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The moment Wooyoung straightens up his old injuries make themselves known.
He doesn’t wince, though. It's been quite some time since he last did, it never stopped hurting but he’d trained his face well enough.
He places his hand up to cover his eyes from the afternoon sun as he walks down the bus.
The air is warm.
Fixing his worn out backpack on his back, it’s lighter than he expected.
Naive of him to believe he’d have more things to bring on when he ran away. He feels suddenly silly, slumping over some weight, or the lack thereof.
However, when he thought of leaving his childhood home behind, he didn't exactly think the only belongings he’ll take are nothing but some clothes, a picture of his brothers withered by the sun and a poetry booklet.
No one in the bus had heavier baggage anyway. It seems that just like him, they had no time to pack a lot, or don’t have a lot.
He ignores the old car, a taxi that gave up upon the yellow painting and simply decided for a hand made sign hanging from the rear view glass.
He walks past it right into the road shoulder.
The town isn’t that far, only a few miles that his light backpack and his swirling mind can walk without more concern. He needs the sunlight to provide the serotonin his body isn’t.
That, and the old lady that arrived with him needs the taxi more than him, he supposes.
His head feels like it’s been set on fire after only half an hour.
Today’s first regret, he writes down on his imaginary list, is not bringing that cheap baseball cap Yunho got him a few years ago.
He mentally adds a second item to the list: Trusting serotonin. Honestly, he should’ve gone with caffeine. Or maybe revenge, if he could only find someone to blame that’s not himself.
Because, well, he’s past self sabotage by now.
Yet…
To think about it hurts, it physically hurts. And it’s not the upcoming headache or the unstoppable insolation, but to think about his friends.
A certain punch into his stomach. The kind that leaves you breathless and bent over yourself.
He kicks a stone, planning to make it his walk companion but it ends in the middle of the road. Wooyoung rolls his eyes and sighs.
They tried to save their friendship.
Jongho and Yunho tried, Wooyoung didn’t even notice that there was something to save to start with. He’d been so caught up in his own tumultuous mind, unable to look out of his own bubble of misery and self pity to see the way his friends were having a sword battle against the distance Wooyoung himself established between him and the rest of the world.
Perhaps he had crafted it well enough (It seemed, it has been the only thing he did right back then) to resist every one of his friends’ attempts to take him out of it.
When he did notice, when the mist dissipated and he finally noticed, it was too late.
Already broken, unfixably so.
No one can fight for so long without growing tired. And he knew he was to blame.
After seeing no results they just let it be, after months of sword battles they started bleeding too, Wooyoung was just drowning in his own blood to see it.
He apologized, even if no apology would mend it, it was necessary.
Wooyoung bites his tongue at the memory of it.
It aches somehow that they didn’t let him take the blame, a bittersweet taste of what good camaraderie is. They assured countless times that everything was fine, but of course they could not get into his mind and take off that thought either.
At least there’s no more bleeding now.
Yet, he 's frail. Tired in a way sleep could never mend. The slightest of inconveniences tearing him apart, it’s partially the reason why he ran away.
Being somewhere unknown seems harmless, good, even. At least he can feel alone with a real reason and not only because he feels like a wandering ghost.
He’s been seeing the village nestle at the foot of the mountain for quite some time, looking like a cluster of tiny dots. He didn’t care too much about it, invested in mentally torturing himself while trying to avoid getting hit by a car or the things that would fall off from the trucks that go way too fast from what is legal.
Now, as he walks through the entry, the details begin to emerge.
There are no towering skyscrapers or sprawling complexes but small houses, their rooftops are a patchwork of reds and browns, vibrant flowers spilling from window boxes and garden beds.
The village is a colorful tapestry of narrow streets that meanders between the houses, leading to a central square where a few modest shops stood.
Here and now, with his sneakers on the cobblestones and nosy, big eyes staring at him in a failed attempt to go unnoticed, he feels hopeful.
The constant hum of city life seems like a striking past.
Replaced by the soft rustling of the trees and leaves falling into the ground as winter gets closer, and the occasional chirp of some birds Wooyoung had never heard before.
He stops by the red door and checks his phone to make sure the direction is correct.
Most of the houses around this part of the village are very similar, and it would be embarrassing to knock and disturb strangers.
Not like the woman who’s waiting for him is any sort of an acquaintance, anyway.
With the town being this small, Wooyoung soon found out that it would be harder to find a place to stay for the night, or even a small apartment to rent.
In fact, it was almost impossible.
What he did find, thanks to hours and hours of roaming around outdated and poorly programmed web pages, was an old tourism project which objective was to encourage the tourism in the area while trying to improve the economy of the elderly who had spacious houses and a rich culture to share, offering the visitors the experience of living within the culture.
He called different numbers until someone picked up.
When the door is finally open he’s greeted with a gentle wrinkled face. Kind sparkling eyes that disappeared for a second as a soft smile reached them.
Wooyoung wants to introduce himself but the lady does not give him the chance to, already moving from the door frame to let him get into the house that smells like recently varnished wood and homemade food.
“Wooyoung, right? Come in, dear”
Her soothing voice makes Wooyoung smile and nod as he walked in.
She shouldn’t let anyone get into her house like that, Wooyoung was ready to get his ID card out of his wallet to confirm his identity.
“I am. Thank you. Minhee right?” he asked as he took his shoes off by the door, following her inside hearing her hum a response.
The cozy interior of the house immediately wrapped him in a sense of homeliness he hadn’t felt in a long time.
She leads him through a small but well-kept living room filled with family pictures, past a quaint kitchen where the smell of freshly baked bread lingered, and up into a narrow staircase.
“I’m sorry I’m rushing you, honey. I want you to get comfy first.” she said, opening the door to a modest yet comfortable space.
The bed is neatly made with a patchwork quilt, and a small window overlooks the flower garden below.
“I hope you’ll find it of your liking.”
Wooyoung looks around in silence for a few seconds. “It is. It is perfect. Thank you” his voice just above a whisper.
He leaves his backpack on the bed and turns around.
She smiles and continues, “I usually cook breakfast at seven, lunch around noon, and dinner at six. If those times work for you?”
Wooyoung nods, then hesitates before speaking. “I’d like to help with the cooking, if that’s alright. I’m quite good at it.”
The old lady’s eyes lit up. She motions to Wooyoung to follow her down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“That’s very sweet of you, Wooyoung. I’d love the company and the help.”
This might already be his favorite part of the house.
A big window in front of the old-fashioned stove allows sunlight to stream in, illuminating the space with a warm, inviting glow.
The little details are his favorite things; wooden shelves held an array of potted plants, a basket of fresh herbs on the counter, a collection of mismatched mugs hanging from hooks, and a wooden cutting board that looked well-worn from years of use.
He smiles, a brief, flickering warmth crossing his face. Feeling shy.
“Thank you.”
She reaches out and pats his hand gently.
“You’re such a sweet boy, aren’t you?”
Wooyoung’s eyes widened at her words. He almost gets into his knees to beg her to never say that ever again.
A lump forms in his throat and he turns away slightly, blinking rapidly to push back the tears that threatened to spill.
Taking a deep breath, he manages a shaky smile hoping it won’t look strained.
“Is something wrong, dear?” she asks, her voice filled with concern.
Wooyoung shakes his head, swallowing hard. Suddenly feeling like the house is too small for him, and he can’t hide himself and his feelings anywhere. He wants to hide out of the scrutiny of kind eyes.
