Chapter Text
(dream)
Someone dies in the dream, someone who might be himself. He clings to warm hands and he knows then that he loves them, that his whole being is attuned to their touch. Yet blood has made them slippery and they fall from his grasp just as he falls into the earth, deep, deeper still and there is nothing to be done, not anymore. Life is seeping out of him yet there was something he wanted to protect, someone with bloody hands and a golden heart but it is too late, too late now, everything lost, everything ashes and dust and fire.
When he wakes there are tears upon his cheeks, his heart torn asunder for a loss he cannot fathom. There is a face, too, one who wakes a yearning ache between his ribs, one he doesn’t know yet it is for them that the burning tears he cannot quell are falling.
1.
The slumber he wakes from leaves him empty, something missing in his side he doesn’t know the shape of. The ceiling he stares at is unfamiliar, a creamy, smooth color instead of the dark grain of wood. His gaze falls to the walls, to the glass window there and the rug on the floor. Something uneasy is spilling in him, something of the wrongness that he feels, the wrongness and the kind of fear he hasn’t felt in a long time – something irreversible happened, something that shouldn’t have, something he doesn’t know how to control. When he lifts his hands the answers are written in dark runes upon his skin, runes he knows well yet doesn’t fully recognize; their shape slightly wrong, slightly askew, as if something of their truth had been lost. Yet he can still feel their magic spilling warmth in his being and he knows they are what tethers him here, binds him to this flesh.
He rubs at them but they do not erase, the ink deep under his skin, the magic threaded into him. He lets his arms fall upon the covers, feels the softness of them under his hands and there are ghosts in the sigh that leaves him then, the heaviness in his chest relieved but for a few moments before they return, curling there under his heart; ghosts of times forgotten, ghosts with broken nails, wailing the wails of the hurt and the dying. He turns on his side, body heavy, so heavy, as if the grave was calling him back, pulling him down under the earth where it is dark and silent. But he won’t go, not yet, and he listens to the strange sounds of the house around him, sounds he doesn’t recognize the source of. The smells are different too, somehow; subdued, softer, as if this world had managed to erase all the noise and luster of living things.
When he trusts himself not to flounder he pushes the covers off, rising to his feet on the wooden floor, the robes he wears falling about him. He looks down at the soft clothes and he knows them, knows their feel and the low pulse they retain because they are his, robes he had worn so often they espoused his magic, espoused his soul and the feelings he had carried. He clings to the sleeves where his hands disappear, something familiar to anchor him in this strange world he doesn’t yet know what to think of.
There is a mirror upon the desk and he pads softly to his reflection – white blooms in his hair he recognizes as valerian, dark eyes staring back, unmistakably his. He details the savage curve of his bones under his skin and he knows this is his true face; empty orbits staring darkly back, jaw opened on broken teeth, naked bones polished by the tides of time. Death is there, kept at bay by tricks and the old magic yet still right there under his skin. If he stares long enough it seems rot is rising to his cheeks, the taste of decay tainting his parted lips. He snaps his gaze away from the mirror, looking at the objects on the desk, some he cannot comprehend the use of. There is a censer, the smell of lavender escaping it in slow volutes and he knows now that someone had kept watch over him as he slept, someone he must find, someone to give him answers.
The house is quiet as he leaves the room, the corridor empty yet whispers rise as he tread softly upon the wooden floor, whispers from the shadows spilling out of hidden corners, coiling about him like mist and there’s wonder in their hushed voices, tentative touches upon his skin and they welcome him like an old friend thought forever lost. They shroud his eyes from the light, gather at his naked feet in a warm wave, their murmurs weaving with the rustling of his clothes. It feels less lonely then, less deserted and he’s grateful, pushing open the first door that he finds.
The walls of the room are lined with books, strange books of all shapes and sizes and he’d never seen so many in one place. It is empty of any presence though, and so he pursues down the corridor, until the sound of rustling paper and a soft sigh spill from a half-opened door. There is someone at the desk there, round glasses pushed back up on his forehead as he frowns at the book opened before him. He doesn’t notice that someone entered, not until the rustle of clothing snaps him out of his preoccupations. And then he stares, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape.
“You’re awake,” he says and his voice sounds young, a pleasant lilt to his words betraying a soft accent.
“Who did this?” the trespasser asks in answer, holding up his arms so the sleeves of the hanbok fall back, revealing the runes etched upon his arms. The other stares, eyes following the curves of the ink around a dainty wrist, down a pale arm.
“I did,” he eventually says, swallowing. “I didn’t think they would remain.”
“Their magic is strong. But they are wrong.”
“Wrong?” he asks, head tilted and there are old doubts in his eyes, an old fear there, one never quelled.
“Yes.”
“In what way?”
“I can show you.”
Silence stretches between them, before another sigh leaves the seated man and he rubs at his eyes, grabbing his glasses to perch them back onto his nose.
“What is your name?” he asks softly in that same gentle voice.
“What is yours?”
“Xu Minghao.”
“My name is Lee Jihoon,” he says after a silence and the words feel strange on his tongue, the faint taste of lies dragging on his lips. The man that he was, that Lee Jihoon, he has been gone for so long he is not sure what remains of him, he is not sure there is enough left to make a whole out of the devastation left behind. But Minghao nods as if it made sense, gesturing at a stool near his desk.
“Show me what is wrong, then.”
The paper Minghao gives him is white and smooth, the instrument he uses for writing small and unwieldy. But Jihoon doesn’t ask, copying onto the page the runes of his arms, copying them how they should be, the right curves and the right order of the strokes. Minghao watches in silence, a silence full of unasked questions and his gaze weights upon Jihoon’s hands, upon his face and the skin of his arms yet Jihoon keeps drawing; something he knows, something he does well.
“They are not letters to be copied down,” he says, sparing a glance to Minghao, ignoring the fascination he finds there, “they are intent, pure meaning in their own right – a channel for your will.”
“How do you know them?” Minghao asks, and Jihoon stares at the paper before him. He remembers curling his ink brush around the shape of the first rune, the first one that came to him, the first word of power he managed to make real.
“I made them,” he says, writing the last one at the bottom of the page. He ignores Minghao’s sharp intake of breath, ignores his gaze upon his face and stares at the black strokes on the paper, trying to remember how they’d felt in his mind, how they’d came to him when nothing was left, when the world had grown dark and merciless.
