pushed neatly to his forearms, attention fixed on the delicate inked diagrams of leaf structures and root systems.

The soft tap at his window did not startle him so much as interrupt the steady line of his concentration.

Soobin glanced up, slow and mildly expectant, as though the world had merely kept an appointment. The shape beyond the glass shifted, familiar in a way that made something small and unexamined stir at the back of his mind.

He exhaled through a quiet yawn, closed the book with care, and rose.

By the time he opened the front door, Beomgyu was already there, standing as though he had every right to be—bright-eyed, composed, and smiling in a way that, to Soobin at least, could only be described as unfairly pretty.

“You can knock here next time,” Soobin said, not unkindly, one hand resting against the door as he held it open.

Beomgyu nodded at once, entirely agreeable. “Okay.”

He stepped inside without hesitation. It was only then, as the boy crossed the threshold and moved lightly across the wooden floor, that Soobin noticed it.

With each step Beomgyu took, a faint golden imprint bloomed briefly against the polished boards—soft as scattered stardust, delicate as frost catching candlelight. Each footprint shimmered for the span of a breath before fading cleanly away, leaving the wood untouched, as though the house itself had only imagined it.

Soobin’s gaze followed the disappearing trail, his expression sharpening by degrees.

‘Interesting...’

He closed the door behind them with quiet precision.

“You’ve been busy,” Beomgyu said brightly, already peering past him toward the desk, toward the open books, toward everything at once in that unguarded, buoyant way of his.

Soobin folded his arms loosely, though his eyes had not quite lost their thoughtful edge.

“And you,” he replied, measured but not cold, “appear to be shedding evidence wherever you walk.”

Beomgyu paused mid-step and glanced down. Another soft golden footprint flickered into nothing beneath his heel.

His face lit up instead of showing embarrassment.

“Oh,” he said, almost delighted. “It’s doing that again?”

Soobin’s brow lifted, just slightly. ‘Again? What does he mean by ‘again’?’

“Yes,” he said calmly, though the word carried quiet interest now. “It is.”

Beomgyu rocked back on his heels, looking far more pleased than someone being quietly studied ought to be, and Soobin found—somewhat inconveniently—that the room had grown just a fraction less predictable since the moment that boy had stepped through his door.

Beomgyu did not sit when invited. Sitting, apparently, required stillness, and stillness did not seem to suit him for long. Instead, he drifted toward the desk with the bright, unguarded curiosity of someone who had already decided the room belonged to him in some small, temporary way.

Soobin remained where he was for a moment, watching.

The boy leaned over the open volume, hands clasped neatly behind his back as though he were attempting—rather unsuccessfully—to look well-behaved. His eyes moved quickly over the page, taking in the careful botanical diagrams, the margin notes written in Soobin’s precise hand, the pressed specimen tucked between two sheets of paper.

“What are you studying?” Beomgyu asked, tone light and inquisitive, though there was a knowing glimmer in his gaze that suggested the question was not entirely innocent.

Soobin did not immediately suspect anything of it. To him, the contents of his desk were plain things—ink, paper, leaves carefully labeled. Obvious.

“Botany,” he answered simply.

Beomgyu hummed, leaning closer. A loose strand of his hair slipped forward as he examined the page with exaggerated seriousness.

“Botany,” he repeated, as though testing the word for texture. “So… plants.”

“Yes.”

“And these,” Beomgyu said, lightly tapping the illustrated leaf with one finger, “you just… read about them?”

Soobin’s gaze shifted to the boy’s hand, to the easy familiarity with which he hovered over the work.

“I do more than read,” Soobin said, voice mild. “I observe. Compare. Record patterns when they present themselves.”

Beomgyu turned his head slightly, looking back at him over his shoulder. There was something bright in his expression—interest, certainly, but also a kind of quiet amusement he did not bother to hide very well.

“You like patterns,” he said.

It was not quite a question.

Soobin considered him for a brief moment, then inclined his head once. “They tend to be useful.”

Beomgyu’s lips curved, pleased by the answer. He straightened only to drift a step farther along the desk, eyes already moving to the next page, the next note, the next careful piece of order Soobin had built for himself.

Beauty, Soobin reflected with silent alarm, had a most unacademic tendency to distract; he lowered his gaze to the margin notes and traced them with unnecessary intensity. Soobin glanced at him for another moment before closing the book with quiet deliberation. 

“I can show you something,” he said at last.

Beomgyu’s head lifted at once, interest quick and unguarded. “Something what?”

“You’ll see.” Soobin rose from his chair and gestured lightly toward the small seating area by the window. “Sit there for a moment.”

Beomgyu obeyed with surprising readiness, though not without a small bounce of anticipation as he settled himself down. He folded his hands in his lap for all of three seconds before his attention began to wander again, eyes moving about the room with bright, restless curiosity.

Soobin allowed himself the briefest hint of a smile.

“Don’t touch anything that looks fragile,” he added, already reaching for the door.

Beomgyu’s lips parted in mild offense. “I know what fragile looks like.”

“I am not entirely convinced,” Soobin replied mildly.

The fairy huffed but did not argue further, which in itself felt like a small and curious victory.

Satisfied—for the moment—Soobin stepped outside.

The evening air met him cool and clean, carrying the faint, familiar scent of damp earth and wild growth from the meadow beyond. He moved with quiet purpose along the side of the house, toward the small work area he kept just beyond the reach of casual visitors.

After some time — no longer than five minutes — Soobin had come with a generous amount of various plants. Beomgyu squinted at him from across the hallway, still seated where he was left with shoulders drawn slightly inward as though bracing himself for the possibility of being mistaken. His voice was soft and uncertain, from where he sat perched upon the edge of Soobin’s desk.

“Is… is that you?”

Soobin slowed mid-step, his attention sharpening at once. Beomgyu leaned forward, gaze narrowed in scrutiny, and only when Soobin closed the remaining distance did recognition finally settle across his features. A small breath left the fairy’s lips, quiet and relieved, his posture loosening as the tension slipped from him.

Soobin needed no further explanation.

“Hold on,” he said gently.

He guided Beomgyu down onto a low stool beneath the awning with unhurried care. From the satchel at his side, he withdrew a clean sheet of parchment and a long flight feather, pale and well-kept. 

With practiced efficiency he trimmed the barbs and set his penknife to the shaft, shaping the quill in neat, economical strokes. The nib he cut was fine but sturdy, suitable for repeated use, though experience told him it would require trimming again within a few days of steady writing.

A small pottery dish of ink waited near his elbow. He dipped the quill and watched the dark liquid gather along the slit before setting the tip to parchment.

One letter formed cleanly upon the page, followed by another, and then a careful succession that diminished in size with each descending line. Soobin worked with quiet precision, first measuring the spacing by the width of his thumb and then refining it by eye until the chart tapered in orderly progression from bold characters to fine script.

Beomgyu regarded the unusual page with a faint crease between his brows.

“Tell me the smallest line you can read,” Soobin said, his voice mild.

The matter did not end there. In the weeks that followed, Soobin’s worktable was seldom left undisturbed. When he was not bent over his journal or drafting reports no one had requested, his hands were occupied with curved glass, fine abrasives, and thin shavings of wood. He consulted worn manuscripts on optics, studied the proper curvature of lenses, and with steady patience coaxed small discs of glass into shapes that would better serve Beomgyu’s sight.

The frames came later. He produced several careful sketches first and allowed Beomgyu to choose among them before shaping the final pair with meticulous attention. When they were at last complete, he placed the spectacles into Beomgyu’s hands.

“Try them,” Soobin said, his tone even though a quiet brightness lingered in his eyes.

Beomgyu lifted the frames and settled them cautiously upon his nose before turning his gaze toward the open fields beyond.

When the lenses aligned with his sight, the world resolved itself with such unexpected clarity that he stilled where he stood. What had long existed as a gentle blur now revealed its careful detail; the stretch of grass before him separated into countless slender blades, and the scattered wildflowers showed distinct petals stirred softly by the passing wind. The distance between things no longer wavered. It stood honest and precise.

Only then did he seem to realize how much of his life had been spent in approximation rather than true sight.

“Whoa,” Beomgyu breathed, wonder softening his voice. “I didn’t know the world was this…”

His expression broke into a bright, unguarded smile as he glanced back at Soobin, gratitude plain upon his face.

Soobin’s lips curved in quiet return, far more restrained than the warmth gathering behind his ribs, and he remained where he was while Beomgyu hurried forward into the grass, crouching here and there to examine flowers, blades, and the slow crawl of ladybugs with delighted care.

In the days that followed, the house acquired a second rhythm.

Where once Soobin’s hours had passed in disciplined quiet, they were now punctuated by the soft thud of light footsteps, the rustle of turning pages that were not always turned with proper care, and the occasional bright exclamation of discovery from somewhere very close to his elbow.

Beomgyu proved, much to Soobin’s private astonishment, to be a most earnest pupil.

He did not sit still particularly well — that much became apparent within the first quarter hour — but his attention, when properly caught, burned with a keen and almost disarming intensity. He asked questions freely, often before Soobin had quite finished explaining the previous matter, and possessed the mildly alarming habit of leaning far too close when something truly interested him.

“This one,” Beomgyu said one afternoon, finger planted decisively upon a diagram of leaf structures. “Why are they shaped differently if they all do the same thing?”

Soobin, who had been reaching for his teacup, paused mid-motion.

“Because function rarely exists without adaptation,” he replied, setting the cup aside. He drew the book gently nearer between them. “Observe the margins here. This species thrives in open sun. The narrower leaf reduces water loss.”

Beomgyu hummed, leaning in until their shoulders nearly brushed, eyes bright behind the carefully crafted lenses.

“And this one?” he pressed.

“Shade-dwelling. Broader surface area.”

Beomgyu’s lips parted slightly in quiet fascination.

Soobin pretended not to notice the way the fairy’s wing brushed the back of his sleeve. 

Their lessons grew longer after that.

Reading came first — slowly, with patience — followed by simple natural philosophy, then the more orderly foundations of botany. Beomgyu absorbed it all with surprising hunger, though his curiosity did not always follow the tidy paths Soobin might have preferred.

It was on a mild afternoon, sunlight lying warm across the desk, that the first complication arose.

Beomgyu had been roaming, as he often did, along the lower shelves while Soobin annotated a passage nearby. There was a small pause — the particular, dangerous sort of pause that came when the fairy had found something new.

Soobin looked up.

Too late.

Beomgyu was crouched near the far end of the shelf, one slender finger already hooked around the spine of a thinner volume bound in muted green. His head tilted.

“What’s this one about?”

Soobin was on his feet before he quite realized he had moved.

“That,” he said, a touch too quickly, “is not necessary for you just yet.”

Beomgyu blinked up at him, curiosity beaming in his eyes. “…Not necessary?” he repeated slowly.

Soobin reached down and, with careful gentleness that tried very hard not to look like urgency, eased the book back into its place.

“For later study,” he amended, tone smoothing. “There is a proper order to these things.”

Beomgyu studied him for a long moment. Then — to Soobin’s mild surprise — he smiled. Bright, knowing in a way that suggested he might not understand the subject… but very much understood the reaction.

“Okay,” Beomgyu said agreeably, rocking back onto his heels.

And, for the moment, he let it go. Soobin did not, however, miss the way the fairy’s gaze flicked once more toward the green-bound spine before he bounced lightly back to the desk. 

‘Yes. This,’ he suspected quietly, ‘was going to become a problem.’

In the days that followed, their meetings assumed a quiet regularity that neither of them thought to question. Morning often found Soobin already at work, seated with the composed stillness of habit, his books arranged in neat, deliberate order. 

Beomgyu’s arrivals, by contrast, obeyed no schedule save his own whims. At times he appeared with the first clear light of dawn; at others he came nearer noon, hair faintly wind-tossed and expression bright with whatever small adventure had delayed him.

Soobin discovered, with some private resignation, that he had begun to listen for the soft tap at the window.

Instruction, once begun, progressed with surprising ease. Beomgyu possessed neither the patience nor the discipline of a trained pupil, yet his curiosity proved a far more effective tutor than diligence alone might have been. 

He read sprawled more often than properly seated, one foot hooked beneath the chair, wings shifting in small, restless adjustments whenever stillness threatened to hold him too long. Difficult words were mouthed quietly under his breath until they yielded their meaning, at which point his entire expression brightened with undisguised satisfaction.

“Photosynthesis,” he repeated one afternoon, careful and proud over each syllable.

Soobin inclined his head in approval. “Correct.”

The answering smile was altogether too pleased for so small an achievement.

Their lessons soon expanded beyond the page. Soobin showed him how to press leaves between clean sheets, how to label specimens with a steady hand, and how to distinguish between similar wildflowers by the subtle differences in their stems and veining. Beomgyu approached each task with wholehearted enthusiasm and only moderate precision.

Soobin permitted himself one treacherous glance at the fairy’s luminous form before composing his features into the stern neutrality of a man determined to remain respectable at any cost.

“This one keeps moving,” Beomgyu complained mildly while attempting to sketch a particularly delicate bloom.

“It is not moving,” Soobin replied.

Beomgyu narrowed his eyes at the flower as though it had personally wronged him. “…It feels like it is.”

Soobin did not permit himself the smile that threatened.

It was perhaps inevitable that the green-bound volume would draw attention again. The matter resurfaced several days later when Soobin returned from the adjoining room to find Beomgyu lingering near the lower shelves with an air of innocence just slightly too deliberate to be convincing.

Soobin paused in the doorway. Beomgyu glanced back.

For a brief moment they regarded one another with the quiet awareness of two people who both understood more than either intended to say.

“You watch this shelf rather closely,” Beomgyu observed at length, his tone light but not careless.

“Do I,” Soobin said.

“Mhm. People usually guard the interesting things.” 

“That is not universally true.”

Beomgyu’s mouth curved with mild satisfaction. “Then it must be very dull.”

Soobin, who had debated seasoned academics without difficulty, found himself momentarily without a proper reply.

Their familiarity, once incidental, deepened by such small degrees that the shift might easily have gone unnoticed by anyone less attentive.

Beomgyu leaned nearer during readings, close enough that the faint stir of his wings occasionally brushed Soobin’s sleeve.

 He had developed the habit of humming softly while concentrating, a quiet, thoughtless sound that seemed to settle into the room as naturally as the light itself. One evening, while practicing his penmanship, he fell uncharacteristically silent as Soobin adjusted his grip.

“Not so tight,” Soobin said, guiding his fingers with careful precision. “You will split the nib.”

Beomgyu stilled at once, his attention wholly fixed on the slow movement of the pen across the page. For once, he did not chatter.

Soobin became aware, a fraction too late, of their proximity. The fairy’s lashes were lowered in concentration, his breath soft and even, the warmth of him uncomfortably present at Soobin’s side.

He released Beomgyu’s hand sooner than was strictly necessary.

“There,” he said evenly.

Beomgyu looked up, bright and pleased. “I am improving.”

“Yes,” Soobin answered.

By the end of the week, the alteration in his routine had become impossible to ignore. One afternoon, after Beomgyu had wandered outside with his spectacles slightly askew and his attention wholly claimed by some new marvel in the grass, Soobin remained alone at his desk with an open book before him. 