“No, no.” he says instead. “Everything is perfect”
He lets out a nervous laugh that turns into a sigh causing the old lady to clench her lips into a line.
It smelled faintly of mothballs and stale air, like a grandmother’s house, almost forgotten but oddly comforting.
He would like to say that it made him remember his own grandmother’s, but the truth is he can’t quite remember the last time he went to visit her. What he missed more, even desperately, was the sweet, chaotic scent of toys, storybooks, and bedtime lotion that used to linger at home.
Real home.
Or what once was a real home.
The cold breeze that seems to dodge everything else except for his face and hair, threatens to make him fly away.
Wooyoung’s attention strays to its usual haunts and hunts, to avoid losing the habit of being his own casualty.
The town is small and even if it’s yet to be discovered, Wooyoung feels the familiarity of it.
The camaraderie in between residents is quite a shock, a stark contrast to what he’s used to.
There’s a lovely place someone just got in, and the woman behind the counter gave them the sweetest of smiles and looks like she just asked them about their day.
He craves it. The gentle and tiny interest, then he wonders if he’s being egoistic because when he had it, he hadn't seen it.
He wants it now, needs it. Even the interest of the coffee worker that just cares about him because he’s standing right in front of them, even if they will forget about him as soon as he crosses the door.
The bakery is in the corner of the street, with its wooden sign swinging gently in the breeze, promising the warm, comforting scent of freshly baked bread. And if there’s a woman behind that counter, and if she ever cares the slightest about him, she would ask him about his poems and if he’d finally found the way, the courage, to finish that specific one.
Next to it, a quaint café with flower-laden tables invites him to sit and savor the quiet simplicity of the village life.
Wooyoung pictures himself sitting there, an every morning routine. Sipping the americano on his tongue patiently, while observing the children playing near the small fountain, as they’re doing as he walks past them.
And they would inspire him to write about the already gone and nearly forgotten carefree, reckless youth he once experienced.
Something he thought would be for all time, only to be replaced with the obnoxiousness of existing in a world that moves too fast and expects too much.
An unknown sense of calm surrounds him and condenses now that he's in a place where time seems to slow down in a different way than he'd been this last year, everything else feels like a distant memory.
And maybe, maybe he can finally start over.
The town seems to know what he needs because, somehow, as the sun went down and the streets tricked him into wandering aimlessly, the first place he stumbled upon was the library.
The ever-present tightness on his chest eases off the slightest bit at the thought of finding a new world to distract himself with.
The building stood quiet, tucked between two taller structures like a murmur between louder, yelling voices.
Two stories tall, all stone and weathered time, it looks like it had always been there, and maybe it always had.
The edges of the bricks are softened by age, moss tracing lazy, beautiful patterns along its base. By the door, a tarnished bronze plaque caught what little light the overcast sky offered. The letters, though fading, still read: “Established 1814.”
It feels like the kind of place people walk past every day and never really see because they’re used to it. Instead, Wooyoung seems unable to take his eyes off of it: how much Wooyoung actively loves moss, he had almost forgotten it.
Too caught up into what now seems obsolete when he’s seeing the most captivating edification he’d seen for a long time.
He hesitates, maybe because it’s already quite late, maybe because something about it made him feel so excited it felt out of him.
Out of this new shell that had been created somewhere along the last two years.
The door creaks open without much resistance.
Old paper, dust, and warmth are the first things he notices before the yellow light spills from inside and bathes him; soft and muted, brushing against the wooden floor and tall bookshelves. The furniture, aged and polished from years of use, carries the same golden hue, so much that everything looks dipped in honey.
Everything feels golden and warm and he felt oddly observed. Not watched, yet noticed.
He looks around the place for the librarian.
Not a soul at sight but, to be fair, they’re probably lost amongst the long corridors stretched out in every direction, full shelves forming narrow tunnels that seemed to go on forever.
The sensation that if he started walking, he could reach the end of the world, which he kind of wishes it’s possible. Or at least another version of it where things were different.
One foot inside the golden hush of the library and the other still clutching the cold breath of outside. The silence had stretched so long it almost became a sound of its own before the footsteps appeared.
And with it, a man.
Wooyoung’s breath catches, like a child caught sneaking into somewhere he shouldn’t be.
The person comes closer, calm and certain.
From between the rows of tall shelves, slender and still, with dark, brown hair that shimmers faintly under the golden light.
His eyes are warm, Wooyoung can tell even from a distance, and given the way they turn into crescent moons as he smiles from a few steps away.
He isn’t addressing his existence yet, it seems like he smiles gently not out of politeness but of habit.
Wooyoung thinks there’s been quite some time since he felt like he could.
The moment he targets him, his smile seems to grow bigger and even brighter, and he waves at him like a little kid would do.
“Hi there,” his voice low. The kindness coming in waves out of him. “You found it”
Wooyoung blinks. There is a pause that his brain tries to make sense of what’s supposed to mean and fails miserably.
“I—” he clears his throat. “I didn’t know, I was looking.”
“That’s often how it goes.” The man steps aside and gestures. “You can come in properly, if you’d like. It’s warmer further in.”
Wooyoung hesitates, but only for a moment, the thought of dinner with Minhee flitting through his mind. He told her he already ate, which was a lie, and he truly wasn’t able to lie to save his life.
The cold follows him inside, clinging to the tips of his fingers and the edges of his ears and somehow to every part of his body deep into his bones.
“I’m Wooyoung”
His voice quieter than he meant it to be.
“I’m Yeosang.” But he matches it.
And of course he is. It’s the kind of name you never hear, resonant and unique, just as his face it’s the kind you never see around.
Closer, Wooyoung gets to see a slightly red birthmark that traces a delicate pattern near Yeosang's eye.
Wooyoung looks around.
“Is this… your place?”
Yeosang smiles again, almost bashful.
“It’s everyone’s place. But I do take care of it.” He gestures around again, his gaze soft. "It requires… a certain kind of dedication."
Wooyoung feels a strange tug in his chest, being dedicated is something he'd tried before, even chased. Even something he’d been, though he rarely gave himself any credit for it.
Yeosang doesn’t rush him in. He simply turns around and starts to walk further into the golden quietness, and Wooyoung follows without double thinking.
There’s a touch of cinnamon, and something else Wooyoung can’t name but makes his heart ache in a very particular way.
Yeosang stops before a shelf so decidedly Wooyoung wonders if that had been a task assigned before his own arrival. He stares at the way his fingers run along the spines.
“Here,” he murmurs, plucking a clothbound book from between two larger volumes. “This one’s for you, Wooyoung.”
Wooyoung takes it carefully, like it might turn into ashes. The cover is too worn out but it is still soft at the edges, the title etched in way too faded gold.
His mouth moves, to ask why. To question what kind of presumption is this. Instead, he says:
“I don’t really enjoy self-help books”
Yeosang beams at him. White, aligned teeth on display.
“It's not,” he says, eyes not quite on Wooyoung but somewhere just beside him, “That’s Jowoon story.”
Wooyoung’s fingers clench slightly around the book simply wondering if he’s supposed to know who this Jowoon person is, Yeosang seems to read the question out of his face, because then he’s speaking again.
“Jowoon thought all life was about being useful, or exceptional, or chosen. Then, when his father decides she’s not good enough to become the Queen, she finds herself wondering about how to continue existing, wondering if she even wants to”
If Wooyoung’s face could mirror his insides, it would look utterly wounded. In fact, it probably can, because Yeosang suddenly looks really scared.