“You made them,” Minghao repeats slowly in that singing voice of his and Jihoon looks up, stares at the dark eyes, wide behind the glasses. The shadows that had trailed his steps are tangling in the man’s hair, curling over his wrists and the curve of his shoulders, protective, adoring.
“Yes,” he says, “or I merely discovered them when they were needed.”
“Why did you need them?” Minghao asks and Jihoon stares at him, voice stuck in his throat.
We see death coming into our midst like black smoke, the words rise unbidden to his mind, the gangrenous smell of putrefaction riding on their tail. A plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy for fair countenance.
“Because the world was dying,” he says, “yet if I had known the price to pay I would have let it end.”
Silence finds them again, slithering in the air between them, Jihoon staring at the page before him as Minghao details the lines of his face and Jihoon can feel him wanting to ask more, can feel the sadness that grips him as he stares even though Minghao cannot know what he is grieving for.
“What happened to you?” Minghao asks then, his voice almost a whisper and Jihoon glances at him furtively, worrying at the inside of his cheek. Don’t you want someone to know, the psychopomp had asked, don’t you want someone to know what happened to you, even if it’s too late?
But I don’t want to tell that story, Jihoon thinks then, I don’t want to remember all that I wished to forget. And so he pushes the paper towards Minghao, gesturing to the runes there, answering his question by another.
“Who taught you the runes?”
Minghao looks down, thumbing at the page and there’s an old sadness in his eyes, an old shame, an old wound.
“No one,” Minghao says, “there was no one to teach me. There was someone who helped, someone you know. And I found writings, but the runes must have already been lost by then.”
Jihoon looks down at his own drawings, at Minghao’s finger tracing their shape, almost longingly, this knowledge he had sought for so long within reach at last.
“You’re the first one,” Minghao says eventually, raising his gaze to Jihoon, pushing hair out of his eyes. “It all started with you.”
“What started?”
“Everything,” Minghao answers him, “everything that happened to us.”
Jihoon knows what he means, then, he knows; he was there, he was there when the seer stepped into the dream to carve his flesh in offering, he was there when the twisted shades were brought back where they belonged, deep under the earth, he was there for everything, for all the pain and the suffering. His gaze falls down to his hands, down to his arms where Minghao’s runes are etched.
“They are not so bad,” he says, Minghao’s gaze snapping to him. “I can feel their magic, and it is strong enough. Wild and raw, but it serves its purpose.”
“Are you trying to make me feel better?”
“Why would I do that?”
Minghao laughs then, something short-lived but there all the same and his features change with the sound, brighter, younger, and Jihoon wonders what burdens have plagued him for the sadness in his eyes to spill so over his being. But were he to ask he knows what Minghao would want in exchange – his own story, one he isn’t ready to tell. So he keeps quiet, eyes searching Minghao’s face and the latter stares back, something of wonder in his face, wonder at what they have accomplished – bringing him back, back from a wake-less sleep.
“Are you hungry?” Minghao asks suddenly, as if remembering his hosting duties. “Do you want to drink anything?”
A smile makes its way on Jihoon’s lips, something that has Minghao stare uneasily.
“I do not think I need to,” Jihoon says. He lifts his arms, sleeves falling back, exposing the runes. “These are enough.”
“You mean–”
“I mean I am not really alive, no. This flesh has only the pulse magic has given it. I don’t think I could ever leave this house. I don’t think I could ever leave these clothes.”
Minghao falls silent, hesitation in his gaze before he tentatively reaches out, fingers brushing against Jihoon’s hand. Jihoon knows the feel of his flesh, the cold dwelling there, the icy stillness of death he carries in the marrow of his bones. But Minghao doesn’t recoil. His fingers inches higher, to the base of Jihoon’s wrist and he traces the rune there, the only thing of warmth on Jihoon’s body.
“I’m sorry,” Minghao says then, softly, and Jihoon isn’t sure what it is he’s sorry for. He opens his mouth to ask, but there is a sudden noise down the corridor, a lively voice spilling into the room as the door swings open. Jihoon turns, and the young man at the threshold freezes, eyes wide as they fall on him.
“Oh,” he says, “oh damn, he’s awake,” and Jihoon knows him then, knows his voice – he had heard it long ago, pleading, a supplicant offering up everything but there had been nothing to take. Yet Jihoon had relented, Jihoon had given up the little soul that had found its way to the yew tree.
“Chan,” Minghao says then, rising from behind the desk and the kid’s nervous eyes jump to him, “this is, er, this is Lee Jihoon,” and his sentence ends almost like a question.
“Okay, well, erm, nice to meet you? I’m Lee Chan.”
“I know you,” Jihoon says and Chan’s eyes jump to Minghao again, as if looking for reassurance, and Jihoon notices he still hasn’t stepped into the room.
“That’s – that’s great,” he says eventually. “How?”
“You asked something of me, long ago.”
“Oh. Oh, right,” the kid says, as if it just hit him. “Thanks, I guess? Like, thanks a lot.”
Jihoon almost wants to laugh. Such simple words for the tremendous thing Chan had asked for, yet Jihoon knows there is sincerity there. Instead of laughing he watches the kid fidget at the threshold, watches him rack his brain for anything to say in the stretching silence, until Minghao helpfully decides to put him out of his misery.
“Did you have something to tell me?”
“Oh yes,” Chan latches onto him, staring at his face with too much intensity, as if forcefully trying to prevent his gaze from drifting to Jihoon. “Just, well, lunch is ready. I guess we can, I guess we can add a plate,” he finishes lamely, glancing at Jihoon.
“He doesn’t eat,” Minghao starts, Chan’s gaze snapping back to him.
“He doesn’t eat?” he says, almost offended.
“He doesn’t need to.”
“What about eating for pleasure?” Chan asks, turning to Jihoon this time, who stares back at him blankly.
“I would rather not,” he says slowly, watching as Chan’s expression changes to a frown.
“He would rather not,” Chan repeats to no one in particular, Minghao skirting around the desk to join him at the threshold, steering him back towards the corridor, still mumbling.
