(for lowislane) unburials: towards the setting sun part i
For: lowislane
Title: unburials: towards the setting sun
Genre: fantasy, romance, angst
Rating: PG-13
Length: 19,400 words
Summary: once upon a time, a hunter born on the bloodlust year seeks out the purest soul.
Notes: Hello, hello! First of all, I’d like to apologize to my recipient if this is not in any way what you were looking for. I suspect that I deviated very much from your original request. Second, I would like to thank the mods for their endless patience, and for assigning me a wonderful beta who was more than willing to clean up my mess.
the demon hunter
the skies are red.
underneath the eye of the blood-rimmed sun, jongin surveys the landscape stretching out on all sides. everything is flat, black earth, smudged with the lives that have crossed over it to the unknown. his shoulders remain tense as he sets down his rucksack. even as his hands perform the familiar task of setting up a tent, tying the canvas to the stakes, drawing a square around it and muttering the simple incantation that his mentor had taught him, jongin does not glance down.
his prey is just as easily his predator.
the last thing he does before he retreats into his tent is build a fire out of a bundle of dried tinder and a flint. it won't keep out the things he is hunting, he knows, but it will give him warmth, something to cook with. the enchanted square will do most of the protecting, as long as he does not take a single step out of it.
inside his tent, he unrolls his sleeping bag and lays it down on the ground. from the belt at his waist, he takes out a thin, silver rod, no more than five inches long. then, sitting cross-legged, he places the mark etched into the heel of his right palm on an indentation halfway down the rod. for a second, it is silent, his chest rising and falling with every breath that finds its way to his lungs.
the rod begins to glow, brighter and brighter until the interior of the tent is spilling over with white. jongin narrows his eyes into slits and waits for the light to slink back to the shadows, leaving him with a sharp, cruel blade, attached to a hilt of bone and leather. branded on the flat of the blade is a labyrinth shaped like a hexagon, the lines of it black, matching the one on his palm.
he places it across his lap. jongin has more than a lot of faith in the incantation that will ward off the evil beginning to swirl around the edges at the first blush of sunset, but he has been trained for so long to be prepared for anything. he watches, and waits for the first appearance.
through the canvas of his tent, he sees a shapeless form drip darkness just outside the square. then another, and another, hordes of them finding strength in the dark, shifting and changing. jongin's grip on the hilt of the blade tightens.
the demons, now gathered in full force, begin to wail.
if there were any other person in the tent, a person who was not jongin and did not know what jongin knew, he or she would have sat there feeling despair climb into his or her bones. the wails would have cut into his or her core and flooded it with the tight feeling of hopelessness, a sensation meant to crush his or her ribs. his or her vision would darken; in minutes, the wails would pull him or her out and the demons would swallow him or her whole, leaving behind strips of flesh hanging sack-like over bones.
but jongin is the one inside, and he knows what the full effect of the wails is, knows it so well that they do no more than coax disdain out of him. the blade on his lap winks silver. he reminds himself that come morning, he will be able to drive it through the demons kept at bay by the enchanted square.
outside the tent, the fire continues to burn, a halo of light not yet blotted out by the shadows boiling just inches away.
i. the innkeeper’s son
winter blankets the village not even a day into the twelfth month, sweeping animals into burrows and deep beneath the roots of trees. kyungsoo eyes the snow, knee-deep now, filling the yard of his family's inn. as the youngest of three sons, it is his duty to keep the path clear for any travelers looking to wait out the rest of the storm somewhere comfortable and safe. kyungsoo likes how the travelers stomp in with tales of other villages, furs often reeking of adventures yet to turn stale, but he despises the hours-long work of shoveling the snow. he sighs and wraps his coat and scarf extra tight around himself, then trudges out with his shovel.
his village is one of the more prosperous ones, fields blooming with grain during harvest season and markets overflowing with fresh produce, jewels, fabrics and all manner of things in the spring. there is a school that teaches the basics -- everything else, a trip to the far-away city can cover, for every year there are officials who come round to offer a handful of youth the chance to have an education. but those who choose not to go and those who aren't chosen at all, are not left wanting. this is, after all, an area known as a trading outpost. every family has its own trade, every shop is willing to impart its craft, and so very few people take the hay-filled caravans to the city.
kyungsoo is an innkeeper's son, but as the last-born, he is normally expected to take up some other trade or craft, or even take the offer of a scholarship in the city. but his brothers had gone ahead of him: junmyeon, the eldest, had accepted the offer five years prior, and now he was home for a short while before taking oath as part of the city's new batch of lawmakers; jongdae, next in line, had long since been attracted to music, and just the year before, he'd begun his apprenticeship with the village's favorite bard, kyuhyun. that had left kyungsoo with the responsibility of continuing the family trade, though he'd entertained the same dreams as his brothers.
he leans on the handle of the shovel and squints down the rest of the tree-lined path, wondering if any travelers will come along today.
last night, a group of cloaked men had mixed dirt with snow, their faces shadowed when they'd come up to kyungsoo's mother and asked for rooms for five nights. kyungsoo, who had been sweeping the hallways that time, had felt a chill in his bones as he watched them. still they gave enough gold for kyungsoo's family to be able to buy spiced cakes for the midwinter dinner, so he'd quelled the fear that was wave-like in his stomach.
kyungsoo resumes shoveling the snow, humming a song under his breath. he keeps himself going with the thought of the hot cider his mother is brewing in the inn's kitchen, the fire blazing in the common room of the inn, and the music sheets that jongdae had given him upon returning from a training session with the bard. the wind blows and plays with the snow a while, but it takes care not to ruin his work. further down the road, he can hear the ring of hammer on metal from the blacksmith's shop, the bargaining for cured meats at the charcutier's house, and the snap of leather from the tanner's place.
"you."
a voice, rusty and deep, breaks through the rhythm of kyungsoo's shoveling. he looks up to see a young man swathed in robes as deep as night, his features free of anything except a certain blankness that disconcerts kyungsoo. the stranger's skin has been licked by sun, which kyungsoo finds curious in the dead of winter, when the sun sleeps in its bedding of clouds before noon has even made its mark on the ground. this man looks weathered, hardened, as though the years have chipped away at his innocence and encased him in metal and earth.
kyungsoo has to remind himself that he is the innkeeper's son, and, therefore, he must be hospitable. "yes?" he says, trying for a bright smile. it feels tight on his lips and only succeeds in pulling out a look of disdain from the man.
"where is the village inn?" the man asks. his irises, kyungsoo notes, are near black. he seems like he's looking at a point to the right of kyungsoo -- it unsettles him, that detached gaze, but he marshals himself.
"right here," kyungsoo says, motioning toward the pair of carved wooden doors with gold inlay that his father had had installed this year. "i'll show you inside."
"no need for that," the man says, now beginning to make his way up the path.
"i'm sorry, i think i have to make myself clear," kyungsoo says, a bit irritated now. it usually takes more than a couple of dismissive replies for him to be on the offensive. "it's not an option. i'll show you inside, because my parents -- who are also the innkeepers -- are doing errands, and as i am their son, i am responsible for accommodating you." he slings the shovel in one smooth motion over his shoulder, trying not to wince when the flat of it bumps against his thigh.
a brief look of shock crosses the man's face, but it becomes impassive once again. "well, then," he says, "show me the wonders of your inn."
kyungsoo seethes at the tone but he reminds himself that he is not in a position to drive away this man. so he stays silent, leading the walk to the inn and opening the door for the visitor. inside, he edges between the redwood-paneled desk and shelves built for receiving guests. the man remains silent all throughout this, not even bothering to shake the snow off his coat or setting down the faded grey rucksack he's been carrying.
kyungsoo takes out a ledger and a pen, and he sets both down on the desk with a flourish. he turns to the pages noting which rooms are free. "alone?"
"does it look like i am anything but?"
kyungsoo bites down on his tongue. "a small or large room?"
"i've slept in tents and even on top of earth before," the man says, lips curled into a bitter smile. "the bare minimum will do."
"how many nights?"
"for as long as it takes to accomplish my task."
"alright," kyungsoo says, biting down even harder on his tongue. "name?"
"jongin."
kyungsoo glances up, surprised at how the answer strikes out so plainly and without any anecdote whatsoever. jongin returns his gaze with a raised eyebrow.
"alright, jongin," kyungsoo says, "since you're staying here indefinitely, payment must be given each morning before the birds sing eight times. five golden pieces a night. we serve food at any time of day, but bear in mind that this isn't at all part of what you're paying already. here's your key." he hands the key to jongin, then slips out of the receptionist's nook to lead the way to his room.
it's unsettling how quiet jongin is behind him; how, when he moves, the only thing that gives him away are the glances kyungsoo shoots back to check if he's still following. they're on the second-floor hallway when jongin taps on his shoulder.
"wait."
"what is it?" kyungsoo asks, trying to repress the urge to jump in surprise.
"do you have any other visitors at the moment?" jongin's stance seems tense, and his eyes keep flicking back-and-forth. it's as if he's seeking something that kyungsoo can't see. the bones of his knuckles push against his skin as he grips the straps of his rucksack tighter.
it unsettles kyungsoo, this guardedness. life in the village holds hardly any mystery or tension. while it isn't like everyone is ready to pour out their stories at campfires, kyungsoo knows of no one like jongin, who hunches in on himself and seems bent on becoming a part of the shadows. and no one, kyungsoo is sure, looks as though they'll be gone any minute.
"of course we do," kyungsoo snorts. "this is an inn. a lot of travelers stop by here."
jongin considers him for a moment. kyungsoo does not drop his gaze. then he says, almost to himself, "such leniency of trust can only come from someone with newborn eyes."
kyungsoo stiffens. "what did you say?"
"there are suspicious characters abroad," jongin says, his voice a decibel louder. "ghosts turn into humans, and humans turn into ghosts."
"i have no idea what you mean," kyungsoo says. "i speak in the tongue of the land, not the tongue of the strange."
he knows jongin's glaring at him, but kyungsoo turns his back on the other guy and keeps walking. his parents won't forgive him once they find out about his behavior to a guest; for now, though, he feels a deep sense of satisfaction.
he stops outside of jongin's door and watches him as he unlocks it. kyungsoo's given him one of the sparser rooms, something more suited to the nomadic aura that clings to jongin. the guest enters the room and surveys it with the door still half-open behind him, taking in the double bed with clean white sheets pushed up against a curtained window, the wooden desk, the closet near the entrance and another door leading to the toilet.
"dinner will be ready once the sun sets," kyungsoo says. "if you need anything, tug on the bell-pull beside your bed. we'll get whatever it is that you need."
jongin doesn't reply. he sets down his rucksack beside the closet and makes for the window, pushing aside the curtains to let a pool of weak winter sunlight spill over the bed.
"if you don't need anything," kyungsoo continues, feeling more and more like this is a lost cause and that he really shouldn't bother, "i'll be downstairs shoveling the snow."
"what is your name?"
kyungsoo's eyes narrow. jongin lets the curtain drop back down, his face turned in kyungsoo's direction.