Wooyoung’s mouth oddly contorts itself as he takes in a deep breath, and looks to his side into the wooden floor as if something just fell down there. A dime, his phone, his heart.
The shift is almost instant, a crack in the dam that happened to be Wooyoung’s eyes. His eyes sting all over again, and this time he can’t blink it away fast enough.
“But it’s adventurous!” he motions his hands forward as if trying to stop him from crumbling down. “I promise it’s really fun, there is this character who’s always joking and messing around and there’s a wild dog, very cute. The thing is, what she learns in the end.”
“And what does she learn?”
There’s something that prevents him from swallowing normally.
“I’m not ruining you the book just like that”
Wooyoung wants to roll his eyes, but stops in his tracks at the realization that he just met this man and he does not intend to come off as rude.
Yeosang doesn’t move. He doesn’t look away, nor does he move closer, and somehow that makes it worse. To be under his scrutinizing, gentle gaze, as though he’s being studied secretly, letting him feel without demanding explanation.
“I— I should go,” Wooyoung whispers, the words trembling like tired muscles. “I just— I need— I’m sorry.”
He clutches the book to his chest and turns quickly, footsteps too fast, uneven, as he makes his way back toward the entrance.
Suffering the consequences of his own weakness, there was no way he could find it in himself to press back the book into Yeosang’s hands.
Yunho had always been the one who would get the things straight out of him, pull the wool ball from his chest and unravel it into something Wooyoung could see through and fix as much of it as he could.
Until Yunho wasn't there anymore, and Wooyoung was to blame.
No one is there anymore.
If you ever asked him about death, he wouldn’t say he’s afraid of dying and instead, he’s utterly terrified of others dying. His beloved ones. It feels grotesquely selfish and now, with this piercing sense of desolation, at least he can say he’d never lied to himself when he said that his biggest fear was being left alone.
It might be true, when they said that you attract what you fear the most.
Quietly staring at the ceiling texture and throat closing up around every thought he would like to eradicate from his body. His nape falls again against the mattress, some of his dark hair falling all over his eyes and ears as he lay down. He can’t tell whether it’s his hair or his tears making his eyes sting.
The book still rests in his hands, but he doesn’t open it. Afraid that not even Jowoon can find what she’s looking for. Then, the thought that Yeosang wouldn’t give him a book that could end up that tragically, not with how gentle and caring he seemed.
At least, he tries to comfort himself, there is no panic anymore.
This isn’t even sharp enough for that. This is a slow, sinking kind of sadness. One that drips and hums inside. The kind that feels like it’s always been there, not noticed and blurred into the hustle of daily life.
Perhaps he shouldn't have come here. It is infuriating, the way he’d just let hope flicker inside of him just to let it snuff it out himself.
Sitting there in the bluish glow, the book presses against his chest resembling a turnstile. Wooyoung keeps it there as a punishment.
It hadn’t even been a full day. And still, somehow, this is the worst he’d ever felt. Everything and nothing stays the same.
He drags his legs tighter, burying his face in the curve of his knees, the edges of the book still burying painfully into him.
He doesn’t sleep much, unable to keep his eyes closed no matter how hard he tries. He isn’t even thinking anymore, it feels dull and empty. Nor does he eat.
So when the sun rises up again and the world goes soft at the edges, Minhee asks, gently, if he needs anything, and he just shakes his head as he walks through the door.
Wooyoung walks.
It’s a pleasant thing, to feel the wind, cold and furious against his cheeks partially hidden behind his coat, and his mind occupied in catching the eye of every falling leaf and maybe walking out of the path to hear the satisfying crunch of them under his feet.
The trees and its skeletal silhouettes against the twilight sky are fighting against the autumn’s defeating fierceness.
Gazing at it helps the hope to settle back into place.
Right? Isn’t death what gives place to life, somehow?
Because when he’d planned what he was going to do for life, and he found himself unable to hold on to it, it felt like the end of the world. It is, somehow.
A world dies, a new world is born out of it. Out of its cracks, as if fissured to let the light be free.
It forces you to look for something else, it can leave you stranded for quite some time but not forever. Wooyoung had learned it very well, he needs to start again; he’s not the same after such a breakpoint.
Sometimes he wished he was, sometimes he despises himself at the thought of it.
Weeks of staring at the bedroom ceiling and a heart somewhere else but not where it belongs.
Fourteen hours of a bus drive into a village camouflaged by mountains, fighting the tears that would make it impossible to look through the window. He needs to get to know this new self, to choose a new path and let it unfold.
All he can do is to hope it won’t take long for things to get better.
It turned into a hum, a whispering motto.
It’s, maybe, a song he once heard.
“Carry on. Let the good times roll ” he mumbles, comforting himself. Humming the part of the lyrics he can bring his mind to remember. “You know it's gonna get better”
And when he realizes where his feet just took him to, it’s already too late to pretend surprise.
It truly had felt like a pulling knot on his stomach, the night before when he walked out of it, as if his body wanted, weirdly but decisively, for him to walk back in.
The honeyed eyes stare back at him.
It catches him by surprise, a wave of embarrassment flows all its way to his face, he hadn’t even noticed he was staring to start with.
He realizes the moment he blinks, and given the way his eyes sting a bit he can only imagine how red and swollen they might look. Minhee actively asked him if he was fine, and the way that Yeosang is looking at him ignites something inside of him.
In the air now an emotion he can not decipher, the dust is no longer what causes him an unsettling feeling on his throat but this is.
Yeosang rubs his fingertips together, Wooyoung somehow knows it’s a habit.
“You’re back, I see.” He says and Wooyoung shrugs.
“Don’t have that many places to be, anyway.”
Did that come out rude?
Yeosang hums, it’s a deep murmur born from his throat. A simple sound that Wooyoung had heard plenty of times before, yet is a soothing sound.
“I expected you to come back, so I’m glad to see you”
Wooyoung feels the warmth of the place hug him as he takes off his coat, still trapped in between his hands to give them something to do. Yeosang smiles.
“I’m glad I’m not an inconvenience. I like to read and this one seems to be the only library in town” he says, looking around, drinking in the view of such a calm place that contrasts with his tumultuous insides.
Wooyoung hopes Yeosang forgot that he actually gave him one book last night, but the flicker on his eyes told him he did not.
“It is”
Wooyoung claps his lips together looking around, fishing for something else to say.
“So you’re here today too…” he trails off.
“I’m here everyday”
“Those are a lot of days”
Yeosang giggles. “They are”
Wooyoung finds himself smiling too.
It seems that, just as last night, there is no one else in the library today. Only Yeosang and his inviting gentleness tell him to stay and ‘maybe grab a book and give it a chance’.
This time, Yeosang does not offer him a specific one, he simply gestures. A quiet motion of his hand that grants Wooyoung the permission he needs to roam around piles and piles and corridors and corridors of clothbound- old books.
The creak of wooden floorboards beneath hesitant steps until he finally decides over one specific volume.
Yeosang sits at the head of the long table, where the golden afternoon light spills in through the high, narrow windows. His sleeves are rolled up slightly as he leans over a small stack of books, sorting them with a quiet focus that makes him look almost like part of the library itself.
Wooyoung eventually settles into a chair, not too close. One seat away.
The chair creaks under Wooyoung as he shifts, coat still folded in his lap to give himself a little warm. From time to time, Yeosang scribbles something in a small, battered notebook.
Wooyoung lets his eyes drift over the stained glass window above the door, the colored shapes flickering across the walls like they’re shy. Even in the silence, Yeosang’s company is a soft hum in the empty, shattered room of Wooyoung’s chest.