“Do you still want to join us?” Minghao asks him and Jihoon ponders in silence. Us, he’d said, the psychopomp and the shaman, the blinded seer and the buried one. Us. He had seemed so alone, that man at his desk, eager fingers tracing the edges of forgotten runes, full of a longing for bygone knowledge and lost answers. Yet he wasn’t, and wherever he turned Jihoon saw the traces of the people who dwelt there, threaded into Minghao’s own presence; two different handwriting on the same paper, a pile of books left for safekeeping on the corner of the desk near empty teacups.
“No,” he says then, because it is not the place of the dead to mingle with the living. “I will remain here.”
They do not insist, their footsteps disappearing down the corridor after Minghao gently pushes the door closed behind him. Left alone Jihoon rises from his stool and goes to sit in Minghao’s chair, listlessly turning the pages of the book the man had been reading but the words on the white pages do not register; it is something else that he sees, and as he watches the shadows curl around his hands, drawn to him like cold fingers to a fireplace, he remembers.
It had come with the soldiers. Those tall, horse-mounted soldiers that had stood on the crest of the hills. They weren’t anything new. There had always been soldiers, and raids and wars and the death that they sowed. But this time, this time something else was riding with them. Something unseen, unknown, something that did not choose sides, something that came down upon the world and devoured it whole. It had started slowly, a sickness that struck on the outskirts, a terrible sickness, one that would kill in spurts of blood and the blackening of the limbs. But that’s all it was. Until it wasn’t. Until it struck and struck again, shattering the bodies and filling the graves, until the moans of the dying drowned out the voices of the living. It spread amongst families, amongst friends and soon no one was left to bring out the dead .
A great pit was dug into the soft earth under a lonely tree where bodies laid uncovered, the smell of rot and blood and suffering.
And Jihoon stood there, Jihoon stood there and watched the devastation spread, watched the world turn dark and waited amongst the dead for death to come. And it did.
2.
Chan stumbles before him as Minghao steers him to the kitchen where everyone is already seated, four pair of eyes rising to them as they enter. Something must show in their faces, something uneasy as the silence stretches before Jeonghan breaks it, asking in a soft voice if anything’s the matter.
“He woke up,” Minghao says eventually, standing at the threshold with a hand on Chan’s shoulder. “His name’s Lee Jihoon, and he woke up.”
“Oh,” Vernon says, echoing Chan’s earlier reaction. Chan himself ducks from under Minghao’s touch to go sit by his side where a chair has been left empty.
“He’s creepy,” he says, “there’s just something about him that’s creepy. It’s not even what he says but he’ll just look at you and barely blink and it’s like he’s seeing through your skin to what your soul’s made of. And he’s disappointed.”
“You barely stood in the room with him for five minutes,” Minghao remarks as he takes a chair for himself, squeezing between Wonwoo and Joshua.
“Yeah, well, it felt longer,” Chan says, stabbing a chopstick in one of the mandu Vernon deposits on his plate.
“What did he say?” Joshua asks, Minghao turning towards him.
“He said – he said the runes were wrong. He showed me how they should be. He said… he said he made them. Discovered them when they were needed.”
There’s a short silence as each thinks of the implications of Minghao’s words, Joshua staring at the food cooling in his plate until he speaks again.
“Did he say why he needed them?”
Because the world was dying, Jihoon had said, yet if I had known the price to pay I would have let it end. There had been such grief in his cold eyes, such anger in the turn of his jaw.
“Not really,” Minghao says carefully, “something happened, though. Something that must have been terrible. A war maybe, I don’t know.”
Joshua nods, looking back down at his plate.
“You left him in your office?”
“Yeah,” Minghao acquiesces, “he didn’t want to come down. He doesn’t need to eat, apparently.”
“Well, he’s not technically alive, so I am not surprised.”
“That’s what I meant by creepy,” Chan pipes in, talking more to Vernon than anyone else, “you get my drift now? Dude’s some sort of healthy zombie.”
Vernon snorts, his eyes widening as he realizes his mishap and he elbows Chan to get him to quiet.
“Read the room,” he whispers, Chan smacking his hand away. But no one pays any attention to them; Joshua has pushed his chair back to get to his feet.
“I’ll go talk to him.”
“Do you want one of us to come?” Jeonghan asks but Joshua shakes his head, smiling at him before walking through the door. There are things he wants to ask Jihoon. Things he doesn’t want Jeonghan to hear, not now that the quiet dread that had inhabited him ever since Joshua offered himself for Wonwoo’s sake had finally started to recede. And so he climbs the stairs alone, the corridor eerily quiet, the light of day itself seemingly subdued, as if the house held its breath, silenced its noises for the one who had awaken.
Joshua knocks before pushing open the door to Minghao’s office without waiting for an invitation. Jihoon is seated behind the desk, raising his gaze from a book opened on the tabletop. And immediately, Joshua knows what Chan had meant. His eyes, his eyes are hauntingly cold, a faraway look that goes through Joshua as if he was made of mist. There is something else, too, something unseen that raises the fine hair on Joshua’s nape, something that speaks to the most primitive part of himself, telling him to run, that this is unnatural, an abomination he should fear.
Yet Joshua takes a step and Jihoon watches him come into the room, remaining silent when Joshua drags the stool closer, when he sits himself on the other side of the desk. He’s detailing the lines of his face, searching with his eerie gaze and Joshua lets him, waits out his scrutiny, and it is Jihoon who speaks first.
“How does it feel?” he asks, voice cold and quiet, cold and quiet as the grave. “How does it feel to be free once more?”
Joshua blinks, tilting his head, considering what is asked of him.
“Terribly lonely,” he says eventually, voice slow and measured, “the world I knew and loved is gone. The people I knew, those I loved and those I hated, are no more. I am unmoored, and lost, and I do not understand the workings of this new life I have been given.”
“But you have found a family, here, yes? The blinded seer who loves you, and the almost witch, and the lost one you came to me for.”
“I did, and I love them, and so there is hope.”
Something that should be a smile blooms on Jihoon’s face as he sits back in his chair, a slow blink hiding his shadowy gaze.
“There are things you wish to ask me.”
“Many,” Joshua answers, leaning towards the desk. “But I will only ask one, today. What are you? The tree, what is it?”
“That’s two questions,” Jihoon says, snapping his eyes open. “I am me, and the tree is the tree. It grew in a sacred place where we brought out our dead, nourished itself of souls and wishes. The magic it holds is old as the world, and I found it, and I used it. When I was buried there it sunk its roots into my flesh and grew around me, and we became something else, something more than just the sum of our beings. And then you pulled back my soul.”