"why do you want to know?" kyungsoo bites back. he curses jongin in his thoughts -- normally he is patient and courteous with every guest that passes through the entrance of the inn. perhaps it has something to do with how jongin's tone is dismissive, the rise and fall of his words like a slap to the hearer's face.
jongin doesn't reply.
kyungsoo huffs. "my name is kyungsoo," he says. "pleased to make your acquaintance."
for the first time since jongin had strolled his way into kyungsoo's life via the shoveled path to the inn, the corner of his lips turns up into a smile. kyungsoo blinks. "are you?" he asks. "pleased to make my acquaintance, i mean. i don't think so. you look as though if someone gave you a knife, right here, right now, i would find the blade driven through my chest."
"i don't know what you're talking about," kyungsoo says, though his response is half-hearted. it's not like jongin's wrong.
"listen, kyungsoo." jongin crosses the room, his face serious again as he stops in front of kyungsoo. "ghosts turn into humans, and humans turn into ghosts. i know you do not understand what it means, and i am in no position to tell you, but keep those words in mind. danger has been kept away from the land for a long time, but that does not mean it will stay that way forever. let your guests in, yes; however, you must never trust them. and sleep with your doors and windows closed, and a sprig of rosemary tucked beneath your pillow."
"a sprig of rosemary," kyungsoo repeats, trying and failing to hide his incredulity. "okay."
something passes over jongin's face. a flicker, like the brief flap of a bird's wing flying across his eyes, the last sad note of a piano piece. "you do not understand," he says. "i hope you never will."
"alright," kyungsoo says. "i'll get going now, then, to fetch myself some rosemary."
he doesn't even linger for a second longer there, his steps down the hallway going quick
quick, away from the room and away from jongin. the guy, kyungsoo thinks, is clearly one of those gypsies romping throughout the land with crystal balls and glass beads, proclaiming the doom of the world.
still, as he settles back into the task of shoveling snow, kyungsoo wonders what those words might mean, and why jongin insists so much that he must hold on to them.
dinner at the village inn is always a boisterous one, no matter the season and the number of people present. when the darkness tiptoes across the skies, locals and travelers often find themselves on the zigzagging path leading to the carved doors of the inn, eager to stamp out their exhaustion with a fire blazing at the grate and drinks pouring for a bit of bronze. kyuhyun the bard sometimes drops by to share a newly-composed song. so does the dance troupe that camps out in the fields to the west of the village, drilling movements so fluid and powerful into bodies meant to bend. there are, of course, plenty of poets always ready to sing a sonnet or two. not to be outdone, travelers regale everyone with adventures they've had in other parts of the land, hands cutting air into bits and pieces of unknown landscapes. kyungsoo likes this the most; if there were ever something stopping him from rejecting his inheritance of the family inn, it is this, the gatherings that stack sounds up to the rafters and leave red-faced smiles on sofas.
tonight, however, a chill rushes through the village and keeps everyone tucked inside the heated walls of their houses. a few more travelers come dripping into the inn, but they say nothing more than the cursory good evening to him. it is impossible to talk with blue lips. kyungsoo knows this, but he still can't help feeling disappointed. he always looks forward to the stories.
"ring the bell for me, will you, kyungsoo?" his mother calls from the kitchen.
kyungsoo reaches for the bell-pull hanging by a pillar near the receptionist's desk. it's a thick green braid, running up and down the pipes and connected to almost every room in the inn. he tugs, and in the background, he hears the faint tinkling of all the bells installed in all of the rooms. then he checks the dining room one more time to ensure that there are no wrinkles on the tablecloths and no wilting roses in the vases.
as the travelers begin settling down at the tables and ordering food, kyungsoo's kept busy serving them. it's a quiet affair, many of the patrons too exhausted to expend effort on things that do not involve lifting food and drink to their mouths. at the very least, jongdae's here, having just finished another day of training with the bard. he sweeps right through the aisles and sits down at the piano to play a song, his voice accompanying the notes that drift out of ivory and black.
the cloaked men that had come just the night before are hunched round a table, whispering amongst themselves. unlike the other guests, they haven't ordered a single dish, choosing to whet whatever appetites they have with glasses of ale and cider. kyungsoo's curiosity is pricked by the secrecy that the group wears so comfortably, but he doesn't hover too much around them.
jongin doesn't come down until late into the hour, with most of the guests gone and the tables ready for clearing. he hasn't changed out of his clothes; still, kyungsoo thinks that there's something different about him since the last time he's seen him, something to do with the clench of his jaw and the wariness of his eyes, and the way his right hand rests on some part of his cloak. he glances round the room, as if seeking something. kyungsoo may be wrong, but there seems to be a flicker of relief in jongin's eyes. he makes his way to a table in the corner, settling into a chair with its back against the wall and which, kyungsoo realizes, provides an unobstructed view of the entire room.
"we have chicken, beef, several salads and a minestrone soup," kyungsoo reels off to jongin. jongdae's taking a break at the moment, so only chatter is threaded into the surroundings as his older brother hops from table to table with his bright smile, checking that everything's all right. he's got no intention of taking up the family trade, but jongdae, like junmyeon and like kyungsoo, had been brought up to accommodate guests. this is a habit that will stay with the three of them for the rest of their lives.
"does your salad have rosemary in it?"
kyungsoo squints at jongin, trying to gauge if the latter is joking or not. to be on the safe side, he says, "we have rosemary in the chicken."
"then i'll have that," jongin says, "along with the soup and a glass of cider."
kyungsoo does not comment further, jotting down the order as fast as he can.
"where do you sleep, kyungsoo?"
he almost drops his pen in surprise. jongin's said a lot of strange things from the moment he's stepped inside the inn, but this is perhaps the strangest of all.
"what -- what does it matter -- this is not a... a..." kyungsoo stutters, trying to gather his thoughts. he considers, for a brief moment, bringing up the subject of turning away suspicious characters from the inn at the next family meeting. it's always been the inn's creed to welcome anyone from any land, and it's the reason why their business thrives so much. still, jongin's strangeness is almost enough to convince him to do otherwise.
jongin raises his eyebrow. "i don't think I'm thinking the same thing you're thinking, kyungsoo. i'm asking out of curiosity, if you will. does your family stay in this inn and take rooms out of many, or do you stay far from here?"
"why would an innkeeper leave his inn unattended?" kyungsoo says, bristling at the suggestion. "no, we live right here. the downstairs rooms are ours. also," and he lifts his chin a bit, trying to cover for his earlier sputtering, "you shouldn't phrase things like that, it gives people the wrong impression."
"no, it just reveals the state of their mind and how they think," jongin says. "i presume you have silver bolts on your doors and windows like in the rooms of your guests?"
"of course," kyungsoo says. he's trying to see where jongin's heading with this but he's failing. he looks down at the pad in his hand, hoping to give jongin the hint that if he doesn't have anymore questions, kyungsoo will be pleased to attend to his order -- and to be in a place without an irritating guest spouting nonsensical things.
"and you use them regularly?"
"yes, we do," kyungsoo says. "now if you'll excuse me, i'd like to go fetch the food you've asked for, sir." he leaves no room for jongin to say another word. instead he turns his back on the guest and brings the order to his mother.
he returns to jongdae sitting at jongin's table, the men laughing over something. kyungsoo resists the urge to rub his eyes, sure that this is an apparition of some sort. but it doesn't seem like it, and his brother's always been the most patient one, friendly even to guests like jongin who sink into darkness and spout visions of the improbable.
"oh, hello, kyungsoo," jongdae says, standing up to help kyungsoo put down the dinner things on jongin's table. "i was just talking to jongin here about his experiences in the north. he seems to have seen a lot."
"really?" kyungsoo asks, trying to seem nonchalant, even though he wants to know the details as well. "why are you asking about the north, anyway?"
jongdae shrugs. "oh, kyuhyun takes a trip to the north every year to visit a council of bards, and this year he wants to take me along."
"ah, interesting," kyungsoo says. he glances at jongin, whose mouth is now full of chicken and soup. the man glances up at kyungsoo with a gaze that is hard to decipher. "okay, since you're here anyway, i'll leave the two of you to it."
jongdae tilts his head. "you don't want to listen to jongin's stories? you love stories, kyungsoo."
"well -- yes, but mother needs me in the kitchen," kyungsoo reasons. "really, it's all right."
"i can help mother in the kitchen," jongdae volunteers. "i've run out of songs to play anyway."
kyungsoo opens his mouth but jongin beats him to it. "it's all right, the both of you can go to the kitchen," he says. "i'm fine with company, but i'm not really used to it while dining, and i'd also like some time to myself. thank you, though," and he smiles with closed lips at jongdae.
"are you sure, sir?" jongdae asks, brows furrowed.
"very," jongin says. "i don't mind."
“well,” jongdae says, “then let’s go help mother, kyungsoo.”
as they leave, kyungsoo swears there’s a hint of a smile in jongin’s eyes. then the guest returns to his chicken, and kyungsoo and jongdae fall right into the rhythm of doing the chores their mother sets them to, the kitchen soon sparkling clean. junmyeon comes down not a few minutes later and is the one to gather up the remaining utensils and clutter in the dining room. for a few hours, as kyungsoo and his family lock the doors and retire to their rooms, heads already aching for the smooth down of pillows, kyungsoo feels content. he forgets about jongin, about rosemary and silver bolts and human-shaped ghosts. in the embrace of blankets, it is easy to live within the crystalline shells of dreams, without thought of the dangers creeping into moonlight-drenched rooms.
red. the room is smeared with paint, with blood -- red, so bright, so alive, pulsating even in the periphery of kyungsoo’s vision. he does not move. he cannot move. above him the ceiling opens up to a storm, swirling in with wind and rain, thunder shaking kyungsoo’s spine. instead of flying off, the blankets cling to him still. they wrap, tighter and tighter, around his limbs, his neck, his torso. kyungsoo tries to peel them off but he has no hands, no fingers, just eyes that watch the red bleed into the air in the midst of the downpour.
the red begins to crumble. eroded, tainted, the searing shade of it washed away by the skies’ blues. flakes of it sail across his body and assemble into some weird shape he cannot make sense of. the blankets are tighter now, the pillow beneath his head like rock.
then the red flakes begin to dance, caught up in some kind of vortex in the middle of room. it grows stronger, stronger, until all kyungsoo can see is a spectrum of spilled life. it runs down his face, his lips, and wanders down his tongue. fabric curled around his throat.
his chest heaves, but no air comes. something black, like oblivion, issues out of his mouth; something, but he does not know what it is. no air, no breath, more black. no breath, no air, more black. more black --
kyungsoo’s eyes fly open, his hands reaching for his neck in a desperate attempt to regain air. his throat continues to constrict and he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know why this is happening and what is going on. he claws at the skin -- there is no fabric, but something’s weighing him down, something heavy and oppressive and suffocating. his mouth opens and he thrashes in his bed, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
five figures loom over him, detaching from the darkness that blots the room. kyungsoo can do nothing but stare up at them. it is silent save for his gasping, and he tears his hand away from his neck to reach out, to ask for help.
one of the figures moves closer to him and touches his chest. kyungsoo almost throws up as a sudden burning feeling eats away at his stomach, makes its way through his veins, and surrounds his rib cage with an internal fire. the pain continues to build and he thinks in flashes, in bursts, in graphite shadows and memories sketched into existence by the call of death. there is a fire inside him and it is filling his insides with smoke. the figure pushes down on his chest, and then smoke does begin to issue out of his mouth. kyungsoo’s eyesight begins to blur.
he hears the sound of a door being thrown open and the sharp screeches of slashing. his eyesight is still foggy; all he can make out is that now, instead of five, there are only three figures left. then two, then one -- and red, flakes of red beginning to form a cylinder, spinning downward with a howl. the figure closest to him pushes down harder on his chest but silver cuts through it. cruel silver, arcing down the black, paring it down to the copper rust falling back to earth.