For a fleeting moment, Soobin observed the smooth expanse of Beomgyu’s thigh where fabric failed in its duty of concealment; he cleared his throat and turned a page that did not require turning.

Several minutes passed.

He had not read a single line.

At length he closed the volume with quiet deliberation and leaned back in his chair, gaze unfocused on the far wall. What had begun as simple instruction had acquired complications he had neither anticipated nor entirely welcomed. 

He had intended to educate, to observe with scholarly distance. Instead, his carefully ordered days now bore the unmistakable influence of soft golden footprints, bright interruptions, disruptive thoughts, and a fairy who regarded the world as though everything in it deserved wonder.

Outside, Beomgyu’s delighted voice carried faintly through the open window.

Soobin exhaled slowly. ‘This,’ he suspected, ‘was unlikely to remain simple for very much longer.’

Rain arrived without ceremony, a steady curtain that drew itself across the evening and showed no inclination of lifting. By the time Beomgyu noticed it in earnest, the paths beyond the house had already darkened into slick ribbons of mud and shadow.

He stood near the window, spectacles slightly askew, watching the downpour with open fascination.

“It is rather thorough,” he observed.

Soobin, who had long since learned the temperament of countryside storms, followed the line of his gaze only briefly before reaching for the candle at his desk. The small flame bent beneath his breath and vanished, leaving the room to the softer glow of the hearth beyond.

“You will not make it back tonight,” he said with quiet certainty.

Beomgyu turned at once. “I will not?”

“The downpour will only worsen,” Soobin continued. “Even you would find the air unfriendly in weather such as this.”

This, rather than discouraging him, seemed only to brighten the fairy’s expression.

“Oh,” Beomgyu said, and then, with unmistakable interest, “Oh.”

Soobin chose not to examine that tone too closely.

With the same composed efficiency that marked most of his movements, he crossed into the adjoining room and returned with a neatly rolled sleeping mat and a folded blanket. He set them upon the floor with practical care, smoothing the edges flat against the wooden boards.

“You may take the bed,” he said.

Beomgyu, who had already wandered ahead in open curiosity, froze mid-step.

It was, in fact, his first time inside the bedroom proper. Until now, their hours had been contained neatly within the study, all ink and parchment and orderly stacks of books. Here, the space was simpler, more plainly lived in. The bed stood near the far wall, well-made and undeniably soft-looking, the linens pale in the low light.

Beomgyu approached it as though it might vanish if he moved too quickly.

He pressed one cautious hand into the mattress, then both. His eyes widened.

“This is…” He sank down experimentally, the bed dipping beneath his weight. “…This is extraordinarily comfortable.”

Soobin, kneeling near the sleeping mat, allowed himself the smallest exhale through his nose.

“It serves its purpose.”

Beomgyu bounced once, lightly, as though verifying the claim. The movement sent a faint ripple through his wings, which settled again in pleased little shifts.

“You sleep here every night?” he asked, turning bright eyes toward Soobin.

“Yes.”

Beomgyu’s gaze dropped immediately to the arrangement on the floor. Then back to the bed. Then, very pointedly, back to Soobin. 

A small crease formed between his brows.

“But… why are you down there?” he asked, the question entirely sincere. “You are accustomed to the bed. I am accustomed to leaves. Surely the logical arrangement would be the reverse.”

Soobin paused in the act of straightening the blanket. For a moment he seemed to consider the question as though it had been posed in earnest academic debate.

“You are my guest,” he said at last, tone even.

Beomgyu tilted his head, unconvinced.

“That does not make the floor softer.”

“It is sufficient.”

The fairy studied him a moment longer, lips pursed in mild dissatisfaction. Then, with the easy decisiveness that governed most of his choices, he shifted further onto the mattress and patted the open space beside him with bright invitation.

“There is clearly enough room,” Beomgyu said.

For a brief moment his gaze rested on the offered space, then shifted away with deliberate composure as he finished smoothing the edge of the sleeping mat upon the floor. His movements were unhurried, almost methodical, though a faint tightness had settled at the line of his shoulders.

“I will remain here,” he said.

Beomgyu blinked, mildly perplexed rather than offended. “But you sleep on the bed every night.”

“That is beside the point.”

Soobin went very still. Rain continued its steady murmur against the roof. Beomgyu, entirely untroubled, leaned back onto his elbows and looked around the room with open interest, as though the matter had already been reasonably solved in his mind.

“You humans are very strange about sleeping arrangements,” he added thoughtfully. “In the forest we simply avoid the damp places and lie down where it is comfortable.”

It was, perhaps, not the most satisfying explanation, but Soobin did not amend it. Instead he extinguished the remaining lamp near the bedside, leaving only the softened spill of firelight from the adjoining room to warm the edges of the dark.

As he settled onto the mat, the old, familiar chorus of voices rose unbidden in his thoughts — half teasing, half critical, and long since etched into memory.

His peers had never quite understood him.

There had been no shortage of commentary during his years at the academy. Some had said, with no small measure of disbelief, that he lacked the instincts proper to a man of his age. Others, less charitable, had suggested he simply did not possess the temperament for indulgence. It had been implied more than once — sometimes jokingly, sometimes not — that a scholar who kept such careful distance from easy company could hardly be called worldly.

Yet there had been other voices too — quieter ones.

Professors whose approval was never lightly given. Senior alumni whose regard carried weight precisely because it was so rarely offered. They had spoken not of deficiency, but of restraint; not of coldness, but of discernment. A man who understood the value of boundaries, one had said, was a man unlikely to betray either his work or his company.

The memory of it settled now with a steadying effect.

Soobin folded his hands loosely over his midsection and allowed his breathing to even, the earlier moment of uncertainty pressed neatly back into order where it belonged. Whatever Beomgyu’s easy comfort with proximity, whatever careless invitations might be offered without a second thought, Soobin had neither the intention nor the inclination to presume upon them.

Across the room, the mattress gave a faint shift as Beomgyu resettled himself.

The rain continued through the night, patient and unhurried, while above him the bed rustled once more as Beomgyu turned, still not entirely convinced—but, for now at least, willing to let the matter rest.

Beomgyu did not wake with the dawn.

Under ordinary circumstances he would have been long gone by first light, restless as sunlight itself; but the bed had proven a far greater luxury than leaves and woven branches, and comfort, once discovered, had held him fast. When at last he stirred, the house was already awake around him.

He emerged some time later, hair faintly mussed, spectacles slightly crooked, and wings still slow with sleep.

Soobin, who had been setting down the last of the dishes, glanced up only briefly.

“You have missed the morning by a fair margin,” he observed.

Beomgyu stretched without shame, entirely unbothered. “Your bed is dangerously persuasive.”

“I shall take that as a compliment.”

Breakfast was simple but thoughtfully arranged: sliced fruit laid in careful portions, a modest Caesar salad prepared with quiet precision, and at the center, still faintly warm, a cut of steak seared cleanly and resting upon a plain ceramic plate.

Beomgyu leaned forward at once, bright curiosity returning in full.

“You prepared all this?”

“The old lady at the château required assistance this morning,” Soobin replied, taking his seat with composed ease. “Butchering duties. She insisted I take a portion for myself.”

Beomgyu’s eyes widened slightly, interest sharpened.

“You cut this yourself?”

“Yes.”

There was a brief pause while the fairy studied the plate with renewed respect, as though the meal had acquired an entirely different character.

For a time they ate in companionable quiet, broken only by the soft clink of utensils and Beomgyu’s occasional pleased hum when something particularly suited his taste.

Then, as though the thought had only just occurred to him, Beomgyu spoke.

“Daresay,” he began lightly, spearing a piece of fruit, “have you met a Kang Taehyun?”

Soobin’s hand, which had just reached for the fruit basket, tightened almost imperceptibly around its edge. The motion was small enough that a less attentive observer might have missed it entirely, but the brief stillness that followed was unmistakable.

His jaw set for the space of a single breath, then he looked up.

“How do you know him?” Soobin asked, his voice calm but no longer idle.

Beomgyu tilted his head, expression bright with unmistakable mischief.

“How do you know him?”

There was a short, measured silence.

Soobin exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound carrying the faintest suggestion of resignation. When he spoke again, his tone had smoothed, though his gaze remained steady on the fairy across from him.

“I will answer if you answer.”

Beomgyu’s smile widened at once, pleased as though the exchange had unfolded exactly as he hoped.

“I will answer if you answer,” he echoed cheerfully.

Soobin regarded him for a moment longer, the earlier question lingering between them like an unfinished line of thought. Whatever answer might have followed seemed, upon reflection, unnecessary.

He reached instead for his fork. “Your breakfast is growing unreasonably neglected,” he said with mild composure.

It was an elegant deflection, and Beomgyu recognized it at once. His eyes narrowed with quiet amusement, but he allowed the matter to rest for now and returned to his meal with a small, knowing hum.

The morning resumed its familiar rhythm soon after. Soobin cleared the table, set the kitchen to rights, and returned to the steady occupations that filled most of his days: notes reviewed with neat precision, botanical specimens turned thoughtfully beneath the light, and a brief trip beyond the house to tend the modest garden beds entrusted to him by the lady of the nearby château.

Beomgyu, left to his own devices, wandered the room with cheerful curiosity. He examined the grain of the wooden table, straightened a stack of papers that did not require straightening, and spent an inordinate amount of time observing how the morning light refracted through his spectacles.

At length, the familiar pull of his own world returned.

“I ought to visit the others,” he announced, already drifting toward the door. “They grow suspicious when I vanish for too long.”

Soobin inclined his head. “Try not to encourage their suspicions further.”

Beomgyu smiled without the slightest hint of remorse and slipped outside in a brief shimmer of gold and green that left the house noticeably quieter in his absence.

In the late afternoon when the sun had made its way to the horizon, Soobin had just finished setting aside his papers when a light but deliberate knock sounded at the front door. Not the window this time. He crossed the room and opened it.

Beomgyu stood on the threshold, bright-eyed and faintly wind-touched, his spectacles sitting neatly upon his nose. In the warm lamplight the lenses caught a soft gleam that lent his already lively expression an air of earnest innocence.

“You have learned the proper place to knock,” Soobin observed.

Beomgyu’s smile turned immediately pleased. “I am a very good student,” he said, leaning forward slightly. “May I come in?”

Soobin stepped aside, the small curve at the corner of his mouth impossible to suppress.

A stool newly placed near the table seemed, at once, to attract Beomgyu’s full attention. His face brightened with quiet delight as he crossed the room and climbed onto it without ceremony, settling himself with a soft, pleased giggle. 

He held the seat at either side with curled fingers, shoulders drawn up in unconscious excitement, his feet swinging lightly above the floor as though the simple act of sitting there afforded him uncommon satisfaction.

He looked at Soobin and smiled.

It was the sort of expression that arrived without calculation and lingered without restraint. Soobin, who had long practiced the art of composure, found himself obliged to look briefly away under the pretense of adjusting the papers on his desk. When he glanced back, Beomgyu was still watching him with open, unguarded warmth.

“Thank you,” the fairy said softly.

Soobin might later have denied it, but in that moment he could have sworn the lenses of the spectacles caught the candlelight in a way that made Beomgyu’s eyes appear almost impossibly bright.

Beomgyu shifted slightly on the stool, clearly pleased with both the furniture and the company.

“If it is not too much to ask,” he added with hopeful politeness, “do you happen to have an apple?”

Soobin paused.

“I am afraid I have not yet collected any from the barn today,” he said after a moment. “My stores are presently insufficient.”

Beomgyu’s shoulders dipped in mild disappointment, though the expression did not linger long.

Soobin watched it happen and, after the briefest consideration, added, “If you are inclined to accompany me, we may remedy the matter directly.”

The change in Beomgyu was immediate.

He straightened at once, nodding with unmistakable enthusiasm, feet kicking once against the stool in bright approval as though the invitation had been precisely what he had hoped for all along.

By the time they reached the barn, the evening air had cooled into something soft and faintly sweet with hay and turned soil. Soobin stepped inside first, already scanning the familiar corners where the old woman usually kept the day’s harvest.

“That is strange,” he murmured more to himself than to Beomgyu.

The crate he expected was not where it ought to have been.

He moved deeper between the stacked bales, expression tightening slightly as he checked one place, then another, with growing suspicion that someone else had seen fit to reorganize the space without warning.

Behind him, Beomgyu—who possessed none of Soobin’s practical urgency—had already made himself comfortable.

He perched atop a hay bale with easy satisfaction, legs swinging lightly as his curious hands roamed wherever they pleased. It was during this idle exploration that his fingers closed around something tucked rather poorly into the straw and drew it out.

In his hand was a crude object, fashioned with unmistakable improvisation from whatever materials the village could spare: a hollowed length of bamboo, its outer surface wrapped in worn cloth darkened by repeated oiling, the faint scent of pressed seeds and woodsmoke clinging stubbornly to it.

Beomgyu turned it this way and that, brows knitting in bright, puzzled interest.

“What is this?” he asked, holding it up for inspection.

Soobin turned and froze at the sight.

For perhaps the first time since Beomgyu had known him, the scholar moved with something very close to undignified speed. He crossed the space in three quick strides and, with remarkable efficiency, relieved the fairy of the object and stuffed it firmly back into the hay bale from which it had emerged.

“Nothing,” Soobin said smoothly.

The smile he produced was technically polite. It was also, Beomgyu noted with immediate fascination, entirely too tight at the corners. The fairy’s head tilted.

His eyes, now sharpened by well-crafted lenses and unrestrained curiosity, lingered on Soobin’s face with growing interest.

“…Nothing?” Beomgyu repeated, clearly unconvinced.

Soobin, already turning back toward the far end of the barn with deliberate composure, adjusted his cuffs as though the matter had been thoroughly and permanently concluded.

“You wished for apples,” he said. “Let us remain focused on that objective.” 

They did, in the end, find the apples—somewhat unceremoniously relocated to a crate near the far wall. Soobin selected a few with habitual care and passed one to Beomgyu, who accepted it with immediate enthusiasm and bit in without ceremony.

He had only just begun chewing when the thoughts, as they so often did with him, came spilling out.

“You know,” Beomgyu said around the mouthful, gaze drifting vaguely upward as though addressing the rafters rather than Soobin, “I have always loved studying. Books, reading… all of that sort.”

Soobin leaned lightly against a nearby post, listening.

“More than half of our community cannot read,” Beomgyu continued, still chewing with very little concern for elegance. “It has never been considered a priority. We require labor simply to live, and I am fortunate enough to give them the excuse of learning, as I am one of the twelve young brains of our realm.”

There was no vanity in the statement—only simple fact, offered plainly.

“I learned through a friend,” he went on, lowering the apple slightly. “A fae. As you know, they are stronger than fairies. Often cleverer too, though not invariably inclined toward kindness.”

His voice softened just a fraction.

“He left our realm a long time ago. I miss him still.”

For a brief moment, the bright restlessness in Beomgyu’s expression dimmed into something quieter. Then, just as quickly, it returned, sunlight breaking through cloud.