“But some part of you is still there.”
“Yes, and it always will be. The tree in this world is long gone, yet it remains in the other. It is the same for me. It was the same for you.”
This is where it lays, Joshua thinks, the kinship that he feels with this dead being, with this phantom staring at him from beyond the grave. They were both exhumed, awakened from a transient death that left them deserted, everything lost, everything ashes and sand.
“I should thank you, I think,” Joshua says then, and Jihoon tilts his head, an amused glint in his eyes.
“Everyone seems to think so. But what I did, I did not do for you.”
“Why did you do it, then?”
Jihoon remains silent as he ponders the question, lifting a hand to brush back a strand of hair falling loose from his topknot and the hanbok’s sleeve falls back over his arm. Joshua stares at the runes etched there, the ones Minghao had said were wrong yet they were still powerful enough, still potent enough to tether this dead soul to an imprint of its lost flesh.
“There has been enough suffering,” Jihoon says eventually and his gaze is far away, looking back through bygone centuries. “We have paid enough for an existence we did not ask for. I could stop it, so I did.”
“Compassion, then,” Joshua says, thinking of Minghao and his lost heritage, Jeonghan and his glaring absence of a past, Chan’s bruised skin and Wonwoo’s terror. Jihoon is smiling his strange smile again, gaze falling from Joshua’s face to the books opened on the desk.
“Yes, maybe. Compassion. That is why you brought me here, too, isn’t it?”
And it must be, Joshua thinks, remembering the tortured ghost they had summoned, that broken body, buried alive, alone and suffering. It had spurred them on, more than the answers they wanted, more than the knowledge they could gain.
“It would be very noble of us,” he says, Jihoon leaning forward on his elbows and Joshua wonders if he felt the same in life, if he was this cold, if his eyes held the same phantoms. And Joshua remembers what Vernon had told them then, remembers the other soul, the lost one, the one Jihoon had embraced in death. Someone had loved him, someone had clung to him as they died.
“The other one,” he asks, Jihoon’s gaze snapping back to him and there’s a warning there, one that Joshua ignores, “the other body buried with you, who were they?”
“That is an awful lot of questions for someone who said they would only ask one.”
Joshua knows he won’t get an answer, yet he also knows that Jihoon remembers, remembers perfectly. It’s there behind his eyes, a grief, a distress seeping through his dead flesh. But Joshua knows, too, about the pain of unearthing buried memories and so he lets it go; there will still be time, it is the only thing that Jihoon has, here.
“Alright,” Joshua says, a small smile on his lips. “Are you in need of anything?” he asks, embracing the finality Jihoon has brought to their conversation.
“Books,” Jihoon answers immediately, as if he had been waiting for Joshua to ask. “History books.”
“What are you looking for?”
Jihoon blinks at him, and for a split second Joshua thinks he will refuse to answer once again, yet Jihoon does, a wistful lilt straining his words.
“I need to know how it ended,” he says, “I need to know what happened.”
Joshua nods slowly; he knows nothing more will come forth and so he raises from his seat, Jihoon falling into step behind him. He’s quiet, too quiet, the rustling of his hanbok the only sound to be heard from him – no breath, no noise from his naked feet and Joshua shivers as if a ghost trailed his steps.
They stop in front of the library, Joshua pushing the door open and letting Jihoon go in first. They have brought the room back to its original state, yet it will always feel different. The light is colder, now, the shadows darker, louder in their whispers. Something had clung here, something they will never erase. Maybe Jihoon feels it as he steps carefully, eyes trailing over the rows of books clothing the walls.
“You might find what you’re looking for. There’s no real order, though, so good luck.”
“Thank you,” Jihoon says, and Joshua knows when he’s been dismissed. He leaves the room, closing the door, and he presses his ear against the wood but there is nothing to be heard; the room might as well be empty.
Left alone Jihoon trails a finger over the spines of the books, and as he moves the shadows move with him, swirling in his footsteps, trading whispers amongst themselves. Jihoon extends a hand towards the floor and they rise in volutes, twining around his fingers like infant snakes, their coldness nothing to the one nesting within him. He is used to their constant company, to their chatter like wind in the trees and he is glad that they have come. I am unmoored, the buried one had said, unmoored and lost and I do not understand the workings of this new life and Jihoon knows what he had meant, he feels it in his borrowed flesh; it’s in the foreign sensations under his fingertips, the foreign sounds, the foreign smells that do not speak to him.
And so he touches the spine of these strange books, he leafs through their pages and the words are hard to read, too different from what they had been yet their primal form is still there, just like it is in the runes covering his body. He finds an old volume, heavily bound in leather, one that looks promising; the painting on the cover shows what he knows, what he remembers. A skeleton riding a white horse harnessed to a cart full of naked skulls, a mangy dog gnawing at a fallen body, pyres in the distance raising black smoke to the sky while an army of desiccated corpses marches against mankind.
He had tried, Jihoon had tried when the sickness had come, when the buboes had appeared on the bodies of those he knew, when their skin had blackened, when blood had spurt forth from their mouths. But there had been nothing he could do. He had stood there, kneeling near their agonizing forms, holding them as they’d died, writhing and sobbing. Every day we bring out our friends for burial, the book says, and every day the city becomes emptier as the number of grave increases. And soon there was no more space for graves, and they had dug a pit under the old bent tree, as deep as they could in the dry earth, and the death carts had brought the fallen there, to be piled onto one another when there was no more time to burn them.
Breath spreads the infection among those speaking together, the page continues, and it seems as if the victims were struck all at once by the affliction and were shattered by it. After three days they died, and with them died not only everyone who talked with them but also anyone who had acquired or touched or laid hands on their belongings.
Except me, Jihoon thinks, except me, I had to stay, I had to witness as all around me crumbled to ashes, as it seemed the end of the world had come. And when I asked why, there was no answer.
There had been no reason for the pestilence, none that he could find yet he had tried everything that he knew and everything that he didn’t, listening to the whispers of dead souls and the wind in the old tree, carving runes that had come in empty dreams, chanting songs in unknown words. But nothing had slowed the advance of the great mortality. And then, then he wasn’t the only one looking for answers anymore, he wasn’t the only one looking for a source, looking to assign blame because then the madness would make sense.