“i told you to be careful,” someone hisses, the reproach within the voice choked back by notes that reek of desperation. “i told you -- goddammit.” a hand wraps around the smoke still rising, drifting from kyungsoo’s lips, and the hand glows. it twists and turns the column of smoke, threading silver along it, gathering it into a thin stream. then the hand forces it back into kyungsoo’s mouth. kyungsoo can feel the smoke slipping down his throat, falling in place somewhere deep within him. the hand does not stop -- it passes a rod over his body, and the voice is murmuring an endless river of words that do not make sense to kyungsoo. but whatever it is, it’s helping him, because the fire in his stomach dies out. he tastes rosemary on the back of his tongue.
“who -- what --” kyungsoo coughs, sitting up and trying to catch a glimpse of the person. “what happened --”
“we can’t stay here,” the voice says, and while kyungsoo’s eyesight is cleared up now, he can only make out streaks of motion disturbing the shadows. “they’re coming, they’ll have heard the call, and we need to be out of here immediately.” the door swings shut and the bolts slide in place over the wood.
“who are you?” kyungsoo says, scrambling from the bed. “what just happened?”
“no time.” sprigs of rosemary christen the area in front of the door. “they won’t come after your family, i’ve already cast the incantations to protect them, and in any case it’s you they want. let’s go.”
“go where?” kyungsoo cries, but the person doesn’t answer him. an arm wraps around his waist and swings him over his shoulder with surprising strength, and they head for the nearest window.
a figure materializes on the other side of the glass.
the person holding kyungsoo curses, and kyungsoo tries to swallow down his fear. he watches as the figure wails and feels the fire burning in his stomach once more, boiling --
the glass shatters. a silver blade is sunk deep into the figure’s chest and it bursts into a confetti of red shards. kyungsoo feels the person beneath him clamber out of the window, muttering something in his breath, and he is pulled out of the room with him.
“faster, faster --”
a chorus of wails breaks out behind him, and the person gives an angry shout. he crosses the open window with silver, chanting something, and the hole bursts with yellow light. rosemary assaults kyungsoo’s senses.
“don’t listen to the wailing!”
he watches the figures melt in the yellow and claps his hands over his ears. he thinks of the inn, of his parents, of his brothers; he thinks of the fire, the embers of it still sparking inside him, and the smoke rising in his stomach.
he thinks until he thinks too much, and his head feels like it’s going to burst. the person is calling out his name, but kyungsoo is too far gone to answer.
he succumbs to the black.
flight
jongin runs.
night is the hardest time to travel because it is when the demons are strongest. everything that the light does not touch is their domain, their kingdom, and he is heading straight into it. it’s made more difficult by the human load on his shoulders and the fact that he knows there are plenty of demons on their trail, but he sets his sights on moving forward. not too far, but far enough by the time the sun rises.
as he runs, he curses himself. he should have done this sooner. when he’d arrived at the inn, he should have whisked kyungsoo away the moment he’d stepped into the second floor hallway and felt the malicious aura of the spirits wrapped in human flesh. but he’d been stupid. he hadn’t sensed that kyungsoo was the one they were looking for until he’d gone down to the dining room and sat at the table they’d used, snatching at the remnants of the conversation they’d had not yet erased from the atmosphere. even he hadn’t sensed that kyungsoo was the one he was supposed to protect. no, not until midnight, when the pull of evil was like a tide of sludge, and through it all jongin had seen the blinding white of a pure soul, the soul that he and the demons had been racing toward. blinding white, about to drown in darkness. blinding white, in kyungsoo’s room.
blinding white, in kyungsoo’s unlocked room, without a single sprig of rosemary.
he tells himself that it isn’t kyungsoo’s fault. the boy had known nothing, after all -- in these parts, the legends and myths have long succumbed to practicality, and even then he and his fellow hunters have done their jobs without alerting everyone else to the presence of demons. they’d long lived in the far reaches of the land, deep in forests and deserts, but the prophecy had somehow made it to their lairs. the prophecy of a pure soul, one that both hunters and demons coveted, one that would finally destroy the balance.
so jongin’s legs ache but he does not stop, does not look back. he turns his face forward, and with all of his might, he races toward the yolk of the sun.
ii. one pure soul
when he wakes, kyungsoo’s hand flies to his neck before he even registers the reason why. then he remembers the events of the previous night and he sits up, his body alert, trying to make sense of how many hours have passed and where he is. cloth stares back at him. no, not cloth, but thick white canvas, used in tents similar to the ones he and his brothers had used when they’d camped in the past. he looks down and sees that the lower half of his body’s encased in a sleeping bag. to his right, there is hard, flat earth dusted with snow.
kyungsoo pushes the sleeping bag aside and slips out of the entrance flap.
it takes a while for his eyes to adjust. it takes even longer for him to try to fit the landscape with a place in his memory. nothing comes up. this is an unfamiliar area to him, one that he’s never gone to even when he was younger. he pulls himself up to an upright position and scans the surroundings some more, trying to find anything that looks familiar.
“you’re awake.”
kyungsoo whips around. jongin looks back at him, still swathed in his dark robes. in his hand is a silver rod, and seeing it causes the memories to flood right back to the forefront of kyungsoo’s mind.
“you -- last night --”
“we’ve got no time to waste,” jongin interrupts him. “they won’t come after us while it’s still light out, so we need to get to somewhere safe before the dark comes. the nearest village is a good day’s walk away.”
“you can’t just drag me along without explaining anything to me!” kyungsoo protests, watching as jongin crawls inside the tent to get the sleeping bag and roll it up. “who, what were those things? what were they doing? why are they chasing after us?”
jongin stuffs the sleeping bag inside his rucksack. he kneels and pulls out the stakes holding down the tent, all the while not acknowledging kyungsoo’s questions.
kyungsoo scrambles to the last stake. “jongin.”
jongin snatches the stake from his grip. he doesn’t reply, just places the stakes in a pocket of his rucksack. then he gathers up the rest of the tent, bundles everything up, and places it in an inner compartment of his rucksack.
“let’s go.”
“wait!” kyungsoo cries, but jongin doesn’t even spare him a glance. he starts walking northeast, rucksack over his shoulder, the hems of his cloak billowing in the breeze. it’s too early in the day for snow but it’s still cold, and kyungsoo’s about to wonder why he’s not freezing his limbs off when he looks down and sees that he’s wearing a coat and boots. he looks up and jongin’s further down the path; a little more and he’ll be a speck of black on the white. kyungsoo grits his teeth and runs after him.
“jongin!” he pants when he’s finally in step with him. “jongin, you owe me answers. you owe me answers before you start taking me to places i don’t know a thing about.”
kyungsoo expects more silence and more monotonous walking. he expects jongin to ignore him, to brush him off as no more than a bug he must put up with for a while. he does not, however, expect jongin to stop in his tracks. neither does he expect the other guy to say something, voice flat and distant and bitter, striking out into the winter air like a slap to kyungsoo’s face: “i owe you answers?”
kyungsoo winces and takes a step back, regretting his choice of words.
jongin turns to him, and his eyes seem blacker than ever. “you think i owe you answers, kyungsoo? you think i owe you anything at all?”
“i... i…” kyungsoo tries to speak but his vocal cords fail him. jongin's strange, yes, and he says things kyungsoo doesn't understand. but this is different. jongin looks as though he's long lived underwater, every part of him submerged in a secret world kyungsoo has never been and will never be part of.
the other guy starts in his direction. “if there is anyone between the two of us who owes the other one anything, it is you. you owe me your life, kyungsoo, and i nearly lost my own! i could have left you behind to lose your soul, but i ran for miles to escape.”
kyungsoo doesn’t know why he hasn’t noticed it in the past few seconds, but jongin is paler than he remembers. there are bluish-purple rings underneath his eyes, his lips are bloodless, and he’s walking with a bit of a limp. he swallows. he knows guilt when it is right in front of him, with hollow cheeks and a fractured smile, the poison of it a thin veneer over a body housing an exhausted soul.
“i do not intend to let anything i’ve done go to waste,” jongin snaps. “so i suggest, unless you have a pressing need to die within a few hours, you should follow what i say without any protest. do we have an understanding?”
kyungsoo manages a faint “yes.”
“good.” jongin turns. “then let’s get going.”
the village to the northeast is a cluster of log cabins decked in pine and mounds of snow. it’s quieter here, not as colorful or as busy as kyungsoo’s village, but all the same the people smile at them and the children rule the streets in their warmest winter clothes. he and jongin find lodging in a modest inn. kyungsoo knows he mustn’t compare; still he finds himself drinking in the furnishings and thinking that a splash of paint here and there won’t hurt. and there it is, that feeling of nostalgia -- only yesterday he’d been at the inn, like he was every day of his life, begrudging the inheritance that stole most of his time. it was the safest place he’d ever known.
it takes a bit of time for kyungsoo to realize that jongin had asked for the two of them to share a room. it isn’t until he is standing in the space between two beds that the thought hits him, and he turns to jongin. “we’re sharing a room?”
jongin raises an eyebrow at him. “i can’t trust you to know enough to protect yourself, so of course we’re sharing a room. also, it’s cheaper.”
kyungsoo has a thing or two to say about that, but he bites down on his tongue and sits on the edge of the bed on the left-hand side of the room. he balls up all of his questions and tucks them deep down his throat, watching jongin as he draws along the boundaries of the room with a silver rod, murmuring something to himself. when he’s gone around the entire space, he takes a step back and waves his right hand. the square begins to glow a dull yellow. he does the same thing to the windows and the doors; then, without explaining why, he sprinkles rosemary beneath kyungsoo’s pillow.
there are plenty of things that kyungsoo wonders about. how are they going to eat? where will they end up? what are they running from? but he can’t quite erase from his thoughts the expression on jongin’s face earlier, nor his tone of voice. so he looks down and fiddles with his fingers.