The gold-threaded spine, frayed from age, feels warm to the touch.
“I haven’t read that one.”
Wooyoung realises he was already staring at him, his fingertips tracing the edge of the page.
“It’ s about poems,” he simply says. “I like them”
“Do you…like poems?”
Wooyoung stares at him. “I think I said so, yeah.”
Yeosang simply nods as he continues his task. And Wooyoung reads.
"There are poems wherever people breathe. Wherever a man has lived, a poem remains like the imprint of his footsteps, the echo of his breath, the trace of what he once felt. For that is what poems are: life, in its most distilled form. But what does it take to write a poem? The answer is simple and impossibly complex: nothing, and everything. To write a poem, one must first learn the rules of language, of rhythm, of lyricism. And yet, none of that matters if the poem does not know how to feel. To truly feel. To recognize what it carries within and give it form, with honesty and precision."
His eyes graze over the words.
‘Where’s life there is a poem’, he sighs.
There must be poems in death too, not about death but born from it. Poems born from the things that had died inside of us, because of us, or things we hope would die.
Because he feels dead alive, yet inside of him are still lots of poems.
He takes a deep breath. But the last time he ever felt like he could properly breathe, he’d his head underwater and his lungs were screaming for oxygen, yet he’d never felt that grounded ever since.
“Wooyoung” Yeosang calls out his name. “Would you like to go outside? I have a courtyard”
Looking up at him, it takes him a good five seconds to answer.
He stares at Yeosang’s nape as they walk to said place.
The back door creaks open as Yeosang pushes it gently, revealing a modest space, enclosed by ivy-covered walls and sun filtering in through the high stone archway.
He squints under the sunlight, taking in the small garden growing wild between cracks in the stones.
The shadows stretch lazily across the moss. And just as lazily stretching is the back shape on top of a broken planter, eyes shining golden like flame in the shade. The cat blinks once, then twice, unmoving but fully aware of their presence.
“Oh,” Wooyoung marvels, his voice quiet with awe.
Yeosang smiles. “He visits sometimes. Always leaves before nightfall.”
Wooyoung tilts his head, curious. “He isn’t yours? Have you ever tried to domesticate him?”
Yeosang walks a few steps closer to the feral cat.
“I could never”
Yeosang looks at him like it’s the worst thing ever asked, he feels suddenly flustered.
“Mhm? Why not?”
“Domesticate him, it’s to think I’m superior to him. And certain is that I’m not”
“I thought it was just give him some food and help him to get use to your presence, so one day, you can maybe pet him”
“Is much more than that. It’s to take something off of him, erase his instinct and nature to turn him into a white canvas. To create a place where he’s an inferior being, and the only practices and actions allowed are the ones I dictaminate.”
Wooyoung can’t do much, but to tear his gaze from the quite big black cat and stare directly at Yeosang. He opens his mouth to say something but nothing comes out, there’s nothing on his mind but amazement.
When Yeosang gives him a crooked beautiful smile, he’s finally found something to say.
“You think too deeply” and it isn’t a criticism.
“All this time I spend in between book turned superficialities into a boring thing, I guess”
Wooyoung scoffs. “I aim to it”
Maybe then, he thinks, his poems won’t be as tasteless and boring as they are.
Yeosang laughs but he’s not making fun of him. Even if Wooyoung does think it’s something worthy to make fun of. Yeosang seems to understand what he means, while Wooyoung never met someone who could understand him, not at all, not so fast, and not so unprejudiced.
There is no maliciousness hidden behind Yeosang’s chuckle, and Wooyoung has the hunch maliciousness is not something Yeosang has in him.
“You already think deeply, Wooyoung”
Wooyoung frowns. “Well, you don’t know that”
“I can see it” he says and his face shows nothing but truth. Then he cocks his head to the side. “I would like to know, if you would let me”
Wooyoung feels heat rush to his neck and face, eyes widening in surprise.
Brush it off. Damn.
“Do I look like a cheat on boardgames? Cause that I do”
Yeosang chuckles.
He tries not to spiral. He tries not to get in his own head about it, and face the fact that just because he finds Yeosang attractive doesn't mean the sentiment is mutual.
Since Wooyoung had never been very good when it comes to reading people, Yeosang probably does not mean what Wooyoung thinks he does, and that’s that.
Still, he nods. Not fully knowing what he’s just agreeing with, he still nods.
The way Yeosang claps his hands together and smiles at him with that crooked, bright motion, tells him there’s nothing to be worried about.
Not that Wooyoung is unlikeable. He grew up with people constantly telling him how handsome he is. Pretty names, surprised faces, stares that lingered, people being nice in general. He always managed to attract whoever he liked.
But now? He feels like anything but.
Maybe it’s because he no longer feels like himself. Not as clever. Not as fun. Not as good.
As if somewhere along the way, something in him faded and he’s not sure how to get it back.
And Yeosang just seems so amazing that whatever he wants to give him, Wooyoung will take it.
“So…” Yeosang starts, sitting down on the ground where the sun washes him completely, patting the spot next to him.
An invitation.
Wooyoung suppresses a smile at that. Cute.
He hesitates only for a second before moving closer, his sneakers crunching softly against the grass that’s so green he feels bad to be stepping on it. Sitting close, but not too close.
“I’ve never really done this before,” Yeosang says, voice low and thoughtful.
Wooyoung glances at him. “You mean… like, talking?”
Yeosang smiles, and the sun makes his eyes look gold.
“No…” he giggles. “You’re funny”
“Ah! I’m not, actually” Wooyoung mutters, half-joking. “So? What do you want to know? I’m an open book. A moldy and dilapidated one.”
There’s a moment of silence where only Yeosang’s eyes move around his face, Wooyoung feels studied. He looks away uncomfortably, he waited for Yeosang to laugh at the comment.
The black cat watches them from a distance, tail flicking lazily.
Wooyoung picks at the grass between his fingers nervously.
“Everything,” Yeosang says simply. And then, after a pause, adds: “ Who you are. Where you came from. What you want to do. But we can start with whatever you’re ready”
Briefly, Wooyoung wonders if Yeosang is asking questions he already knows his own answers to.
If Wooyoung ever happened to know that about himself, it would still have been hard. It would be easier to have a photo album, and pinpoint his younger face and dusty regrets.
He’d been, once, the one who shared.
He tucks things away now. Fold them neatly and store them in silence, behind polite smiles even when he still does not understand where’s the fun in keeping things to oneself.
How many things can be buried in the depths of the strange, drifting being Wooyoung had turned into?
Who he’s not, is one to ever feel ready.
Maybe he should say it to Yeosang, warn him not to expect very much from him.
“I don’t think I like who I am yet.” Wooyoung looks up to the sky for a good few seconds. “I came from fear and aim for…”
“Peace”
Yeosang completes.
His lips are pursed in what seems like a wince and a pout at the same time, and Wooyoung smiles at him because he never knew what to do when people showed empathy.
“Mhm” Wooyoung hums in agreement.
“I used to feel somewhat like that until I got here. You know? This place is really peaceful. Almost…Magical”
“Why does it sound like you want to sell me a timeshare?”
Yeosang lets out a bewildered chuckle.
“Would you agree to a timeshare?”
“Mhm…I’d have to think about it”
They decide to read outside.
Wooyoung wonders briefly if Yeosang shouldn’t be inside just in case someone walks in, but he doesn’t say anything.
Somehow, the image of Yeosang bathed in sunlight, cross-legged on the grass with a book in hand, feels more right than anything else he’s seen since he got here.