Jihoon closes his eyes, snapping the book shut before it awakens the memories buried deep under his heart, the ones he wishes would rot into nothingness. But they are always there, intact and unchanged; he can feel the weight they carry, their slow pulse where nothing should beat. He opens his eyes, and the light has changed slightly, dimmed, softened, as if it wished to spare him. He looks down at the book in his lap and there are words, printed alone on the white page. Jihoon read slowly, the whispers of the shadows closing in around him.
Now, there is a dismal solitude.
(dream)
The dream is sharper, this time. He hears better, sees better, colors and shapes coming into his vision. Someone is crying. Exhausted sobs, carrying a sorrow the depths of which he cannot fathom but it sinks beneath his ribs, smothering his heart.
“It will be fine,” he hears himself say, “I will be okay,” and his voice sounds raw, raw and broken. The sobs forcefully halt , and there is a silence before a face bends over him, eyes bloodshot, cheeks streaked with tears yet it is still beautiful, and he knows then that this is a face he loves, one he knows by heart, every line and every edge.
“You must go,” he says in his broken voice, “you must leave me and go. I will be fine.”
There is nothing but silence, and hands coming to rest upon his chest, warm, beloved hands he held so many times. He gains conscience of his body then, every ache and every bruise and there is only pain, there is only pain to be felt. And so he knows, he knows that he is dying, that the cold sweat drenching him is one that comes with agony.
“You must go,” he repeats, urgency seeping into his voice with a sense of danger, of impending doom and he remembers the blood on his hands, he remembers falling into soft earth, he remembers the cries and the loss and he’s too late, too late, this is something that has already happened.
“I won’t leave you,” a voice rises, a voice he adores, “I won’t leave you here to die alone.”
But then you will die too, he thinks, blood and earth and cries, but this isn’t what he says.
“Help me dress. Please,” and he hears a rustle and he feels the touch of rough cloth setting his skin on fire. He sees the sword leaned against the wall but he does not ask for it; h e knows that he won’t be able to lift it. He knows that this is all in vain. He knows that this is the end, but at least they won’t go alone to face eternity.
When he wakes the sadness is still there, lodged like a stone in his chest. The face is still there, too, and he grabs the sketchbook by his bedside, picks up the pencil lodged in its spine. It’s almost too easy to draw, he thinks then, shapes bursting forth from under the tip of his pen; the sharp lines of almond eyes, the ridges of high cheekbones, the slight curve of smiling lips. It’s him, then, the man in the dream, staring at him from the white page and the deepest yearning unfurls in his chest, one he cannot understand, one that brings tears to his eyes and he hugs the sketchbook to himself, trying to breath through the grief pulling him under.
3.
If Jihoon doesn’t need to eat, he doesn’t really need to sleep, either. He knows that he could, that were he to close his eyes sleep would eventually claim him, but he is not sure it is worth the dreams that awaits him there. So when the dark of night replaces the graying light of day, the season slowly plunging into winter, he listens to the sounds of the house dying down – footsteps and voices and a door closing. They have left him alone, for the most part. They do not know how to handle him, not yet, and he doesn’t fault them, remaining in the library with the company of shadows. When the house falls entirely silent he leaves the room, the door hanging open behind him and he walks down the corridor, cold fingers trailing against the old walls.
On the ground floor he stands in the middle of the little shop, darkened and silent, the bric-a-brac on the shelves espousing strange forms; sometimes a face watching from the shadows, sometimes a wolf crouching in wait, sometimes a hand grabbing for him. He stands and he closes his eyes, taking a few steps in a circle, a slow dance in time with his breathing and it becomes easier then, easier to picture what used to stand there, when his flesh was warm, his heart beating. The house was little back then, little and derelict, and the tree stood tall apart from it, branches bending to dry earth not yet dug out to make way for corpses.
If he goes quicker he can hear the sounds; the bustle from the village, the lowing of cattle, the cawing of birds in the branches. Maybe if he had known then, maybe he could have prevented the pestilence from devouring all. But he hadn’t, and all had gone only for him to remain alone, the sole survivor of the decimation, the sole witness of mankind’s suffering. Was that it? he asks then, was someone needed to know, to remember, to carry within them the memories of others? How they suffered, how they perished? There is no answer from the dark, no answer from the shadows who curl around him as his dance slows and he knows who they are, he knows their grief and the yearning they carry; he had watched them die, had held them as they fell.
Jihoon keeps his eyes closed, wandering closer to that locked door within himself, the slow thumping of his naked feet the only sound to be heard. He knows who is standing behind it, knows their voice and their touch, knows how they had looked in death, their body spent, their perfect skin marred with the brand of sickness, their hands reddened with the blood of their own veins. And he had gone willingly, he had gone willingly with them into the grave. Where are you? he asks again, and again there is no answer. Where did you go? I have been alone for so long. Please find me. Please let me find you.
They find him like this in the morning, the almost witch and the blinded seer. He is still standing, still waiting, still listening. But there is nothing to hear, nothing to see. And so he puts a smile to his lips as they talk to him, nods yes and no, and climbs the stairs back to the shelter of the library, ignoring their whispers in his wake. But there is someone there, seated on the sunken sofa now littered with the books Jihoon has yet to put back. Jihoon smiles his absent smile, closes the door behind him and leans against it, considering the boy on the couch.
“I was wondering when you will come find me,” he says softly, and red rises on the shapeshifter’s cheeks.
“I wasn’t sure… I wasn’t sure what to say.”
“And now you are?”
The shapeshifter shakes his head, glancing down at his hands, sagely folded in his lap.
“Still not. But I brought you back. And so I am here to listen.”
Jihoon blinks, pushing off the door to step closer, the kid watching him approach with wide eyes, something like fear in their depths and Jihoon knows how he must feel to him; cold, distant, dead.
“Listen to what?”
“Don’t you have anything you want to say?” the kid asks, tilting his head, curious. Someone to know that you were here, someone to know the extent of your suffering, someone to know. Jihoon considers him in silence, this kid who feels too much like the place he left behind, the shadows, the magic clinging to the very fabric of his being.
“What is your name?”
“Vernon.”
“It is a strange name.”
“It isn’t Korean. There are other countries,” the kid says carefully, as if wary to shock him.