“Since then, I collect whatever books travelers abandon—intentionally or otherwise.” He took another cheerful bite of apple and looked back at Soobin with unguarded warmth. “I am very happy to have met you. It is not every day one is permitted to drown in such plentiful books.”

Soobin did not answer at once.

Something in his expression had gentled, though he would likely have denied it if asked. He folded his arms loosely and regarded the fairy—this bright, earnest creature who spoke of loss and delight in the same breath—with thoughtful quiet.

“At your present rate,” Soobin said mildly at last, “you may exhaust my entire library before the season turns.”

“Is that permission?”

Soobin’s study received them in its usual quiet way, lamplight pooled soft and obedient across the desk. Dust hung in the air like it had nowhere better to be.

Beomgyu, however, did not share the room’s composure.

He stood there with the green book already in his hands — that green book — his fingers curled possessively around the worn spine, glasses slipping a little down the slope of his nose. His smile was bright in a way that suggested either genuine curiosity or imminent disaster.

“So,” he said lightly, lifting the book a fraction higher, tone dipped in deliberate innocence, “is it time for me to learn about the”—he tilted his head, eyes gleaming—“forbidden book?” The word forbidden arrived soaked in sarcasm.

Soobin exhaled. It was not quite a sigh of defeat, but it was certainly negotiating with one.

He stepped closer and, with practiced gentleness, plucked the book from Beomgyu’s hands. Their fingers brushed — briefly, accidentally — and Soobin very carefully did not react.

“You talk too much for someone who hasn’t even read the first page,” he murmured. Beomgyu only smiled wider.

Soobin set the book on the desk and opened it with the slow resignation of a man who knew fate had already signed the paperwork. The pages whispered as they turned, diagrams and dense script revealed beneath the lamplight.

Behind him came the soft scrape of wood.

Soobin glanced sideways just in time to see Beomgyu dragging his little stool across the floor with great determination and absolutely no subtlety. The fairy planted himself beside Soobin with a pleased little huff, kicking his feet once before settling.

Soobin, after the briefest pause, shifted his chair slightly — just enough. Just enough for Beomgyu to see better.

Beomgyu’s shoulders lifted a little, pleased in that quiet, unconscious way of his, hands curling on the edge of the desk as he leaned forward. His glasses caught the lamplight; his eyes, unfortunately, caught Soobin’s attention. 

A mistake. A repeated one.

“So,” Beomgyu said, voice softer now, peering down at the open spread with almost scholarly focus. “Where do we begin, Professor?”

There was something deeply unfair about the way he asked it — earnest and teasing in the same breath.

Soobin rested one hand on the page, finger tapping lightly beside the first diagram.

“We begin,” he said evenly, “with you promising not to say anything outrageous for at least five minutes.”

Beomgyu turned his head slowly. His smile was small, dangerous, parkling in a way that suggested the promise was already doomed.

“…I can try,” he said.

Soobin taught the way careful men do—precisely, patiently, and with the quiet air of someone who very much wished the subject were less… animated beside him.

The green book lay open between them like a polite scandal.

“This,” Soobin said, voice level as his finger rested beside the first illustration, “is the primary structure responsible for reproduction.”

Beomgyu leaned in immediately, glasses sliding further down his nose, eyes bright with the dangerous enthusiasm of someone who had just discovered a new category of curiosity. Soobin found, to his scholarly distress, that knowledge was not the only thing that possessed exquisite curves; he shook his head lightly and returned his eyes to the text with almost devotional urgency.

“Oh,” he breathed, far too delighted for Soobin’s peace of mind. “It looks… simpler than I expected.”

Soobin’s mouth twitched before he could stop it.

“Appearances,” he said dryly, “are famously unreliable.”

He turned the page with deliberate calm, the paper whispering under his fingers.

“The external anatomy serves several functions,” he continued, slipping smoothly into the cadence of a lecturer who had long ago learned that composure was a survival skill. “Protection, sensation, and—under the appropriate biological conditions—reproduction.”

Beomgyu nodded with exaggerated seriousness, though his feet had begun their small, restless swinging beneath the stool.

“And this part?” Beomgyu asked, pointing—not inaccurately, which was perhaps the most alarming development of the evening.

Soobin followed the gesture, then carefully adjusted Beomgyu’s finger half an inch to the left.

“That is adjacent,” he corrected. “This is the structure you mean. Its primary function is sensory. Highly sensitive tissue, densely supplied with nerve endings.”

Beomgyu’s eyebrows lifted.

“…That seems inefficient,” he murmured. Soobin glanced at him.

“In what way?”

Beomgyu tilted his head, expression bright with that soft, wandering curiosity of his.

“Well,” he said, perfectly sincere, “if something is that sensitive, wouldn’t it make people… distracted?”

For one brief, traitorous moment, Soobin had no immediate academic response. He cleared his throat.

“Biology,” he said with careful neutrality, “is not particularly concerned with productivity.”

Beomgyu hummed thoughtfully, clearly delighted by this answer. Soobin pressed on.

“The internal systems,” he continued, turning another page, “coordinate through hormonal signaling. These regulate development, maturation, and reproductive capability. None of this occurs randomly. The body is, in its own way, very orderly.”

Beomgyu leaned closer still, shoulder just barely brushing Soobin’s sleeve — an incidental contact that Soobin pretended, with great discipline, not to notice.

“Orderly,” Beomgyu repeated softly. “I like that.”

His gaze moved slowly across the diagrams, and for once, the teasing quieted into something more genuine — wonder, perhaps, or the simple hunger of someone who had spent too long with too few books. After a moment, he glanced sideways.

“You must have studied this for a very long time.”

Soobin’s expression softened a fraction — brief, unguarded. “Long enough,” he mumbled.

Beomgyu smiled at that, small and pleased, hands curling lightly on the edge of the desk as his feet resumed their gentle swinging.

“Well,” he declared, settling in with bright determination, “don’t stop now, Professor. I’m only just beginning to be properly educated.” And, despite himself, Soobin turned the next page.

Soobin paused only briefly before continuing, though this time his fingers did not immediately turn the page.

“There is,” he said carefully, “a limitation to what I can state with certainty.”

Beomgyu perked up at once, chin lifting from where it hovered too close to the book.

“Oh?”

Soobin folded his hands lightly atop the desk, the picture of composed scholarship.

“Most formal anatomical studies,” he explained, “have been conducted on humans and closely related species. As for fairies…” His gaze flicked, briefly and thoughtfully, toward Beomgyu. “I am not aware of any comprehensive work that has been formally published.”

Beomgyu’s eyes widened behind his glasses, not offended in the slightest — only intrigued.

“No one’s studied us properly?” he said, sounding almost pleased by the scandal of it.

“Not in any rigorously documented way,” Soobin replied. “At least, none that has passed through academic review.”

Beomgyu leaned back on his stool, swinging one foot slowly.

“That feels like a terrible oversight.”

“So it is,” Soobin said mildly, and turned the page where the diagrams grew more complex.

“Now,” he continued, slipping fully back into lecture mode, “we move from structure to function. Reproductive systems serve two broad biological roles: individual regulation and species propagation.”

Beomgyu blinked. “…That sounded important.”

“It is,” Soobin said.

His finger rested beside a section of text. “On the level of the individual, these organs are also involved in what is termed auto-stimulatory behavior.”

Beomgyu tilted his head. “Auto…?”

“Masturbation,” Soobin said plainly.

There was a brief, very noticeable pause. Not from Soobin, but from Beomgyu.

“Oh,” Beomgyu said slowly, interest sharpening at once. “Oh.”

Soobin, who had long ago mastered the art of continuing through academic discomfort, pressed forward with admirable dignity.

“It is a naturally observed behavior across many species,” he explained. “Primarily associated with tension release, hormonal regulation, and sensory exploration. In humans, it is neither abnormal nor inherently harmful when practiced in moderation.”

Beomgyu’s feet had stopped swinging.

“…People just… do that?” he asked, voice threaded with fascinated disbelief.

“Yes.”

“…On purpose?”

“Yes, Beomgyu.”

The fairy leaned forward again, glasses slipping lower as his eyes flicked rapidly across the page.

“And this is all… documented?”

“Extensively.”

Beomgyu made a small, impressed sound.

“Well, scholars truly are thorough.”

Soobin chose, with great wisdom, not to respond to that. He turned another page.

“The second role of the reproductive system,” he said, voice steady, “is intercourse — the cooperative biological process between two individuals that allows for genetic exchange and potential conception.”

Beomgyu’s head lifted again, curiosity now very much alive and well.

“That one I’ve heard about,” he admitted, almost sheepish. Then, brightening: “But no one ever explained the mechanics properly.”

Soobin exhaled quietly through his nose — the closest he ever came to visible resignation.

“Then we will proceed properly,”

He adjusted the book so both of them could see more clearly, and without fuss, began outlining the physiological coordination involved — hormones, timing, compatibility, the careful choreography of biological systems working in tandem.

Beomgyu listened with surprising focus, the earlier mischief softened into something more sincere — though the spark of amusement never quite left his eyes.

After a moment, he murmured thoughtfully, almost to himself:

“…Biology is much busier than I expected.”

Soobin, despite everything, allowed the smallest ghost of a smile.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “It usually is.”

Beomgyu’s expression lit with sudden recollection, the thought arriving so vividly it seemed almost to pull him forward where he sat.

“Oh— right. You said you would study me.” He leaned closer across the desk, eyes bright with earnest mischief. “Well, I did ask you to… so how about you write a reproductive book about fairies based on me?”

If composure were a physical object, Soobin felt his slip several inches out of place.

He did not reach for his face, though the urge was immediate and sincere. Instead, his hands tightened quietly where they rested, fingers pressing into the wood of the chair with the strained patience of a man who had spent most of his life being sensible and was now being thoroughly tested for it. Warmth crept up the back of his neck in slow, traitorous increments.

Across from him, Beomgyu’s confidence wavered.

“…Sorry,” he murmured, shoulders drawing in a fraction, the apology softer than his usual brightness.

That, more than the request itself, steadied something in Soobin.

He exhaled through his nose and turned his head, the line of his mouth settling into something that was almost, but not quite, composed.

“You,” he said, voice quiet with restrained disbelief, “will be the death of me.”

Beomgyu blinked, then—inevitably—smiled, the expression open and warm in a way that made irritation exceedingly difficult to maintain. He rocked lightly on the stool, hands curling against its edges, curiosity already beginning to bloom again.

“Well,” he said, with cheerful practicality, “if I am to contribute to academic history, I should do it properly.”

Soobin closed his eyes for the briefest moment, as though silently consulting every dignified mentor he had ever known. When he opened them again, the scholar in him had, with visible effort, resumed command.

He drew a fresh sheet of parchment toward himself.

“If any observations are to be made,” he said with deliberate calm, “they will be conducted with appropriate scholarly discipline.”

Beomgyu straightened at once, posture turning almost ceremoniously attentive.

“Of course,” he replied, bright and immediate.

A small pause followed — not heavy, but curious.

Then, leaning just slightly closer, eyes shining behind his lenses, he asked with disarming sincerity,

“…What do I do first?”

Soobin released a slow breath he had not realized he’d been holding, his fingers tightening once against the carved arm of his chair before he forced them to relax. The room, which only moments ago had felt uncomfortably warm, seemed to settle again into its familiar quiet.

Beomgyu tilted his head, watching him with open curiosity.

“Do we need to go to your academy for this?” he asked. “Because I cannot leave my realm for very long, and it is quite nearby, but still—”

“I am not in the academy,” Soobin said.

The words were mild in tone, yet they altered the air between them at once.

Beomgyu’s expression fell with unguarded immediacy. “You’re not? Why?”

For a moment Soobin did not answer. He reached instead for the edge of the parchment, aligning it with unnecessary care, as though the straightness of the page might lend order to the past. When he finally spoke, his voice carried that same measured calm he used when discussing matters long since decided.

“I was dismissed,” he said. “Formally and rather publicly.”

Beomgyu’s brows drew together. “For what?”

“For plagiarism,” Soobin replied.

The word sat between them with a faint, unpleasant weight.

Beomgyu stared at him. “You?” The disbelief in his voice was almost indignant. “You would never—”

“No,” Soobin said quietly, and there was neither bitterness nor self-pity in it, only a tired clarity. “I would not.”

He folded his hands loosely before him.

“It was a convenient accusation,” he continued. “The sort that requires very little proof when the right person is making it.” His mouth curved faintly, though there was no real humor in the expression. “The young man in question possessed… stronger patronage than I did.”

Understanding, slow but certain, moved across Beomgyu’s face.

“…Nepotism,” the fairy said, the unfamiliar word shaped carefully.

“So it is called in more polite circles,” Soobin replied.

He did not elaborate immediately. Instead he leaned back slightly in his chair, gaze drifting—not distant, but reflective, like a man reviewing a text he had already memorized.

“My professors objected,” he said after a moment. “Several of them quite vigorously. There were letters, inquiries, a brief and rather dignified protest.” His fingers tapped once against the wood, light and restrained. “It made no difference.”

Beomgyu’s mouth had parted, the earlier brightness in him dimmed by something softer, more troubled.

“But… if everyone knew—”

“In this world,” Soobin said gently, “knowledge and consequence are not always close companions.”

The words were delivered without drama, and perhaps for that reason they carried more weight.

He glanced back at Beomgyu then, expression composed, almost reassuring.

“It is an inconvenience I have already learned to live with.”

Beomgyu did not look convinced.

His shoulders had drawn in slightly, hands curling against the edge of the stool, the easy buoyancy that so often followed him now tempered by a quiet, thoughtful concern that lingered in his eyes.

Soobin observed the change in him for a moment longer, then let the matter rest where it lay. There were, he had learned, certain injuries that did not benefit from further handling.

“Anyway,” he said, his tone returning to its usual quiet steadiness, “are you quite certain you wish to be studied in that manner?”

Beomgyu blinked.

Soobin’s gaze remained gentle but searching, the look of a man accustomed to examining not only texts but the intentions behind them.

“Or,” he continued, “do you merely like the idea of being observed—of serving as a muse—without full regard for the particular subject under discussion?”

The question was not unkind. If anything, it was delivered with a careful courtesy that suggested he would accept either answer without judgment.

Beomgyu’s lips parted slightly, the earlier confidence in his posture wavering just enough to be noticed by anyone who had been watching him closely—which, unfortunately for the fairy, Soobin always was.

There was no censure in Soobin’s expression, only patient curiosity, his hands folded neatly before him as though he were prepared to wait as long as necessary for an honest reply.

Beomgyu found, to his mild horror, that no immediate answer presented itself.

For once, the ready brightness of his expression faltered. His fingers, which had been idly curled around the edge of the stool, loosened by degrees, and he stared somewhere just past Soobin’s shoulder as though the proper words might be written there if he only looked hard enough.

Soobin, who missed very little, did not press him. He drew a slow breath instead and settled more firmly into his chair, one hand coming to rest along the carved arm as though to anchor the conversation in calmer ground.

“You do understand,” he said gently, “that any study of this kind—if it were to be done with proper thoroughness—would require a degree of… personal inconvenience.”

The delicacy of his phrasing did very little to soften the meaning.

Beomgyu’s ears pinked.