A few pages in, Wooyoung isn’t actually reading. Focusing instead on the absence of the hollowness he’s grown so familiar with.
His eyes keep lifting from the lines, trailing back to the quiet way Yeosang turns the pages around, the small crease between his brows and the way he leans into the sun like he’s absorbing warmth straight into his soul and feeding out of it.
Yeosang hums without lifting his gaze. “I belong here.”
“It looks like it”
And then, he glances at Wooyoung.
“So do you.”
Wooyoung scoffs softly. “I haven’t done anything yet.”
“What’s there to do?”
Wooyoung does not know the answer to that. And when he looks around, the cat is gone.
He chooses his next words carefully.
“I can’t picture why being here makes me feel so…Light” the slightest of flushes crossing his face.
Yeosang looks up at him through thick, dark eyelashes and Wooyoung almost feels examined.
The usual restless scan of his eyes lay dormant, as if his curiosity for reading who Wooyoung is has been shuttered inside him. And it gave a place to inspect himself in Wooyoung’s cloudy and tarnished eyes.
That motion, the question. Wooyoung knows it too well, he once even gave it a voice and let it materialize along with the tears he’d been containing. What do you see when you look at me?
It’s his time to inquire, Wooyoung decides that it’s only fair.
“What is it?”
“What is what?” Yeosang asks back, his eyes widening like he’s oblivious or dumb.
Wooyoung is sure Yeosang is anything but dumb, and those crescent eyes are far too sharp to be deceiving. He weirdly can quite read the book in Yeosang's eyes.
He narrows his eyes, as if that way he could dig into Yeosang’s mind.
“The thing you want to say to me. What is it?”
He gives the impression he’s been caught up.
Certainly, even if it’s been obvious since the moment he met him, it doesn’t seem to be only his superpower, to read him, because then Yeosang says:
“I don’t think you’d like to hear it”
“Yeah…Well”
Wooyoung isn’t sure about it either.
“Not yet, at least” for a second, Wooyoung can swear there’s a slight flush on Yeosang’s pale cheekbones. “Would you like to come by tomorrow too?”
Moisturising his bottom lip, he nods.
“I’d like to”
Days start to blur together.
Surprisingly, not in the dull way they used to, but with a quiet rhythm that settles into Wooyoung’s bones before he realizes it. a
And now, he can’t remember how it was not to spend his days without Yeosang.
He finds himself showing up at the library every morning; sometimes early, sometimes late, but always with the intention of staying for an hour or two,
sometimes more.
Sometimes so much that he doesn’t make it on time to help Minhee with dinner.
Yeosang never looks at him with less than contentment on his flickering, gentle eyes, and everytime Wooyoung happens to appear later than usual, there’s something achingly close to fear too.
Wooyoung scoffs at the thought. As if he was ever capable of not coming back.
He just hands him a stack of books and points toward the back shelves with a small, bright smile. They fall into a pattern: sorting dusty volumes, whispering about odd titles, arguing softly over genres they don’t fully understand.
Even if Yeosang seems to understand the whole world and every one of its odd ways.
Wooyoung asked once. Just the same way he always questions things, half serious-half joking: “Why does it feel like there’s books coming in everyday?”
Yeosang laughed at it, and it was enough.
When the sun is out, shining bright as only it knows how, they carry a few books outside and read under the trees.
Sometimes they talk.
“Joowon went to the desert to save Mattsun.” He said once, the sun leaving its warmth on his skin, and golden splashes of light on Yeosang’s face. “She finally found the way. I did not need twenty-pages of a landscape description that contributes absolutely nothing to plot nor character development, but I still take it because I love her.”
Yeosang laughed at Wooyoung’s wince.
His eyes two crescents, and his cheeks lifted like hills soaking in the first light of day, soft and expectant.
“She’s pretty cool, isn’t she?”
“Cool? She’s a badass and a fucking mastermind. She should’ve been the Queen–Hell, what was her father even thinking? The crown would’ve begged for her”
Wooyoung scowled like it’s a personal offense to him. It is.
“A crown couldn’t contain her, don’t you think?”
“You’re right there. Title’s too tame for her” Wooyoung chuckled, then turned dead serious. “She’s still the Queen of my heart”
Sometimes they do not talk. There’s no pressure to fill the silence, and somehow, that silence becomes its own kind of closeness.
And so on, and so forth.
Wooyoung doesn’t know when it started feeling like something he could miss. But it does and it frightens him.
What if there’s something to do he isn’t aware of?
He’s terrified of having Yeosang look at him with the same expression Jongho and Yunho did. It could be fatal.
He doesn’t want to–can’t, ruin this too.
That’s how the fear arrives, or rises back to life with full force, because it seems Wooyoung can not aim to exist without it.
If the way his eyes started to burn is an indication, he needs to warn Yeosang that he might be about to crash down, even if he appears to already know.
Yeosang’s warm hand covers his knee in an attempt to make Wooyoung look at him. He does.
Pushing his knees closer to his chest, Wooyoung bites Yeosang’s hand lazily and rests his check on it.
One. Two. Three.
“I used to be a swimmer.”
He says and it feels like falling down.
It doesn’t seem the kind of falling he more than once felt, though.
The words leave his mouth and a weight is being lifted out of his chest, and the act of breathing is no longer an inconvenient thing.
It’s not the kind of falling that ends up in an impending bone crashing smash into cool, gritty concrete.
Staring at Yeosang’s eyes, sensing the warm flickering trace they leave all over his skin, Wooyoung realises that Yeosang wouldn’t let him be broken down. It won’t be allowed. And instead, his brown hair that’s soft like feathers will morph into some kind of bed of flowers that he’ll land on. Lay down on.
Wooyoung decides that if Yeosang were a flower, he’d be a wildflower.
Shining, wild and free.
“The kind that goes to the Nationals and competes worldwide. Live off it.”
He doesn’t look at Yeosang when he says it. Instead, he watches the grass sway in the wind.
“It was all lined up. Sponsors. Scholarships, a spot at a good college. The kind of future people point at and say, ‘Ah! that one’s got it figured out.’ Even if I don’t think I ever got anything figured out”
There is a pause and a jaw tightening. Also, there’s a silence that gives space.
“Then there was this night—just a stupid night out with friends. Kyungmoon wasn’t even drunk, just tired, I guess. We crashed. I broke my clavicle and fifth rib.” His hand lifts briefly, fingers brushing over the bone, like he can still feel it there. Yeosang’s hand flies to grab his, and holds it down. “At first, I couldn’t even breathe right. Every inhale felt like someone was stabbing me from the inside. And the shoulder—It was just hanging there. I couldn't lift my arm, couldn’t move without feeling like I was splitting apart. I knew right away I wouldn’t be swimming for a long time…”
He continues, because now that he’s started, it overflows out of him only naturally.
“Meds dulled it, sure, but they made me feel foggy. Detached and attached to them somehow. Rehab was fucking hell, it seemed to last forever. I remember crying the first time I managed a full stroke motion without pain. Not from joy or happiness. I don’t remember crying because of it, not for a long time. I lost the scholarship, of course. And when the bones had healed and the pain was manageable, everyone said it was time because people never fucking stops talking. When I finally got back in the water, I couldn’t breathe. I started crying. Full-on panic attack just from being in the pool. I didn’t even know I was scared of it until I was already drowning in it, at the same time, I can tell it started when I got my goggles on.”
He shakes his head slowly, like the memory itself is hard to hold still.