“I know there are other countries,” Jihoon says, maybe a little dryly as the kid bites his lips but Jihoon soon notices that it is to prevent a smile from blooming fully.
“Are you mocking me?”
“No, I’m sorry,” the kid says immediately, cheeks reddening again. “It’s just, you’re not as creepy as Chan says you are.”
Chan, the supplicant, the one who had asked for the impossible and seen it granted. Compassion , Joshua had said, and it must have been it; Jihoon had heard his desperate pleas, felt the depths of his anguish, and had relented.
“Do you love him?” he asks, and the blush spreads down Vernon’s neck.
“Yeah,” the kid answers in a whisper, eyes boring holes in the back of his hands.
“Why?”
“That’s a strange question to ask,” Vernon says, gaze snapping back to Jihoon’s face, “I just do. Did you have a reason, when you fell in love?”
Dark eyes and warm hands and the round-pommeled sword at his side. A loud laugh that had dimmed as the war wore on, as the soldiers massed on the hills had sent wave after wave of their numbers. War has become an endless course of terror and fatigue, someone had said in one of Minghao’s books, mutated to a sort of boredom that destroys everything but the body’s motor functions. And Jihoon had watched it happen to him, had seen it dim his features and the light in his eyes. Yet he had loved him, a savage kind of love, a love made dark by the constant fear, by the nearness of death. And then the sickness had struck, and all light had gone from the world.
“I did not,” he says then, “I just did.”
“What happened to him?”
“Isn’t that what you said you’d find out?” Jihoon says with a half smile but the kid doesn’t blush this time; he straightens up, holding Jihoon’s gaze.
“I meant before,” he says quietly, “I meant before he died.”
Jihoon tilts his head, considering Vernon in silence, considering what he can tell, what is still safe.
“He fell ill,” he says eventually and the words sound much too simple, much too quaint to encompass the reality of what this illness had been, encompass the abyss that had opened within him when he had felt the first traces of it under his hands, when the beloved eyes had stared into his own and he had seen that he knew, that death was already there under his skin. And so Jihoon knows then, he knows that words will always fail him, that they will never say anything of the sleepless nights, the quiet tears, the dismal pain. It doesn’t matter, then, it doesn’t matter what he says.
“It’s not what killed him, though,” he continues, not looking at Vernon anymore, eyes out of focus, blurry colors mixing into nothingness.
“I killed him. I wouldn’t go quietly into the grave, and so he went first in my place. He tried to save me, even when he knew there was no hope for either of us.”
“Save you from what?” Vernon asks and his voice is far away, almost unheard over the murmurs of the shadows rising about Jihoon, over the shouts and the cries he can hear in his head.
“Fear and cruelty,” he says slowly, and he remembers their faces, he remembers each one of them, their wide eyes and snarling mouths and the hatred that had burnt within their wrecked bodies.
But they had smelled like fear, they had smelled like fear and despair and he had understood, he had understood; they used to sacrifice chickens and pigs, cows and dogs but this was different, this required more, more blood to be spent for appeasing whatever they had brought down onto their heads. And so they had come for him, they had come to nourish the earth of his blood in hope of breaking the curse, they had come to bury him in the yew tree where he had found the old magic, the one they had begun to fear.
But he hadn’t been willing. Not until they had taken one last thing from him, not until the grave meant for him had swallowed the last of his light. And so he had gone, then. He had let their hands upon his body, he had let them push him down into the earth and he had embraced the body there, the last of its warmth lost against his skin. Only when his lungs burned had he tried to struggle, only then had he clawed at the earth, vainly, broken nails and mouth full of dust, and then, then there had been nothing.
“Do you have any idea,” Vernon is asking, words lost to Jihoon’s ears, “do you have any idea why your soul remained, but his did not?”
Jihoon stares but it isn’t Vernon that he sees; it’s someone else, someone who’s image burns a hole in his chest, yearning and regrets drowning his empty lungs and there is the taste of clay upon his tongue, blood at his fingertips and he stares at the adored eyes, the beloved lips and he misses him so much, he misses him so much he would die a thousand more deaths if it meant bringing him back.
“Jihoon?” a tentative voice calls to him and Vernon rises from the mist, wide questioning eyes and it is enough, it is enough.
“Leave me,” Jihoon says softly, “leave me, please.”
Vernon stares at him but he doesn’t ask, doesn’t say anything as he rises from the couch and skirts around him towards the door. When it closes gently behind him Jihoon sinks to the floor, shadows rising as if to cushion his fall and he lets them cloak him in darkness, their soft murmurs soothing his ears, filling his mind. And now, he thinks back on words lettered upon smooth paper, now there is a dismal solitude.
4.
Chan enters their bedroom to find Vernon laying upon their bed like a starfish, staring at the ceiling with a frown on his face, heavy sighs escaping his chest. The sight is peculiar enough, and Chan remains at the threshold, watching silently for a few seconds until Vernon turns his head towards him, a soft smile finding its way to his lips. It’s an invitation, and so Chan skirts the bed to sit upon the mattress. Immediately Vernon curls his body around him, laying his head in his lap. And immediately, Chan’s hands land upon his hair, threading soft fingers in silky locks.
“What is it?” Chan asks as Vernon nudges closer, burying his face in his stomach. Chan still isn’t fully used to this new intimacy, this new freedom he has; the freedom to touch Vernon , without excuses, without stealing his warmth under the cover of night. This knowledge sits like a warm weight in Chan’s chest and it makes him smile, sometimes, in the middle of the day or late at night, it makes him smile a soft smile, one that Vernon often steals with a kiss.
“I talked to Jihoon,” Vernon answers, voice muffled by Chan’s shirt.
“Oh,” Chan says, scratching lightly at Vernon’s nape, who sighs contentedly, “and how did that go?”
“He really knows how to bring you down, doesn’t he?”
Chan laughs, something short-lived that morphs too quickly into a sigh.
“What did he tell you?”
Vernon’s arms come to rest around Chan’s waist as he scoots his head back to look up at him. There is a sadness in his eyes, one that Chan has the urge to kiss away but he remains still, waiting for the words that are sure to follow.
“I asked him about the body in the grave with him. The dude was sick, and then he got killed somehow, and Jihoon thinks it’s his fault. But he was going to die anyway.”