Soobin continued with the composed patience of a lecturer who had long ago learned that clarity was kinder than evasion. “In the academies, reproductive studies are conducted through careful observation, comparative anatomy, and, where permitted, direct physiological examination. It is not material treated lightly, nor is it undertaken without the subject’s full and informed consent.”

His gaze flicked briefly toward Beomgyu—not stern, but unmistakably serious.

“At most,” he went on, voice even, “we might confine ourselves to external observation and general biological inference, should you still wish to proceed. That would be the least… intrusive approach available.”

He paused then, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly against the arm of the chair.

There was, despite the academic neatness of his words, a faint undercurrent in his tone—something cautious, almost discouraging, as though a wiser part of him hoped the matter might yet be allowed to rest.

“I would not recommend undertaking it lightly,” Soobin finished quietly. “Curiosity is a fine thing, Beomgyu. Discomfort, however, is rarely improved by discovering too late what one has agreed to.”

His eyes softened a fraction.

“But the decision, as always, would be yours.”

A soft sigh slipped from the fairy, and with it went much of the brightness that ordinarily animated him. His wings, so often lively with small unconscious motion, drooped in quiet sympathy with his shoulders as he folded his arms upon the desk and rested his head there. From that lowered perch he looked at Soobin—not accusingly, not even with true disappointment, but with the subdued uncertainty of someone who had wandered farther into unfamiliar ground than he had intended.

Soobin, for his part, gave him the courtesy of space.

He busied his hands with the quill before him, turning it once between his fingers, trimming an imaginary imperfection along the nib. His gaze did lift now and then, but only in brief, careful glances from the corner of his eye, the manner of a man who wished to observe without intruding. It was, he realized with some quiet dismay, the first time he had ever seen Beomgyu so visibly subdued.

The sight did not sit easily with him.

He cleared his throat lightly. “You may wish to set your spectacles aside,” he said, tone mild. “That position is not kind to the frame.”

Beomgyu obeyed at once, though even that small compliance was uncharacteristically slow. He slid the glasses from his nose and placed them carefully on the desk, movements lacking their usual spring.

Soobin watched a moment longer than he meant to.

“There are other avenues of study,” he offered after a pause, his voice deliberately gentle. “We need not confine ourselves to reproductive anatomy. A general physiological and behavioral record would be of far greater academic value, in any case.”

Beomgyu’s lips pursed as he considered this, but the suggestion did not quite restore his earlier light. The melancholy lingered about him like a thin cloud.

Soobin’s fingers tightened once around the quill before he set it down.

“Wait here a moment,” he said.

He rose without further explanation and disappeared toward the kitchen. The quiet he left behind was brief but noticeable, broken only by the faint settling of the house and the distant whisper of evening wind against the shutters.

When he returned, he carried a freshly washed apple, still beaded faintly with water. He set it within easy reach of Beomgyu with a care that bordered on deliberate casualness.

“Here,” he said simply.

Beomgyu accepted it with a small, polite smile that did not quite reach his eyes. He turned the fruit slowly in his hands, thumb tracing the smooth curve of the skin, but the earlier sparkle remained muted. Even his wings gave only the faintest stir.

Soobin pretended, with limited success, not to notice how the sight unsettled him.

Beomgyu shifted where he sat, then suddenly stilled, his brows drawing together in mild surprise. A faint shimmer ran along the delicate span of his wings, as though some unseen current had passed through them. When he moved again, a fine dust of gold slipped loose and scattered softly across the floorboards.

“I… I should go,” he said, a touch breathless, already halfway to his feet.

Before Soobin could meaningfully respond, the fairy had hurried toward the door with the light, swift steps that always seemed just shy of sound. In his wake, faint golden footprints appeared and vanished in gentle succession upon the wood—there and gone, like something the eye might later doubt it had seen at all.

Soobin noticed, but said nothing.

The door closed, the night settled, and the house returned to its ordinary quiet. Yet sleep did not come easily. Soobin turned once, then again beneath the covers, his thoughts proving far less obedient than his body. Each time he shut his eyes, he found himself recalling small, unnecessary details—the tilt of Beomgyu’s head, the way his voice softened when he grew uncertain, the strange and disquieting absence his departure had left behind.

By morning, he told himself the feeling would pass. However, it did not. 

A day went by, then another.

By the third, concern had rooted itself too firmly to ignore. Beomgyu was many things—curious, impulsive, distractible—but he was not forgetful of promises, nor careless of routine. His absence rang wrong in a way Soobin could neither quantify nor dismiss.

Near dusk, he found his feet carrying him back to the meadow where they had first met.

The grass bowed in the evening wind. The birds thinned with the falling light. Soobin waited longer than he meant to, hands folded behind his back in a posture of studied patience that fooled no one, least of all himself.

No one came.

When at last the chill deepened enough to drive him home, the house greeted him with the same unbroken stillness. No tap at the window. No scatter of gold upon the floorboards. Nothing.

The cold had settled sharply by nightfall. Soobin knelt before the hearth to coax the fire to life, sleeves pushed carelessly to his forearms, attention fixed on the small, stubborn flame. It was only after several minutes that he became aware—irritatingly, inconveniently—of his own body’s response to the chill.

He exhaled through his nose, more weary than embarrassed.

It had been some time since he had been forced to reckon with such mundane discomfort. Discipline had always come easily to him; routine, more so. Yet the past weeks had unsettled his habits in ways he had not fully acknowledged until now.

Soobin leaned back in his chair, lifting one hand with studied care, as though he might yet persuade himself the motion was purely practical. His gaze remained fixed upon the slow, hypnotic movement of the fire, but composure, once so reliable, had begun to fray in ways he could neither ignore nor fully master.

Against his better judgment, memory returned with unwelcome clarity: a smaller figure, bright and heedless of the effect he carried with him, perched lightly upon the edge of a stool. Shoulders drawn in, wrists curled with unconscious grace. 

The line of those hips — subtle, yes, but unmistakably there — had caught Soobin’s attention more than once, though each time he had forced himself back to safer things: parchment, ink, the quiet discipline of scholarship.

Yet solitude was an unkind accomplice to restraint.

His fingers shifted where they rested, the movement slow enough to feign absentmindedness, though the tightening in his chest betrayed him. He drew in a measured breath, willing the familiar rhythm of reason to steady him. It did not. 

The remembered tilt of Beomgyu’s spine, the careless sway with which he occupied space, returned with the precision of a scholar’s recall and none of its comfort.

Soobin’s jaw set.

The room felt warmer than the modest fire could justify, the silence pressing too closely about his ears. He told himself — firmly, repeatedly — that it was nothing more than observation carried too far by an overworked mind. The lie did not survive long under scrutiny.

He settled back, spine pressed firm against the chair, one hand resting in studied stillness before drifting, with the air of a man resigning himself to an unavoidable truth, beneath the loosened line of his garments. The movement possessed neither haste nor clumsiness; it was, if anything, excessively composed — which rendered its purpose all the more undeniable.

Discipline had always been his strength.

‘There was,’ he reflected grimly, ‘no proper training for this.’

The remembered grace of Beomgyu’s form returned with treacherous clarity: the slender line of waist, the careless elegance of posture, that unstudied ease with which he occupied space. Thought and sensation, once so dutifully separated, now conspired without restraint.

A faint tremor passed through him as his hand shifted with quieter purpose, answering at last the persistent demand he had so stubbornly resisted. His shoulders drew taut, then eased; breath left him in low, uneven measures he could no longer quite smooth away. The thought of the fairy’s slender thighs — vivid, unwelcome, and far too compelling — surged forward with disarming force.

“Ridiculous,” he murmured, though the word lacked conviction.

His movements grew more insistent despite himself, each subtle adjustment guided now by a heat that reason had plainly failed to govern. The tension wound tighter, breath shortening, control thinning to a fragile thread —

—and then it gave way.

A sharp shudder ran through him, leaving him momentarily rigid before the strain dissolved into trembling stillness, breath escaping in a low, unsteady exhale.

At that precise and thoroughly unfortunate moment, the door flew open.

Soobin’s heart lurched violently. He jerked upright, scrambling for what dignity could still be salvaged, every trace of his hard-won composure collapsing at once.

Beomgyu stood frozen in the doorway, eyes wide, mouth parted in startled horror.

“Oh—! S-sorry—!”

The door slammed shut again with impressive speed as silence crashed back into the room.

Soobin remained motionless for one mortifying second before swearing under his breath, hastily straightening his clothes, zipping up his pants, and wiping his hands against the armrest with sharp, irritated movements.

Then he pushed to his feet and strode after the retreating fairy, curses low on his tongue and something far more dangerous than embarrassment burning steadily beneath them.

Soobin did not catch him.

The night air swallowed the soft rush of wings before he had taken more than a few strides beyond the threshold, and the quiet that followed was of a particularly merciless kind. He stood there a moment longer than dignity allowed, breath still uneven, hand half-lifted as though the fairy might yet reappear out of sheer contrition.

Yet, he did not.

A sharp sound escaped Soobin — something dangerously close to a laugh and entirely devoid of humor. He dragged a hand down his face, fingers pressing briefly at his brow as though he might physically smooth the disorder from his thoughts.

“Excellent,” he muttered under his breath. “Truly exemplary conduct.”

The words were dry enough to parch the air and so, he began to pace.

It was not the measured, thoughtful pacing of a scholar at work, but something far less composed — long strides across the floor, a restless turn at the hearth, another sharp pivot toward the door as though the sheer force of his agitation might summon the offending fairy back into existence.

Mortification burned hot beneath his skin, but it was not alone. Something far more inconvenient had taken root alongside it — a tight, unsettled pull beneath his ribs that refused to be dismissed.

He exhaled sharply through his nose.

“You have entirely lost your mind,” he informed himself, with the grave disappointment of a man cataloguing his own academic decline.

The house, characteristically, offered no defense.

His fingers curled briefly at his sides, then flexed again, as though they did not quite know what to do with their sudden uselessness. He cast one final look toward the firmly closed door, jaw tightening despite his better judgment.

Of all the undignified, ill-timed—

Soobin broke off with a low, frustrated sound and turned away at last, scrubbing a hand through his hair with more force than strictly necessary. Sleep, he suspected, would not be making an appearance that night. Not with his thoughts in their present state, and certainly not with the vivid memory of wide golden eyes now burned far too clearly into his mind.

He exhaled once more, slower this time, though the tension stubbornly remained.

“Yes,” he muttered darkly to the empty room, “this will be a problem.”

‘And the most irritating part,’ he reflected grimly, ‘was this is most plausibly only the beginning.’

Beomgyu returned the following evening.

Soobin knew it before the knock had properly settled into the wood. There was, by now, a particular quality to the fairy’s presence — something bright and lightly restless, like sunlight that refused to remain politely outside the window.

He opened the door with what he hoped was composure.

Beomgyu stood on the step, spectacles slightly askew upon his nose, hands clasped behind his back in a posture that aimed for cheerfulness and achieved something nearer to nervous restraint. His wings shifted once, a small, betraying flutter.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Soobin inclined his head with careful politeness. “You have been absent.”

Beomgyu’s smile flickered, then returned, a touch too quick to be entirely natural. “Ah… yes. About that.”

He rocked once on his heels, then forward again, as though uncertain where to settle his weight.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and though the words were light, there was an unusual softness beneath them. “I didn’t mean to disappear like that. The timing was…” His mouth pressed briefly to one side. “…not ideal.”

Soobin, to his credit, did not so much as blink.

“Emergencies seldom are,” he replied evenly, though his grip on the edge of the door tightened by a measurable degree.

Beomgyu nodded quickly, relief flashing across his face at the absence of open reproach.

“There was a situation back home,” he continued, a little more hurried now, as if eager to smooth the space between them. “Something that needed handling right away. I would’ve come sooner, but…” He trailed off, then brightened with visible effort. “Well. I’m here now.”

Soobin stepped aside at last, the gesture gentlemanly and precise. “You may come in.”

Beomgyu slipped past him with familiar lightness, though there was a faint edge to his movements tonight — a restless energy that had not been present before. He hovered near the study table, fingers brushing once along its edge, then twice, as though he could not quite keep still.

Soobin noticed.

Of course he noticed.

Scholars, after all, were trained observers, and Beomgyu — for all his attempts at brightness — was behaving very much like a creature whose thoughts were running several steps ahead of his manners.

“You seem,” Soobin said carefully, removing his gloves with unnecessary precision, “unusually… animated this evening.”

Beomgyu’s head snapped up a fraction too quickly.

“Do I?”

“Yes.”

The fairy laughed — bright, a touch breathless. “I’m just in a good mood.”

‘It was not a convincing performance.’ Soobin thought grimly.

Silence stretched — thinner now, threaded with something neither of them was quite willing to name.

Then, with the air of someone attempting casual conversation and missing the mark by a respectable margin, Beomgyu cleared his throat and said, almost too brightly—

“So… about that reproductive book—”

Soobin closed his eyes briefly, as though summoning the last surviving fragments of his patience.

He drew a measured breath and folded his hands behind his back, the picture of composure save for the faint stiffness in his shoulders.

“Before we proceed any further,” he said, voice even, “I believe an apology is in order.”

Beomgyu blinked, somewhat perplexed.

“What you witnessed last evening,” he continued, each word selected with painful care, “was… not a circumstance I had intended for an audience. Least of all yours.”

A flush crept, traitorously, along the back of his neck.

“I regret the impropriety.”

For once, Beomgyu did not answer immediately. Then he shook his head quickly, wings giving a small, agitated flutter.

“No, no — I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said, words tumbling out with unusual haste. “I shouldn’t have barged in like that. I don’t usually do that. I mean—” He faltered, cheeks warming. “Not… without knocking properly.”

Soobin’s mouth pressed thin, though some of the tension in his posture eased by a fraction.

“I had gathered as much.”

A brief, awkward quiet settled between them.

Soobin cleared his throat softly. “If I may ask… what possessed you to enter with such urgency?”

Beomgyu hesitated, his fingers curled against the edge of the table, the way his gaze slipped momentarily to the side before returning with forced brightness.

“I needed your opinion on something,” he said. “Right then. Immediately.”

There was a small, sheepish curve to his mouth that Soobin didn’t fail to see.

“But don’t worry,” he added quickly, waving a hand as if to dismiss the whole affair, “it’s all sorted now.”

Soobin studied him for a long second — not rudely, but with the quiet thoroughness of a man accustomed to noticing what others missed. At length, he inclined his head.

“Very well.”

Then, more gently than before, “Nevertheless… I, too, owe you an apology. My… loss of composure was hardly scholarly.”

That finally coaxed a faint, relieved smile from Beomgyu.

“Well,” the fairy said, attempting lightness, though a strange restlessness still clung to him, “you’re only human.”

Soobin exhaled slowly “That,” he murmured, “is becoming increasingly apparent.” And despite himself — very slightly — his gaze lingered on Beomgyu a moment too long.

Soon enough, their lesson had taken its course.

Beomgyu leaned nearer at one point, ostensibly to examine a marginal note, and his shoulder brushed Soobin’s with such innocent ease that the contact might have passed unnoticed on any other evening. 