“i’ll get us some food,” jongin says. “the sun may be out, but it will go home soon as all things in nature do. stay here. you’ll be safe as long as you’re within the square. i’ll be back as soon as i can.”
if there is anything that kyungsoo at all hates, it is waiting. it is being trapped within a glass box, waiting for time to flow past; it is the hours, the seconds squandered in a single place, with him doing nothing except stand sentry over his own inactivity. he’s not, however, in a position to go against this. so he nods his head, and when he blinks, jongin’s gone.
kyungsoo decides that, given the circumstances, the only thing left to do is to sleep. so he settles back down on the bed, closes his eyes, and he dreams of a home that only yesterday, he’d had in the palm of his hand.
by the time he wakes, the skies outside are splattered with blotches of navy. there are no clocks in the room so he has no idea how long jongin’s been gone. it’s a bit worrying, but his encounters with jongin have driven in a point, like an arrow straight through the bull’s-eye: jongin knows what he’s doing. as much as kyungsoo hates being a rag doll with a yarn mouth sewed shut, he has to comply with what jongin’s asking him to do.
at least, until kyungsoo understands everything that’s been going on.
he sits up in his bed. lying on jongin’s bed is the rucksack he’s been carrying around all day, looking even sorrier in the light of the bedside lamp. it seems to have been built for heavy traveling, with thick stitches running along the lengths of the seams, and sturdy leather straps with silver buckles. he wonders what’s inside, aside from the materials for the tent. then, because kyungsoo is a curious creature with none of the finesse, he slips out of bed and decides to take a peek at the contents of the rucksack.
he starts small, opening the front compartments first. one is overflowing with herbs, mostly rosemary, and a few roots. he reminds himself to ask jongin about the significance of the rosemary later, when the other guy’s in a good enough humor. another pocket holds silver trinkets, clinking when kyungsoo attempts to untangle them. their chains hold fast to each other, so he moves on to another pocket, which is stuffed with a bag made fat by money. and on and on, he finds traveling essentials, maps to other villages with red circles over certain areas, a magnifying glass, a compass, and a case of long-handled sharp implements. he replaces this and is about to open the main flap when he hears the faint patter of footsteps outside the door.
kyungsoo hurls himself to the other side of the room -- not because he’s that scared of jongin, but because he’s wary of whatever it is coming toward him from outside the door. when the knob turns, kyungsoo finds himself wishing for a weapon, something to protect himself with even though he doesn’t have the skill to do so. three summers ago, he’d been given the chance to learn swordsmanship, but back then he’d just been named the heir to the family trade as jongdae had made clear to his parents that as soon as he’d deemed his skills enough, he would vie for an apprenticeship with the bard. kyungsoo had not had time to consider other trades, then; as the last son, he was also his parents’ last chance, and so all summer he’d been kept in the inn. he regrets it now, being the son that would not disappoint his parents. helplessness wraps itself around his rib cage and smothers his heart.
the door cracks open, and in falls jongin with a paper bag hanging from his arm. he kicks the door shut then leans his body against it, his face turned up to the ceiling, chest heaving in search of air. kyungsoo hesitates. he wants to go over there and ask jongin if he’s alright, but the other guy’s made clear that he doesn’t want anything of the sort. so the silence slips into the room along with the ever-darkening night, and kyungsoo catches himself stealing glances at the window opposite him.
when a few seconds have passed, jongin speaks with more gravel in his voice than usual. “there is food in the bag.” he tilts his head toward the paper bag that he’s set down. “go… eat. once you’re done, you’ll find that in my rucksack there are some changes of clothes for you.”
kyungsoo stands up and walks toward the bag. jongin’s breathing is calmer now, but he’s pale all over and it looks like his bones will crumble beneath his skin in any minute. “are you… alright?”
“i’m fine,” jongin rasps out. “i’ve already eaten. mind your own business.”
kyungsoo clenches his jaw. if he doesn’t want help, fine. if he’s determined to treat kyungsoo as the one charity case he needs to take care of to appease the spirits of goodwill every year, suit himself. it’s not like kyungsoo had asked to be attacked by whatever those creatures were in his room last night.
his hand’s grabbed ahold of the bag when jongin’s body spasms. no sound escapes from his lips but the pain’s laid thick over his features, and he rests his forehead against his knees. his breathing turns shallow.
well, kyungsoo thinks, he’d been intent on ignoring jongin like the latter wished. still, it isn’t in his nature to watch people suffer, and he does owe jongin his life.
“where’s the wound?” he asks, all business now. the years he’d spent learning the healing lore in order to treat sick guests rush through his veins, and he feels more confident, more secure in the knowledge that there is something he can do.
“there is… no wound.” jongin summons up the energy to raise his head so he can give kyungsoo the darkest glare he can manage.
kyungsoo doesn’t even acknowledge the blatant lie. with the hidden strength used by most healers against stubborn, unyielding patients, he manages to pull jongin’s robes off of him. underneath, a single cut runs diagonally down his abdomen, the freshness of the blood in stark contrast to the whiteness of his shirt. a look of shock registers in jongin’s eyes at the sight; perhaps he hadn’t thought it was that bad. to kyungsoo, it isn’t untreatable, but it’s a little more than he’s bargained for.
“do you have any tools?” he asks, suddenly missing his well-stocked medical kit at home.
“rosemary,” jongin says, every inch of resistance sucked out of him. his shoulders slump and he screws his eyes shut. “rosemary before everything else.”
“alright, rosemary,” kyungsoo says. “anything else? needles, thread, bandages?”
“rucksack. inner pocket. wooden box at the bottom.”
kyungsoo scrambles for the rucksack. after a bit of a tussle with some rolls of fabric, his fingers brush against the lid of the box, and he brings it up. it isn’t that big, but inside it has everything that kyungsoo needs. he takes rosemary out of the pocket where he’d seen it earlier, not quite sure how he’s supposed to apply it.
jongin seems to be thinking the same thing, because his eyes flutter open and he says, “just give me the rosemary.”
kyungsoo hands it to him and sits back on his heels, trying to keep himself from twitching with urgency. with a sigh, jongin crushes the rosemary in his hand and sprinkles the leaves over the wound, muttering words under his breath. at first, it isn’t clear what the routine is for; but then the air around him feels charged and the wound glows white. it becomes so bright that kyungsoo has to shield his eyes; he watches from the spaces in between his fingers as purplish-black smoke hisses and rises out of the cut. with his other hand, jongin reaches for something in his pocket and draws out a silver jar. then, the words on his lips growing louder but still incomprehensible, he draws the smoke around his fist and guides it into the jar, replacing the lid with a final, shouted chant. sweat beads his upper lip. the jar rolls from his grasp and rests at kyungsoo’s feet. jongin heaves another breath and lets his body fall back, eyes closed once more.
kyungsoo steels himself. he can feel his hands shaking from the nerves of seeing the smoke rise from jongin’s wound; just hours ago, the same kind of smoke had gushed out of his lips. still, he has a task to do. he's seen worse-looking cuts and dealt with severed limbs -- now that jongin’s done whatever he’s done, all he has to deal with is a single cut. he sets to work on it, swabbing disinfectant over the wound to wash it clean of any bacteria. taking the needle and thread in hand, he sews the cut closed, applies a layer of ointment over the stitches, and carefully finishes the entire process off by bandaging the wound. jongin’s still pale, but kyungsoo thinks it’s more out of exhaustion than of blood loss. with some difficulty, he hoists jongin up to his bed. the other guy’s not that responsive anymore, already fallen prey to the sleep he's eluded for hours. kyungsoo stares down at him for a moment, wondering if he should wake him up to eat, but he decides to leave him alone. he needs rest more than food.
he opens the paper bag and finds a hunk of bread,a couple of packages of cured meat, fried fish wrapped in leaves and salted nuts. his stomach growls --it’s been some time since his last meal, so kyungsoo eats his share and sets aside the rest for jongin.
once he’s done eating, he rummages through the rucksack and finds the change of clothing that jongin had mentioned. the room doesn’t have its own toilet, but it does have a wash basin and running water, which kyungsoo uses to scrub the grime off his hands and face and most of his body. then he uses the soap and water to wash his clothes, hanging them to dry on the clothes rack.
jongin sleeps through all of these tasks. kyungsoo can’t quite shake off the jittery feeling in his stomach, though -- the state jongin was in when he arrived, and the yellow glow of the square, and the rosemary coaxing the smoke out of jongin’s wound have disquieted him. no matter what jongin thinks, it’ll be easier for him to comply with his wishes if he understood everything. being in the dark only serves to make him more scared than he already is.
he starts pacing the length of the room. what would his parents think when they found his bed without its occupant, drawers and shelves most likely upturned, bedsheets strewn all over the floor, and windows flung open? how would they react? who would help them run the inn?
perhaps they’d even alerted the village’s hunters and strongmen to search for him. but outside the snow is falling again, and kyungsoo doubts anyone is in any state to brave the conditions, even if it is to search for a missing member of the village. it simply is too much risk.
he’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn't notice jongin's body stirring from his slumber. that's why he almost yelps when jongin brushes past him to get to the food kyungsoo had left on the table. jongin doesn’t speak while he eats, and kyungsoo stands there, frozen, unsure of what to say. midway through chewing his fish, jongin seems to remember something; he walks back to his rucksack, ruffles through the things inside, then without warning, he tosses a waterskin to kyungsoo. kyungsoo only just manages to catch it, and jongin returns to the food with his own waterskin in hand.
“jongin?”
jongin doesn’t give him a scathing reply, so kyungsoo takes this a sign of encouragement.
“i know i’m, um, not supposed to bother you, but, um... what happened?”
jongin uncaps his waterskin and takes a sip. it doesn’t look like he’s going to speak anytime soon, so kyungsoo resigns himself to more unanswered questions and makes for the bed.
“i got caught.”
kyungsoo pauses. jongin doesn’t say anything more, so he prods, “got caught by what?”
“by them.” jongin shrugs, and he tears the meat out of its packaging. “by the demons. not that strong, really, the bunch of them, but there were too many. one managed to sneak in his mark on me.”
“demons?” kyungsoo’s lips feel dry. he sits down at the edge of his bed. “what do you mean, demons? are they the ones coming after us?”
“haven’t heard of demons before, have you? well, i’m not surprised, it means i’m doing my job right. you’re not aware they exist because i get rid of them before they get to you. except this time, i failed.”
“what... why are they after me?”
jongin shrugs. “they go after anyone with a soul, but they want you especially for a particular reason. as to what that reason is... i’m sorry, i can’t tell you that. all you need to know right now is that they’re pursuing us, they travel fast at night so no matter how much distance we cover during the day they’ll catch up to us, and it’ll be a while before you’ll be able to go home." he seems to catch the look on kyungsoo’s face because he adds, "don’t worry. before we left, i wrote a note to your parents and slipped it under their door.”
“so…” kyungsoo pauses, trying to gauge if jongin’s getting tired of all his questions, but he’s chugging down water and doesn’t quite look as irritated. “where are we going?”
“i don’t know yet,” jongin admits. “right now the plan is to have someplace to stay where we can hunker down during the night. we can’t stay long in one place because they’ll simply stake out our location and attack us once there’s the slightest breach of our defenses. everything i’ve done,” he waves his hand around the room, “will work for now, but not when the stronger ones come calling.”
“the... stronger ones?”
“don’t concern yourself with them,” jongin says. “you just need to run when i tell you to run. for now, go to sleep. i’ll stand guard.”
“but you’ve barely had any rest,” kyungsoo protests. “your wound might open up again.”
“i do not want, nor need, your concern. i’ll be fine.” jongin starts clearing up the rubbish, and by the set of his shoulders, kyungsoo can tell that this conversation is over.
for now, kyungsoo promises himself. he won’t push it now, not when his relationship with jongin is still tenuous. but he won’t be closing this chapter until he gets all of the answers.
part ii
Title: unburials: towards the setting sun
Genre: fantasy, romance, angst
Rating: PG-13
Length: 19,400 words
Summary: once upon a time, a hunter born on the bloodlust year seeks out the purest soul.