“I dropped out not long after. Couldn’t see the point if I couldn’t get my head underwater. I stopped seeing my friends, they were the best thing in my life and did nothing wrong, but I just…Lost the rhythm of life. I stopped answering calls. And my parents…” he sighs. “My family was always so proud, always saying I’d be the best in the world. Everything was full of shame, constantly. I didn’t know how to face them when I wasn’t even good anymore. I wanted to…Just- stop existing”
Wooyoung laughs unamused and dry, chasing away the shedding tears. “Oh, god. That was a long ass monologue, wasn’t it?”
At the lack of response, he risks a glance at Yeosang, almost expecting pity, disappointment, or that gentle expression of concern he’s seen before.
He can’t get a sight of Yeosang, he doesn’t get the chance.
Because Yeosang is suddenly moving, closing the space between them, wrapping his arms around him in a way that’s a little clumsy and almost too tight.
One hand cups the back of his neck, steady and grounding, and the other pulls him in. Pressing Wooyoung’s face against the warmth of his shoulder and neck and into the woody scent of his perfume.
If Wooyoung dampens Yeosang’s clothes, he doesn’t mention it.
He still thinks about it sometimes. He still wonders what's more defeating. The fact that he tried so hard to find a way to reconnect with it and he couldn't, or the fact that he got tired of trying and decided to simply go away.
It hunts him.
It's always wandering around and ready to hit him every time he's defeated, when he lets his guards slightly down. Maybe if he would've tried more, maybe it would have taken just one more try, one more push to go back there.
He can't even take a bath, can’t handle having water hitting his face for more than a few seconds without his heart rate to pick up. His hands shake and his throat closes completely.
He always knew he'd run away. Not like this, he hoped for some exciting future. Not for a glory walk on a red carpet, but at least for something to be proud of.
Move to a bigger city, where big dreams and big dreamers live, he was supposed to be one of them.
He had plans, but of course, life doesn't care. No matter how much he dreamed about every moment of it, every picture of it was as clear as day.
He felt Yeosang’s arm holding him tighter, squeezing him between his embrace. And Wooyoung decides right there that he wants to exist within the confines of Yeosang’s arms till the universe falls apart.
Is that a strange thing to want? After just a few weeks? He hopes it 's not.
He 's exhausted. He’s a loser, and starving for whatever this is.
And when Yeosang begins to loosen the hug, Wooyoung doesn’t move away. Instead, he lets himself rest his head against his shoulder.
“So, that’s who I am.”
“That’s not who you are, Wooyoung-ah”
“Well, what then? Who am I then if not my story?” Wooyoung marvels.
Yeosang sticks his tongue slightly in between his pink lips, the thing he does every time he pretends to think of an answer he already knows.
“The poems you write”
Wooyoung moves away and stares at him.
And he kind of wants to grab Yeosang by his shoulders and shake him violently, while asking him, or scream into his face something like: “Where have you been all my life?”
He doesn’t do that, he isn’t that much out of his head. He is a very well behaved specimen of a man, thank you very much.
Maybe, he briefly wonders as he continues to stare, he should ask him how he knows that it’s lame poems that he writes the most.
Yeosang smiles timidly. God, is he ever not smiling?
Whatever thing Yeosang smiles is, whatever it means, fearing it won’t help.
He won’t poison the wildflower by clinging too tightly.
“I want to know now,” he says softly, breaking the silence. “That thing you wanted to tell me. I think I’m- I want to know now.”
Yeosang doesn’t answer right away. His hands rest gently on Wooyoung’s shoulders and his eyes seem to drift somewhere distant.
“Wooyoung, I like you”
His voice is soft. For a second, Wooyoung thinks he must have misheard.
His breath catches halfway. His mind goes blank, like the world tilted slightly and forgot to warn him.
“I think I’m the one who's afraid now. Because I know too well how history tends to repeat itself. First, there’s something I need to tell you…”
Yeosang glances down, almost apologetic.
Heart thudding, voice barely steady, yet Wooyoung doesn’t hesitate.
“Everything you need is okay with me.”
Wooyoung raises his hand, cupping Yeosang’s soft, warm cheek.
He smiles.
“Is this okay?” barely above a whisper.
Yeosang doesn’t speak, he moves forward into his space, eyes fluttering closed and hums quiet and sure.
Wooyoung leans in. Slow and hesitant, giving Yeosang time to pull away.
But he doesn’t.
The kiss is soft. Soft and warm.
Reviving, just like the first breath after breaking the surface of deep water.
When they part, Yeosang’s voice cracks a little as he asks:
“You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
A tone Wooyoung never thought would hear coming out of Yeosang’s mouth. He hopes he hasn't, and prays to never hear ever again.
“Ah! Naive of you to think you’ll ever get rid of me.”
Yeosang kisses him this time, briefly again. Soft again, and so reviving.
When they separate, Wooyoung stares at him dead serious, deep scolds that bring both his brows to the middle of his face.
“You weren’t supposed to kiss me, you were supposed to say ‘good’ or ‘great’ or ‘phenomenal’ or thank the God above you believe in for my existence!"
It’s Yeosang’s turn to scoff.
“Wooyoung, you’re literally one second away from bawling your eyes off, please.”
Wooyoung jaw falls open.
“My theatrics are rubbing off on you and I don’t know if I’m happy about that”
Truth is, he’s really happy.
Truth is, it’s also a little bit embarrassing.
The curtains, as every time, are not completely closed to let the moonlight sneak into the room. Making it possible for them both to look around the living room and actually see their faces. It’s as casual as it is a habit, Minhee and he sit down and let the conversation wander around every topic known to mankind.It’s the same thing he does with Yeosang every day, yet it’s completely different. They approach the same things with such distinct perspectives that Wooyoung doesn’t ever get bored.
She said that one phrase she knows gets everything out of him. “You look chirpy, Wooyoung-ah”
“...He touched my hand once while sorting books and it was so gentle I forgot how to alphabetize, and then he said that I was pretty, but I think he meant that–”
And once again, for the hundredth time today, he notices he’s thinking (and talking) about Yeosang. Amidst his own phrase he stops abruptly and looks up sheepishly.
“Wooyoung-ah” She rolls her eyes. “Didn’t he tell you he likes you already?”
“Well, yes. But maybe he means I’m a likeable human being? Like, I’m nice? Right? Am I nice?”
“I’m going to strangle you” her eyes squeezed shut, with a voice like she’s gripping every ounce of patience, she continues talking. “You’re nice and you’re very pretty, Wooyoung–ah. Give yourself a breather from your own mind, yeah?”
“Don’t flatter me, I’m gonna believe it” he jokes, batting his eyelashes.
“I hope you would, son”
Minhee leans in with a sigh that’s actually more fond than it is frustrated. She reaches out and gently smooths his fringe, her fingers combing through his hair like she’s trying to quiet the noise in his head and detangle the mess of thoughts.
“Your brain’s a birdcage, Wooyoung–ah,” she murmurs, still fussing with his hair. “And every single one of them is chirping the same name.”
He blinks, caught off guard, then lets out a soft laugh.
“Are you fixing me up so Yeosang thinks I’m presentable?”
“I’m fixing you up so you’ll shut up for five seconds and hear what’s obvious.”
The moon watches, ever so quietly, as Wooyoung finally lets himself believe, just a little bit, that he might be enough.
And the next day, the sun watches as Wooyoung stops for coffee.
Because Minhee italian coffee maker it’s not exactly wooyoung-friendly and she loves it way too much for him to mess it up by trying to use it while she’s not home.