Soobin merely shifted the book a little toward him and continued reading aloud in the same even tone, though the warmth that lingered at his sleeve was curiously persistent.

 It happened again not long after — a light collision of knees beneath the desk, followed by the faint drag of fabric when Beomgyu adjusted his seat. None of it was overt; all of it was, in its own way, entirely too noticeable.

By the time the fairy leaned in a third time, Soobin’s voice had begun to slow, the careful cadence of his explanation thinning into something more distracted. He read another line, closed the book halfway, and then at last looked properly at the boy beside him.

“Sit up straight for a moment,” he said, the request gentle but unmistakably deliberate.

Beomgyu blinked in mild confusion, though he obeyed at once, drawing himself upright with the earnest compliance of someone who had never yet learned to refuse Soobin anything. His hands folded loosely in his lap, wings giving a small, restless flick behind him.

Soobin studied him in silence for a brief moment before lifting his hand. “May I?” he asked. “Your forehead.”

The fairy nodded without hesitation. “You can.”

The instant Soobin’s palm met his skin, he drew back as though the contact had scorched him.

“You’re burning,” he said, the quiet composure in his voice tightening at the edges. “Do you feel unwell? Dizzy, perhaps?”

Beomgyu’s brows knit as he considered the question with genuine care. After a moment he shook his head, though the movement was slower than usual, as if even that small effort required thought.

“I don’t think so…”

Soobin did not appear convinced. His gaze shifted, sharp and analytical now, toward the wings half-curved behind the fairy’s back. They were brighter than he had ever seen them — not merely luminous in their usual gentle fashion, but visibly radiant, the green-gold shimmer deepening and brightening in soft, irregular pulses.

“…Does this happen often?” Soobin asked, his tone carefully neutral. “Your wings behaving in this manner. And the fever.”

For the first time since arriving that evening, Beomgyu fell noticeably quiet.

Color crept slowly up his neck and into his cheeks, and his fingers tightened in the hem of his skirt as though the fabric alone might steady him. When he finally spoke, his voice had dropped to something small and reluctant.

“I think…” He hesitated, then forced the words out in a rush. “I think I’m going into heat.”

Soobin went very still. One hand rose unconsciously to his mouth, thumb pressing lightly against his lower lip in a gesture that betrayed more tension than he would have preferred to show.

 He had read about such things, of course — academically, distantly — but theory had never prepared him for the reality of it unfolding, flushed and fidgeting, scarcely two feet away.

“…Heat,” he repeated carefully.

Beomgyu nodded, clearly embarrassed now, his wings giving an uneven flutter that stirred the papers on the desk. A fine sheen of perspiration had begun to gather at his temples, and his breathing, though still controlled, had grown subtly uneven.

“It’s similar to a wolf’s heat,” the fairy explained, words tumbling together in his haste. “Just… in fairy form. I think. Sort of.”

Soobin’s gaze sharpened. Only now did he fully register the way Beomgyu’s thighs pressed together, the small, restless shifts of his posture, the faint tension threading through his shoulders as though he were attempting — unsuccessfully — to master some growing internal discomfort.

“What do you usually do,” Soobin asked slowly, “when this occurs?”

Beomgyu made a soft, distressed sound and promptly buried his face in his hands.

“I-I have to go home,” he admitted, voice muffled through his fingers. “But I can’t go back like this. It’ll attract the others, and that’s…” His shoulders hunched further. “That’s really not ideal.”

Soobin exhaled slowly through his nose and rose from his chair. He began to pace the length of the room with measured steps, every inch the composed scholar to any casual observer. Yet there was a new tightness about his mouth, a faint crease between his brows that had not been there before. 

This was no longer a matter of idle curiosity or gentle instruction; it was, he was beginning to suspect, a situation that required very careful handling.

And the difficulty of it lay not only in the fairy’s condition.

The room had scarcely settled into its strained quiet when Beomgyu’s gaze, wandering in restless distraction, abruptly fixed on Soobin with unusual intensity.

“You’re…” the fairy blurted, one slender finger lifting in vague but unmistakable accusation.

Soobin followed the gesture and, in one swift, mortifying instant, understood.

Heat rose sharply along his collar. Without a word he reached for the hem of his sweater and tugged it loose over the front of his trousers, the movement practiced in its composure despite the haste beneath it.

“Pay it no mind,” he said, far more evenly than he felt. “It is of no consequence.”

Beomgyu, to his credit, did not press — though the tips of his ears had gone suspiciously pink.

Soobin cleared his throat softly and forced his attention back to the matter at hand, the steadiness of the scholar reasserting itself by sheer discipline. “Would nesting,” he asked, “offer any relief?”

The fairy nodded at once, relief flickering plainly across his flushed features.

Soobin moved with brisk efficiency toward the bed, gathering pillows with an urgency he would later pretend was purely practical. One by one he arranged them into a careful, softened hollow, adjusting the angles with the meticulous air of a man who preferred order even in crisis. By the time he stepped back, the bed bore little resemblance to its former austerity.

Beomgyu approached more slowly, wings drooping slightly with fatigue. He hovered at the bedside for a moment, then glanced back with a small, hesitant expression.

“…Is it alright if I have a sweater?” he asked. “Something that smells like you.”

Soobin was already turning toward the wardrobe. “Of course. I am certain there is—”

“Actually,” Beomgyu added, voice smaller now but undeniably hopeful, “may I have the one you’re wearing?”

Soobin paused, for the briefest moment, his composure threatened to fracture.

“The scent is woody,” the fairy continued, shoulders drawing in with shy apology. “It would help. I’m sorry — I know it’s a troublesome request.”

Troublesome was not the word Soobin would have chosen.

Nevertheless, he inclined his head once, as though the matter were perfectly ordinary, and drew the sweater up and over his shoulders in one smooth motion. Left in only his untucked collared shirt, he folded the garment once before placing it carefully atop the newly made nest.

“If it eases your discomfort,” he said quietly, “then it is no trouble at all.”

To further occupy his hands — and perhaps his thoughts — he reached for the small glass bottle on his desk and lightly misted two of the outer pillows. The familiar woody fragrance deepened the air almost at once.

Beomgyu settled into the nest with visible relief, curling instinctively into the softness. His wings gave a faint, shivery flutter before relaxing at last against the bedding, and for the first time that evening, some of the tight strain left his expression.

Soobin did not allow himself to watch for long.

With deliberate calm he gathered a blanket and spare pillow from the foot of the bed and made for the sitting room, where the narrow sofa awaited with all the hospitality of a wooden plank. He arranged himself upon it with careful resignation, long limbs folding in a manner that was, at best, an approximation of comfort.

Sleep, however, did not come.

Beyond the thin wall, there was the faintest rustle of fabric, the soft shift of bedding — nothing improper, nothing he could reasonably object to — and yet each small sound seemed to arrive sharpened at the edge of his awareness.

Soobin turned once against the sofa cushions. Then again. And again. And again. And again. 

His jaw tightened as his thoughts, against firm instruction, strayed toward the image of Beomgyu curled in his bed — flushed, warm, wrapped in borrowed scent and softened linen. He exhaled slowly through his nose, pressing the heel of his hand briefly against his brow as though the gesture alone might restore order to his mind.

“Compose yourself,” he muttered under his breath. The command, regrettably, went only partially obeyed.

He did not mean to rise.

One moment Soobin sat rigid upon the narrow sofa, every thought disciplined into stillness; the next he was on his feet, already halfway across the room, drawn by a concern he would later insist was purely clinical. The house had grown too quiet — not peaceful, but watchful, the kind of silence that pressed at the edges of one’s composure.

He told himself he was merely ensuring the fairy’s condition had not worsened. The lie was tidy. It was also transparent.

By the time he reached the bedroom door, his hand had already lifted — though it hovered there, suspended, fingers curled faintly as though uncertain of their own intention. He hesitated. Professional distance, he reminded himself firmly, had thus far preserved what little order remained in this evening.

He ought to return to the sofa, yet he did not.

His knuckles brushed the wood — not quite a knock, more the ghost of one — and at that precise, unfortunate moment, the door swung inward.

They startled in perfect, mirrored shock.

Beomgyu stood just beyond the threshold, clearly having meant to step out. Whatever words had been forming on his lips dissolved at once. He looked… worse. There was no scholarly detachment that could soften the observation. His skin held a visible flush, a fine sheen of perspiration at his temples, and his wings gave a faint, restless tremor behind him, their glow brighter — far brighter — than before.

For a suspended second, neither of them spoke.

Then Soobin, whose composure had weathered many academic crises but was presently under siege, said — far too quickly:

“Should I check your temperature?”

The moment the words left him, regret followed with impressive speed.

‘Why that… of all possible things?’ Beomgyu blinked, clearly surprised… but he nodded.

“…Okay.”

There was no graceful way to proceed now.

Soobin lifted his hand, steady by force of will alone, and placed the back of his fingers lightly against the fairy’s forehead.

Heat.

Not merely warmth — heat that startled straight through the skin. His brows drew together at once, scholar’s concern overtaking, at least briefly, the more complicated awareness beneath it. He shifted his touch to the side of Beomgyu’s neck, careful, measured.

Still too warm.

“It is worsening,” Soobin said quietly.

And then — as though the contact itself had carried some delayed consequence — he withdrew.

His fingers flexed once in the air beside him, the motion small but tight, as though the sensation lingered inconveniently along his nerves. The hand lowered only after a moment’s visible effort, settling once more at his side with studied restraint.

Soobin cleared his throat softly, every line of his posture attempting, with diminishing success, to return to something resembling dignified control.

“You should not be standing,” he added, voice lower now, steadier by discipline alone. “You are in no condition to pretend otherwise.”

Beomgyu, unfortunately, looked as though pretending had already become quite impossible.

With a steadiness that was more deliberate than calm, he returned to the bed and guided Beomgyu down properly, one careful hand at his shoulder, the other hovering as though even the air around the fairy might bruise if handled too roughly. 

The pillows shifted with a soft sigh as Beomgyu lay back, wings trembling in uneven flickers of light that painted the sheets in restless gold. Up close, the heat rolling off him was unmistakable — not the harsh burn of illness, but the slow, insistent warmth of something far more complicated and far less innocent.

Soobin remained seated at the edge of the mattress. For a moment — a dangerous, indulgent moment — he simply watched.

Beomgyu’s breathing refused to settle. A faint sheen of sweat gathered at his temples, slipping in delicate lines down the curve of his face, and his fingers twisted anxiously in the fabric beneath him as though his own body had become an unfamiliar country. The sight did something deeply inconvenient to Soobin’s composure.

He rose abruptly.

“I should give you some space,” he said, voice restored to its usual, careful civility, though the precision of it cost him more than he cared to admit.

He had nearly reached the door when—

“Wait.”

The word was soft, almost fragile, yet it struck him with embarrassing efficiency. Soobin turned.

Beomgyu’s hand had curled faintly in the sheets, his expression caught somewhere between mortification and reluctant need. “…Stay,” he added, quieter now. “If it’s okay.”

It was then Soobin noticed. Something clung to Beomgyu’s fingers — translucent, faintly sticky, catching the lamplight in a subtle, treacherous shimmer. 

Beomgyu followed his gaze and immediately flushed a violent, blooming red. With a small, hurried motion that only made the scene more intimate, he wiped his hand against his clothes, lips pressing together as if apology itself had become physically uncomfortable.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured, voice tight. “I didn’t mean— it’s just—”

Soobin flexed his hand once at his side, the movement sharp and involuntary, before he mastered himself again.

“We should not be reckless,” he said quietly.

It was not a reprimand. It sounded, if anything, like a man attempting to convince his own pulse to behave.

Beomgyu’s mouth pursed, soft and faintly wounded, and he gave a small, wordless nod. The wings at his back flickered again, brighter this time, as though his body had no interest in respecting the dignity of the situation.

Silence followed — but not the empty kind.

It was the sort that pressed gently against the ribs, warm and increasingly difficult to ignore. Soobin remained where he stood, every rational instinct urging distance, while every less respectable impulse seemed intent on reminding him exactly who was currently overheating in his bed.

He exhaled slowly through his nose, composure drawn tight as a bowstring.

“Tell me,” he said at last, voice low and carefully even, “what you require — and I will see it managed properly.”

It was, on the surface, a perfectly responsible offer.

Unfortunately for both of them, there was nothing responsible about the way the air between them had begun to thicken.

Beomgyu’s hand lifted before either of them seemed fully aware of the decision.

His fingers hovered near Soobin’s face, hesitant in a way that did not suit his usual brightness. Soobin blinked, brows drawing together in quiet confusion.

“Your face…” Beomgyu murmured, voice softened by heat and embarrassment. “Is it okay if—”

Soobin did not make him finish.

With a composure that was perhaps too deliberate to be effortless, he inclined forward and rested his cheek gently into Beomgyu’s waiting palm — the one mercifully untouched by that earlier, glittering evidence of distress. The contact was warm, immediate, and far more intimate than the simple gesture had any right to be.

Beomgyu’s breath caught.

His thumb moved first, tentative, brushing along the curve of Soobin’s cheekbone as though reacquainting himself with something he had only ever been allowed to observe from a distance. 

The touch grew steadier after that, softer, almost careful.

“I’m sorry to trouble you this much,” Beomgyu said quietly. “I would go home if I could. It’s just… safer here than there.”

Soobin’s head shook before the apology had even fully settled between them.

“Do not apologize,” he said, voice low and firm, the words leaving little room for argument. “You are not a burden.”

His hand rose — slow enough to be considerate, sure enough to be intentional — and closed gently around Beomgyu’s wrist. Not restraining. Not quite anchoring. Simply there.

Beomgyu’s lips curved into something small and grateful.

“I think…” he admitted softly, fingers still resting against Soobin’s skin, “I’m feeling a bit better like this.”

Understanding dawned across Soobin’s features with dangerous clarity.

“Ah,” he said, quieter now. “Yes. Physical contact would help you.”

Beomgyu’s gaze lifted, warm and a little too bright.

“Yes,” he said, almost under his breath. “…It definitely would.”

 Their eyes held. Neither looked away. The space between them narrowed by degrees so subtle they might have gone unnoticed by anyone less invested in the exact distance between two mouths.

Beomgyu’s chin tipped up — just slightly. 

Soobin lowered his face.

For one suspended second, it would have been very easy to misunderstand their intentions.

And then— at the last possible moment, Soobin turned his head and pressed his face into the space beside Beomgyu’s temple instead, breath warm against his hair rather than his lips.

Beomgyu exhaled shakily, the sound small and helpless, like someone who had only just realized he had been holding his breath for far too long.

Soobin’s hand tightened around Beomgyu’s wrist.

His voice, when it came, was quieter than before — and far less steady than he would have preferred.

“…My apologies.”

Beomgyu’s lips pressed together, the lower one caught briefly between his teeth as his gaze drifted upward to the ceiling, as though the plaster above might offer him the composure his body so stubbornly refused to keep.

The room had grown too aware of itself — too warm, too quiet, too full of things neither of them seemed prepared to name.

“You should rest,” Beomgyu said after a moment, voice gentler now, though the faint breathlessness had not entirely left it. His fingers, now withdrawn, curled loosely against the blanket. “You had a long night.”