Notes: Hello, hello! First of all, I’d like to apologize to my recipient if this is not in any way what you were looking for. I suspect that I deviated very much from your original request. Second, I would like to thank the mods for their endless patience, and for assigning me a wonderful beta who was more than willing to clean up my mess.
the demon hunter
the skies are red.
underneath the eye of the blood-rimmed sun, jongin surveys the landscape stretching out on all sides. everything is flat, black earth, smudged with the lives that have crossed over it to the unknown. his shoulders remain tense as he sets down his rucksack. even as his hands perform the familiar task of setting up a tent, tying the canvas to the stakes, drawing a square around it and muttering the simple incantation that his mentor had taught him, jongin does not glance down.
his prey is just as easily his predator.
the last thing he does before he retreats into his tent is build a fire out of a bundle of dried tinder and a flint. it won't keep out the things he is hunting, he knows, but it will give him warmth, something to cook with. the enchanted square will do most of the protecting, as long as he does not take a single step out of it.
inside his tent, he unrolls his sleeping bag and lays it down on the ground. from the belt at his waist, he takes out a thin, silver rod, no more than five inches long. then, sitting cross-legged, he places the mark etched into the heel of his right palm on an indentation halfway down the rod. for a second, it is silent, his chest rising and falling with every breath that finds its way to his lungs.
the rod begins to glow, brighter and brighter until the interior of the tent is spilling over with white. jongin narrows his eyes into slits and waits for the light to slink back to the shadows, leaving him with a sharp, cruel blade, attached to a hilt of bone and leather. branded on the flat of the blade is a labyrinth shaped like a hexagon, the lines of it black, matching the one on his palm.
he places it across his lap. jongin has more than a lot of faith in the incantation that will ward off the evil beginning to swirl around the edges at the first blush of sunset, but he has been trained for so long to be prepared for anything. he watches, and waits for the first appearance.
through the canvas of his tent, he sees a shapeless form drip darkness just outside the square. then another, and another, hordes of them finding strength in the dark, shifting and changing. jongin's grip on the hilt of the blade tightens.
the demons, now gathered in full force, begin to wail.
if there were any other person in the tent, a person who was not jongin and did not know what jongin knew, he or she would have sat there feeling despair climb into his or her bones. the wails would have cut into his or her core and flooded it with the tight feeling of hopelessness, a sensation meant to crush his or her ribs. his or her vision would darken; in minutes, the wails would pull him or her out and the demons would swallow him or her whole, leaving behind strips of flesh hanging sack-like over bones.
but jongin is the one inside, and he knows what the full effect of the wails is, knows it so well that they do no more than coax disdain out of him. the blade on his lap winks silver. he reminds himself that come morning, he will be able to drive it through the demons kept at bay by the enchanted square.
outside the tent, the fire continues to burn, a halo of light not yet blotted out by the shadows boiling just inches away.
i. the innkeeper’s son
winter blankets the village not even a day into the twelfth month, sweeping animals into burrows and deep beneath the roots of trees. kyungsoo eyes the snow, knee-deep now, filling the yard of his family's inn. as the youngest of three sons, it is his duty to keep the path clear for any travelers looking to wait out the rest of the storm somewhere comfortable and safe. kyungsoo likes how the travelers stomp in with tales of other villages, furs often reeking of adventures yet to turn stale, but he despises the hours-long work of shoveling the snow. he sighs and wraps his coat and scarf extra tight around himself, then trudges out with his shovel.
his village is one of the more prosperous ones, fields blooming with grain during harvest season and markets overflowing with fresh produce, jewels, fabrics and all manner of things in the spring. there is a school that teaches the basics -- everything else, a trip to the far-away city can cover, for every year there are officials who come round to offer a handful of youth the chance to have an education. but those who choose not to go and those who aren't chosen at all, are not left wanting. this is, after all, an area known as a trading outpost. every family has its own trade, every shop is willing to impart its craft, and so very few people take the hay-filled caravans to the city.
kyungsoo is an innkeeper's son, but as the last-born, he is normally expected to take up some other trade or craft, or even take the offer of a scholarship in the city. but his brothers had gone ahead of him: junmyeon, the eldest, had accepted the offer five years prior, and now he was home for a short while before taking oath as part of the city's new batch of lawmakers; jongdae, next in line, had long since been attracted to music, and just the year before, he'd begun his apprenticeship with the village's favorite bard, kyuhyun. that had left kyungsoo with the responsibility of continuing the family trade, though he'd entertained the same dreams as his brothers.
he leans on the handle of the shovel and squints down the rest of the tree-lined path, wondering if any travelers will come along today.
last night, a group of cloaked men had mixed dirt with snow, their faces shadowed when they'd come up to kyungsoo's mother and asked for rooms for five nights. kyungsoo, who had been sweeping the hallways that time, had felt a chill in his bones as he watched them. still they gave enough gold for kyungsoo's family to be able to buy spiced cakes for the midwinter dinner, so he'd quelled the fear that was wave-like in his stomach.
kyungsoo resumes shoveling the snow, humming a song under his breath. he keeps himself going with the thought of the hot cider his mother is brewing in the inn's kitchen, the fire blazing in the common room of the inn, and the music sheets that jongdae had given him upon returning from a training session with the bard. the wind blows and plays with the snow a while, but it takes care not to ruin his work. further down the road, he can hear the ring of hammer on metal from the blacksmith's shop, the bargaining for cured meats at the charcutier's house, and the snap of leather from the tanner's place.
"you."
a voice, rusty and deep, breaks through the rhythm of kyungsoo's shoveling. he looks up to see a young man swathed in robes as deep as night, his features free of anything except a certain blankness that disconcerts kyungsoo. the stranger's skin has been licked by sun, which kyungsoo finds curious in the dead of winter, when the sun sleeps in its bedding of clouds before noon has even made its mark on the ground. this man looks weathered, hardened, as though the years have chipped away at his innocence and encased him in metal and earth.
kyungsoo has to remind himself that he is the innkeeper's son, and, therefore, he must be hospitable. "yes?" he says, trying for a bright smile. it feels tight on his lips and only succeeds in pulling out a look of disdain from the man.
"where is the village inn?" the man asks. his irises, kyungsoo notes, are near black. he seems like he's looking at a point to the right of kyungsoo -- it unsettles him, that detached gaze, but he marshals himself.
"right here," kyungsoo says, motioning toward the pair of carved wooden doors with gold inlay that his father had had installed this year. "i'll show you inside."
"no need for that," the man says, now beginning to make his way up the path.
"i'm sorry, i think i have to make myself clear," kyungsoo says, a bit irritated now. it usually takes more than a couple of dismissive replies for him to be on the offensive. "it's not an option. i'll show you inside, because my parents -- who are also the innkeepers -- are doing errands, and as i am their son, i am responsible for accommodating you." he slings the shovel in one smooth motion over his shoulder, trying not to wince when the flat of it bumps against his thigh.
a brief look of shock crosses the man's face, but it becomes impassive once again. "well, then," he says, "show me the wonders of your inn."
kyungsoo seethes at the tone but he reminds himself that he is not in a position to drive away this man. so he stays silent, leading the walk to the inn and opening the door for the visitor. inside, he edges between the redwood-paneled desk and shelves built for receiving guests. the man remains silent all throughout this, not even bothering to shake the snow off his coat or setting down the faded grey rucksack he's been carrying.
kyungsoo takes out a ledger and a pen, and he sets both down on the desk with a flourish. he turns to the pages noting which rooms are free. "alone?"
"does it look like i am anything but?"
kyungsoo bites down on his tongue. "a small or large room?"
"i've slept in tents and even on top of earth before," the man says, lips curled into a bitter smile. "the bare minimum will do."
"how many nights?"
"for as long as it takes to accomplish my task."
"alright," kyungsoo says, biting down even harder on his tongue. "name?"
"jongin."
kyungsoo glances up, surprised at how the answer strikes out so plainly and without any anecdote whatsoever. jongin returns his gaze with a raised eyebrow.
"alright, jongin," kyungsoo says, "since you're staying here indefinitely, payment must be given each morning before the birds sing eight times. five golden pieces a night. we serve food at any time of day, but bear in mind that this isn't at all part of what you're paying already. here's your key." he hands the key to jongin, then slips out of the receptionist's nook to lead the way to his room.
it's unsettling how quiet jongin is behind him; how, when he moves, the only thing that gives him away are the glances kyungsoo shoots back to check if he's still following. they're on the second-floor hallway when jongin taps on his shoulder.
"wait."
"what is it?" kyungsoo asks, trying to repress the urge to jump in surprise.
"do you have any other visitors at the moment?" jongin's stance seems tense, and his eyes keep flicking back-and-forth. it's as if he's seeking something that kyungsoo can't see. the bones of his knuckles push against his skin as he grips the straps of his rucksack tighter.
it unsettles kyungsoo, this guardedness. life in the village holds hardly any mystery or tension. while it isn't like everyone is ready to pour out their stories at campfires, kyungsoo knows of no one like jongin, who hunches in on himself and seems bent on becoming a part of the shadows. and no one, kyungsoo is sure, looks as though they'll be gone any minute.
"of course we do," kyungsoo snorts. "this is an inn. a lot of travelers stop by here."
jongin considers him for a moment. kyungsoo does not drop his gaze. then he says, almost to himself, "such leniency of trust can only come from someone with newborn eyes."
kyungsoo stiffens. "what did you say?"
"there are suspicious characters abroad," jongin says, his voice a decibel louder. "ghosts turn into humans, and humans turn into ghosts."
"i have no idea what you mean," kyungsoo says. "i speak in the tongue of the land, not the tongue of the strange."
he knows jongin's glaring at him, but kyungsoo turns his back on the other guy and keeps walking. his parents won't forgive him once they find out about his behavior to a guest; for now, though, he feels a deep sense of satisfaction.
he stops outside of jongin's door and watches him as he unlocks it. kyungsoo's given him one of the sparser rooms, something more suited to the nomadic aura that clings to jongin. the guest enters the room and surveys it with the door still half-open behind him, taking in the double bed with clean white sheets pushed up against a curtained window, the wooden desk, the closet near the entrance and another door leading to the toilet.
"dinner will be ready once the sun sets," kyungsoo says. "if you need anything, tug on the bell-pull beside your bed. we'll get whatever it is that you need."
jongin doesn't reply. he sets down his rucksack beside the closet and makes for the window, pushing aside the curtains to let a pool of weak winter sunlight spill over the bed.
"if you don't need anything," kyungsoo continues, feeling more and more like this is a lost cause and that he really shouldn't bother, "i'll be downstairs shoveling the snow."
"what is your name?"
kyungsoo's eyes narrow. jongin lets the curtain drop back down, his face turned in kyungsoo's direction.