“Oh, happy days,” Chan says, drawing a tired smile from Vernon who rolls away on his back, hands leaving Chan’s waist to rest up on his own stomach, head pillowed on Chan’s thighs .
Chan takes to put ugly braids in Vernon’s hair, his dark hair which are getting too long. He likes the shaggy look it gives him, though, a departure from his usual put-togetherness Chan knows is a conscious effort to go unnoticed. Vernon is starting to let go, bit by bit. Chan likes it. And so he bends to kiss him, gently, softly, because this is something he can do now, and Vernon smiles up at him when they part.
“You know, he’s kinda funny though, in a way.”
“Really?” Chan says dryly, an eyebrow raised skeptically. Jihoon hadn’t particularly struck him as a riot. Jihoon had struck him as the type of guy to stalk the corridors at three am, looking freshly dug out, handing out heart attacks to innocent bystanders just trying to get to the bathroom.
“Yeah, like, kinda?” Vernon continues, “ like sometimes he says something all dry and I don’t really know if he’s joking or not but like… it’s kinda funny.”
“Well, I mean,” Chan starts, willing to give Vernon the benefit of the doubt, “being buried alive with the fresh corpse of your diseased lover would probably put a damper on a guy. Maybe he was funny before.”
“Do you think he could be funny again?”
Chan looks down at Vernon, at the worry in his eyes and he knows what he is really asking.
“Yeah,” he says, “I think so.”
“I sort of said I’d find the guy for him but like, I don’t even know where to start,” Vernon says quietly, eyes downcast, a slight blush on his cheeks.
“Maybe he became a ghost,” Chan says absently, drawing the lines of Vernon’s eyebrows with a gentle finger.
“Should we try oui-ja?”
“Dude,” Chan laughs, trailing fingertips in the dip of Vernon’s collarbones, “we have a whole-ass shaman.”
“I don’t want to bother Wonwoo.”
“I do. I mean, I don’t think he would mind. Like, we’re all in this together.”
Vernon opens his mouth but he doesn’t have time to say anything before Chan slaps his hand over it.
“Don’t,” he warns, “don’t fucking sing that song.”
“I wasn’t gonna,” Vernon mumbles from behind his palm and Chan knows that he is lying.
“You were, and I hate you.”
Vernon licks his palm then, Chan shrieking and scrambling away in disgust. Vernon rises with a laugh, pushing him down against the mattress and Chan struggles halfheartedly, giggling as Vernon straddles his waist to play-fight him, Chan fending off his hands as Vernon half-yells the lyrics of the song without trying for melody. And then, something shifts. It’s in the warmth rising in Chan’s chest at Vernon’s proximity, at the feel of his body against his. It’s in Vernon’s burning gaze as he looks down at Chan’s flushed face, in the slowing of his hands, in the parting of his lips.
Chan closes his eyes as Vernon leans down towards him; his kiss is slow and gentle, nibbling as Chan parts his lips and rests his hands at Vernon’s nape, bringing him closer. I love you, Chan says silently; it’s in the gasps that he lets out, in his fingers clutching at Vernon’s shirt, in the warmth of his mouth and the way his body yields. And Vernon hears, and Vernon knows, and Vernon kisses him again and again, melts against him, hands finding all the right edges.
These are moments Chan loves, moments he knows he will remember. Laying quietly next to Vernon, head pillowed on his chest, listening to his heart beat as Vernon trails lazy fingers over his hair. The smell of him on his own skin, the ghost feeling of his hands on his hips, down his back, circling his waist. The sound of his breath, the warm feeling of it fanning over his damp skin. All that came before, all that will come after. Chan rises his head, just enough to kiss a jutting collarbone and Vernon sighs, hugging him more tightly to himself. Each of their gesture languid, each of their touch unhurried.
“Maybe he got lost,” Chan says eventually, as if they had never interrupted their conversation.
“Who?” Vernon asks, trailing fingers down Chan’s neck, eliciting a shiver.
“The guy in the grave,” Chan explains as he wrestles the cover from under himself. “He died first, right? Maybe he got lost. Maybe he went looking for Jihoon in all the wrong places.”
Chan throws the cover over them both, Vernon snuggling down in the newfound warmth.
“Then we just have to call him back,” Vernon says, and his hand on Chan’s waist tightens its hold, “like when you called me back.”
“Well,” Chan says, his fingers finding Vernon’s own, “it was different, then. Someone was listening.”
Chan still cannot bear to think about it. It is still there, stark in his mind; Vernon’s lifeless body, his blue lips, the cold feel of his hand. And it always will be, no matter how young he had been. A ghost tapping at the window of his mind, one he doesn’t want to let in yet it is always there trailing his steps, whispering in his ear, you almost lost him, you almost lost him, he was dead under your hands. And soon Vernon’s voice rises in his mind, his voice heard from behind a closed door, the tree said he had asked for the same thing, once, and he’d been denied. A weight sinks in Chan’s stomach, his hand gripping Vernon’s tighter. He said he knew what it felt like.
Jihoon’s dark eyes and the dismal sorrow found there, his quiet voice and the bare words it cloths in darkness. And maybe Chan understands a little better, maybe he can find some of his loneliness in Jihoon’s own, some of his old pain in Jihoon’s sorrow. And so he curls further against Vernon, feels his warmth and the rise of his chest, listens to the beat of his heart and the rhythm of his breaths. And he knows who he has to thank for the life under his hands, for the elation in his chest at each of Vernon’s glance, each of Vernon’s smile.
“Okay,” he says, and he can feel Vernon’s gaze on him, “I will help. I will ask Wonwoo, and I will help you find the lost soul.”
“Thank you,” Vernon says and there’s a kiss against his cheek. Vernon doesn’t ask about his sudden commitment. He must know, Chan thinks, he must know, and he turns on his side to bury his face against Vernon’s chest, hide his eyes from the grey morning light and it feels like it might rain, heavy clouds drifting in the sky, an earthy smell carried in the air with a feeling of expectation.
Yet the first drops do not fall until morning has turned into twilight, and Chan finds himself seated at the kitchen table, watching Wonwoo cut up mushrooms for dinner. Rain falls heavily, drops knocking against the window as if asking to be let in and Wonwoo looks up, knife held in his hand. There’s a chill in the air, a shiver going through them both and Chan hunches up on himself as Wonwoo resumes his chopping, the rhythmic thump of the knife against the cutting board lulling Chan to a torpor.