That, and the coffee shop in the main street is good enough to not be an outright punishment.
The café is quiet, the hum of the espresso machine feels like background music. Wooyoung’s halfway through his americano, sitting close to the window so he can see the kids playing around, laughing and smiling, when he hears the two older women at the corner table. They’re speaking in low voices, the kind that beg to be overheard and he’s a simple mortal.
“…and I told her, don’t walk home alone after dark.”
She takes a sip of her mug, her eyes wide while her brows frown, a weird motion he won’t even try to imitate. What he does is, he focuses.
“Don’t you think it’s rude to spread rumors just like that, Dan?” she scowls. “Maybe he looks a lot like his father, and you’re being rude- I mean”
“If that was the case, he’s the spitting image of his grandfather. Not his father because years don’t make sense that way. Also, who’s even his father? I swear to god-”
Wooyoung blinks, unsure if he misheard. Still, he leans forwards slightly, pretending to read the book he brought today, ears tuned in.
“You’ve been reading too many fairy tales, Dan”
“In fact, I haven’t read any because I won’t step foot in that library again. I don’t want to freaking die! Or worse, live forever!”
Wooyoung snorts at that. Then studies what she’d just said.
The mention of the library lands like a dropped coin in a quiet, almost empty room, it echoes. Wooyoung glances up, catching the edge of the woman's nervous expression, and the other’s skeptical face. He hesitates, wondering whether it’s worth overcoming as a prying odd dude for the sake of knowing what this woman is talking about and if it’s about Yeosang at all.
At the thought of the man’s face, he stands. Coffee long forgotten but book in hand as he walks over with casual air.
“Ah…I’m really sorry,” he says, offering his most polite smile. “I couldn’t help overhearing, and…Did you say…Something about the town’s library?”
The seriousness in the woman's face is so sudden, not nervous but fearful now, that Wooyoung feels himself pale at the sight of it and looks around to get a sight of the rest of the place.
If anything, the woman's friend looks resigned. As if she’s already tired of the conversation and curses Wooyoung for feeding her friend’s delusions.
“Please, tell me you didn't meet the vampire!”
Wooyoung snorts amused. Only to find out that he’s the only one filled with apprehension all over his face.
Two men have silently joined the conversation, now standing beside him as if summoned by the mere mention of the undeath creature. They’re staring at him as if they’re trying to place his face and whole existence. Something he’d learned that people who live in the small town tend to do.
Well, if these people live here, it’s obvious they all already know about this, it’s only normal that none looks surprised.
“Who’s this vampire, you say?”
Any dream of a detective career just flew right out of the window.
“If you don’t believe in vampires, there’s no need to play pretend, boy,” the bald man next to him says, narrowing his already small eyes. Wooyoung raises his hand defensibly. “I didn’t used to believe in those kind of horror stories until I meet him”
He looks down. “I didn’t mean to sound rude. But I kinda frequent the library and...”
“So you know him!”
Wooyoung stares at the finger pointing at his direction accusably, dumbfounded for a moment before he gulps and nods.
“I think I do. Well, there’s only one librarian, right? Yeosang.”
The slightly pump man squints at him in an attempt to read his soul through his pores.
“Yeosang,” he repeats slowly, looking like he’s testing if the name alone is some kind of course that would cause him a heart stroke. “Tall. Pale. Doesn’t blink enough?”
Wooyoung tilts his head. “I mean, he blinks. I think. I haven’t counted"
“And everybody looks tall close to us, Aejeong”
Dan gasps. “Isn’t that exactly what a vampire would want you to think?!”
Wooyoung winces at the way her voice got to even a higher pitch.
Another man, who hasn’t spoken yet but has been chewing at the same piece of toast for what Wooyoung thinks has been half the conversation, finally chimes in.
“He once recommended to me a book about vampires. Vampires, son”
Wooyoung blinks. “Was it… fiction?”
He shrugs. “Didn’t stick around to find out.”
There’s a beat of silence. A beat where Wooyoung glances at the espresso machine and ignoring the sound of the man chewing loudly, he wonders, briefly, if he should just go back to pretend he’s literate.
There’s also a moment where Wooyoung thinks he hears the man say the book was named “Highlight”
But before he can’t even turn around, the first woman leans forward, her eyes gleaming with something closer to concern that recalls his mother's eyes.
“If you really know him, son, you need to be careful. He’s charming with that birdmark like a flower, that’s how they get you”
Wooyoung snorts again, but it dies halfway through because everyone’s looking at him like he’s already halfway turned.
He tries to brush it off, his hand motion to take his hair off his face only to find nothing but a lingering sense of disquiet clinging to him, a foreign discomfort in someone who’s always found the act of talking as easy as breathing.
His mind is now a train with no brakes or driver, ricochets with thoughts that echo into the farthest corners of his skull and smash themselves in the back of his eyeballs. And somewhere amidst chaos, he contemplates the remote—no, the extraordinary possibility that such creatures might truly exist.
The laughter of the people around fades and with it the warmth of the sunlight that used to come through the windows of the coffee shop, it can be that it is Wooyoung the only one that can’t feel it anymore.
If Dan, Aejeong and the others see him blanching, they’re all socially aware enough to not comment on it.
He exhales through his nose, sharp and quiet, and balances his weight in his feet in a casual move that doesn’t quite reach his insides.
He still goes to the library as he planned, because the truth is he does not have a proper reason to not, right?
He finds Yeosang by the window, half-lit by the sun that is moving to the back of the building now. His fingers tapping absently against the glass, too calm, for a creature that’s supposed to be averse to the sun, and if Wooyoung’s shoulder slackens slightly, it’s a totally normal reaction.
There’s something about the way he stands; too still, too composed that makes Wooyoung’s chest tighten with a question he has not yet named and is unsure if he’d ever phrase at all.
Because, really, what’s there to ask? He should do himself a favor and stop before his mind starts drawing sharp teeth in people he might already be in love with.
And because Wooyoung’s single brain cell took the day off, he blurts out:
“Someone told me today that you’re a vampire”
Wooyoung heard it, the way Yeosang’s breath hitched.
When he talks, Yeosang still manages to sound as if he’s able to brace whatever outcome, yet Wooyoung can as well feel the saccharine fakeness of it.
Yeosang’s face is tarnished with some kind of anguish that makes Wooyoung feel sick to his stomach. It’s as if the intonation of the joke had been completely ignored, but there’s the possibility that Wooyoung has been all along unable to even joke about it.
Sure is that he wants, needs, that veil far gone from the other’s face, miles away from them both.
“My time is not my own. Yet, I’m certainly not a vampire, Young-ah”
“Is that– Is that so?”
“We age differently, Wooyoung”
He stares.
“We, who? There’s more of your kind?”
Wooyoung knows he should ask better questions, like But what are you, then?
He's also sure he isn’t doing it because he’s afraid that the Universe is playing sick jokes to him. This can’t be. Yeosang can’t be a vampire nor any other kind of weird creature.
First of all, because those creatures don’t exist. And second, because that isn’t fair.
It is not fair that Wooyoung finds someone so amazing and for what?
“We, us”
Wooyoung, contrary to popular belief, does not overreact.
He won’t start asking questions like a maniac, nor will he start screaming as he points fingers. He falls into a contemplative silence, though. Sure is, he doesn’t want to get ahead of himself, so he’s mulling over this somewhat piece of information and the feeling of Yeosang’s cascade, light brown eyes.
That he ages differently, he hasn’t been one to know that.