He hesitated, then added, softer, almost careful with the words.

“…Thank you. For taking care of me. And—everything.”

Soobin held his gaze for a beat longer than necessary, something unreadable flickering behind his usual composure. Then, with visible effort, he straightened slightly at the edge of the bed, folding his restraint back into place piece by careful piece.

“Yes,” he said quietly, the agreement measured but sincere. “You focus on what you need to do here.”

His hand moved — not quite touching, but close enough that the warmth of it could be felt through the air between them.

“Do not concern yourself with anything else,” Soobin continued, voice low and steady in that way he used when he was very deliberately choosing control. “Your comfort is the priority tonight.”

Over the past few days, Soobin had acquired, almost against his own better judgment, a certain dangerous ease in Beomgyu’s presence. The careful formalities that had once governed their interactions had thinned to something softer, more perilously familiar. It was not that the boundary between them had been consciously crossed — Soobin would have noticed that — but rather that it had worn away gradually, like silk fraying beneath patient fingers.

The days that followed acquired a peculiar quality, as though time itself had been persuaded to linger in doorways and listen. The house, once so obedient to Soobin’s habits of order, began to behave with an almost theatrical indulgence. Curtains breathed though no breeze entered; candle flames inclined themselves toward Beomgyu as though he were a confession they longed to hear.

Soobin told himself he noticed none of this. A scholar’s dignity, after all, is a habit carefully rehearsed. Yet he found that his sentences, once precise as geometry, had begun to wander into metaphors of warmth, of light, of things that refused containment.

Beomgyu, for his part, had grown exquisitely ill at ease with stillness. He perched rather than sat, listened rather than heard, and touched objects as though they might dissolve without reassurance. There was a brightness about him — not merely the shimmer peculiar to his kind, but the unsettling radiance of someone who burns from within and is startled by his own fire.

On the third evening, Beomgyu lingered after the hour when propriety might reasonably have dismissed him. He stood by the kitchen window he once stood outside of, twilight threading itself through his hair until he appeared less a guest than a phenomenon of light temporarily shaped into a person.

“Does it trouble you,” he said quietly, “that I am here?”

Soobin answered with the measured tone of a man who has rehearsed indifference and found it insufficient. “Trouble,” he said, “is often merely attention in a more dramatic costume.”

Beomgyu smiled then — a small, dangerous expression, like a door left ajar.

The air between them possessed that curious intimacy which arises when nothing is permitted to occur. It was an intimacy of almosts: glances that returned with a persistence politely disguised as accident and breaths taken as though language itself required courage.

Soobin discovered that dignity, like truth, is easiest to defend in theory. In practice, it is constantly seduced by tenderness.

On the night the rain came, it came with an insistence that made conversation impossible and silence unavoidable. Beomgyu sat close to the hearth, warmth gilding the curve of his throat. He said nothing, yet the room seemed to pulse with a question neither of them would articulate.

There are moments, Soobin reflected, when restraint ceases to be virtue and becomes merely delay.

He remained where he was. He did not cross the space between them. He did not speak Beomgyu’s name. Yet something irrevocable had already occurred — not in gesture, but in allowance.

And in that fragile, luminous tension, inevitability found its first permission.

On the height of Beomgyu’s heat, the night had taken its quiet due.

Morning returned to Soobin with all the subtle cruelty of a fever reluctantly breaking. He stirred with a faint crease between his brows, breath warm and uneven, his skin damp in that intimate way the body acquires after dreams one would rather not examine too closely.

For several slow seconds he remained where he was, suspended between sleep and waking, one hand drifting absently along his own arm as though to soothe some lingering, internal warmth.

Then he stilled, the air against his skin felt… improper.

Soobin’s eyes opened fully.

Understanding arrived not in panic but in a series of exquisitely unfortunate observations: the sheets, disgracefully disordered about his hips; the unmistakable absence of clothing; the pale spill of morning light that revealed far more than he would have preferred—

—and the fairy beside him.

Beomgyu slept with the serene abandon of someone entirely untroubled by consequence, lashes resting softly against flushed cheeks, his breathing slow and even. There was, Soobin noted with a tightening jaw, something almost offensively peaceful about him.

It was only then that Soobin became aware of the rest.

Clothing — theirs — lay strewn about the room in quiet, eloquent disarray. A sleeve abandoned near the chair. A ribbon of fabric half-caught beneath the bedframe. The sort of evidence that did not accuse loudly, but did not forgive either.

His hand closed sharply in the sheets.

Memory, when it returned, did so with deliberate precision.

Not the mercy of vagueness — no. His mind, ever scholarly in its cruelty, supplied sensation with uncomfortable clarity: warmth, breath, the fragile way Beomgyu had said his name as though it were something that might dissolve on the tongue.

Soobin exhaled slowly through his nose. When his gaze fell once more upon the sleeping fairy, it was no longer clouded by confusion. Only guilt remained — cool, composed, and deeply inconvenient.

It settled into his chest with the quiet certainty of something that would not be easily dismissed.

Soobin moved through the small rituals of the day with a precision that would have satisfied any casual observer. 

The bed was remade with almost mathematical care. The scattered garments were folded, not hastily, but with the same quiet thoroughness he applied to his manuscripts. 

Even the windows were opened at their usual hour, as though routine alone might persuade the world that nothing irreversible had occurred within those walls.

Yet the air in the house had changed, it seemed to hold memory too well.

Every so often his gaze would betray him, drifting — not to the fairy himself, who still slept with the soft, unguarded peace of the thoroughly exhausted — but to the small, damning details left behind: the faint glitter embedded in the sheets, the subtle warmth that still lingered in the mattress, the unmistakable disarray of a night that had not belonged to reason.

Soobin told himself, with great firmness, that the situation had been… circumstantial.

The words arranged themselves neatly in his mind, each one respectable, each one defensible. Yet, none of them settled.

By midday, he found himself unusually restless. His hands, ordinarily so obedient to discipline, misplaced things — a quill set down too hard, a page turned twice, a book opened and left unread. It was not like him. He was a man who lived comfortably inside order.

Now, order seemed to watch him with quiet suspicion.

What unsettled him most was not the memory itself — though that was troubling enough — but the disturbing clarity with which he could recall Beomgyu’s expression in sleep: unguarded, trusting, entirely unaware of the storm he had left behind in the scholar’s chest.

There was no accusation in that sleeping face, no regret, only softness and somehow, that made the guilt worse.

Soobin found himself pausing often throughout the afternoon, fingers resting idly against the spine of whatever book he had most recently pretended to read. His thoughts moved in careful circles, each one returning, with increasing inevitability, to the same disquieting question:

Had he, in his careful instruction… in his proximity… in his attention… crossed a boundary he had no right to approach?

He did not like the answer his silence suggested.

Outside, the light shifted slowly toward evening, thin and gold across the meadow where they had first met. Soobin stood at the window longer than necessary, gaze unfocused, posture still impeccably straight despite the slow unrest threading through him.

For the first time in many years, the scholar found that certainty — once his most reliable companion — had become a far more fragile thing.

And somewhere beneath the quiet dignity of his composure, doubt had begun, very persistently, to take root.

When Beomgyu finally emerged from the room, Soobin found, to his mild irritation, that language — usually so obedient to him — had entirely deserted its post.

The fairy looked… altered.

Not improperly so. He was clothed, thankfully — though the garments were unmistakably Soobin’s, the sleeves falling a touch too long over slender wrists, the collar sitting with an almost indecent softness against his throat. His hair remained faintly disordered, and there was about him the fragile air of someone who had slept deeply and woken somewhere unfamiliar.

It was, Soobin decided with quiet severity, an exceedingly dangerous sight. His fingers tightened once around the quill in his hand before he very deliberately set it down.

“Come,” he said, voice level, as though nothing in the world had shifted.

Beomgyu followed without protest.

The walk to the bathing room was brief but curiously heavy with unspoken awareness. Morning light filtered through the narrow windows, pale and clean, falling across the stone floor in long, orderly lines that neither of them disturbed. Soobin kept a respectful half-step ahead, posture immaculate, every inch the composed scholar — though the careful set of his shoulders suggested a discipline being very actively maintained.

He paused at the doorway and stepped aside.

“I have prepared a bath,” he said.

Inside, the arrangements were characteristically thorough. Steam curled gently from the filled basin. A fresh towel had been folded with precise edges atop the nearby stool, and a change of clothes — properly sized this time — had been laid out with quiet consideration. Even the small comforts had not been neglected; a faint, clean scent lingered in the air, understated and deliberate.

Beomgyu blinked at the sight, something soft and unreadable passing across his expression.

Soobin, meanwhile, kept his gaze politely averted.

“If anything is lacking,” he added, tone measured, “you need only say so.”

There was a brief pause — not awkward, precisely, but delicate in the way of things carefully avoided.

Neither of them spoke of the night. Neither of them so much as approached it. And yet, the silence between them was no longer the easy, academic quiet it had once been. It carried weight now. Awareness. The faint, unmistakable tension of two people who had crossed some invisible threshold and had mutually, wordlessly agreed not to look back at it directly.

Soobin inclined his head once, courteous to the last.

“I shall be in the study,” he said.

Then, with all the dignity he could reasonably assemble, he turned and left the door gently — very gently — closed behind him.

Beomgyu did not, at first, trust himself to stand.

The water lay warm around him, faint steam curling toward the ceiling in soft, dissolving ribbons, yet his body remained drawn inward, knees gathered to his chest as though he might make himself smaller by the effort. A quiet sigh escaped him, more weary than distressed, as his gaze drifted over the faint, unmistakable remnants the night had left behind.

There was no mistaking them.

Soft shadows bloomed along the delicate slope of his shoulder, the pale curve of his collarbone, the sensitive line of his throat. They were not cruel marks — nothing so harsh — but neither were they accidental. Each one spoke, with an intimacy that made his ears warm, of hands that had been careful, of restraint that had at last given way to something far more human.

Beomgyu pressed his lips together.

It had only been to ease the heat. That was the sensible conclusion, the reasonable one, and he repeated it inwardly with the quiet insistence of someone attempting to settle a restless thought. Soobin had been composed even in the midst of it, gentle where he might have been otherwise, patient in a way that suggested duty rather than indulgence.

At least, that was what Beomgyu told himself.

But the memory, unhelpfully vivid, refused to arrange itself so neatly.

If it had been nothing — truly nothing — then why the careful way Soobin had held his face, as though it were something unexpectedly fragile? Why the warmth of his breath, the quiet steadiness of his hands, the almost unbearable tenderness that had threaded through every measured touch?

And the kiss…

Beomgyu’s fingers curled slightly against his knees.

That, he could not so easily explain away.

He sank a little deeper into the bath, water lapping softly against his skin as though the simple motion might dissolve the thoughts crowding his mind. It had been necessary, he reminded himself firmly. Practical. A matter of biology and timing and unfortunate circumstance.

And yet — though he would not have dared give the thought voice — there had been something in Soobin’s care that did not feel merely dutiful.

Something dangerously close to gentle.

With another quiet breath, Beomgyu finally reached for the cloth Soobin had left folded neatly nearby. He worked slowly, almost absently, washing away the lingering warmth of the night with careful, methodical movements. The water cooled by degrees, steam thinning into nothing, but still he lingered, as though reluctant to step too quickly back into the clear light of morning.

By the time he finally lowered his feet to the stone floor, his expression had settled into something outwardly composed.

Only the faint flush still lingering at the tips of his ears betrayed him — and even that, he suspected, would fade soon enough. Whether the memory would be so obliging… remained, for the moment, uncertain.

When Beomgyu emerged from the bath, the quiet industry of the house had already resumed.

Soobin stood at the small dining table with the composed efficiency that seemed native to him, sleeves neatly rolled, attention fixed upon the careful arrangement of the morning meal. The soft clink of porcelain and the faint scrape of cutlery against wood were the only sounds that greeted the fairy’s return. When Soobin at last glanced up, the smile he offered was polite, measured — and curiously shallow, as though it had not quite been permitted to reach its natural depth.

Beomgyu’s gaze drifted, inevitably, to the center of the table.

“There is steak again,” Beomgyu observed, settling into his chair. “Did the old lady happen to send you off with another portion?”

Soobin shook his head once, precise.

“I purchased it this time,” 

A small pause followed.

“I see,” Beomgyu said, softer now.

He did not know the price of such things in the human world, nor what quiet adjustments Soobin might have made to afford it, but he knew the care of the gesture when he saw it. Still, he said nothing further, only watched as Soobin finished laying out the rest of the meal — the pale, careful mound of mashed potatoes, the modest portion of string beans arranged with almost scholarly neatness.

“You should eat while it is still warm,” Soobin said, with a small motion of his hand.

Beomgyu nodded at once. “Thank you.”

They began in silence. It was not an uncomfortable one, precisely, but it carried weight — the kind that lingers after something has shifted too deeply to be named outright. The quiet stretched, punctuated only by the soft sounds of cutlery and the occasional rustle of fabric, until Soobin, with the air of a man deliberately choosing his moment, spoke.

“How are you feeling this morning?” Soobin asked at last.

The question caught Beomgyu entirely unprepared.

He startled mid-bite, breath catching sharply in his throat as he coughed, shoulders hitching in mild distress. Soobin was on his feet at once, movement swift but controlled, already reaching for the water pitcher. He poured with steady hands and guided the glass toward Beomgyu with quiet insistence.

“Careful now,” Soobin murmured, steadying the glass in Beomgyu’s hand.

Beomgyu took the water, still coughing lightly, and Soobin’s hand came to rest between his shoulder blades. The touch was firm but measured, patting once, twice — dignified even in its concern.

“Are you quite all right?” Soobin asked.

Beomgyu nodded quickly after a moment, cheeks faintly warm. “I.. I am feeling much improved,” Beomgyu admitted. “The heat has mostly passed.”

Soobin regarded him for a brief second, eyes thoughtful.

“Mm. Has it?” Soobin regarded him briefly. “That is… reassuring.”

He seemed prepared to return to his seat — the moment already folding neatly back into propriety — when Beomgyu’s fingers closed, almost without thinking, around his wrist.

Soobin stilled. His gaze dropped first to the contact, then lifted slowly to Beomgyu’s face. The fairy’s wings gave a soft, unconscious flutter behind him, their glow faint but steady.

“Thank you,” Beomgyu said quietly. “For last night… for this… for all your care these past few days. I fear I have not the proper words to repay you.”

For the first time that morning, Soobin’s composure faltered in some small, human way. His eyes widened a fraction before he carefully arranged his expression once more.

“It was the least I could do,” Soobin replied, the words careful and restrained. 

Beomgyu hesitated.

His fingers were still curled around Soobin’s wrist, as though he had not yet quite decided to let go. Then, with a small breath that seemed to gather what little courage he possessed, he tugged gently.

Soobin did not resist.

The movement brought him a step closer, and in the next moment Beomgyu leaned forward, arms slipping around Soobin’s waist in a quiet, impulsive embrace. His forehead came to rest lightly against Soobin’s stomach, the contact soft but unmistakably earnest. Soobin went very still.