"why do you want to know?" kyungsoo bites back. he curses jongin in his thoughts -- normally he is patient and courteous with every guest that passes through the entrance of the inn. perhaps it has something to do with how jongin's tone is dismissive, the rise and fall of his words like a slap to the hearer's face.
jongin doesn't reply.
kyungsoo huffs. "my name is kyungsoo," he says. "pleased to make your acquaintance."
for the first time since jongin had strolled his way into kyungsoo's life via the shoveled path to the inn, the corner of his lips turns up into a smile. kyungsoo blinks. "are you?" he asks. "pleased to make my acquaintance, i mean. i don't think so. you look as though if someone gave you a knife, right here, right now, i would find the blade driven through my chest."
"i don't know what you're talking about," kyungsoo says, though his response is half-hearted. it's not like jongin's wrong.
"listen, kyungsoo." jongin crosses the room, his face serious again as he stops in front of kyungsoo. "ghosts turn into humans, and humans turn into ghosts. i know you do not understand what it means, and i am in no position to tell you, but keep those words in mind. danger has been kept away from the land for a long time, but that does not mean it will stay that way forever. let your guests in, yes; however, you must never trust them. and sleep with your doors and windows closed, and a sprig of rosemary tucked beneath your pillow."
"a sprig of rosemary," kyungsoo repeats, trying and failing to hide his incredulity. "okay."
something passes over jongin's face. a flicker, like the brief flap of a bird's wing flying across his eyes, the last sad note of a piano piece. "you do not understand," he says. "i hope you never will."
"alright," kyungsoo says. "i'll get going now, then, to fetch myself some rosemary."
he doesn't even linger for a second longer there, his steps down the hallway going quick
quick, away from the room and away from jongin. the guy, kyungsoo thinks, is clearly one of those gypsies romping throughout the land with crystal balls and glass beads, proclaiming the doom of the world.
still, as he settles back into the task of shoveling snow, kyungsoo wonders what those words might mean, and why jongin insists so much that he must hold on to them.
dinner at the village inn is always a boisterous one, no matter the season and the number of people present. when the darkness tiptoes across the skies, locals and travelers often find themselves on the zigzagging path leading to the carved doors of the inn, eager to stamp out their exhaustion with a fire blazing at the grate and drinks pouring for a bit of bronze. kyuhyun the bard sometimes drops by to share a newly-composed song. so does the dance troupe that camps out in the fields to the west of the village, drilling movements so fluid and powerful into bodies meant to bend. there are, of course, plenty of poets always ready to sing a sonnet or two. not to be outdone, travelers regale everyone with adventures they've had in other parts of the land, hands cutting air into bits and pieces of unknown landscapes. kyungsoo likes this the most; if there were ever something stopping him from rejecting his inheritance of the family inn, it is this, the gatherings that stack sounds up to the rafters and leave red-faced smiles on sofas.
tonight, however, a chill rushes through the village and keeps everyone tucked inside the heated walls of their houses. a few more travelers come dripping into the inn, but they say nothing more than the cursory good evening to him. it is impossible to talk with blue lips. kyungsoo knows this, but he still can't help feeling disappointed. he always looks forward to the stories.
"ring the bell for me, will you, kyungsoo?" his mother calls from the kitchen.
kyungsoo reaches for the bell-pull hanging by a pillar near the receptionist's desk. it's a thick green braid, running up and down the pipes and connected to almost every room in the inn. he tugs, and in the background, he hears the faint tinkling of all the bells installed in all of the rooms. then he checks the dining room one more time to ensure that there are no wrinkles on the tablecloths and no wilting roses in the vases.
as the travelers begin settling down at the tables and ordering food, kyungsoo's kept busy serving them. it's a quiet affair, many of the patrons too exhausted to expend effort on things that do not involve lifting food and drink to their mouths. at the very least, jongdae's here, having just finished another day of training with the bard. he sweeps right through the aisles and sits down at the piano to play a song, his voice accompanying the notes that drift out of ivory and black.
the cloaked men that had come just the night before are hunched round a table, whispering amongst themselves. unlike the other guests, they haven't ordered a single dish, choosing to whet whatever appetites they have with glasses of ale and cider. kyungsoo's curiosity is pricked by the secrecy that the group wears so comfortably, but he doesn't hover too much around them.
jongin doesn't come down until late into the hour, with most of the guests gone and the tables ready for clearing. he hasn't changed out of his clothes; still, kyungsoo thinks that there's something different about him since the last time he's seen him, something to do with the clench of his jaw and the wariness of his eyes, and the way his right hand rests on some part of his cloak. he glances round the room, as if seeking something. kyungsoo may be wrong, but there seems to be a flicker of relief in jongin's eyes. he makes his way to a table in the corner, settling into a chair with its back against the wall and which, kyungsoo realizes, provides an unobstructed view of the entire room.
"we have chicken, beef, several salads and a minestrone soup," kyungsoo reels off to jongin. jongdae's taking a break at the moment, so only chatter is threaded into the surroundings as his older brother hops from table to table with his bright smile, checking that everything's all right. he's got no intention of taking up the family trade, but jongdae, like junmyeon and like kyungsoo, had been brought up to accommodate guests. this is a habit that will stay with the three of them for the rest of their lives.
"does your salad have rosemary in it?"
kyungsoo squints at jongin, trying to gauge if the latter is joking or not. to be on the safe side, he says, "we have rosemary in the chicken."
"then i'll have that," jongin says, "along with the soup and a glass of cider."
kyungsoo does not comment further, jotting down the order as fast as he can.
"where do you sleep, kyungsoo?"
he almost drops his pen in surprise. jongin's said a lot of strange things from the moment he's stepped inside the inn, but this is perhaps the strangest of all.
"what -- what does it matter -- this is not a... a..." kyungsoo stutters, trying to gather his thoughts. he considers, for a brief moment, bringing up the subject of turning away suspicious characters from the inn at the next family meeting. it's always been the inn's creed to welcome anyone from any land, and it's the reason why their business thrives so much. still, jongin's strangeness is almost enough to convince him to do otherwise.
jongin raises his eyebrow. "i don't think I'm thinking the same thing you're thinking, kyungsoo. i'm asking out of curiosity, if you will. does your family stay in this inn and take rooms out of many, or do you stay far from here?"
"why would an innkeeper leave his inn unattended?" kyungsoo says, bristling at the suggestion. "no, we live right here. the downstairs rooms are ours. also," and he lifts his chin a bit, trying to cover for his earlier sputtering, "you shouldn't phrase things like that, it gives people the wrong impression."
"no, it just reveals the state of their mind and how they think," jongin says. "i presume you have silver bolts on your doors and windows like in the rooms of your guests?"
"of course," kyungsoo says. he's trying to see where jongin's heading with this but he's failing. he looks down at the pad in his hand, hoping to give jongin the hint that if he doesn't have anymore questions, kyungsoo will be pleased to attend to his order -- and to be in a place without an irritating guest spouting nonsensical things.
"and you use them regularly?"
"yes, we do," kyungsoo says. "now if you'll excuse me, i'd like to go fetch the food you've asked for, sir." he leaves no room for jongin to say another word. instead he turns his back on the guest and brings the order to his mother.
he returns to jongdae sitting at jongin's table, the men laughing over something. kyungsoo resists the urge to rub his eyes, sure that this is an apparition of some sort. but it doesn't seem like it, and his brother's always been the most patient one, friendly even to guests like jongin who sink into darkness and spout visions of the improbable.
"oh, hello, kyungsoo," jongdae says, standing up to help kyungsoo put down the dinner things on jongin's table. "i was just talking to jongin here about his experiences in the north. he seems to have seen a lot."
"really?" kyungsoo asks, trying to seem nonchalant, even though he wants to know the details as well. "why are you asking about the north, anyway?"
jongdae shrugs. "oh, kyuhyun takes a trip to the north every year to visit a council of bards, and this year he wants to take me along."
"ah, interesting," kyungsoo says. he glances at jongin, whose mouth is now full of chicken and soup. the man glances up at kyungsoo with a gaze that is hard to decipher. "okay, since you're here anyway, i'll leave the two of you to it."
jongdae tilts his head. "you don't want to listen to jongin's stories? you love stories, kyungsoo."
"well -- yes, but mother needs me in the kitchen," kyungsoo reasons. "really, it's all right."
"i can help mother in the kitchen," jongdae volunteers. "i've run out of songs to play anyway."
kyungsoo opens his mouth but jongin beats him to it. "it's all right, the both of you can go to the kitchen," he says. "i'm fine with company, but i'm not really used to it while dining, and i'd also like some time to myself. thank you, though," and he smiles with closed lips at jongdae.
"are you sure, sir?" jongdae asks, brows furrowed.
"very," jongin says. "i don't mind."
“well,” jongdae says, “then let’s go help mother, kyungsoo.”
as they leave, kyungsoo swears there’s a hint of a smile in jongin’s eyes. then the guest returns to his chicken, and kyungsoo and jongdae fall right into the rhythm of doing the chores their mother sets them to, the kitchen soon sparkling clean. junmyeon comes down not a few minutes later and is the one to gather up the remaining utensils and clutter in the dining room. for a few hours, as kyungsoo and his family lock the doors and retire to their rooms, heads already aching for the smooth down of pillows, kyungsoo feels content. he forgets about jongin, about rosemary and silver bolts and human-shaped ghosts. in the embrace of blankets, it is easy to live within the crystalline shells of dreams, without thought of the dangers creeping into moonlight-drenched rooms.
red. the room is smeared with paint, with blood -- red, so bright, so alive, pulsating even in the periphery of kyungsoo’s vision. he does not move. he cannot move. above him the ceiling opens up to a storm, swirling in with wind and rain, thunder shaking kyungsoo’s spine. instead of flying off, the blankets cling to him still. they wrap, tighter and tighter, around his limbs, his neck, his torso. kyungsoo tries to peel them off but he has no hands, no fingers, just eyes that watch the red bleed into the air in the midst of the downpour.
the red begins to crumble. eroded, tainted, the searing shade of it washed away by the skies’ blues. flakes of it sail across his body and assemble into some weird shape he cannot make sense of. the blankets are tighter now, the pillow beneath his head like rock.
then the red flakes begin to dance, caught up in some kind of vortex in the middle of room. it grows stronger, stronger, until all kyungsoo can see is a spectrum of spilled life. it runs down his face, his lips, and wanders down his tongue. fabric curled around his throat.
his chest heaves, but no air comes. something black, like oblivion, issues out of his mouth; something, but he does not know what it is. no air, no breath, more black. no breath, no air, more black. more black --
kyungsoo’s eyes fly open, his hands reaching for his neck in a desperate attempt to regain air. his throat continues to constrict and he doesn’t get it, he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know why this is happening and what is going on. he claws at the skin -- there is no fabric, but something’s weighing him down, something heavy and oppressive and suffocating. his mouth opens and he thrashes in his bed, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale.
five figures loom over him, detaching from the darkness that blots the room. kyungsoo can do nothing but stare up at them. it is silent save for his gasping, and he tears his hand away from his neck to reach out, to ask for help.
one of the figures moves closer to him and touches his chest. kyungsoo almost throws up as a sudden burning feeling eats away at his stomach, makes its way through his veins, and surrounds his rib cage with an internal fire. the pain continues to build and he thinks in flashes, in bursts, in graphite shadows and memories sketched into existence by the call of death. there is a fire inside him and it is filling his insides with smoke. the figure pushes down on his chest, and then smoke does begin to issue out of his mouth. kyungsoo’s eyesight begins to blur.
he hears the sound of a door being thrown open and the sharp screeches of slashing. his eyesight is still foggy; all he can make out is that now, instead of five, there are only three figures left. then two, then one -- and red, flakes of red beginning to form a cylinder, spinning downward with a howl. the figure closest to him pushes down harder on his chest but silver cuts through it. cruel silver, arcing down the black, paring it down to the copper rust falling back to earth.