Wooyoung isn’t a fan of meddling either, but this is about him, somehow. And Yeosang said the magic word. Us.
It is intrinsic to him, the need to know he belongs. Innate is the desire to ask Yeosang if for him there is truly an ‘us’ in what they have, or what they do or who they are.
Maybe then, after his heart leaps or sinks, whatever thing is yet to come that he’s unaware of, then he’d ask how could ever time move differently for creatures that live under the same sun as everybody else.
And Yeosang will say something clever he didn't think of, because that’s a really Yeosang thing to do, and it won’t matter if one of them ages differently, if one of them drinks blood to live, or if Yeosang wants to feed out of him. Wooyoung does not care, won’t care as long as he gets to spend time with him and sort books together.
He wants to ask ‘Us, as in you and me? Or us, as in something older than both?’, instead he just:
“Okay” he says, hushed voice. At Yeosang’s obvious relief and crooked smile, he tilts his head. “And what are we exactly?”
Yeosang stares at him. Hair soft as feather, so beautiful that it’s only fair he is a fairy tale creature.
He can feel his eyes studying his face like the first time he appeared in the library, and they’re not in a search for something, but in contemplation.
It makes Wooyoung believe there’s no possible thing he could ever say or do that’ll make Yeosang feel less than endeared.
“You were supposed to come a few decades earlier, if I let myself be honest with you” he smiles softly. “I’ve been waiting for you to come. For you to find me and find this.”
“I literally was just learning to walk a few decades ago. What do you mean?”
“Ah, yes. Because, you see…Wooyoung you’re…hmh”
He trails off and it’s a little bit scary because he never does.
For a second, Yeosang’s eyes go down to the wooden tables on the floor, and then he looks up again with a face so earnest it makes Wooyoung want to pull him into a hug.
Yeosang’s slightly colder hands reach ever so slowly, fingertips first and palm second, until he has all of Wooyoung’s own covered.
“The process of healing and no-aging begins once you get here. Tell me, have your old injuries ever ached again? Or did your… thoughts get sharp like they used to?”
Wooyoung recalls. Tries to.
All he can get himself to think about is a bright sun and a way brighter smile. He shakes his head.
“You were supposed to come earlier because you were supposed to already know about me. We are…Creatures of this world, of course. I’m sorry we’re not those aliens you like.” Wooyoung snorts and suppresses a smile. “Born from a certain lineage of humans, Keepers. We’re destined to take care of the chronics of Human existence.”
Wooyoung stays still, silent. As if wondering just how out of his own mind Yeosang had gotten. Or how out of his own mind he’s gotten himself, because really, why is he even considering that what Yeosang is saying makes sense? How could this even make sense?
“You remember that, don’t you? Where there’s life…”
“...There’s a poem”
Yeosang hums, delighted. “Or any other kind of writing.”
Wooyoung decides, right then and there, that someone he’s not, it’s a runner.
It was what brought him here, after all, still he is not used to letting things scare him so easily nor enough to make him run and hide. Yes, he did run away. Not hide but to grow, and back then, there was not very much to lose.
“That I am…”
“Isn’t that what they all say? That when you look into your family’s history you will find a secret sooner or later?”
“Well, yeah. Tax evasion”
Since the very start he wanted to know everything there is to know about Yeosang, and it’s even more powerful now that it means he’d get to learn about himself too.
“How?”
The question is vague. How do you know it’s me? How can you think I’d even believe you? How is this even possible?
He won’t specify because there’s no need to. Somehow, Yeosang always manages to say just what he needs to hear even when he’s not sure himself.
“Back then, somewhere along the path of time, the Jung Keeper deserted. If I’m allowed to guess I’d say he wanted to have a normal life, a normal family and a more normal death. And when I got here, there was this Keeper with me. She was a lovely woman but she had been here for a long time and she needed to continue with her own lineage . I’ve been on my own ever since.”
Yeosang shrugs like it’s not a big deal. But Wooyoung can feel it, the utter sentiment of loneliness he always thought was only his own.
“That’s why you asked me to never–”
“Yeah” he rushes, not wanting Wooyoung to say it.
“I’d never”
He doesn’t say it.
“What is this then?”
“A boundless crew of eternal instants”
“So this isn’t just a library but like…-”
“Isn’t every library a boundless crew of eternal instants anyway?”
Wooyoung narrows his eyes and mocks him. “Sometimes, I don’t like you”
The sun is generous today as it always seems to be for them.
It spills across the grass in lazy caressing streaks, warming the backs of their necks and the pages of their books they’re reading. Wooyoung lies on his stomach, one leg bent, toes twitching in rhythm with the breeze and the musical hum coming out of his partner’s lips.
Yeosang sits beside him, upright but relaxed, just as he always seems to be. His shadow stretches long and soft over Wooyoung’s shoulder and head like an umbrella shielding him from the sun he so often forgets to guard against.
He turns a second page before he glances sideways. Yeosang’s eyes are scanning the text, but his thumb is still on the same paragraph, which means he’s not really reading.
The memory of yesterday’s conversation is like the woody scent that Wooyoung can smell against his own skin, it lingers softly.
Yeosang smiles, eyes half-closed.
“It occurred to me that you’re like a four-leaf clover.”
Wooyoung blinks, surprised by the comment. He tries to remember what kind of book Yoesang chose for today, if he wasn’t so distracted by other aspects of Yeosang’s whole existence, he’d be able to.
“Rare?”
Yeosang shakes his head gently, and Wooyoung knows what he means.
“You’re not reading, and you’re overthinking stuff”
Wooyoung points out as if he hasn’t been the biggest overthinker just two days ago. He still whispers, because he doesn’t want to perturb the black cat that is very much sleeping a few feet away from them. And also because he knows very well how it is to be scared.
He rolls onto his back, letting the sun blind him for a second before he closes his eyes.
The world is more peaceful and wider now.
Yeosang doesn’t answer. He just reaches out, fingers brushing Wooyoung’s wrist as a bookmark placed gently between chapters.
“It’s the prophecy of experiences. The past always repeats itself” Wooyoung mumbles. “That’s why you were scared. Don’t be”
“Humans repeat themselves”
Wooyoung hums, his lips in a line as he stares at Yeosang the best he can. “You don’t think of yourself as a human, do you?”
“Well. I don’t think that I am one anymore. I was, once” he shrugs. “However, that perception has all to do with what do I think it means to be a human”
He lays down, head resting lightly in Wooyoung’s abdomen.
“What do you think it is about?”
“All the things humans do are aligned with the imminence of death”
Wooyoung stops actively caressing Yeosang’s hair. Caught up in between thoughts and feelings.
He used to crave the kind of things that only oblivion could offer. He’d wanted to vanish for such a considerable amount of time that to think about the way he’s about to live for more years than normally expected, it’s weird.
It’s weird that it sounds like a promise and not like a punishment.
Back then, Yeosang was not a part of the equation of his life, nor was this endless library, nor this freeing feeling.
“Not only death is what makes us humans…But our minds”
Yeosang hums, contemplative. And Wooyoung is already much accustomed to the dreamy status quo that Yeosang seems to live in.
Against the muscles of his stomach, Wooyoung can feel the way Yeosang’s cheeks get fuller when he smiles the moment he places his own hand around the other’s neck, now tracing invisible constellations on his skin.
Yeosang speaks, his voice is low and small in the most welcoming of ways.
“This is going to be really fun”
“This, what?”
“Eternity with you”
The sun doesn’t seem to mind staying a little longer, at least for them.