Surprise flickered plainly across his features, but it did not last. Gradually — almost cautiously — the tension left his shoulders. One hand lifted, hovered for the briefest second as though reconsidering the wisdom of the gesture, and then settled carefully atop Beomgyu’s head.

His fingers moved in slow, soothing strokes through the fairy’s hair.

The motion was gentle, almost absent-minded, like one might calm a small, trembling creature — and yet there was nothing careless about it. Beomgyu’s wings gave another soft flutter at the touch, their glow warming faintly in response.

The morning light filtered quietly through the window, laying pale gold across the table that still waited half-set, across the untouched dishes, across the two figures who had, somewhere between duty and kindness, stepped into something neither of them had quite meant to name.

And though nothing more was said, something between them had unmistakably, irrevocably shifted.

Hours dissolved into days with a quiet swiftness that neither of them thought to measure, and throughout that gentle span Soobin continued, with careful constancy, to keep the fairy within the radius of his care. There had been no further impropriety—at least none that could be named without unfairness. Only embraces were exchanged, and those of a firmness that spoke less of indulgence than of reassurance. 

Beomgyu, for his part, discovered that such closeness soothed him more effectively than any remedy he might have devised for himself; the restless edge left behind by the height of his heat gradually softened beneath the simple luxury of being held.

When at last the faint, bright tingle returned to his wings—a delicate warning he had come to recognize—Beomgyu understood that he ought, for the time being, to return to his own realm.

He lingered a few measured paces from the entrance of Soobin’s modest thatched cottage, where the scholar stood with composed patience, one shoulder resting lightly against the wooden frame. Beomgyu took two steps toward the path, then stopped. His small hand curled into a fist at his side. A moment passed in visible indecision before he turned sharply on his heel and hurried back.

The impact of his sudden embrace drove Soobin half a step backward. Instinct overtook deliberation; his arms came around the fairy’s waist at once, steady and secure, holding him with a firmness that surprised them both.

“You will take care— yes?” Soobin said quietly.

Beomgyu tipped his face up with a soft brightness that had not entirely left him. “Of course.”

The exchange was brief, almost ordinary in sound, and yet Soobin felt, with uncomfortable clarity, that something within his own voice had shifted beyond easy correction. He had not meant for the words to carry such warmth; he had certainly not meant for his affections toward the fairy to grow so inconveniently difficult to disguise.

Still, he released him.

Beomgyu rose lightly into the air a moment later, wings stirring the afternoon light into faint motes of gold, and soon he was gone beyond the meadow’s gentle reach. The quiet that followed settled heavily about the cottage. For the first time in nearly a week of uninterrupted commotion, Soobin found himself entirely alone with his thoughts.

He bathed shortly thereafter, though the preparation lacked the fastidious care he had shown when the bath had been meant for another. By the time he returned to his desk, his composure had largely reassembled itself. He drew his chair in, lifted his quill, and set about the orderly task of recording the day’s events, including what he had neglected to commit to paper the night prior.

Yet reflection, once invited, rarely keeps polite boundaries.

The longer he wrote, the more his pen slowed.

It was impossible to ignore the simple truth of the matter: Beomgyu, for all his brightness, had been at a distinct disadvantage during the most vulnerable crest of his condition. Circumstance had confined them together in a proximity that no sensible scholar would have designed without careful forethought. Reason insisted—firmly, repeatedly—that nothing had occurred without the fairy’s clear consent. Beomgyu’s continued warmth toward him afterward only supported that conclusion.

And still.

Soobin’s jaw tightened faintly.

Had he, in some quiet way, failed the better version of himself?

With a restrained exhale, he set the quill aside and rose before the question could root itself any deeper. The day’s obligations would not complete themselves, and there was comfort—reliable, merciful comfort—in routine. He made his way toward the château to attend to the old lady’s needs as he had promised.

It was in the barn, while searching through the familiar clutter of tools and feed, that his attention caught on a crude object half-concealed within the hay. Recognition came swiftly and without mercy.

The makeshift device.

His mouth flattened and without ceremony, Soobin retrieved it and disposed of the thing at once, his movements efficient and faintly severe. There were, he reflected, far better uses for both intellect and manual skill than such… improvisations.

Yet even as he turned back toward his work, his thoughts—tiresome creatures that they were—wandered where they pleased.

They drifted, quite against his preference, toward the academy he no longer called his own: to long corridors smelling faintly of ink and varnished wood, to lectures that had once held the clean authority of certainty, and to the few companions whose regard he had valued without reservation.

One name, in particular, surfaced with inconvenient clarity.

Soobin slowed, only now, with the house quiet and his mind no longer occupied by immediate concerns, did the peculiar weight of Beomgyu’s earlier question return to him in full. At the time he had been too distracted to examine it properly.

Now, however, the implication settled with distinct unease.

It was, when considered with appropriate care, a very curious thing indeed that the fairy should know of him at all.

Beyond the province of ordinary sight—where the air, like an overgenerous host, offered nectar upon every breath and sunlight lounged upon the leaves as though it had nowhere more important to be—the fairy realm pursued its radiant occupations with a diligence that was almost fashionable. 

Houses rose with an elegance nature might have envied, coaxed from bark and vine with a kind of effortless artistry; gentle creatures drifted past one another in amiable familiarity; and along the borders there trembled a barrier so thin and luminous it resembled nothing so much as a thought held carefully behind the lips.

Beomgyu moved among it all with the serenity of one perfectly at home in beauty.

He knelt beside a fairy whose condition—both maternal and magnificent—had rendered her wings restless with the delicate impatience of imminent motherhood. With hands that possessed the quiet authority of kindness, he adjusted the mossen cradle beneath her, arranging it with the care one usually reserves for fragile dreams. 

When she inquired, with the mild curiosity of someone who had little else to investigate, where he had vanished these past few days, Beomgyu answered only with a smile so bright it bordered on conspiracy.

“I have been learning,” he said.

“Really, have you?” The voice arrived with the punctuality of truth and the mischief of familiarity, and the arms followed an instant later. Beomgyu gave a startled cry—one half indignation, the other delight—and spun so abruptly his wings cast a brief confetti of gold through the air. Recognition struck him almost immediately, and he flung himself forward with an enthusiasm that suggested restraint had never been one of his accomplishments.

“Taehyun! You’re back! It’s been ages!” His words arrived in a rush, as though language itself feared being left behind. “I’ve learned so much—you wouldn’t believe it. Botany, reproduction, philosophy, and a hundred other things besides.”

Taehyun steadied him with the ease of someone accustomed to Beomgyu’s velocity, though his brows lifted in quiet amusement.

“Remarkable,” he said dryly. “The last time I visited, I was attempting—heroically, I might add—to teach you how to read and write. It seems you have since conquered the entire curriculum.”

The smile, however, proved a brief visitor.

Something—perhaps the angle of Beomgyu’s wings, perhaps the curious light in his expression—caught Taehyun’s attention with the subtle insistence of a misplaced note in a perfect melody. His gaze sharpened, not unkindly, but with the alertness of one who has made a profession of noticing.

“Why?” Beomgyu asked, tilting his head with innocent perplexity. “What’s wrong?”

Taehyun did not answer immediately. Instead, after offering the pregnant fairy a murmur of apology so polite it bordered on theatrical, he caught Beomgyu lightly by the wrist and guided—very nearly hauled—him toward the privacy of a flowering thicket whose blossoms seemed to blush at the prospect of gossip.

When he spoke, his voice had acquired the careful edge of someone who has discovered a mystery and is deciding whether it deserves admiration or alarm.

“Is it from this realm?” he asked quietly. “I told you before—trust here is a currency most people spend recklessly.”

Beomgyu blinked with charming confusion. “Huh? What do you mean?”

Taehyun regarded him for a long, measured moment, the silence stretching with a kind of delicate tension.

“Beomgyu-hyung,” he said at last, softly enough that even the flowers might have leaned closer to hear, “your ears have rounded.”

The reaction was subtle but unmistakable. Beomgyu’s smile did not disappear—it merely altered, softening into something reflective, almost shy.

“Oh… well…”

He offered no further explanation.

Taehyun exhaled slowly through his nose, the sound carrying the unmistakable weight of a man who had just realized that the story had become far more interesting than he had anticipated.

Among fairies, the signs were subtle—deliberately so—but not invisible. A fairy’s purity, once given, left faint alterations discernible only to certain fae, those with the particular acuity to perceive such changes. Taehyun, inconveniently, had always been among that minority.

Conflicting thoughts moved swiftly behind his composed exterior. Beomgyu was of age; there was no impropriety in that alone. Yet Taehyun knew the realm well enough to understand how easily gentleness could be mistaken for safety. And there had been no suitable fairy or fae near Beomgyu for quite some time.

That fact unsettled him more than he cared to admit.

His shoulders softened at last, and he gathered Beomgyu once more into his arms—an embrace quieter than the last, and infinitely more deliberate; the sort that carries with it the silent gravity of unspoken concern.

“My only wish,” Taehyun murmured, his voice low beside Beomgyu’s ear, “is that you be spared the charming follies that have already undone a number of our kind. You know, I think, that my hopes for you have always been of the most conscientious sort.”

Beomgyu answered with the mild certainty of one who has long ago made peace with himself.

“It is all right. I understand. But we must not let the behavior of others destroy our inner peace.”

Taehyun stilled.

“…Jane Austen.”

Beomgyu’s smile brightened with unmistakable satisfaction. “Sense and Sensibility.”

And for the first time since his return, a thread of genuine alarm wound its way through Taehyun’s chest.

That sentence—rendered in precisely that arrangement of words—existed only in a particular translated volume, one kept not in the wide world but within the guarded quiet of his academy’s private library.

His stomach dropped with a most inelegant certainty.

Memory, which possesses the inconvenient habit of arranging itself into clarity at the least convenient moments, settled into place: a solitary figure glimpsed across the meadow days before, the familiar inclination of a body bent over gathered apples, the quiet scholar whose presence had once been as constant as the seasons themselves.

So it had been Soobin.

Taehyun’s jaw tightened by a degree so small that only the most observant eye might have remarked upon it.

He loved Beomgyu—had always loved him—in that steady, unornamented fashion which requires neither confession nor embellishment to remain true. It was not romance; such theatrics had never seemed necessary between them. 

Their bond was something far older and rather more respectable: a form of devotion that resembled family, sharpened by responsibility and the long familiarity of years. 

Though Beomgyu stood a year his elder, he occupied a lower rung in the delicate hierarchies of their realm, yet Taehyun had never once allowed that to diminish the quiet respect contained in the word hyung when it left his mouth.

The notion of a human—any human—treating him with the carelessness to which mortals are so regrettably inclined stirred something immediate and unpleasantly warm in Taehyun’s chest.

And Soobin— Taehyun’s expression smoothed with admirable composure, though the resolve beneath it had already hardened into something far less gentle. Whatever had transpired in his absence would not be permitted to linger in ambiguity.

If there had been carelessness, he would correct it.

If there had been harm, he would answer it.

And if Soobin had, in the quiet passage of time, stepped into a place Taehyun himself had guarded with patient vigilance for years—

Well…

Taehyun’s gaze drifted toward the distant meadow, thoughtful in appearance and rather cold in intention.

One way or another, he would see the matter put right.

The meadow, which had always possessed excellent manners, remained obligingly quiet.

Soobin had just twisted an apple free from the branch when movement at the edge of the trees caught his attention. He turned—and for a moment the scholar vanished entirely, replaced by something younger and far less guarded.

“Taehyun?”

The name came out bright with unmistakable surprise. Genuine pleasure flickered across his face as he stepped forward, apple still in hand, as though the sight of him were an unexpectedly welcome miracle.

“Well,” he said, laughter almost threading through his voice, “this is a rare phenomenon. I was beginning to suspect you had been absorbed into the academy shelves.”

He looked him over with open curiosity, the way one studies a long-absent constellation that has suddenly returned to the sky.

“It has been what—” he tilted his head slightly, thinking, “—a year?”

The apple turned slowly between his fingers. “And yet here you are,” Soobin continued, mildly amused. “In the countryside. In the middle of the afternoon. Without warning, explanation, or the faintest attempt at social pleasantry.”

His eyes flicked briefly to the surrounding meadow. “I must admit,” he added lightly, “I am fascinated. This is not a part of the countryside you have ever shown much enthusiasm for visiting.”

Taehyun did not smile. The silence that followed was heavy enough to press against the ribs.

Soobin’s amusement faded gradually, the brightness in his expression dimming as the reality of Taehyun’s stare settled into place. The shift was subtle but unmistakable: his posture straightened, his attention sharpening into something careful.

“…Ah,” he murmured after a moment. “So it is that sort of reunion.”

Taehyun stepped closer, every movement controlled with a precision that made the air feel colder. “You have been busy.”

Soobin blinked once, faintly puzzled. “Busy?”

“Do not,” Taehyun said smoothly, “mistake my restraint for confusion.”

There it was. Soobin watched him for another second, then slowly bent and set the apple down in the grass beside him. When he straightened again, he dusted his hands together with deliberate calm.

The friendliness was gone now—not replaced by hostility, but by something much more alert.

“Very well,” he said. “Let us abandon the pretense of small talk. What, exactly, has inspired you to seek me out after a year of remarkable disinterest?”

Taehyun’s eyes did not waver. “Beomgyu.”

Something small shifted across Soobin’s face at the name—not guilt, not quite surprise, but recognition. “I see,” he said quietly.

“His ears have rounded.”

The statement landed with the crisp weight of evidence.

For a brief moment Soobin said nothing. His gaze moved away toward the trees as if examining the idea from several angles before returning.

“And from this,” he said mildly, “you have deduced that I am responsible for some ‘terrible’ corruption.”

“I have deduced,” Taehyun replied, voice tightening, “that Beomgyu was alone, far from his realm, and in the company of a human scholar with far more curiosity than restraint.”

Soobin’s lips curved faintly. “Careful,” he said softly. “You are beginning to sound less like a friend and more like a prosecutor.”

Taehyun took another step forward. “You expect me to believe you had no influence over him?”

“I expect,” Soobin said, a sharper edge entering his voice now, “that you remember who you are talking about.”

He unfolded his arms and moved forward as well, closing the distance between them until the conversation could no longer pretend to be casual.

“Beomgyu,” he continued evenly, “is not some delicate artifact that shatters the moment a human breathes near it. He is curious, impulsive, stubborn to the point of catastrophe, and perfectly capable of making decisions that will give both of us headaches.”

“You speak,” Taehyun said tightly, “as though enthusiasm cannot be exploited.”

“And you speak,” Soobin returned, one eyebrow lifting, “as though Beomgyu has ever once in his life done something he did not enthusiastically choose.”

Taehyun’s patience snapped another degree. “I know Beomgyu. I know the way he trusts too quickly. The way he gives everything when someone shows him the smallest kindness. Forgive me if I find the timing of your sudden involvement in his life… troubling.”

Soobin regarded him in silence. The change in his expression was subtle, but complete — warmth withdrawing like light behind a cloud.

“Troubling,” he echoed softly, as though the word amused him by its inadequacy. A faint, incredulous breath escaped him.