“i told you to be careful,” someone hisses, the reproach within the voice choked back by notes that reek of desperation. “i told you -- goddammit.” a hand wraps around the smoke still rising, drifting from kyungsoo’s lips, and the hand glows. it twists and turns the column of smoke, threading silver along it, gathering it into a thin stream. then the hand forces it back into kyungsoo’s mouth. kyungsoo can feel the smoke slipping down his throat, falling in place somewhere deep within him. the hand does not stop -- it passes a rod over his body, and the voice is murmuring an endless river of words that do not make sense to kyungsoo. but whatever it is, it’s helping him, because the fire in his stomach dies out. he tastes rosemary on the back of his tongue.
“who -- what --” kyungsoo coughs, sitting up and trying to catch a glimpse of the person. “what happened --”
“we can’t stay here,” the voice says, and while kyungsoo’s eyesight is cleared up now, he can only make out streaks of motion disturbing the shadows. “they’re coming, they’ll have heard the call, and we need to be out of here immediately.” the door swings shut and the bolts slide in place over the wood.
“who are you?” kyungsoo says, scrambling from the bed. “what just happened?”
“no time.” sprigs of rosemary christen the area in front of the door. “they won’t come after your family, i’ve already cast the incantations to protect them, and in any case it’s you they want. let’s go.”
“go where?” kyungsoo cries, but the person doesn’t answer him. an arm wraps around his waist and swings him over his shoulder with surprising strength, and they head for the nearest window.
a figure materializes on the other side of the glass.
the person holding kyungsoo curses, and kyungsoo tries to swallow down his fear. he watches as the figure wails and feels the fire burning in his stomach once more, boiling --
the glass shatters. a silver blade is sunk deep into the figure’s chest and it bursts into a confetti of red shards. kyungsoo feels the person beneath him clamber out of the window, muttering something in his breath, and he is pulled out of the room with him.
“faster, faster --”
a chorus of wails breaks out behind him, and the person gives an angry shout. he crosses the open window with silver, chanting something, and the hole bursts with yellow light. rosemary assaults kyungsoo’s senses.
“don’t listen to the wailing!”
he watches the figures melt in the yellow and claps his hands over his ears. he thinks of the inn, of his parents, of his brothers; he thinks of the fire, the embers of it still sparking inside him, and the smoke rising in his stomach.
he thinks until he thinks too much, and his head feels like it’s going to burst. the person is calling out his name, but kyungsoo is too far gone to answer.
he succumbs to the black.
flight
jongin runs.
night is the hardest time to travel because it is when the demons are strongest. everything that the light does not touch is their domain, their kingdom, and he is heading straight into it. it’s made more difficult by the human load on his shoulders and the fact that he knows there are plenty of demons on their trail, but he sets his sights on moving forward. not too far, but far enough by the time the sun rises.
as he runs, he curses himself. he should have done this sooner. when he’d arrived at the inn, he should have whisked kyungsoo away the moment he’d stepped into the second floor hallway and felt the malicious aura of the spirits wrapped in human flesh. but he’d been stupid. he hadn’t sensed that kyungsoo was the one they were looking for until he’d gone down to the dining room and sat at the table they’d used, snatching at the remnants of the conversation they’d had not yet erased from the atmosphere. even he hadn’t sensed that kyungsoo was the one he was supposed to protect. no, not until midnight, when the pull of evil was like a tide of sludge, and through it all jongin had seen the blinding white of a pure soul, the soul that he and the demons had been racing toward. blinding white, about to drown in darkness. blinding white, in kyungsoo’s room.
blinding white, in kyungsoo’s unlocked room, without a single sprig of rosemary.
he tells himself that it isn’t kyungsoo’s fault. the boy had known nothing, after all -- in these parts, the legends and myths have long succumbed to practicality, and even then he and his fellow hunters have done their jobs without alerting everyone else to the presence of demons. they’d long lived in the far reaches of the land, deep in forests and deserts, but the prophecy had somehow made it to their lairs. the prophecy of a pure soul, one that both hunters and demons coveted, one that would finally destroy the balance.
so jongin’s legs ache but he does not stop, does not look back. he turns his face forward, and with all of his might, he races toward the yolk of the sun.
ii. one pure soul
when he wakes, kyungsoo’s hand flies to his neck before he even registers the reason why. then he remembers the events of the previous night and he sits up, his body alert, trying to make sense of how many hours have passed and where he is. cloth stares back at him. no, not cloth, but thick white canvas, used in tents similar to the ones he and his brothers had used when they’d camped in the past. he looks down and sees that the lower half of his body’s encased in a sleeping bag. to his right, there is hard, flat earth dusted with snow.
kyungsoo pushes the sleeping bag aside and slips out of the entrance flap.
it takes a while for his eyes to adjust. it takes even longer for him to try to fit the landscape with a place in his memory. nothing comes up. this is an unfamiliar area to him, one that he’s never gone to even when he was younger. he pulls himself up to an upright position and scans the surroundings some more, trying to find anything that looks familiar.
“you’re awake.”
kyungsoo whips around. jongin looks back at him, still swathed in his dark robes. in his hand is a silver rod, and seeing it causes the memories to flood right back to the forefront of kyungsoo’s mind.
“you -- last night --”
“we’ve got no time to waste,” jongin interrupts him. “they won’t come after us while it’s still light out, so we need to get to somewhere safe before the dark comes. the nearest village is a good day’s walk away.”
“you can’t just drag me along without explaining anything to me!” kyungsoo protests, watching as jongin crawls inside the tent to get the sleeping bag and roll it up. “who, what were those things? what were they doing? why are they chasing after us?”
jongin stuffs the sleeping bag inside his rucksack. he kneels and pulls out the stakes holding down the tent, all the while not acknowledging kyungsoo’s questions.
kyungsoo scrambles to the last stake. “jongin.”
jongin snatches the stake from his grip. he doesn’t reply, just places the stakes in a pocket of his rucksack. then he gathers up the rest of the tent, bundles everything up, and places it in an inner compartment of his rucksack.
“let’s go.”
“wait!” kyungsoo cries, but jongin doesn’t even spare him a glance. he starts walking northeast, rucksack over his shoulder, the hems of his cloak billowing in the breeze. it’s too early in the day for snow but it’s still cold, and kyungsoo’s about to wonder why he’s not freezing his limbs off when he looks down and sees that he’s wearing a coat and boots. he looks up and jongin’s further down the path; a little more and he’ll be a speck of black on the white. kyungsoo grits his teeth and runs after him.
“jongin!” he pants when he’s finally in step with him. “jongin, you owe me answers. you owe me answers before you start taking me to places i don’t know a thing about.”
kyungsoo expects more silence and more monotonous walking. he expects jongin to ignore him, to brush him off as no more than a bug he must put up with for a while. he does not, however, expect jongin to stop in his tracks. neither does he expect the other guy to say something, voice flat and distant and bitter, striking out into the winter air like a slap to kyungsoo’s face: “i owe you answers?”
kyungsoo winces and takes a step back, regretting his choice of words.
jongin turns to him, and his eyes seem blacker than ever. “you think i owe you answers, kyungsoo? you think i owe you anything at all?”
“i... i…” kyungsoo tries to speak but his vocal cords fail him. jongin's strange, yes, and he says things kyungsoo doesn't understand. but this is different. jongin looks as though he's long lived underwater, every part of him submerged in a secret world kyungsoo has never been and will never be part of.
the other guy starts in his direction. “if there is anyone between the two of us who owes the other one anything, it is you. you owe me your life, kyungsoo, and i nearly lost my own! i could have left you behind to lose your soul, but i ran for miles to escape.”
kyungsoo doesn’t know why he hasn’t noticed it in the past few seconds, but jongin is paler than he remembers. there are bluish-purple rings underneath his eyes, his lips are bloodless, and he’s walking with a bit of a limp. he swallows. he knows guilt when it is right in front of him, with hollow cheeks and a fractured smile, the poison of it a thin veneer over a body housing an exhausted soul.
“i do not intend to let anything i’ve done go to waste,” jongin snaps. “so i suggest, unless you have a pressing need to die within a few hours, you should follow what i say without any protest. do we have an understanding?”
kyungsoo manages a faint “yes.”
“good.” jongin turns. “then let’s get going.”
the village to the northeast is a cluster of log cabins decked in pine and mounds of snow. it’s quieter here, not as colorful or as busy as kyungsoo’s village, but all the same the people smile at them and the children rule the streets in their warmest winter clothes. he and jongin find lodging in a modest inn. kyungsoo knows he mustn’t compare; still he finds himself drinking in the furnishings and thinking that a splash of paint here and there won’t hurt. and there it is, that feeling of nostalgia -- only yesterday he’d been at the inn, like he was every day of his life, begrudging the inheritance that stole most of his time. it was the safest place he’d ever known.
it takes a bit of time for kyungsoo to realize that jongin had asked for the two of them to share a room. it isn’t until he is standing in the space between two beds that the thought hits him, and he turns to jongin. “we’re sharing a room?”
jongin raises an eyebrow at him. “i can’t trust you to know enough to protect yourself, so of course we’re sharing a room. also, it’s cheaper.”
kyungsoo has a thing or two to say about that, but he bites down on his tongue and sits on the edge of the bed on the left-hand side of the room. he balls up all of his questions and tucks them deep down his throat, watching jongin as he draws along the boundaries of the room with a silver rod, murmuring something to himself. when he’s gone around the entire space, he takes a step back and waves his right hand. the square begins to glow a dull yellow. he does the same thing to the windows and the doors; then, without explaining why, he sprinkles rosemary beneath kyungsoo’s pillow.
there are plenty of things that kyungsoo wonders about. how are they going to eat? where will they end up? what are they running from? but he can’t quite erase from his thoughts the expression on jongin’s face earlier, nor his tone of voice. so he looks down and fiddles with his fingers.