“Winter’s coming early this year,” Wonwoo says as he puts the chopped mushrooms into a bowl, moving to grab a suy choi from the grocery bags abandoned on the counter.
“Maybe it’s cause we have the ice king in the house.”
Wonwoo laughs, sitting back down at the table, moving the cabbage onto the cutting board.
“We really didn’t think that one through, huh.”
Chan shrugs, pillowing his head on his arms, listening to the neat sound of Wonwoo’s blade running through crisp leaves.
“It just felt like we had to do something. And then we did. Or, well, you guys did.”
“Are you rejecting all responsibility?” Wonwoo deadpans, eyebrows raised over an amused glance.
“I am. I am powerless in this house. Nothing that happens will ever be my fault.”
“Damn, you got it easy.”
Chan smiles, extending a hand to grab at a leaf before having it slapped away.
“Hands-off my cabbage,” Wonwoo warns, turning the knife on Chan who raises his hands in surrender.
“It’s Minghao’s cabbage though, he paid for it,” he grumbles, flexing his injured fingers.
“All that is his is mine,” Wonwoo announces, pouring as much solemnity as he can into his voice.
“Says who?”
“Says me.”
“Well that’s grand,” Chan says, pushing off the table to sit up straighter. “What are you making anyway?”
“Some sort of stir-fry,” Wonwoo says, back to chopping.
“That inspires confidence,” Chan sighs, looking forlornly at the bowl full of mushrooms.
“You’re welcome to go eat anywhere else if you don’t like it.”
“Nah, I’m good with approximate stir-fries.”
Wonwoo glares at him over Minghao’s cabbage, suspending his gesture for a split-second.
“Why are you even here? Don’t you have anyone else to bother?”
“Aw I’m hurt,” Chan says, clasping his hands over his heart, “I thought we were having a bonding moment.”
“We were until you insulted my cooking.”
“You insulted it yourself.”
Wonwoo opens his mouth on an indignant gurgle when lightning illuminates the room, both jumping at the loud crash of thunder that follows. The sky has turned entirely dark outside, rain falling in heavy streaks, and as they watch in silence lightning again flashes, the rumble of thunder following close. They glance at each other with wide eyes, Wonwoo heaving a sigh before he shakes his head, going back to chopping, the sound of his blade almost drowned out by the hammering of the rain against the window.
“Spirits will be restless tonight,” he says quietly, sliding the cabbage into the bowl.
“Jihoon too?”
“Jihoon always is.”
Wonwoo leaves the blade upon the table, stretching his arms over his head before looking through the window again; yet the rain obscures all, and the world seems to close in on them, nothing beyond the house, beyond the lighted kitchen. Chan feel s it too as he bends towards Wonwoo, speaking in a hushed voice under the rolls of thunder.
“Shamans can speak to the dead, right?”
Wonwoo considers him, head slightly tilted, before he answers.
“You saw what I can do. I do not speak to them. They speak through me.”
“How do you find the right soul?”
“The dead are eager to speak. You do not have to find them. They come to you, and you do not have to call long.”
“I– ” Chan interrupts himself, suddenly intimidated. There are many Wonwoo, it seems, and the one sitting there in front of him is not the one he was bantering with anymore. It’s the one he’d seen clad in the cloths of the dead, the one that had danced a slow dance, the waves of his opened fan calling back a lost soul; it’s the one who had trapped Jihoon with the sound of bells and a low song. The dead are eager to speak, and Chan remembers cold fingers of ashes and dust pulling at him, murmurs in his ears turning to wails, the smell of decay and the taste of rot, they come to you, and you do not have to call long and Minghao’s pendant had burnt itself into his flesh; where he to look he would see the curved scar the rune had left, where he to touch it would feel warm, warm with Minghao’s magic.
“Could you try to call the one in the grave?” Chan asks eventually, voice barely above a whisper and Wonwoo smiles, a sad smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.
“I did not wait for you to ask me before trying. But there is nothing to call. There is no one to find.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that soul is gone. Gone for good.”
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know,” Wonwoo says, and the helplessness in his face drives a thorn in Chan’s side. They fall silent, listening to the thunder rumbling outside, lightning painting their faces in ghastly shadows, and the rain at the window sounds too much like rapping fingers.
“What if he made a wish,” Chan says then, gaze lost on the encroaching dark. “We all made wishes, and they were all granted.”
“What kind of wish?” Wonwoo asks, and his voice seems to come from far away, from somewhere beyond the storm and the night.
Chan remains silent, thinking of this unknown man in the opened grave, staring at his lover as himself laid dying.
“He would have wanted to live,” he says then, a soft sorrow rising with his words. “He would have wanted them both to live.”
(dream)
The storm raging outside seeps into the dream, thunder and rain crashing against the roof of the house. But they are laughing, pressed against each other, and the man’s hair have come loose from the topknot he wears, falling in dark strands upon his naked shoulders. He kisses him, he kisses him again and again and maybe the thunder is only raging in his chest; it bursts against his ribs in warm waves and he can barely contain it, this craving, this hunger for the body under his hands, warm and pliant and his, only his for the span of these moments stolen from the heart of the night.
It won’t last, he knows now. What will come is only darkness and pain and he wishes his dreams had never showed him. But they are laughing, they are laughing and maybe this can be enough, maybe this is worth the evil that will devour them, the evil that is already there, nesting within his body, sowing pain under his skin.
I love you, he hears himself say and there’s a sharp intake of breath, a warm embrace and this is the last night, he remembers then, the last night of happiness.
There’s the crack of thunder, cold rain pelting his face and he’s standing now, standing at the edge of a pit, clinging to adored hands made slick with blood, his own blood, the one flowing from the wound in his chest and it hadn’t been meant for him, and the man holding the pitchfork had been young, so young, so young and full of terror. He’s slipping, falling backward, shouts and wails and a panicked yell but it doesn’t concern him anymore, he is dying, he is dead, everything lost, everything ashes and dust and fire.
He wishes it were different. He wishes the sickness had never come, he wishes the world didn’t have to end. He wishes to live, he wishes to live and hold these hands again, feel their warmth and the love that they hold. And then, then there is only darkness, and a dismal solitude.