“So,” he said, “this is the form our reunion takes.”

His gaze settled on Taehyun with measured composure.

“You were present, if memory serves, when the academy discovered how much simpler it is to believe what is convenient than what is true.”

The gentleness of his tone only sharpened the edge beneath it.

“You also remember, I trust, that my departure was not an exercise of preference.”

He paused — not for effect, but with the precision of someone allowing meaning to land exactly where intended.

“How curious,” he continued almost pleasantly, “that a year may pass in exemplary silence, marked only by dutiful letters on ceremonial dates… and yet when you finally choose to appear, you do so not as a friend seeking understanding, but as an arbiter delivering suspicion.”

His eyes did not leave Taehyun’s.

“You speak with remarkable certainty,” Soobin went on quietly, “for one who was not present. You imply conclusions without the inconvenience of inquiry. It is an efficient method, I admit. One avoids the risk of being corrected.”

He stepped closer. “You say you know him. I do not dispute the claim. But knowledge of a person is not knowledge of an event… and concern, however sincerely felt, is not evidence.”

A brief pause. His voice lowered, calm and exact.

“If you wished to understand, Taehyun, you might have asked. Instead, you arrived prepared to judge. And I find myself wondering,” he said softly, “whether you came in search of truth… or merely confirmation of what you had already chosen to believe. It is a distinction the academy also neglected.”

Sleep, once a faithful servant, had lately developed the most inconvenient habit of desertion.

Soobin discovered this not merely in a single restless night, but in a slow succession of them, each one more quietly humiliating than the last. He would lie rigid beneath his blankets, hands folded with almost clerical restraint over his stomach, as though posture alone might persuade his body back into obedience. The familiar disciplines followed with mechanical precision—measured breathing, orderly recollection of the day’s tasks, the silent recitation of botanical classifications in careful Latin.

None of it survived the hour.

Because the trouble, inconveniently, was not intellectual. It was terribly, persistently human.

The realization did not strike him all at once. It settled instead with the dreadful composure of a conclusion long resisted and finally admitted. Soobin turned his face into the pillow, jaw tight, as though linen might absorb the thought before it fully formed.

Because reason—damnably intact—refused to condemn what had passed. Beomgyu had not been confused. Nor coerced. Nor incapable. The fairy possessed a will as bright and deliberate as his wings, and Soobin, for all his present discomfort, was not dishonest enough to pretend otherwise.

And yet, memory was proving to be an ungovernable thing.

It returned in fragments that were far too vivid for comfort: the small, warm weight that had leaned into him without hesitation; the soft, uneven breaths that had ghosted against his collar; the quiet, instinctive way Beomgyu had reached—not calculated, not coy, but trusting in a manner that sat uneasily beneath Soobin’s ribs.

Academic facts did not linger like this.

Academic facts did not warm the blood.

By the third night, he abandoned the pretense of proper rest altogether.

The old lady noticed before the week was half spent.

At first, it was merely a raised brow when Soobin appeared in the gardens at an hour more suited to ghosts than scholars. Then came the longer glances when he volunteered—unprompted—for labor no one had assigned him. Firewood multiplied under his hands. Brass fixtures shone with an almost accusatory brilliance. Even the barn, long accustomed to dignified neglect, found itself subjected to a level of attention that bordered on personal offense.

More telling still, he had begun to stay.

Not returning promptly to his cottage. Not retiring at sensible hours. Instead, he lingered—first in the west library she had permitted him, then, on the second evening, half-asleep over an open folio; and by the third, discovered in the barn at dawn, coat folded poorly beneath his head, as though he had intended only a moment’s rest and been quietly overtaken by exhaustion.

It was on that third morning that she finally intervened.

Soobin was in the courtyard, sleeves rolled with unnecessary severity, applying himself to the highly questionable task of reorganizing seed trays that had, until that moment, lived perfectly orderly lives.

Her voice arrived behind him with surgical calm.

“Young man,” she said, “people who work this hard are either in love or in trouble. Which is it?”

The tray in his hands shifted—only slightly—but enough to betray him.

“With respect,” Soobin replied, setting it down with more care than the situation strictly required, “I am merely occupied.”

“Mmm.”

The sound contained decades of disbelief. She regarded him over the rim of her spectacles with the serene patience of someone who had witnessed every variety of respectable self-deception and found most of them unconvincing.

“Occupation,” she said mildly, “is what people call it when they are running away while standing perfectly still.”

For once, Soobin—who had never in his life lacked for words—found none immediately suitable.

Silence, he decided, was the more dignified refuge. The old lady watched him a moment longer. Something in her expression shifted then—not indulgent, precisely, but touched with a quiet understanding she was too polite to name aloud.

“You may use the west library as long as you like,” she said at last, as though the decision had only just occurred to her. “Books are excellent company. They rarely chase you.”

A beat.

“And when they do,” she added dryly, “at least they cite their sources.”

Despite himself—despite the tightness still lodged unpleasantly behind his ribs—Soobin exhaled through something that was almost a laugh.

“You are most generous,” he said, inclining his head.

“Yes,” she replied, already turning away. “Do try not to waste it.”

Soobin had expected silence when he pushed open the door—expected the modest stillness of his cottage, the familiar obedience of empty space. Instead, the sight that greeted him struck with such quiet violence that the books slipped at once from his grasp, falling in a soft but ruinous cascade across the floor.

There was someone in his bed.

For a suspended instant he did not move, as though motion itself might confirm the reality his mind was still struggling to accept. The afternoon light spilled gently across the small figure curled amid his sheets, touching pale limbs and the faint shimmer of folded wings with an intimacy that made the entire scene feel indecently private.

Then the figure stirred.

Beomgyu shifted with the slow, reluctant grace of someone surfacing from deep sleep, his brow knitting faintly before his lashes fluttered open. Confusion lived there first—soft, unguarded, almost childlike—before recognition followed in a swift, bright wave that transformed his entire expression. His eyes widened, luminous even in the gentle daylight, and he pushed himself upright with sudden urgency, the blankets slipping down around his waist in careless disarray.

“Soobin—!”

The name left him half-breathed, half-relieved, and before the scholar could properly collect either his composure or his scattered belongings, Beomgyu was already moving.

He crossed the small distance between them with reckless immediacy and threw himself forward, arms winding tight around Soobin’s middle with a force that drove the taller man back a step. The impact was warm, startlingly real, and for one unguarded heartbeat Soobin simply stood there, every carefully cultivated instinct for distance and propriety faltering beneath the unmistakable tremor running through the fairy’s slight frame.

“I believed—” Beomgyu’s voice trembled, a fragile thing pressed against Soobin’s chest, soft and uncertain, like a candle’s flame shivering in a draft. Even Soobin, who had long cultivated a sanctuary of composure, felt a tightening low in his ribs, a small, inconvenient rebellion against propriety. “I believed you had turned away from me. I waited, endlessly, and you did not come. And then, when I glimpsed you near the chateau… Hao-hyung whispered of quarrels with Taehyun, and I—”

The rest dissolved into a small, helpless sound that was far more dangerous than tears had any right to be. Soobin closed his eyes briefly.

It would have been easier—infinitely easier—if Beomgyu had been angry.

Instead, after a moment’s visible struggle, his arms rose with reluctant instinct and settled carefully around the fairy’s waist, the hold firm enough to steady but measured enough to preserve the fragile dignity he still stubbornly clung to.

“There now,” he said quietly, though the usual smoothness of his voice carried the faintest thread of strain. “You will quite undo my reputation for composure if you continue this assault without warning.”

It was meant to be dry. Measured. Sensible. Unfortunately, his hand had already begun—almost of its own accord—to smooth once, gently, over Beomgyu’s hair.

And that, Soobin realized with growing unease, was considerably more dangerous than the embrace itself.

Beomgyu’s breath hitched—and then, quite helplessly, he laughed.

It was a soft, watery sound, bright in spite of the tears still slipping stubbornly down his cheeks, as though his heart had not quite decided whether it wished to ache or to rejoice. The contradiction of it struck Soobin with quiet force; he had encountered weeping before, and laughter too, but rarely had he seen the two so disarmingly intertwined upon the same fragile face.

“I was terribly, terribly frightened,” Beomgyu confessed, the words trembling loose between uneven breaths. “For a moment I thought he might have driven you away. I knew—of course I knew—you would not leave me so easily, but…” His voice broke again, and the small, wounded sound of it drew from Soobin a look far too gentle to be called merely polite.

Beomgyu swallowed, lifting his gaze with quiet insistence despite the tears still clinging to his lashes. “You do understand, don’t you,” he went on softly, “that I am quite capable of choosing for myself? I possess, I assure you, a perfectly serviceable mind—one that comes equipped with its own logic, its own reasoning, and, when the occasion demands it, a rather stubborn will.”

His fingers tightened faintly in the fabric of Soobin’s shirt.

“And whatever it is you fear I might repent,” he finished, voice small but certain, “I do not. Not where you are concerned, Soobin. Not in the least.”

For a moment he only watched him. Then something in his expression gave way.

Soobin bent slightly at the waist, the movement careful, almost restrained, as though he were still negotiating with his better judgment even while acting against it. His hands rose with measured deliberation and came to rest at either side of Beomgyu’s face, palms warm where they cupped the soft curve of his cheeks.

“You are a troublesome creature,” he murmured, the words gentler than the mild reproach they carried.

With his thumb, he brushed beneath Beomgyu’s eye.

The motion was slow, precise—far more careful than the situation strictly required—as he wiped away the lingering tear that had traced its way down the fairy’s skin. Another followed, and he caught that one too, his touch light but unmistakably tender, the sort of absentminded gentleness that belonged less to a scholar and more to a man already far too affected for his own comfort.

His brows drew together faintly as he worked, not in irritation but in quiet concentration, as though the simple act of drying Beomgyu’s tears demanded the same seriousness he afforded his books.

“There,” Soobin said at last, voice low and composed, though something warmer had crept beneath the surface. “If you must greet me so dramatically, at least have the courtesy to stop crying while you do it.”

Yet his hands did not immediately fall away.

Beomgyu’s laughter had not quite faded when the moment shifted.

It occurred in that delicate, treacherous manner by which the most consequential moments prefer to arrive—without herald, without consent. His eyes were still bright with unshed tears when Soobin, who had always taken a quiet pride in the tidy governance of his own impulses, committed an act that was neither scholarly nor particularly defensible.

He leaned in.

The kiss was unhurried—almost excessively so—as though he meant to interrogate the reality of it rather than be conquered by it. His hand remained warm against Beomgyu’s cheek, his thumb still faintly damp from its earlier mercy, and for one suspended, fragile instant, the world itself seemed inclined toward silence.

Then the fairy lit.

Not metaphorically—though writers might have been tempted to the indulgence—but quite unmistakably, inconveniently real. A soft spill of gold trembled loose from the delicate span of Beomgyu’s wings: first a hesitant shimmer, then a quiet, treacherous cascade. Fine, luminous dust drifted into the air between them, settling with intimate familiarity along Soobin’s sleeves, his collar, the dark, obedient fall of his hair.

Soobin drew back at once, composure cracking like thin glass.

“…Beomgyu—”

But the fairy only stared at him—equally startled, equally breathless—his fingers curling, almost helplessly, into the front of Soobin’s shirt as the glow deepened. The room filled with that warm, impossible radiance—soft as candlelight, bright as freshly struck gold—and before Soobin could summon either retreat or reason, the floor seemed to slip, very politely, out from beneath the certainty of things.

The world, in a moment of undeniable theatricality, folded in upon itself. When it unfolded again, everything was… suspiciously picturesque.

Soobin’s first awareness was of softness—far too much softness to belong to his narrow, perfectly respectable bed. The second was scent: light, floral, and faintly enchanted. Pale petals were scattered across the woven floor as though someone had recently entertained a very fashionable breeze, and somewhere in the walls a thin thread of magic hummed like distant music that had forgotten its audience.

Soobin blinked once. Then again.

“…Where,” he said slowly, “are we?”

Beomgyu, who was still standing rather close—close enough that their hands had not quite remembered to let go—looked around with an expression that suggested this development had surprised him just as much.

“…Good question.”

His wings twitched faintly as he turned his head from one corner of the room to another, eyes narrowing in puzzled recognition.

“…Wait.”

A pause.

“…Why are we in my room?”

Soobin followed his gaze across the room with careful composure, as though the answer might be written somewhere among the petals.

“Ah,” he said after a moment. “So it is your room.”

“Yes,” Beomgyu said, still frowning slightly. “But that doesn’t explain why we’re here.”

Another pause settled between them. Then Soobin glanced down—very briefly—at the way their hands were still loosely intertwined. Beomgyu followed his gaze.

“Oh.”

“Oh,” Soobin echoed.

The silence that followed was not particularly dignified.

“…The kiss,” Beomgyu said slowly.

“Yes,” Soobin replied. “The kiss.”

Beomgyu tilted his head, thinking.

“…That wasn’t supposed to teleport us.”

“No,” Soobin agreed mildly. “In most educational contexts, it does not.”

Beomgyu squinted at the ceiling as though the magic itself might confess if he stared hard enough.

“…Maybe it was the true love’s kiss thing.”

Soobin raised an eyebrow.

“An ambitious conclusion after approximately three seconds of analysis.”

Beomgyu looked back at him. “You’re the one standing in my bedroom.”

“I assure you,” Soobin said dryly, “that was not part of my evening plans.”

Instead of pulling away, he gave Soobin’s fingers a small, reassuring squeeze—gentle, almost absentminded.

“It doesn’t mean anything has to happen,” he said lightly. “Just because we landed here.”

Soobin glanced down at their hands again, thoughtful.

“…How considerate of the magic to clarify that.”

Beomgyu huffed. “I’m clarifying it.”

“Ah.”

Soobin’s hand settled, almost automatically, at Beomgyu’s back—steadying rather than possessive.

“In that case,” he said, “I suppose the situation is merely mysterious rather than scandalous.”

Beomgyu grinned faintly. “You say that like you wouldn’t survive a scandal.” He leaned his cheek lightly against Soobin’s chest, still smiling.

His hand came to rest, almost absently, against Beomgyu’s hair.

“My dear,” he said gently, “I have already been ruined in the eyes of the world. It was a most educational experience. One learns, after such instruction, that disgrace is simply reputation stripped of imagination.”

The chamber retained a wan and lingering radiance, as though magic, having completed its labor, was reluctant to depart and chose instead to loiter in delicate suspension. Particles of light drifted through the air with the indolent grace of thoughts unwilling to become conclusions.

“Soobin-hyung?”

The voice arrived not loudly, yet with the peculiar authority of reality intruding upon reverie. They turned as one does when a dream acquires a witness.

A figure stood framed by the doorway — paused between entrance and retreat, as though uncertainty itself had taken visible form. Recognition dawned upon his features with a swiftness bordering on alarm, his gaze arrested by the unmistakable proximity of two people who had forgotten, if only briefly, the architecture of distance.

It was, unmistakably, not Soobin’s room. Nor, at that moment, did it appear to belong to reason.

Soobin blinked, composure gathering itself about him like a habit recalled too late.

“…Kai?”