“i’ll get us some food,” jongin says. “the sun may be out, but it will go home soon as all things in nature do. stay here. you’ll be safe as long as you’re within the square. i’ll be back as soon as i can.”
if there is anything that kyungsoo at all hates, it is waiting. it is being trapped within a glass box, waiting for time to flow past; it is the hours, the seconds squandered in a single place, with him doing nothing except stand sentry over his own inactivity. he’s not, however, in a position to go against this. so he nods his head, and when he blinks, jongin’s gone.
kyungsoo decides that, given the circumstances, the only thing left to do is to sleep. so he settles back down on the bed, closes his eyes, and he dreams of a home that only yesterday, he’d had in the palm of his hand.
by the time he wakes, the skies outside are splattered with blotches of navy. there are no clocks in the room so he has no idea how long jongin’s been gone. it’s a bit worrying, but his encounters with jongin have driven in a point, like an arrow straight through the bull’s-eye: jongin knows what he’s doing. as much as kyungsoo hates being a rag doll with a yarn mouth sewed shut, he has to comply with what jongin’s asking him to do.
at least, until kyungsoo understands everything that’s been going on.
he sits up in his bed. lying on jongin’s bed is the rucksack he’s been carrying around all day, looking even sorrier in the light of the bedside lamp. it seems to have been built for heavy traveling, with thick stitches running along the lengths of the seams, and sturdy leather straps with silver buckles. he wonders what’s inside, aside from the materials for the tent. then, because kyungsoo is a curious creature with none of the finesse, he slips out of bed and decides to take a peek at the contents of the rucksack.
he starts small, opening the front compartments first. one is overflowing with herbs, mostly rosemary, and a few roots. he reminds himself to ask jongin about the significance of the rosemary later, when the other guy’s in a good enough humor. another pocket holds silver trinkets, clinking when kyungsoo attempts to untangle them. their chains hold fast to each other, so he moves on to another pocket, which is stuffed with a bag made fat by money. and on and on, he finds traveling essentials, maps to other villages with red circles over certain areas, a magnifying glass, a compass, and a case of long-handled sharp implements. he replaces this and is about to open the main flap when he hears the faint patter of footsteps outside the door.
kyungsoo hurls himself to the other side of the room -- not because he’s that scared of jongin, but because he’s wary of whatever it is coming toward him from outside the door. when the knob turns, kyungsoo finds himself wishing for a weapon, something to protect himself with even though he doesn’t have the skill to do so. three summers ago, he’d been given the chance to learn swordsmanship, but back then he’d just been named the heir to the family trade as jongdae had made clear to his parents that as soon as he’d deemed his skills enough, he would vie for an apprenticeship with the bard. kyungsoo had not had time to consider other trades, then; as the last son, he was also his parents’ last chance, and so all summer he’d been kept in the inn. he regrets it now, being the son that would not disappoint his parents. helplessness wraps itself around his rib cage and smothers his heart.
the door cracks open, and in falls jongin with a paper bag hanging from his arm. he kicks the door shut then leans his body against it, his face turned up to the ceiling, chest heaving in search of air. kyungsoo hesitates. he wants to go over there and ask jongin if he’s alright, but the other guy’s made clear that he doesn’t want anything of the sort. so the silence slips into the room along with the ever-darkening night, and kyungsoo catches himself stealing glances at the window opposite him.
when a few seconds have passed, jongin speaks with more gravel in his voice than usual. “there is food in the bag.” he tilts his head toward the paper bag that he’s set down. “go… eat. once you’re done, you’ll find that in my rucksack there are some changes of clothes for you.”
kyungsoo stands up and walks toward the bag. jongin’s breathing is calmer now, but he’s pale all over and it looks like his bones will crumble beneath his skin in any minute. “are you… alright?”
“i’m fine,” jongin rasps out. “i’ve already eaten. mind your own business.”
kyungsoo clenches his jaw. if he doesn’t want help, fine. if he’s determined to treat kyungsoo as the one charity case he needs to take care of to appease the spirits of goodwill every year, suit himself. it’s not like kyungsoo had asked to be attacked by whatever those creatures were in his room last night.
his hand’s grabbed ahold of the bag when jongin’s body spasms. no sound escapes from his lips but the pain’s laid thick over his features, and he rests his forehead against his knees. his breathing turns shallow.
well, kyungsoo thinks, he’d been intent on ignoring jongin like the latter wished. still, it isn’t in his nature to watch people suffer, and he does owe jongin his life.
“where’s the wound?” he asks, all business now. the years he’d spent learning the healing lore in order to treat sick guests rush through his veins, and he feels more confident, more secure in the knowledge that there is something he can do.
“there is… no wound.” jongin summons up the energy to raise his head so he can give kyungsoo the darkest glare he can manage.
kyungsoo doesn’t even acknowledge the blatant lie. with the hidden strength used by most healers against stubborn, unyielding patients, he manages to pull jongin’s robes off of him. underneath, a single cut runs diagonally down his abdomen, the freshness of the blood in stark contrast to the whiteness of his shirt. a look of shock registers in jongin’s eyes at the sight; perhaps he hadn’t thought it was that bad. to kyungsoo, it isn’t untreatable, but it’s a little more than he’s bargained for.
“do you have any tools?” he asks, suddenly missing his well-stocked medical kit at home.
“rosemary,” jongin says, every inch of resistance sucked out of him. his shoulders slump and he screws his eyes shut. “rosemary before everything else.”
“alright, rosemary,” kyungsoo says. “anything else? needles, thread, bandages?”
“rucksack. inner pocket. wooden box at the bottom.”
kyungsoo scrambles for the rucksack. after a bit of a tussle with some rolls of fabric, his fingers brush against the lid of the box, and he brings it up. it isn’t that big, but inside it has everything that kyungsoo needs. he takes rosemary out of the pocket where he’d seen it earlier, not quite sure how he’s supposed to apply it.
jongin seems to be thinking the same thing, because his eyes flutter open and he says, “just give me the rosemary.”
kyungsoo hands it to him and sits back on his heels, trying to keep himself from twitching with urgency. with a sigh, jongin crushes the rosemary in his hand and sprinkles the leaves over the wound, muttering words under his breath. at first, it isn’t clear what the routine is for; but then the air around him feels charged and the wound glows white. it becomes so bright that kyungsoo has to shield his eyes; he watches from the spaces in between his fingers as purplish-black smoke hisses and rises out of the cut. with his other hand, jongin reaches for something in his pocket and draws out a silver jar. then, the words on his lips growing louder but still incomprehensible, he draws the smoke around his fist and guides it into the jar, replacing the lid with a final, shouted chant. sweat beads his upper lip. the jar rolls from his grasp and rests at kyungsoo’s feet. jongin heaves another breath and lets his body fall back, eyes closed once more.
kyungsoo steels himself. he can feel his hands shaking from the nerves of seeing the smoke rise from jongin’s wound; just hours ago, the same kind of smoke had gushed out of his lips. still, he has a task to do. he's seen worse-looking cuts and dealt with severed limbs -- now that jongin’s done whatever he’s done, all he has to deal with is a single cut. he sets to work on it, swabbing disinfectant over the wound to wash it clean of any bacteria. taking the needle and thread in hand, he sews the cut closed, applies a layer of ointment over the stitches, and carefully finishes the entire process off by bandaging the wound. jongin’s still pale, but kyungsoo thinks it’s more out of exhaustion than of blood loss. with some difficulty, he hoists jongin up to his bed. the other guy’s not that responsive anymore, already fallen prey to the sleep he's eluded for hours. kyungsoo stares down at him for a moment, wondering if he should wake him up to eat, but he decides to leave him alone. he needs rest more than food.
he opens the paper bag and finds a hunk of bread,a couple of packages of cured meat, fried fish wrapped in leaves and salted nuts. his stomach growls --it’s been some time since his last meal, so kyungsoo eats his share and sets aside the rest for jongin.
once he’s done eating, he rummages through the rucksack and finds the change of clothing that jongin had mentioned. the room doesn’t have its own toilet, but it does have a wash basin and running water, which kyungsoo uses to scrub the grime off his hands and face and most of his body. then he uses the soap and water to wash his clothes, hanging them to dry on the clothes rack.
jongin sleeps through all of these tasks. kyungsoo can’t quite shake off the jittery feeling in his stomach, though -- the state jongin was in when he arrived, and the yellow glow of the square, and the rosemary coaxing the smoke out of jongin’s wound have disquieted him. no matter what jongin thinks, it’ll be easier for him to comply with his wishes if he understood everything. being in the dark only serves to make him more scared than he already is.
he starts pacing the length of the room. what would his parents think when they found his bed without its occupant, drawers and shelves most likely upturned, bedsheets strewn all over the floor, and windows flung open? how would they react? who would help them run the inn?
perhaps they’d even alerted the village’s hunters and strongmen to search for him. but outside the snow is falling again, and kyungsoo doubts anyone is in any state to brave the conditions, even if it is to search for a missing member of the village. it simply is too much risk.
he’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn't notice jongin's body stirring from his slumber. that's why he almost yelps when jongin brushes past him to get to the food kyungsoo had left on the table. jongin doesn’t speak while he eats, and kyungsoo stands there, frozen, unsure of what to say. midway through chewing his fish, jongin seems to remember something; he walks back to his rucksack, ruffles through the things inside, then without warning, he tosses a waterskin to kyungsoo. kyungsoo only just manages to catch it, and jongin returns to the food with his own waterskin in hand.
“jongin?”
jongin doesn’t give him a scathing reply, so kyungsoo takes this a sign of encouragement.
“i know i’m, um, not supposed to bother you, but, um... what happened?”
jongin uncaps his waterskin and takes a sip. it doesn’t look like he’s going to speak anytime soon, so kyungsoo resigns himself to more unanswered questions and makes for the bed.
“i got caught.”
kyungsoo pauses. jongin doesn’t say anything more, so he prods, “got caught by what?”
“by them.” jongin shrugs, and he tears the meat out of its packaging. “by the demons. not that strong, really, the bunch of them, but there were too many. one managed to sneak in his mark on me.”
“demons?” kyungsoo’s lips feel dry. he sits down at the edge of his bed. “what do you mean, demons? are they the ones coming after us?”
“haven’t heard of demons before, have you? well, i’m not surprised, it means i’m doing my job right. you’re not aware they exist because i get rid of them before they get to you. except this time, i failed.”
“what... why are they after me?”
jongin shrugs. “they go after anyone with a soul, but they want you especially for a particular reason. as to what that reason is... i’m sorry, i can’t tell you that. all you need to know right now is that they’re pursuing us, they travel fast at night so no matter how much distance we cover during the day they’ll catch up to us, and it’ll be a while before you’ll be able to go home." he seems to catch the look on kyungsoo’s face because he adds, "don’t worry. before we left, i wrote a note to your parents and slipped it under their door.”
“so…” kyungsoo pauses, trying to gauge if jongin’s getting tired of all his questions, but he’s chugging down water and doesn’t quite look as irritated. “where are we going?”
“i don’t know yet,” jongin admits. “right now the plan is to have someplace to stay where we can hunker down during the night. we can’t stay long in one place because they’ll simply stake out our location and attack us once there’s the slightest breach of our defenses. everything i’ve done,” he waves his hand around the room, “will work for now, but not when the stronger ones come calling.”
“the... stronger ones?”
“don’t concern yourself with them,” jongin says. “you just need to run when i tell you to run. for now, go to sleep. i’ll stand guard.”
“but you’ve barely had any rest,” kyungsoo protests. “your wound might open up again.”
“i do not want, nor need, your concern. i’ll be fine.” jongin starts clearing up the rubbish, and by the set of his shoulders, kyungsoo can tell that this conversation is over.
for now, kyungsoo promises himself. he won’t push it now, not when his relationship with jongin is still tenuous. but he won’t be closing this chapter until he gets all of the answers.
part ii